Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: Ever noticed how some people joke about immorality? Our culture treats moral failure not as tragedy, but as entertainment. Behind the laughter, however, are real stories of broken families, devastated consequences, and shattered trust.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll gets personal about moral purity. He shares his own story about facing overwhelming temptation as a young Marine. Stationed in Okinawa, Chuck was surrounded by godless living, and he was far from home. From his series titled Contagious Christianity, Chuck presents what he calls Straight Talk about Moral Purity.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: Turn over to the dusty old ancient writings of a sixth-century prophet named Habakkuk. We're not familiar with him, but we sure are with his times. He's a man who lived in the fog. His book is an ancient call to repentance. It is a cry to God who is holy for some intervention. It's not just a cry, it's a scream. He says, "How long, O Lord, will I cry for help and you will not hear? I cry out to Thee 'Violence!' and yet You don't deliver."

Why? Those questions sound familiar. How long? Why? Why don't you unfold Your arms and get with it in this old polluted world of ours? Why don't you save? Why do You make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness? Yet destruction and violence are before me. Strife exists and contentions arise. Therefore the law is ignored, justice is never upheld, the wicked surround the righteous, therefore justice comes out perverted.

Verse 12: "I thought You were holy. Aren't You holy?" Scholar Kyle Yates is right: Habakkuk could not reconcile a bad world with a holy God. It was a world of personal iniquity and wickedness. Verse three: "Why dost Thou make me see iniquity?" The word means lying, vanity, and idolatry. It would include that. Why do You cause me to look on wickedness? The term encompasses oppression, robbery, and assault. There are homicidal deeds going on in the streets of Your people, God. Aren't You Jehovah of Judah? Aren't You the God of this nation? Where are You, God?

Verse 4: The law isn't upheld, and when it is, it's compromised. There's legal compromise, brutal violence, personal iniquity, relational wrangling, legal compromise. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound familiar to anybody else? I thought You were holy, God. Where are You? How can You allow this to happen? There is a moral pollution that comes from the smog, and I'm tired of sucking it in. I'm tired of its diseased impact on my body. I'm tired of talking about a holy God in a world of unholy people.

Habakkuk screamed, but Jeremiah just quietly sobbed. Go back if you will, you'll go back in your Bible to Jeremiah 6, but we're really going a few years ahead in time. He lived a little later than Habakkuk, though not by much. Jeremiah lived to see the end of an era. He saw the nation fall. That's why he wrote Lamentations. It's another name for weeping. He's called the Weeping Prophet. He doesn't scream, he doesn't fight, he doesn't even argue. He just sobs. He writes his prophecy in tears.

Verse 8: "Be warned, O Jerusalem," Jeremiah 6:8, "Be warned, lest I be alienated from you, lest I make you a desolation, a land not inhabited." Verse 10: "To whom shall I speak and give a warning that they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed." See, that's the result of living in the fog. That's the result of sucking up the smog. Your ears get stopped and you can't hear the spiritual message that God is giving. They cannot listen. See the way he puts it? The word of the Lord has become a reproach to them. They have no delight in it.

Ah, get off that stuff. Get up with the times, man. That's the sign of the smog. Verse 11: "I'm full of the wrath of the Lord, I'm weary of holding it in." I'm boiling, I'm churning. Verse 13: "From the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain." Does that sound familiar? That's living in the fog. That's part of the smog. We're fighting for gain. There's a competition to get more, more. And to make matters worse, from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.

I mean, it's bad enough that it's in the law courts, but it's now in the pulpits, Jehovah. What do they tell me? Well, they deal falsely. They have healed the wound of Your people just slightly. Look at what he says: They keep saying, "Shalom, shalom," when there is no shalom. There isn't any peace. And if you don't think that's bad, look at the next verse, 15: "Were they ashamed because of the abomination they've done? Nope. They were not even ashamed at all. They did not even know how to blush."

Ever seen that in the Bible before? Lord God, when I minister to Your people Judah, and I see them come with all the pollution, I notice, God, that there are no more red faces. No one seems shocked anymore. It's what we shall call compensating. In order to handle the shock of our day, we compensate by remaining free of shock. That's part of living in the fog. And it would be bad enough if it were just in my world where I am forced to rear four precious children who carry into their homes a lifestyle.

They build upon our foundation in a world that's increasingly more polluted. The ultimate telltale sign of a lack of holiness is that we no longer blush when we find wrong. We make jokes about it. It's funny. And if you don't laugh, you're a prude. You're weird. You're kind of crotchety. You're getting older. Maybe I don't like to laugh about that much anymore because I am ideal always with the consequence of it. See, people don't come to me and our staff talking about the joys of illicit sex. They come with a horror stories.

Of what do they do now about their family? Or what do they do about this disease? Or what do they do with this incestuous relationship that has torn the place apart? What do they do with this information that's going to blow the thing out of the water now that she's pregnant? What are they going to do? It would be bad enough in the world, but it is now in the church. Even this church. And so when I see in 1 Thessalonians chapter four straight talk about moral purity, I am grateful that God talks that way about it.

I'm grateful He doesn't stutter. I'm even more grateful that He doesn't laugh. He tells me straight what to do about it, and He leaves me with a choice because actually, if you boil holiness down to its basic sense, you come to obedience, don't you? As the 19th-century Scottish theologian John Brown said, "Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervors, or uncommanded austerities. It consists in thinking as God thinks and willing as God wills." That's what the apostle is asking of the reader in chapter four of 1 Thessalonians.

He got his foot in the door by that last part of chapter three when he gave us some guidelines on how to really live. Remember that last time? Remember those comments he gave us? And it just thrilled us, especially as he got to the end and he said, verse 13, "That God may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness." What a great way to live, unblamable in holiness. Confidence is being unblamable. I mean, it's better than having the answers to all the questions on the test. There's no security like being free of blame.

That God may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness so that you can smile at life. You can take it in all of its pleasures. And when marriage comes and you enjoy the partnership of that opposite sex, you have the joys of sexual delights, the likes of which would cause God to laugh. He's pleased with that. He applauds that. He invented it. He created it. He said it will be in that context that it will reach its fulfillment and I honor that. The marriage bed is undefiled, free of blame.

But you take it out of its original context and blame associates itself with it and all the miseries in accompaniment. So Paul, since he lived in Corinth, which was so much like one of our cities in California—not exclusive to California, but it seems as though we have cultivated the notorious reputation for fast living out here. It isn't exclusive, but it seems as though we are the byword for Corinthianizing in our day. And he lived in Corinth when he wrote this letter.

He could have been looking out of his window one morning and prompted by something that had happened in the night before as he saw the same street with the people there. And he knew the Thessalonians lived in a city that had its temptations. And so he said, "Finally, brethren, we request and we exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God, just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more." Underline that. Excel still more.

We have words for that today: Go for it. Give it your best shot. Don't just drift, pursue. Be a gimper. Or as my father would often say, "Get with it. Get with it." Paul says to the reader, just as we have written you and just as we told you when we were with you to really walk, get with it. Make something happen in your life. Don't just drift along in the fog of mediocrity. Excel. Go the second mile. Go beyond the expected. If you're a C student, try your best for a B.

If in life you tend to be rather laid back, remember as your work comes and as you're to give yourself to it, give yourself to diligence. Overcome that tendency toward laziness. That's all involved in the excelling. The reason I'm landing on it and massaging it in a little bit is that the passage that follows is a direct outworking of that excelling lifestyle. You know the commandments we gave you with the authority of the Lord Jesus; excel in that. Now in verses 3 to 6, in the realm of morality, abstain from immorality.

Verse 3: "This is the will of God: your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality." You want to excel in your walk? Then you'll have to come to terms quickly with your lust battle, and it will be that. And it won't stop when you turn 50. And it won't be over just because you lost a mate. And it won't end because your geography changes or because you happen to be a woman or because you are well-educated or because you live behind the walls of a prison or a monastery or are led to remain single.

This is the will of God. Very seldom will you find such straight talk in Scripture. You don't even have to pray about it. You know His will. This is the will of God, that you abstain from porneia. We get our word pornography or pornographic from it. Abstain means abstain. Outside marriage, have nothing to do with sexual involvements with others. That's what it means. Now in the fog of horizontal standards, you will be left with any number of options. You will be counseled to be discreet, but not abstain. I mean, let's don't be silly about this.

You will be told it would be dangerous for you to play around with somebody else's mate, so don't do that. Watch out for disease. It's unwise for you to cohabit with a partner in your family; that's incest, that's scandalous, that's illegal. If you're a teacher, you shouldn't be intimate with your student; that's not professionally wise, so don't do that, some would caution. How relieving it is to know exactly where you stand with the living holy God. If you are not married, you have no business being involved sexually with any other person. That is what it says.

That is what it says. And that is for our good, and that is for God's glory. Now, he doesn't leave us with simply a stark command. He follows it up with some counsel, verse 4: "That each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor." This is the will of God, that you know how to do that. So you must become a student of yourself in order to know how to handle yourself, right? You know what kind of student you are academically in order to pass the course. You have to apply what you know will work in order to pass the test and accomplish the course and get the degree or the diploma.

Now in the realm of your intimate life, each of you is to know how to possess his own vessel. There is a bit of disagreement as to the interpretation of one's own vessel. Some have taught that it meant for the man, his wife. I rather think it has reference to one's body because it is used more than just a time or two in the New Testament, this word vessel for the body. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, remember that out of 2 Corinthians 4? We are to know how to possess our own drive. How to gain mastery over it. How to sustain ourselves in a life of purity.

Not in lustful passion. Let me amplify that. Let me talk really straight with you about it. Within the media, there are certain things that we cannot handle. And you know yourself as an adult or as a young adult well enough to know that weakens me. Then you are wrong to traffic in it. There are certain films and pictures and magazines that you and I cannot handle. There are certain television programs we have no business tuning into. There are certain conversations that stimulate us from certain people who weaken us, and to traffic with those people and to run with them as friends or even quasi-friends is foolish.

It gives us temptations we cannot control. And there are certain activities that stimulate, certain parties, certain places, certain seductive pastimes that weaken us. And we are fools to play with it. Just as a person trying to recover and get on his or her feet from alcoholism chooses not to live on the second floor above a bar. Stupid. Foolish. And it will lead to failure. The same kind of thing is true here. Verse 6: Some would get around it by saying, well, what we could do is just keep this within the family.

But he corners us here and says that no one transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things. I'll deal with that in a moment. This would have reference not only to in general the family of God, but family members, the indecent practices of relating to one's daughter-in-law, son-in-law, mother, stepmother, stepfather, and on and on in the whole realm of incest. That defrauds. The defrauding not only occurs with the person that one takes advantage of, even if it's done voluntarily, but the defrauding occurs since it's secret, and there are many who know nothing of it and when they find out, they are damaged as well.

Now to put it very straight, God stands clearly against extramarital sex, homosexual sex, sex with individuals outside of marriage under any situation. Any situation. He says abstain from it. Now when I say this, I am not the only voice, but I'm a lonely voice in our day, certainly among public figures. And because all illustrations can lead to unfortunate results, I choose not to use anyone else but myself as an example, and I'll tell you my story. While I was early married in 1955, I finished my schooling and decided that I needed to deal with my military deferment.

In those days, the military was an obligation that was to be fulfilled and I chose an outfit not known for purity. I chose the Marine Corps. And part of the reason I did is because I received the promise from the Corps that if I joined, I would not have to do duty overseas. And since I was married and when one in the Marines goes overseas, cannot take his mate, that certainly was appealing to me because I was enjoying life with my bride in our early years and I really wanted to be with her.

But as is sometime true with the military, they lied. And I wound up 8,000 miles from home and suddenly faced with temptation that I had never known before. Now I have a little fun with that story, but the fun stops right now. Before I ever dropped the sea bag off my shoulder, I was faced with a decision. I was going to live in a barracks that was full of godless lifestyle. Over 90 percent had had or at the time had venereal disease. Living in the village was as common as breathing smog in Southern California.

If you lived in Okinawa, you had a naissance on the side. And the chaplain who was to talk to you about purity really joked his way through telling you where to find penicillin. And I realized since I had known the joys of marriage that temptation would be incredibly strong. Like I have never known it since. Surrounded by men who couldn't have cared less about the things of God, away from my home and wife and my family and all of my accountability. I was just a nameless face on the streets of Okinawa. By the grace of God, the decision that I made allowed me to speak today with confidence. Had I not been by the grace of God preserved from unfaithfulness, I would have to pass rather hurriedly and embarrassingly over this passage of Scripture. But I want you to know: It works. It works.

Bill Meyer: Straight Talk about Moral Purity. That's the title of today's message from Chuck Swindoll. We're confident that Chuck's insights into 1 Thessalonians will lead many people, maybe you, to a place of freedom that only Christ can provide. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into Paul's letter on your own, we invite you to check out the variety of helpful study tools we have for you.

We recommend starting with the searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook for this series. It's ideal for personal reflection as you apply the same Bible study methods that Chuck uses. In addition, you can also hear the complete collection of 12 sermons in this series. It's called Contagious Christianity. You can purchase the CDs or MP3s at insight.org/offer or access our convenient mobile app where listening to Chuck's full-length messages is always free.

One of Chuck's most beloved books ties in perfectly with this study. It's called Laugh Again: Experience Outrageous Joy. Think about it: when did you last laugh? I mean, really laugh from deep down in your soul? If it's been a while, you're not alone. In Laugh Again, Chuck unpacks how to discover unshakeable joy in the worst possible conditions. The Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians while chained in a Roman prison, yet those pages overflow with joy.

If Paul found it there in that dark cell, just think what's possible for you right where you are. Discover his secret when you request Laugh Again. It's yours when you give a donation to support the ministry of Insight for Living. Just visit insight.org/donate. Your gift to Insight for Living accomplishes far more than covering the cost of a book. Your contribution today will help someone you may never meet find a reason to smile. Let us send you Laugh Again when you call 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/donate.

I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues to share Straight Talk about Moral Purity Thursday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, Straight Talk about Moral Purity, was copyrighted in 1984, 1985, 1993, 2003, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.