"Made Truly Human In Christ Alone!" 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

Reminiscere, The Second Sunday in Lent                       28-February-2021

Sermon Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

Sermon Theme: “Made Truly Human In Christ Alone!”

                                                    by Rev. Nathan J. Rusert

I.N.R.I. “Remember, O LORD, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; According to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.”(Psalm 25:6,7) “Reminiscere,” David teaches us to pray the second Sunday in Lent. King David prays for the Lord God to remember His mercy and begs Him to forget the sins of his youth. Jacob in darkness fears death from the hand of his brother Esau whom he had cheated out of the family inheritance in his youth. Jacob wrestles with God to remember His lovingkindnesses and forget the sins of his youth. The Canaanite mother with a demon possessed daughter begs God in our flesh - Jesus - to remember her according to His mercy. She wrestles with the Lord clinging to His lovingkindnesses even when He is silent and His Word seems to exclude her from His grace. All she wants is the mercy shown to the little household puppy - a crumb of God’s lovingkindness.

        St. Paul calls his congregation at Thessalonika to remember. Remember that they have been called out from the world’s perverted views and values by God’s mercy. Remember that their bodies were freed by Christ’s mercy through baptismal water. They are no longer the walking dead controlled by Satan and his demonic lies. They have been freed from the idols of this world. Their bodies, souls, and spirits are redeemed through Jesus’ flesh and blood. Freed from demonic delusion they are: “Made Truly Human In Christ Alone!”

       Remember in baptism you were clothed with Christ’s victory and freed from Satan’s rule. The devil’s allies are this sinful world and our fallen fleshly reason and strength. (1 Thessalonians 4:1-2) The apostle urges and exhorts his congregation in the Lord to grow in walking their saving faith. He urges and exhorts them as a loving mother cherishes her children and as a loving father does his own children. Loving parents nurture their children’s physical, mental, and social health - Christian parents also feed and nurture their children’s spiritual health. It is a satanic delusion that mothers and fathers are not necessary to raise children. It is a lie that our bodies are accidents of evolution and we are to be like animals in heat mating and never marrying. Our Lord Jesus restores humanity to live according to our Creator’s will. The Holy Spirit forgives the sins of our youth and enlivens us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind - and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The Ten Commandments are our Creator’s base operating system on which humanity runs. They are hardwired into our bodies and brains even after Adam’s rebellion and total corruption of humanity by sin. No amount of self-deception or equality laws can remove the nagging voice of conscience when we misuse, abuse, or mutilate our bodies in the idolatry of sexual freedom. The truth of God’s Law remains written on the center of our being even as we try to drown its voice with drugs, alcohol, images, forced acceptance, and human pride. The Law exposes our self-deceptive lie that we have no sin. It is a self- decieved and self-destructing culture that believes it can legislate the truth of God’s Law out of existence and turn vice into virtue ignoring biological science.

       Made alive by God’s mercy in Christ Jesus the Christian wars against the devil’s ally - his own sinful flesh. God the Holy Spirit teaches us, “16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”(Gal. 5) What are the devilish deceptions of our human thinking and feeling? “19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” These sinful idols of our fallen flesh rob us of our humanity and destroy our souls.

        What is our Creator’s will for humans? (1 Thessalonians 4:3) Adam was created to be in fellowship with his Creator. The Triune God saw that it wasn’t good for man to be alone, so on that sixth 24 hour day of creation, He caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and from his side took a rib to build for him a lifelong companion a wife - a woman. God created human beings male or female - this is a biological scientific fact - encoded into our human genome. God’s created us as sexual beings to bind us together in community. Although the Lord God calls some, like St. Paul, to singleness - where nature prevails “a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife” marriage joins two opposite beings who are alike but different from each other that ‘becoming one flesh” they may be “fruitful and multiply” - filling the world with the blessing of children. God’s design and purpose for sex, marriage, and the creation of human life was not thwarted by mankind’s fall into sin. Sex is the blessing given only to a husband and wife who are married to each other. This one flesh union produces children when and where it pleases the Lord. After the fall the gift of marriage and intimacy protects husband and wife from sexual immorality. As Scripture teaches us, “Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”(1 Cor. 7) Taking the blessing of sex outside of our Creator’s boundry of marriage is immoral - it perverts this good gift causing pain and death. Sixty million unborn babies and millions of marriages have been sacrificed on the altar of America’s delusional lie of the sexual revolution. God the Holy Spirit calls us to repent! Turn away from the popular lies of this dying demon possessed culture.

         When mankind turns away from its Creator and only God it always perverts the gift of sex, trashes marriage, and rebels against its own body. It was murderous Cain’s ungodly great - great-great - grandson Lamech who first perverted marriage by taking two wives to fulfill his pleasures. Our Lord Jesus sets the record straight, “Matthew 19:4 “And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”” The Thessalonian Christians were counter cultural - they stood out from the sexually perverse Roman and Greek culture honoring and upholding God’s gift of marriage. (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5) They treated their own bodies as creations of their loving heavenly Father, redeemed and washed new again by the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit to be His temples. Dear Christian if you have fallen prey to our culture’s demonic delusional lies - repent. There is forgiveness here for you in Christ Jesus. He draws near to wash your body new again comforting by His Holy Spirit daily and richly with cross won empty tomb proclaimed forgiveness for you. He remembers His mercy crucified for your sins that He may forget the sins of your youth. He restores to you true humanity - redeeming your body - declaring it “His own”and filling it with His righteousness, innocence and blessedness - that in Him you might have true life!

       Remember that you are not your own. You were bought with a price. Redeemed in this body by the Heavenly Bridegroom Christ Jesus. Glorify God in your body and spirit - this clay vessel into which He has poured His life. Honor your Heavenly Father’s gift to you of your body,soul,eyes, ears, and all your members - your reason and all our senses. Thank, praise, serve, and obey His loving will for your body and the maleness or femaleness He has called you to be and written upon your chromosomes. Those who don’t know the only True God, or who foolishly say in their hearts that there is no God - live in the passion of lust. They use others for their own sinful gratification. Pornography degrades the blessing of marriage and true human sexuality. It degrades and turns other living human beings into mere objects to be used to gratify fleeting feelings - then thrown away. (Vs. 3-6) Sex is created and given to be a blessing only within marriage between a husband and his wife. God sanctifies the marriage bed. Heb 13:4-6 Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (5) Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, "I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU." (6) So we may boldly say: "THE LORD IS MY HELPER; I WILL NOT FEAR. WHAT CAN MAN DO TO ME?"   The tenth commandment alerts us to be on guard against lusting after another human being whom the Lord hasn’t given into our care. We are not to covet our neighbor’s spouse - seeking ways to defraud our neighbor by shattering their marriage. Here the Lord warns that He avenges all who take His good gift of marriage and sex and pervert it for their own lusts. According to the CDC’s website, one in five Americans have a sexually transmitted infection - totaling nearly 68 million infections in 2018. In 2018 there were 26 million new sexually transmitted infections in the U.S.. Almost half of the new STI’s were among young people aged 15-24. If you want safe sex, prize your chastity and keep your virginity as the gift you give to your spouse only after you are married.

       Remember Whose you are! Rom 13:13-14 Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. (14) But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts. Begin and end each day with the words that flowed through the healing and forgiving waters of your baptism which still wash you clean - make you new again. (1 Thessalonians 4:7-8) Your identity isn’t found in giving into fleshly lustful desires. Jesus at the font wrestled you from Satan and gave you a new name - “Christian!” Daily clothe yourself with Jesus - by praying the Lord’s Prayer with Him. He will protect you from worldly lies, demonic deceptions, and fleshly lusts to misbelief, despair, and sins that will bring you only great shame and vice. He has won for you the victory as you struggle with your sins. His victory is clothed upon you in this body redeemed by baptism. Daily return to the water - drown the old fleshly desire by contrition and repentance. Rise to new life forgiven, renewed, strengthened by His Holy Spirit - who is at work in your flesh and blood to free you in Christ Jesus. 1Th 5:23-24 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (24) He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it. Amen.