1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 - Summer of Scripture

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Welcome to Summer of Scripture on the Naked marriage podcast. For 66 days in a row, we're releasing a short daily devotional for your marriage. Over these 66 days, we'll be sharing one scripture from each of the 66 books of the Bible and talking about how it applies to your life and marriage. Listen to all 66 episodes of these and you'll have a better understanding of God's Word and His perfect plan for your marriage. Let's dive in to today's Scripture.

Welcome to Day 52. Today we're in First Thessalonians, the first of two letters or epistles that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica. And this one has a lot to do with sex and how we should control ourselves sexually. And again, Paul was writing these to young Christians in cultures that were very sexually broken, very paganistic. Many of the pagan cults and religions in these areas had prostitution and all different forms of sexual sin. We think our times are sexually broken in a way that they never have been before. But really, that's nothing new. There's been sexual sin since the dawn of time, and God's plan for sex has been timeless since the dawn of time. So in First Thessalonians, chapter 4, verses 3 and 5 says this God's will for you is to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will have control over his own body and live in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the pagans who, who do not know God and God's ways. So it's a call for us to be different when it comes to sex. And in the early church, this is one of the things that set the early church apart was sexually. They decided to do things God's way and not the world's way. And the world's way was so wrong that when you didn't do it that way, it really stood out. So within marriage, you know, we're taught, listen, in marriage, have sex, enjoy sex. It's a gift. You have a lot of freedom. If you're not married, then respect your body, respect others, respect God's view for marriage and don't have sex. So God's plan for your sex life is don't have sex before you're married, have a bunch of sex after you're married. Satan has a plan for your sex life too. And it is have a ton of sex when you're not married, and don't have sex when you are married. Because, you know, sex and marriage is really, really binding. So make sure we're doing things God's way and not the devil's way.

Oh, definitely, because we do. We have so many crazy messages out in the world today. You know, I think that, like Dave said, this is nothing new as far as there being a sexually perverse society. I mean, it's all over the world. You know, sex trafficking is a huge thing all over the world. It's just heartbreaking. And there's even, you know, with the invention just having online applications where people can access virtual things to kind of enhance their sex life in their mind, I guess. But it's really just pornography and just as damaging to the mind and to the relationship. And then we have even. I mean, this is just shocking. But not too far from us, where we are located right now, I think in Houston, Texas, they have sex robots where people go and actually rent out a sex robot.

Well, no, it's gonna be. I mean, not to go too far down this rabbit trail, but the industry of making lifelike sex robots and then even AI artificial intelligence being added to the actual hardware of these things to make machines interact as humans, or that you could program as humans to be as submissive or whatever as you want, is becoming more and more prevalent. I saw one report that by the year 2050, that sex with non human robots designed for sex is actually going to become more common than having sex with another person. Because it will be so. Because our world's become so on demand with everything we want, everything on demand in an instant. And sex is going to be reduced to a commodity that's like that. It's like I know what I want, I know what I'm attracted to. Based on the type of. Because porn has programmed people's minds of, this is my fetish, this is what I'm into, this is what I like. And if I can't get that on demand from my spouse or my spouse just all of a sudden doesn't look like this fetish that I'm into or won't do these certain things or isn't available the way I want them to be, then I'll just Go to this robot and it's a modern example of bestiality. In the Old Testament, bestiality is having sex with animals. But really I see that the heart of that sin is just sexual contact with any non human object or animal for the sake of our own personal sexual gratification. It's a very self focused act. And you could say, well it doesn't hurt anybody. Especially it's a machine, it's a robot, or even masturbation doesn't hurt anybody. But it's what's going on in our mind that matters. We're fueling lust that looks at people as objects to be used instead of souls to be cherished. We're sinning against our own bodies by misusing them in that way and by cheapening the gift of sex. And so as our world gets more and more depraved as it relates to just sex on demand in all forms, I think that the Christian standard for sex should stand out more and more.

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It really should, you know, and kind of where we see like this go like how far it goes and I mean probably will go even farther down this terrible rabbit hole. But you know, they say there was a report several years ago where it was saying that like in certain Asian countries, I can't remember which ones in particular this whole like sex on demand and whether it be with actual prostitutes or with you know, robots or with pornography or whatever it is, is so prevalent that like more and more people are just not even seeing the value in marriage at all. Like not even. Or they're just having major, like it's just, it's just led to total depravity in that, in that part of. And it's just very, very sad. And there's like rampant depression and I mean it leads to all these other mental health issues too.

And then the birth rate plummets because women don't feel safe to have children in those kind of settings. And so there's not a family structure to support it. And yeah, the whole society implodes on itself.

It does. And so again, we have to stand for the Christian standards and especially within our own marriage and our own home and not allow these things to have any kind of foothold on us. You know, we've talked a lot about pornography because that is, you know, for some people, that will be the gate to these robots, you know what I'm saying, to become a full on sex addict. And I think they're preying on, I mean, that they're hoping there's more sex addicts in the world because that's what they're going to go for. You know, and there's, make no mistake, this is the enemy's plan. I mean, he wants, he hates sex because he knows sex is God's idea. So he wants to use it in the most sinister way possible to divide people and not bring married couples together. And so we need to be just very, very aware. And I know this is probably some of your eyes are big right now, like, whoa, this, I thought this was a devotional summer. Like, what?

Well, the Bible talks about these things so much because it's such a big deal and it impacts us so deeply.

It does, it absolutely does. And so talk about this with each other. Talk about just the reality of this. Even if pornography is not a current issue for either one of you, which I hope it's not, you have children, many of you have children where they're living in this world too. So you gotta talk about this as parents and how you can protect your home, you know, by filtering software and by having very honest conversations with your kids about this at an age appropriate level. Because it's everywhere. This is the world we live in. We can't put on blinders. We can't live in a cave and just act like it's going to pass us by. I mean, this is the world we live in. We have to face it. We don't need to be afraid. And thank God, you know, we have the Bible to guide us and we have God on our side. We can pray and we can, you know, lean on his strength in this time. And so we need to, we need to be able to talk about this.

Openly and really important conversation. So I hope that was an encouragement to you or maybe just an important eye opener to you to have some important conversations with your spouse, with your kids, and hopefully to share with others because these are biblical and cultural conversations we need to be having. Join us tomorrow, guys. We'll be in day 53 for two Thessalonians.