3. God will take vengeance
“Finally, brothers, we urge and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have learned from us how you ought to walk and to please God, you should excel more and more. For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you should know how to possess his own vessel (in Scripture means both “body” and “wife”) in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of depravity, even as the Gentiles who do not know God, and that no man take advantage of and defraud his brother in any matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness. Therefore he that despises does not despise man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 4:1-8, parenthetical addition mine).
This is an important message for the church in America today because the church does not understand that when you claim Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, when you say you’ve been born again and that God is your Father, there are things that will make Him feel rejected! There are things that will offend Him and there are things that will snuff out His influence in your life.
There are things that the church can do as the family of God that have this same effect when His influence is no longer felt in the service because He’s offended because you’ve rejected Him, because you’ve thrown a wet blanket on His presence.
We need to wake up and realize that the writings that Jesus Himself gave in the first two chapters of Revelation are really true.
The church can become lukewarm because it puts a wet blanket on the Holy Spirit. It offends God.
What am I talking about?
How do we offend God?
It offends God when you’re more concerned about having smoke machines, dim lights and the latest sound than you are concerned about His Holy Spirit
When you’re more concerned about what looks good, sounds good, the right presentation, being cool, and preening contemporaneity but you’re not passionate about the Holy Spirit Himself and the fire and power of God!
There is no amount of presentation that can take the place of the pure and holy presence of Almighty God!
And it offends God.
How do we reject God?
