Glorify God in Our Bodies

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Well, as we stand, let's open our Bibles together and we're going to turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 6, looking at verses 12 through 20.
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A large section of scripture will be our focus today, but it is a main idea which drives through it.
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And I'd like to try to get through that main idea today if we can.
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And 1st Corinthians 6, verse 12, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
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All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything.
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Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.
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The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
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And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
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Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ and make them, excuse me, bodies are members of Christ, shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never.
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Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her, for as it is written, the two will become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
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Flee sexual immorality.
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Every other sin a person commits is outside the body.
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But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
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Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
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So glorify God in your body.
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Father in heaven, as we come now to the time for preaching, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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And I pray also, Lord, that you would bless the people of God with ears to hear and eyes to see.
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And those who do not know you, that you would draw them to conviction and to faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ, in accordance with your will.
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Father, as we consider the words of this text, may our hearts be in tune with yours.
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May our understanding be a right.
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May we, Lord, be conformed to what you've told us in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Some passages of the Bible are harder to understand than others.
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That's that's amen.
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Yeah, that kind of goes without saying, I think.
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But the reason why I mention it is while there are passages which are crystal clear and there are other times when there are passages where you really have to contemplate their meaning.
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And sometimes I've been left scratching my head after having read a certain text.
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And when you're preaching verse by verse through the scripture, you don't have the benefit of simply being able to skip the parts that are difficult or the parts that are hard to understand.
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That's a good thing.
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It makes for good discipline and study.
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And I believe my responsibility is to rightly handle the word of truth.
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That's what the Bible says.
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My job as the man of God is to rightly handle the word of truth when I'm preaching.
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And so I preface this message this morning by saying this.
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I've had difficulty in preparing this message.
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I've been on the phone this week.
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Brother Mike's been helpful to me and I appreciate that.
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And I've I've been in the word.
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I've been in commentaries of trying to discern exactly what Paul is saying here.
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And so my prayer is that that's what I've done.
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I do think that this passage has been misused and misunderstood, and that's part of the problem.
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And so my prayer is that what I say will be truthful and accurate, but also helpful and encouraging to you and understanding what it means.
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As with any other text of the Bible, we should understand the context when we come to it.
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The context of this passage is right on the heels of the Apostle Paul telling us that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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That's the verses 9 through 11.
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We talked about this last week.
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He said the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor violers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
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And such were some of you.
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But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.
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That's the context leading into this passage.
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And in verse 12, he begins with what I call the confusion.
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I've broken this section, verses 12 to 20, into three parts, the confusion, the connection and the conclusion.
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The confusion is verses 12 through 14, because on the heels of his statement about unrighteousness, on his heels of his statement saying the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, the Apostle Paul then goes into a statement which which on its face might seem contradictory to what he's just said, because Paul has just said the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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And then he says the phrase, all things are lawful for me.
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And I have to admit, that's the phrase that had me hung up.
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This isn't the only time Paul uses this.
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In fact, he says it twice here.
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He says it again in chapter 10.
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So Paul says all things are lawful for me.
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And my immediate thought as the as the as the student of the word and studying, my immediate thought is, wait a second.
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He just gave us a whole list of things which are not lawful.
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He just gave us a whole list of things which he said will keep someone out of the kingdom of God.
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Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Neither the sexually immoral, neither idolaters nor adulterers and so on and so on will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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And then he says all things are lawful for me.
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And I'm leery when anytime somebody says, well, that just doesn't mean what it says, because a lot of people do.
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A lot of people, well, Paul just didn't mean what he said there.
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But I do have to say this.
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I do think that when we read the phrase, all things are lawful, there is a context which must be understood when we refer to the all things.
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And if because I'm going to say this, there have been people who have not taken it within its context and they have used the phrase all things as a license for sin.
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For instance, let's say a man has chosen to live in unfettered fornication.
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He's going about having illicit relationships with anyone he can find, and he's doing all kinds of things to bring dishonor to his body and to the name of his Lord.
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And then someone challenges him and he says, I know it's not good for me, but it's still legal because all things are lawful for me.
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You could see how someone could use such a phrase as license for sin.
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Now, you might not think someone would be so daring.
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Just come spend a year with me and see some of the counseling experiences that we go through as ministers, because now I don't just minister to you all.
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People sometimes will call and need, you know, to just talk to a minister.
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And there are things that happen and people will say things and ask questions.
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I get Facebook messages, emails, questions, people living in absolute sin and trying to justify it any which way they can.
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So are we to conclude that Paul is giving a universal license for sin? No, I can say this.
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I might have had difficulty knowing what it meant, but I didn't have any difficulty knowing what it didn't mean.
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And that right by the mind, we said that we said we say we might have difficulty getting to what it means, but we know what it don't mean.
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And it don't mean all things are lawful in the sense that all sins are appropriate in the eyes of God.
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That would be foolish.
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That would be inane.
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That would fly in the face of so much of the rest of what Paul has said.
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And the Bible was written by men, but it was superintended by the Holy Spirit of God.
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And the superintending power of the Spirit of God has ensured that the Bible is going to agree with itself.
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So Paul is not going to say something in one passage and then say something in another passage that absolutely disagrees with it.
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And if you come to two passages that are disagreeing, here's what you know for certain.
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You've misunderstood one of them or you've misunderstood both of them.
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The Bible has an internal consistency.
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We have something called the analogium scriptorum, which is the Latin phrase for the analogy of scripture, which means that the Bible interprets the Bible, the analogy of scripture.
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If we have difficulty in one passage, we compare it to another passage and we seek harmony in the scripture because there is an internal, consistent testimony.
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So when Paul says all things are lawful, he is not saying sin is lawful because James tells us sin is what? Lawlessness.
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The definition of sin is to do that which is against the law of God.
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So if we know it doesn't mean sin is lawful, what does Paul mean when he says all things are lawful? Because the word all is pretty encompassing.
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Well, as I said, this is where I found more difficult time in interpretation.
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My wife and I sat and talked about it.
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We even read John Calvin's commentary together.
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We we've spent some time in thinking about this.
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We agreed on what it didn't mean, but we're responsible not just to tell you what it don't mean to tell you what it doesn't mean.
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I want you to notice this when you read the ESV.
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Now, if you don't have an ESV, this this will possibly be a little different.
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But if you have the ESV and you go to verse 12, you'll notice that all things are lawful are in quotation marks.
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But if you have a New American Standard Bible, it's not in quotation marks.
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If you have the King James or New King James, it's not in quotation marks.
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I think it is in quotation marks in the NIV.
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The point I'm trying to make is that the translators of the ESV took this phrase as a quote, meaning that Paul is not saying this as something that is something necessarily coming from him, but it's saying something that the Corinthians believed.
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He's quoting to them something that was understood by them.
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Now, that is a bit of a conjecture because quotation marks did not exist in Koine Greek in the first century.
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So when we have the original manuscripts or the copies of those manuscripts, none of them come with quotation marks at that passage.
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So this is something that the translators are including to help in understanding.
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Why, though, why would we think that this is a quote? Why would we think that this is a quote? Well, I think part of the argument for that is because it shows up multiple times in first Corinthians, always preceding something of a clarification.
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Paul says all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
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All things are lawful for me, but not all things build up.
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Later in chapter 10, he'll say all things are lawful for me, but I will not be.
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Oh, no, he says I will not be mastered here.
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Later in chapter 10, he'll say, but not all things build up.
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So there's so there's always this statement and then a clarification of the statement as if this is what you think this is what is the truth, sort of like when Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard it said and he would say something that's true.
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You've heard it said, do not commit murder.
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But I say unto you, don't even hate your brother.
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You've heard it said, don't don't don't commit adultery.
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But I say unto you, don't even lust.
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So he's saying something that's true as far as it goes.
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But then he's adding the clarification.
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So in that sense, if that's the construction that we have here, then Paul is quoting something and then he's clarifying the quote or clarifying the understanding.
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The question then becomes, well, where's the quote come from? Well, we don't have any first century sources that I could find.
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Did you find any outside of the Bible? We don't find the Corinthians is where Mike and I were talking.
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We didn't find anything in Corinth.
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We didn't find anything in extra biblical literature.
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This phrase doesn't seem to come from anywhere else except the Bible.
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So I've kind of narrowed it down in my mind to two things.
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We know that the apostle Paul had written a previous letter that we do not have.
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Right.
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And we know that the Corinthians had written to Paul a list of questions.
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We also don't have that.
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So there's two extra documents that are not biblical that existed in the first century that Paul and the Corinthians would have known about.
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But we don't have them.
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It's very likely that this phrase was in one or the other of those writings.
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It could have been that Paul was talking about the freedom that we have in Christ, the freedom from things like dietary restrictions and the freedom from restrictions on clothing and how we cut our hair and those things which were ceremonially responsible for the for the for the people of the old covenant, which are no longer responsible in the new covenant.
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And perhaps he was saying all things are lawful in that context.
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And perhaps they used that.
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And I could see this.
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Paul's talking about food and clothing.
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And they say, well, if all things are lawful, that means we can sin with wanton abandon.
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And Paul says, no, wait, that's not what I meant.
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That's possible.
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Or it could be that that's the the belief that arose among the Corinthians.
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All things are lawful.
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And that was in the letter that they sent to Paul with the question.
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And Paul is responding.
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You say all things are lawful.
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But I say to you, not all things are profitable.
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So you kind of get where I'm going with this.
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The phrase all things are lawful by itself within a certain context is true.
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Because the Bible does give us a lot of liberty in Christ.
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Let me ask you a question, I hope this makes sense, I don't want to confuse anyone.
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What gives you more liberty, the Bible or your conscience? The Bible gives you more liberty.
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Why? That's right.
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Our consciences, you ought to be up here, we do this together.
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Men bind their consciences to things that the Bible doesn't.
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See, we're never allowed to go outside of scripture, conscience or not.
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If the Bible tells us not to murder, we can't murder because that's a command of God.
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But there are things that the Bible says we are free to do that our consciences will keep us from doing.
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Romans 14 tells us that if a man can't do something in faith, that he shouldn't do it, even if it's not a sin, because if it's not done in faith to him, it is a sin because he's he's violating his conscience.
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I would never encourage you to violate your conscience.
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I talked last week about alcohol.
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I know for a lot of people that is an issue of conscience, even if it's not a sin.
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For a lot of you, your conscience will not allow you to touch a drop of alcohol.
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And I would never encourage you to violate your conscience because whether or not you have that freedom in Christ, isn't the point.
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The point is that your conscience has bound you on that issue.
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And if so, I'm not going to encourage you not to do it.
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I understand that could be with a lot of things some people have in their conscience, I'm never going to go see a movie because I think the cinema is a place that Christians shouldn't go to.
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I'm going to tell you something.
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I don't believe that.
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But if you believe that, then don't go to the movies.
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But you see how what I'm saying, the conscience actually binds us further than the scripture does.
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And so when Paul says all things are lawful, there is a sense in which he's expressing the blessing of Christian liberty.
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There is liberty in Christ.
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If there's anything I've said that should have been followed by an amen, that was it.
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So let me try it again.
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There's liberty in Christ.
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Amen.
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Yes, we have wonderful liberty in Christ.
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But with liberty comes responsibility, always.
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With liberty comes responsibility.
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And so Paul tells us, even though there are things which are not essential, even though there are things which we might call adiaphora, you ever heard the phrase adiaphora? Adiaphora simply means those things which are not essential to the faith, things which are not, which are indifferent to the faith.
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There's a lot of those things out there.
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Some churches believe that, you know, certain things should be done a certain way, and that's the way those churches do.
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It's adiaphora, it's not whether or not you're a Christian.
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Now, if you come to me and you say I deny the Trinity, I deny the deity of Christ, I deny the virgin birth, I would say, yeah, you're not a Christian because those things are not adiaphora, those things are essential to the faith.
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But if you came up to me and you had a difference on baptism, I would say that's not an essential to the faith.
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We can disagree.
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While I think it's important, I wouldn't say that that would necessarily remove anyone from the kingdom.
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If it was, I wouldn't be able to study with Dr.
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Sproul and all the great Presbyterians that I have studied with, right? Those things are conscience issues.
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There's a lot of freedom in Christ.
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And Paul, when he said all things are lawful, it's possible and I think likely that he is extolling that freedom.
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But it's also just as likely.
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And I say even more likely.
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That the Corinthians had taken Paul's statement of freedom and used it as a license for sin.
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All things are lawful, then we can do anything we want, including sinning against God.
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John Calvin said this, I want to just read a section from his commentary.
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He said, quote, These words, all things are lawful for me must be understood as spoken in the name of the Corinthians by anticipation, as though Paul had said, I am aware of the reply which you are accustomed to make when desirous to avoid reproof for outward vices.
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You pretend that all things are lawful for you without any reservation or limitation.
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You see what Calvin is saying, he's saying this was Paul's anticipation, Paul's just said the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God and you're going to say all things are lawful.
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I just said the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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And your response is going to be, well, all things are lawful.
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I tell you this, all things may be lawful, but not all things are good.
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In fact, that's the next word.
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The word there is helpful in the ESV and the King James Expedient and the New American Standard, it's profitable and the New English translation, which is one of my favorite translations to study from the word is beneficial.
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And that and I would say probably the NAS gets the closest to the to the original meaning.
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The word is profitable.
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Right.
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Means it may be legal for you to do something doesn't mean that you should.
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Right.
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I could eat cake.
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For every meal.
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For the rest of my life, and I don't, by the way, but I could I could go to home this afternoon, I could eat cake for lunch, I could eat cake for dinner, I could wake up in the morning, I could eat cake for breakfast, I could eat cake every meal, every time I sit down, I could have cake.
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The kids are all excited and there's no cake police.
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Nobody's going to come knocking on my door with a summons because I've taken all of Jacksonville's cake.
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I've got a liberty.
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But I also know what's good for me, and I might want to squeeze a stalk of cauliflower in there every once in a while rather than just eating cake.
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So Paul says that here in verse 12, he says it very simply, he says all things are lawful for me.
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And by that, he's not including those things which are obviously unrighteous.
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He's saying there's freedom in Christ.
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There's liberty in Christ.
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Things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable.
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Even if something is legal, even if something is is open to me doing it, it doesn't mean that I necessarily should.
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So many things.
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I mentioned alcohol earlier, you know, how many people do you know have gotten trapped inside that bottle? Doesn't mean alcohol is against the law for the Christian, but what it does mean is it might not be profitable for you.
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And honestly, there's a lot of things that could fit into that category.
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Video games, movies, TV, shopping are all neutral in and of themselves.
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But if they master your life, if they dominate your life, cell phones and social media, if that dominates your life, then it's not good for you.
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Paul says that very thing, he says all things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial, all things are lawful, but not all things.
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Or rather, he says, I will not be mastered by anything.
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The ESV says the word enslaved, do you know anybody who's enslaved to something that might otherwise be a liberty to them? Some people are enslaved to food, some people are enslaved to gluttony, some people are enslaved to their relationships.
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Some people are enslaved to vice and they're and they want to have fun all the time and they spend all their waking hours trying to find something to amuse themselves with.
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Paul says, I'm not going to be mastered by anything.
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I listened to Brian Boardman, there's a pastor I really like, and he preached on this passage and he told a story and I'll share it's not my story, it's his story.
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But I thought it was a good story.
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He said that a few years ago, his son had purchased a video game and they started playing it together and he found himself every day more and more playing that video game.
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And he said at one point he was at work and he had taken the disc with him so he could play it on the computer.
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So he was at the office and he was working and he said his wife called and says, it's dinnertime, why aren't you home? So hours had passed and he didn't realize.
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And he said he finally realized this game had taken over a substantial part of his life.
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Wasn't wrong of him to play the game, it was it was wrong of him to be mastered by it.
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You see what Paul is saying here? And so Paul leads down into verse 13, which seems like he's taking a different turn, but I want to I want to show hopefully how all these interconnect together, because now he's going to say food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.
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That also in the ESV is in quotation marks.
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Now, that one is a fairly common phrase.
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People use that phrase to argue that what you do with your body doesn't really matter because it goes on to say God will destroy both one and the other.
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Ultimately, the body is going to be destroyed anyway.
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What does it matter? The stomach was made for food.
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Food was made for the stomach.
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What does it matter? We're just going to eat and live it up.
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And then he goes on to say the body is not meant for sexual morality.
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Well, how do those two connect? Here's how they connect.
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It's very simple.
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If somebody says the body's meant for food and food's meant for the body, so I should be able to eat whatever I want, eat all I want.
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Doesn't matter what was made for anyway.
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Right.
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Well, I ought to also be able to have all the sexual immorality that I want because my body was made for sex.
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God made me to do this thing.
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Why not enjoy it? Tell me you've never heard somebody argue that.
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I've heard I've heard people say, you know what? Why would why would God make me with all these passions and desires if he didn't want me to fulfill them? The body was made for sex and sex for the body.
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That's the same idea as the body's made for food and food for the body.
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He's comparing the two.
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People make the same arguments to essentially open up the door for any and all kinds of license.
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But Paul says something strange here.
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He says the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but the but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
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And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
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You understand that God actually cares what you do with your body.
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You might say, well, God cares about my spirit.
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My body's just going to go into the ground.
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My body's just going to deteriorate and go away.
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That's the actual thing that Paul is repudiating here.
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Look again with me at verse 13.
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Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.
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And God will destroy both one and the other.
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That's not Paul saying that.
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Paul is saying that as a statement of what they're thinking.
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They are saying these things.
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What does it matter what I eat? What does it matter the sex that I have? What does it matter what I do with this body? The body is going to get destroyed anyway.
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And Paul says, but God is going to raise that body up.
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God is going to give resurrection to that body.
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What you do in that body matters.
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Now, we talked about this in Sunday school is the body we're going to have different than this body.
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It's going to be glorified.
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Yes, but this body is part of the process.
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Jesus was in the grave and he came out of the grave and he didn't leave behind the old body.
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It was glorified.
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You know, this is why Christians bury each other, right? This is why and I'm not saying I may clarify this.
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I'm not going to fight with anybody.
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I don't believe cremation is a sin, but cremation is not typical of Christian history because Christians buried the body with the idea that the body would be raised.
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Now, I'm not saying cremation is wrong or necessarily bad, but it is not part of the Christian tradition.
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It's just not because of the idea that the body would be raised, that one day the tombs are going to burst open.
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Jesus is going to descend from heaven with a shout and there will be a cry of the archangel and the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise.
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You see, we don't believe in life after death.
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We believe in resurrection.
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See, the difference is life after death is that my spirit keeps living even though my body dies.
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Now, that is true, because when your body dies, your spirit is with the Lord.
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But there's coming a day when your body will be raised.
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That's Paul's point.
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So your body then becomes an essential part of you.
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Is that strange? I've heard people and this lends to a lot of questions.
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What does that mean? All the scars that I have and the fact that I'm overweight and the fact that I look like this, is that going to go on into eternity forever? I only believe the scars of Christ are going to be in eternity, but I don't know that for sure.
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But I know they are there because he said to Thomas, touch my hands, feel my side, see that it is I.
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All right.
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So the scars of Christ go on forever as testimony to what he has done.
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But the point Paul is making here and the part that I'm trying to get across to you and the point that I'm running out of time regarding is that what we do in our physical bodies actually matters.
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And the attitude of the Corinthians was it doesn't matter.
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They had a dualistic view.
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And by the way, if you're not familiar with what dualism is, dualism sees everything is separated between that which is spiritual and that which is physical.
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Right.
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You get the spiritual side and the physical side.
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And there's there's the spirit is good.
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The physical is bad.
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Right.
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And oftentimes I think Christians become dualistic.
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Everything about the spirit is good.
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Everything about the physical is bad.
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And yet the difference here is Paul is saying that they both should come under subjection to God, that the physical and the spiritual have value and God's going to raise the physical in the new heaven and the new earth.
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And we will have, as we talked about in Sunday school, a spiritual body, but it will be a body.
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And this is what leads into verse 15.
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And this is the connection he makes.
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Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Physical, your body is a member of Christ, shall I then take the members of Christ and make the members of a prostitute? Never.
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Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two shall become one flesh.
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But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
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So what's Paul's point here? What we do in our bodies has a profound impact on us as people.
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You do not live independent of your flesh.
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And what we do with our flesh impacts us.
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Illicit sexual sin attacks us not only spiritually, but physically and emotionally as well.
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Now, some people have said that because verse 16 talks about the two becoming one flesh, that every act of sex creates a marriage.
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You've heard that.
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You've heard somebody say that.
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Well, if two people have sex, they are married because it says here the two shall become one flesh.
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And this is the same language of marriage, right? That the act of sex can create an everlasting connection between two people as in a marriage relationship.
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That's not what it's saying.
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What I believe it's saying is this, is that when a person has sex outside of marriage, they're trampling the covenant that God made because they're doing which is only that which is only supposed to be done in marriage.
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The two are becoming one flesh physically without becoming one flesh covenantally.
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And they're trampling the covenant of God by doing so.
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When a man has sex with a woman and they are not married, the two are one flesh physically without being one flesh covenantally.
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When a man is married and he has sex outside of his marriage, he is trampling the covenant with his wife and doing what he should only be doing with his wife, with someone else.
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All the while, all the while doing so, if he is a Christian, doing so with the Holy Spirit within him.
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You say, can a Christian commit sexual sin? It's not a license, but there have been men who have and who have repented.
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And women, I guess I shouldn't, shouldn't give an off the hook moment there.
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Paul tells us the body matters and what we do with it matters.
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So what is his conclusion? What's the answer? Verse 18, flee, flee sexual immorality.
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Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
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This part of you that still matters, even though it's not your spirit, even though it's the physical part of you, it still matters.
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And when you do this thing, you actually sin against your own body.
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Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You have the Holy Spirit living within you.
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You are not your own.
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You were bought with a price.
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So glorify God in your body.
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That's the theme of the section.
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You are not your own and your body does not belong to you.
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Newsflash for all the people who say my body, my choice.
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It's a lie and not just because it's addressing the subject of abortion, but because it addresses everything in life.
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It's not your body.
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It's not your choice.
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You were bought with a price.
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You belong to God.
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If you are a believer, it's not yours.
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It is God's.
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He redeemed it.
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He owns it.
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It's his.
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You steward it, you manage it, but you don't own it.
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And when you misuse it, you are misusing the temple of the spirit of God.
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Think about how the temple of God.
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Think about this imagery.
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Think about how in the Old Testament, the temple of God was so profoundly protected from any and every kind of unholiness.
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There were there at first it was a tabernacle, right, which had a fence and then the tabernacle inside had had walls of cloth that separated the holy place and the most holy place.
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And then it was guarded and it was protected because there was sanctity there.
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And then it comes to the time of Solomon where a temple is built and you've got the same structure, but now it's built behind walls of gold and marble and it's and its foundations are sure and it's protected from unholiness.
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There's nowhere in the Bible that says this, but there's an ancient myth that when the priest would go in to perform the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, that he had a rope tied to his leg so that if he went in unholy and died, they could drag him back out without having to go in after him because they would suffer the same fate, going into the holy place and dying.
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Now, that's not in the Bible.
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It's a good story.
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And a lot of people believe it, but it's not a it's not a biblical thing.
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The whole rope being tied to the leg, but you understand the idea behind it, right? You've got a holy place that's not going to be tarnished.
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And we do know this, right? If a person tried to tarnish the holy place of God, he was killed.
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He would die.
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And so now that's you.
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You, if you are a believer, the Holy Spirit of God has come to live inside your body.
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And if the Holy Spirit lives inside of your body and he has made your body a temple for his presence, how dare you use that body to sin against him and particularly a sin which involves such an intimate interaction with the body? And that's why Paul uses this to talk about sexual sin, he says, all other sins are done outside the body.
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You know, if you go steal something, yeah, you used your hands, but that was outside the body.
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If you go and you and you do something like you curse something or you say something ugly or you act ugly towards someone that's outside your body.
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But there is an intimacy with sexual interaction.
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There's an intimacy with that that becomes part of you.
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And in that act, you're taking the temple of God and you're joining it to a prostitute.
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Did you know we are told to stand against just about every type of sin? In fact, we're told to stand against the devil in Ephesians 6, 11, but we're not told to stand against sexual sin.
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We're told to run.
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In that sense, you could say sexual sin is more powerful than the devil.
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You can stand against him.
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But when sexual sin comes calling, you need to run.
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It's so dangerous.
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It's so pervasive and it's so damaging to the temple of God.
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What other type of sin has brought with it so much devastation emotionally, physically? In our world.
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Sicknesses and disease, which are only transmitted through that act.
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When you sin.
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And God is in you.
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You're sinning against against your body, you're sinning against yourself and you're sinning against the spirit who's made as a boat within you.
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So what do we do? Well, earlier today in our opening past and our opening of the worship service, Brother Mike Ballard read Romans 12, and that's where I want to end.
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I want to go over here because I think this sort of sums up a lot of what Paul is saying.
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So as we draw to a close, I want to just look really quickly at Romans chapter 12.
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Because if somebody were to come to me today and say, Pastor Keith, I don't know how to deal with this.
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I fight this sin and I don't know how to deal with this.
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What do I do? Romans chapter 12.
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I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies again, the word bodies is there to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
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Which is your spiritual worship and the translation there should be better translated it's your reasonable or reasonable service.
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Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
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Beloved, if you are a Christian this morning, my appeal to you that every day.
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Make an offering to God of your body, glorify God in your body, not because it's what saves you, but because this is what God has redeemed.
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The Bible says God has redeemed us and it belongs to him.
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It's not yours.
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You can treat it like it's yours, but it's not.
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It belongs to him.
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So make a daily offering of yourself to him, not being conformed to this world.
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But being transformed.
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By the renewal of your mind, if you're not a believer, if you're not a Christian this morning, my call to you is to understand what Paul says in verses nine to eleven, the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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The only way to know that you will be with Christ after this death and be where God has created a place of joy and happiness and comfort that is heaven is to know the Lord.
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And if you know the Lord and if you repent and trust in him.
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He will change your life, you will still battle with sin.
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But you will have the Holy Spirit of God living within you and you will become a temple to him.
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Let's pray.
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Father, there is so much in this passage.
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There's so much to consider about the role of the body, about the role of immorality, about how these things function in the temple of the Holy Spirit being within us.
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Father, I pray that what I've said is true.
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I pray that if I have said anything that has been untrue, that has been an error, that you would wipe it from the minds of the people and that you would forgive me.
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Lord, as I stated, this was a difficult text to to conclude my thoughts on and.
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Lord, I want to know you.
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And I want your people to know you.
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Amen.
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I know this, God, it says to glorify you in our body.
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So I pray that every day.
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As those who know Christ, that we would offer our bodies a living sacrifice, holy.
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And acceptable to you.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Let's stand and sing as we prepare our hearts for communion.