1 Corinthians 6:12-20 We Are Not Our Own

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his sermon series titled,

First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.

As Linda said, I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here and I am really so glad to be together with all of you this morning. We are blessed to have a community that's growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

And we are guided by our core values. You might think the core values are donuts and coffee, but they're not.

They're actually written on the wall above the donuts. And that's replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

And truth is the one that holds it all together. Truth is the thing that we keep coming back to time and time again.

His revealed word. And when we say that core value of truth, we mean the scriptures as God's self -disclosure.

What he has told us and put down in writing for us to see and read and reread and study so that we might know him better.

He has put down for us through the pages of scripture, history, law, gospels, letters, prophecies.

But in that, all things that we need to know in order to be saved to an eternal life with him. And that eternal life is not a life that begins after we die as if we're just kind of biding time here until he finally takes us home to be with him.

Although that will be glory, amen? We look forward to the day of either the return of Christ or our return to him.

But the life he has for his people takes root in our lives when we believe. And that's a life that he is using, he is transforming us.

We use the word sanctification, a fancy word that means God's improvement project of our lives over the course of time.

And his spirit begins a transforming work within us the moment that we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation based on the work that he did for us on the cross.

And then over the course of a lifetime, we are being transformed as we are overwhelmed by the grace and love that he has given to us at the cross, amen?

A lifetime of love, a lifetime of enthusiasm, a lifetime of gladness and joy.

And we're gripped then by the purchase of us in such a way that we are gladly and joyfully seeking to honor him with our lives.

It's not out of law, it's not out of rules, but it's a desire to obey out of love that has been given to us, this unreasonable, unimaginable love that has been poured out.

So what I'm getting at is we'll see in our passage here this morning, we are not those who merely keep laws, but instead we are those who love a king.

We don't merely follow edicts, but we bow before a king in reverent awe and admiration.

We don't merely give him our allegiance, though we do those things, it's not merely that, but we give him our whole selves because we have been bought, church, with a price, as our text is going to say.

This passage is going to argue significantly that we are not our own. We do not, of course, so we belong to another, but what we belong to matters.

We do not belong to law. We do not belong to the traditions of men. We do not even belong to the church or belong to ourselves.

In Christ, in Christ, in Christ we have been bought with a price. And Paul makes this the baseline argument for the ethic of the

Christian life here in this text. We're going to, we of course, those of us who have raised kids or are in the process of raising kids or one day will, most of us try or have been raised by parents, most parents try to teach kids all kinds of personal benefits to obedience, right?

How many of you know what I'm talking about? If you were a kid once, your parents are saying, this is going to go better for you if you do this or you do that or whatever.

We know that that's the case. So we have a tendency to teach them that way.

Staying out of the road keeps you from getting hit by cars, you'll live longer. Staying pure keeps you away from diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

Avoiding the hot stove decreases the chance of getting burned. We frame our obedience and our instructions of obedience and our rationale for obedience in terms of personal benefit, do we not?

And often I think our culture has grabbed a hold of that in a very significant way. Oh, don't do this because it benefits me.

Don't do this because or do this because it benefits me. And that is not the ethic that is held forth in the scriptures.

We're going to see that here. It is not about your benefit, despite the fact that it does, it does benefit you to do things

God's way. How many of you have experienced some of that, tasted some of the fruit of living God's way and it is good, it is healthy and it is wholesome and it is the way he's designed the world and we flourish better under that, but that's not the primary ethic.

Our obedience here in our text is framed in terms of ownership, who owns you.

So, before we read this passage, consider the following rhetorical questions. Don't answer them out loud.

Who owns your hands? Who owns your eyes? Who owns your thoughts?

Who owns your morning hours or your afternoon hours? Who owns your Monday mornings?

Who owns your Friday nights? Who owns the time? Who owns your house?

Who owns your car? Who owns your body? Who owns your sexuality? Is it yours?

Let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 12 through 20.

We'll start in verse 12 and we'll read through the end of the chapter. Navigate there and then recognize, church, that we have the privilege of hearing from God on a subject that might make some of us squirm.

It depends on how you were raised and how you process these things and where you stand in terms of God's good gifts to us, but this is

His holy word, a word that He desires to communicate to each one of us here for our benefit, yes, but for His glory most.

1 Corinthians 6, starting in verse 12, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 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.

Flee from sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

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.

So glorify God in your body. Let's pray. Father, I think everybody in this room knows immediately when we read this text, we can kind of squirm a little bit.

We can become uncomfortable with the topic at hand because all of us know darkness.

All of us know brokenness. All of us know what it means to live in a place that is not the way it's meant to be.

All of us know what it's like to navigate in the interior of a heart that is not the way it was meant to be.

All of us have been broken, and all of us have broken things. And now we're going to sing some praise to you.

Praise from hearts that have been broken and break, but have been redeemed by your

Son. Oh, hope, glorious hope, glorious forgiveness, a glorious salvation.

As the text said last week, washed, sanctified, and justified, such were some of us defined by our sin, owned by our sin, running hard after our sin time and time again.

Washed, sanctified, justified, not our own any longer.

Bought with a price, a glorious price. May we sing this morning as those who are bought at such a lavish price.

Your Son's blood shed for us. Father, how can we get past that? May our voices reflect and our faces reflect in worship before you the gladness that we have in the forgiveness we've received through your

Son. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. You can go ahead and be seated.

Occasionally, I wish that the song was just a little bit longer. Like once in a while, it's just like it just hits.

So I encourage you to get comfortable. Keep your Bibles open to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 12 through 20.

And if at any time during the message you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of those back there. And when

I say get comfortable, get as comfortable as possible when the subject is sexual immorality.

So we're going to dive in and we're going to talk about this. But we're going to set the stage first because it doesn't just go there.

Like the text has got some other things that it wants to highlight for us. And as we're marching through 1 Corinthians, how many of you have just, how many of you enjoyed the series?

How many of you are enjoying 1 Corinthians? I am. And enjoying it is like getting punched in a joyful way, right?

Like sometimes scripture is like, yeah, I'm enjoying it and I'm like hurting at the same time. Like it's like I'm getting beat up by it and it's a good beat up.

So yes, here we are. There's a vice list that we encountered.

Vice list is just a list of sins that Paul used in verses 9 and 10 of last week's text.

You can kind of glance back there in the text of verses 9 and 10 and see that list. And the list was very direct.

And that's what kind of spins him off into talking about the next subject. And that text was full of sexual prohibitions.

But he concluded that we once were defiled by those behaviors. Those things once owned us.

They defined us. They described many of us. But now in Christ, we've been washed, sanctified and justified.

It's not to say that we can never slip up, that we can never mess up. But it is saying those things don't define our lives anymore as those who are washed, sanctified and justified.

So we stand in a unique position as people who have been adopted into his family, forgiven of our sins, washed from our filth, set apart to grow up into life, a life of walking closer and closer to him day by day, walking closer in Christ likeness, looking and reflecting to the world around us, more and more his son, which is the word sanctified.

Sanctified is just a word that means all of that process that God is bringing us in improvement day in and day out through the power of his

Spirit alive in us. And then we are justified, which is one of the most astonishing things that Scripture ever says to be true of me.

I don't know if you understand it. If you grasp what it means to be justified, it's just like jaw -dropping wonder that is that we've been legally declared righteous before him.

Like our account cleared of all wrongdoing and now declared before the

Father good. Like that broken relationship where there was this gap, this rift between us and the

Heavenly Father through our sin, rightfully a massive distance between us and Christ spanned that distance and has brought us together again with the

Father. Like glory, glory, glory. No longer viewed as sinners, but now moved into the category of saints.

Raise your hand if that's just jaw -dropping to you. I can't get past that. It's amazing that he has done that for us.

And this is why our text is going to seek to grant us a new ethic that is quite distinct from what is a

Jewish ethic or any other kind of religious ethic on the world. The world religions all to a

T specialize in law, crossing T's, dotting I's. But our outline will give a detailed argument that explains that ownership of us and ownership particularly of our bodies is key to the ethic of our lives.

And what we're looking at here is a text that goes beyond just do's and don'ts and oh, don't do naughty things, don't do bad things.

But why obey? Because we are not our own. We have been bought by love.

Bought by love. And giving us an ethic, God also highlights a great dignity he places on our physical existence in this passage.

It seems like the Corinthians had some misunderstanding that came from some type of error that they had in their minds and in their midst.

And you can kind of imagine if you were new in the faith and didn't really understand all the ins and outs of Christianity, in that time and era, there was a big distinction in their culture between physical existence and spiritual existence.

Spiritual existence, good. Physical existence, bad. And the goal of many of the pagan religions during that time was to shed this earth suit and get into the spiritual realm.

And once you got into the spiritual realm, you were going to be okay. And can you imagine that creeping into the church?

Well, I think it has to a large degree. And many Christians don't really quite understand what to do with all of this. The Corinthians had an error that was basically this.

What we do physically doesn't matter because the body is just a human shell with its warring appetites and all these frustrating things that it does.

But don't worry, my spirit is redeemed. My soul will go to be with God, but the body is going to do what the body is going to do.

This passage, maybe more than any other scripture, distills the teaching that our bodies matter to God in one place.

There are other passages surely that help us to see that, but this brings a lot of disparate pieces together and really emphasizes it.

And his redemption doesn't extend, or doesn't rather end at our souls, our immaterial part, but he is redeeming people, his redeeming body and soul, and his purchase of us extends to our physical selves too, is what the text is getting at.

So our outline this morning, if you're a note taker, a little bit of a strange outline. It's not necessarily, I didn't alliterate it or anything, but you'll see.

The Lord is for the body, verses 12 through 14. The Lord is for the body. We won't see that any more clearly than the incarnation and resurrection, and he will hint to both of those, but the

Lord is for the body, first point. Second point is, sexual sin uniquely denigrates the body. So God is for it,

God wants us to be physical, he created us this way, but sexual sin uniquely denigrates the body that he has given to us, verses 15 through 18.

And then two final points, our bodies are his temple, verse 19, and he bought your body, verse 20.

So that's where we're going, and I'm going to interpret this passage fairly straightforward. Starting in the first section is that the

Lord is for the body. Now we could just say that the Lord designed the body, and therefore he has authority to tell us how to use it, mic drop, end of story, right?

And how many of you know that ought to be sufficient for us? He designed it, he gave it to you, end of story.

And that would be true, but it wouldn't take into account the importance of the various motivations that Paul gives here in this text for us to obey

God with our bodies. He's going to give us more, it's kind of like people will tell me, oh, the book of Revelation, I don't need to read it because it just means

God wins. And how many of you know there's more words in the book of Revelation than God wins? There's more that he wanted us to know.

And so he had to say, God created the body, therefore obey him with it, but Paul doesn't do that here. He says there's more words here.

This is a nuanced argument that affects the very core of the ethical system that God desires to employ among his redeemed people.

When I was raising young children, there was always a voice associated, always voices that came back to me every time

I gave an instruction, a request, or a rule. And it almost always inadvertently, one of my kids, whoever

I was talking to at the time, would inadvertently ask the same question. What's the question? Why?

Oh, some of you have been kids before, or had kids, or have kids now. Always ask why, why?

We serve a God who is often gracious to give us the answer to that question, amen? How many of you are glad for that? Like he doesn't just give you the rules and say, go do it, but he actually gives rationale, often gives rationale and reason for it.

Why should we obey him? Why shouldn't we just go do whatever we want? Why shouldn't we just please ourselves?

To what end, really, this passage is dovetailing to the last passage that we were in, to what end have we been washed?

To what end have we been sanctified? To what end have we been justified? And really the unspoken question being answered here is why obey it all?

Why obey it all? And this is the reason that Paul begins in verse 12 with an adage that many

Christians struggle to see as true. He says this phrase that might bristle many of us, does

Paul mean it? All things are lawful for me, says Paul. What? All things are lawful for me?

Some see this as so untrue that they've bent over backwards to ascribe this as a slogan or some kind of a wrong moral statement coming from the

Corinthians that Paul then sets out to correct. And while that could potentially be true, we just cannot know that with clarity and I don't think it speaks into the most simplistic understanding that everybody would read it and go, oh,

I know what Paul was doing here. I think this is a statement of Paul that lines up well when he says, all things are lawful for me, but I won't be owned by anything.

It's very consistent with other teachings that he gives in places like the book of Galatians. You can see a quote that's going to come up there on the screen there.

But the Christian life is not one of law. It's not one of law any longer. We are not those who obey law.

Instead, we are those who obey Christ and His Spirit out of love. I would suggest to you that the life might look the same.

How many of you know that the average person keeping the law will not murder? And the average person who loves

Christ will not murder? And those ends look the same. But let me,

I contend to you that the life might look the same, but the motivations are worlds apart.

The law abider and the one who loves Christ are worlds apart in the motivating factor.

Now the end result is the same, and that's why it's so hard to tell how you're living. Are you just living the life?

Are you just doing the things? Are you in love with Jesus? And those are really, really hard for us to discern.

I can't tell you what you're doing. I can't see that. You tell me you love Jesus, I go, awesome,

I love that. But you might just be doing the things. You might just be going through the motions.

I can't see that. Christians should not be asking,

Christians should not be asking, what can I and can't I do? We ought to be asking rather what is pleasing to Christ and what is beneficial in drawing me and others closer to Him.

That's the question we should be asking over everything in our lives. What is pleasing to Christ, what is consistent with His love, and what is beneficial in drawing closer to Him.

Now how many of you know the law and the moral things in Scripture help us to put some meat on that.

What does He love? What doesn't He love? Getting to know Him, drawing close to Him in a relationship to know what

He loves based on His word. So Paul's statement here intentionally removes the law as the primary motivation in the

Christian life. Instead, he ends verse 12 with a principle that applies to all areas of life.

He says, all things are lawful. When it comes to law, I'm not bound by law at all anymore at all.

All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but I will not be dominated by anything, says

Paul. There are things that we do that are sin, and there are things that we do that are merely neutral. But Paul is encouraging a lifestyle among God's people that asks a secondary and important set of questions.

Not what can I get away with, but what is helpful to others. What is even helpful to me?

What is helpful to the exaltation of the glory of God in Christ and through His Spirit?

What gives Him the most glory? And further, a secondary question, is this leading me more and more down a road of addiction?

How many of you know that you can be addicted to something that's not in itself sinful? Did you know it's not sinful to eat food?

I hope you knew that, because you probably already did it today. It's not sinful to eat food, but how many of you know it can become an addiction?

Is it sinful to play video games? Not at all. Can it become an addiction? Absolutely. There are all kinds of things that can draw us in.

Many things that are acceptable to God that can entangle our lives, waste and burn time, and eventually dominate us if we're not mindful of this ethic that He's giving to us here.

Paul continues the argument in a strange way, because he does go to food. He goes to food as an illustration.

Well, here's a good thing given by God. It's not sinful to eat food. The stomach needs food, and food was made for the stomach, and the two just go together quite well.

But God, he says in the text, we know that God will destroy both. And that reality was likely leading to the wrong ethical understanding among the

Corinthians. Well, it's all just going to burn anyways. It's all going to go away anyways. So why not do whatever you want?

Since God is going to destroy both food and stomach, the Corinthians rationale went, then it must not matter.

Eat, drink, and be merry. Do whatever you want. The physical world is going away, was their mindset.

But the end of verse 13 begins to correct this do whatever I want attitude, that the body doesn't matter kind of attitude.

While law is not the pathway to a powerful God honoring Christian life, there are some realities that draw us deeper into lives lived for our heavenly father, for his merciful son and his empowering, indwelling

Holy Spirit. The first is the dignity that he gives to our bodies. Yes, in death the stomach is done away with, and in use the food is destroyed.

And if that's the end of our stories, then certainly eating all you can now would be one way to do it. All the bacon, all the cake.

But the body, he goes on to say, our physical existence, our bodies are not meant for sin.

They're meant for something. There's an intention behind the design and purpose of the body.

Paul here jumps right into his primary concern for the ethic of Corinth, which was sexual immorality.

But he very well could have included any sin as his case study. It happens to be that Corinth was specializing in a certain brand of sin, sexual immorality.

But our bodies are not to be used however we want them to be used. Because the body you've been given, the text is emphatic, is for the

Lord. In other words, your body is given to you for the purpose of worshiping

Jesus Christ here on this earth. It's given you a purpose. And he further says, the

Lord is for the body, a bit of a cryptic statement, the Lord is for the body. In what way?

Here we find, I think, the clearest general dignity given to the human body in Scripture. The Lord is for the body means that Jesus is pro -body.

And nothing clarifies this more than the incarnation and the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Lord is not merely for the soul to redeem it in the end, that we would be disembodied spirits hovering and floating.

And I don't even know how a disembodied spirit plays a physical harp, but pictures always have that, right?

How many of you know we don't have pictures of the afterlife? So just people's renditions or whatever.

But we don't think about these things very carefully. The Lord is not merely for the soul, but the

Lord is for the body as well. He came in flesh to redeem an enfleshed people.

Why did the Lord Jesus come in flesh? His arrival was for the redemption of real humans, body and soul.

God saved this way because He wanted to dignify our material existence that He gave us.

Jesus didn't come as a disembodied ghost. He didn't come as a glorious huge lion, sorry

C .S. Lewis. He came in a human way to show that He is for the body.

Now you're going like, Don, that seems so obvious. Why in the world are you, why in the world? Because I don't think our culture gets this anymore.

I don't think we talk this way anymore. We don't think of our material physical existence as having that much significance.

Now we know not to sin, we know not to do this with our body or do that with our body, but do we have a rationale and an understanding that God loves this body?

And what greater dignity can be given than this incarnation coupled with the physical resurrection as verse 14 goes on to say.

In verse 14, we see this awesome ethic starting to take shape. What we do with our bodies matter because it is for the worship of our

Lord. Our Lord came in flesh and He will restore these failing bodies in the resurrection translating them into glorious immortal physical bodies.

He will raise us up in power just as God raised Jesus up in power.

The tomb was empty and so will ours one day as well as all the tombs of those loved ones who have gone before us in Christ.

The Lord is for the body, church. This is the basis for what comes next and I would confess that it's not a super easy thing to apply other than adopting this truth about your body specifically.

It is a given gift by God. It is given for His glory and it will be raised to new life if you belong to Jesus Christ.

This establishes the foundation of an ethical understanding of the deeds we do with this body that we've been given.

That's the foundation level of this message. He loves our physical existence.

But second, this is where He takes it to us, takes it to the Corinthians, sexual sin uniquely denigrates the body, verses 15 through 18.

In verse 15, Paul starts with another cause of our ethical understanding of what we do with our bodies.

For those who have been saved by Jesus Christ are united with Him together as a body. The metaphor of the church is that we are each unique members of a body, some being a hand, some being a foot, some being the neck, some people being fingers, with Christ being the head.

He's in charge, but we all have a function, a role to play. But this doesn't merely end with our hearts, our wills, our intellect, it doesn't end with the immaterial things, but to our physical existence as well.

And Paul escalates things so quickly we might get whiplash in the second part of verse 15. Your body belongs to Christ, so what it means to commit sexual immorality is to rip yourself away from Christ and join yourself to another.

Be that fornication, homosexual practice, pornography, adultery, all different kinds of sins and aberrations from the one man, one woman within marriage plan that God has for us.

All else is defined as sexual immorality. Only one man and one woman in marriage is his plan.

So what it means to commit any form of sexual immorality is to rip yourself away from Christ, join yourself to another.

Sexual activity with a prostitute may seem like an extreme case, and he just jumps right into it. But this was unfortunately quite common in Paul's day and age, and it wasn't even as uncommon as it is today, and further,

I think Paul is seeking out the most casual attitude towards sex possible. Like where can you find the most casual attitude toward it?

One where there is a financial transaction involved. I can't think of anything that makes it more of just a commodity, more of just a thing that bodies do.

And so he uses prostitution as an example, and now with all that he has said up to verse 16, he shouts, exclamation point, of course not!

Never, never should a person who is joined to Christ join themselves to another in this casual sexual way.

There is no such thing as casual, meaningless sex. And he argues in verse 16 that they should already know, you should already know this.

Do you not know, Paul says that when he wants to get a little sarcastic barb, like don't you already know this church?

Don't you already know that sexual union is more than merely physical? Everybody knows that, right?

Not our culture, not their culture, but everybody knows it in their heart.

Everybody knows it in their heart. There is a oneness in the sexual relationship that goes beyond the physical.

The Hebrew phrase for sexual activity has within it the notion of a mingling of souls. There is a connection that our culture will deny all day long, no big deal.

Easy to get into that relationship, easy to get out of that relationship, no it is not.

That connection is there. A mutual sexual encounter creates a link that remains in the human heart.

I'm not going to ask for a show of hands of how many of you agree with me. Paul quotes

Genesis 2, 24 in the marriage formulation saying that when two people engage in sexual action, a oneness is forged there that even extends, here in our text he's using it of a prostitute and her

John. Even that oneness extends to that kind of sexual encounter.

So Paul is once again beside himself, as you can imagine, and we ought to as well, we ought to be beside ourselves against ourselves.

How can one who is united with Christ take what belongs to him and flippantly give it away to a prostitute?

Or really, I mean we ought to just say any casual immoral sexual encounter for that matter. Be it the high school, be it the high schoolers in the parking at the, wherever they park, doing whatever they do.

Or be it the man who is clicking late at night through porn as his wife is asleep in the other room.

Be it whatever it might be as far as sexual immorality that can grab a hold of our lives How dare we?

How dare we unite that which belongs to God for his worship alone, which is an amazing, glorious gift of worship to him that is meant to reflect back to him and how can we unite that with something so illicit, so flippant, so trivial?

We are one in spirit with the Lord. Our unity with Christ is also a component, is meant to be a component here of our war with sin.

And we drag Christ down every dark alley we walk. We take him with us on tours of every porn site we've ever visited.

We bring him into every illicit, dark fantasy of our hearts. United with Christ in spirit, meaning he is with you everywhere you go.

Yeah, you know, I've used that, used that as a fear tactic when I was a kid and I was always like, oh no,

Jesus is with me, Jesus is with me. Well, no, he's with you and you're glad he's with you and he loves you and he absolutely wants better for you.

And so now a command, after establishing a solid rationale, what is the command?

Very simple command, very straightforward, very emphatic. Flee from sexual immorality, church.

Flee from it. Don't walk from it. Don't saunter from it. Don't dilly dally.

Don't wait at the door to see just maybe what might happen. Flee. Run into the streets like crazy

Joseph in the book of Genesis. Who left his cloak behind? I don't know what the dude is wearing as he ran through the streets home, but I can tell you he didn't have his cloak on.

He left it behind. Run. Flee from it. Don't draw near to it.

Don't play with it. Don't toy with it. It will toy with you, right? Run.

Flee from it. And then keep your distance. And the reason Paul is singling out sexual sin here is explained in the last chunk of verse 18.

Every other sin a person commits is outside of the body, but sexual immorality is a unique sin in that it is a sin against one's own body.

Now Paul, when he wrote this, thought it made sense and so it must, but we have to try to understand what he thought it was saying or what he meant by saying it because it seems like drunkenness, gluttony, or drug abuse are all sins against the body as well, right?

Do you get what I'm saying there? And here he is certainly singling out sexual immorality as a more egregious sin because of the unique way that it impacts our bodies.

And here is what I think God and Paul meant here in this writing of 1 Corinthians about it being a sin against our bodies.

All other sin is a sin outside of the body, but this is one that is uniquely interior to us.

No other sin joins the body that belongs to Christ alone to another like sexual immorality.

No other sin more radically desecrates the union of Christ and cheapens the worth of the body that he has given.

Even gluttony and drug abuse is not taking that which belongs to Christ for his purposes and uniting him in an illicit union like sexual immorality.

This is not to say, by the way, and I want to clarify because as heavy as it is and as much as I might shout, flee sexual immorality,

I know we haven't always, I know I'm not looking out at a chaste, pure group of people here this morning.

And so I just want to highlight for us in grace and thankfulness that all sin is forgivable in Christ.

I want you to just kind of like, hopefully that removes a little bit of weight off your own shoulders here this morning, like, okay, wait, it's forgivable?

Like as in washed, such were some of you, but washed, sanctified, justified, all sin, all sin is forgivable.

But this does say what I think it's unfortunate that most of us all know, and that is simply that we cannot unexperienced, there are consequences, we cannot unexperienced what we have done against ourselves in the sexual arena.

And I say that we have done things against ourselves simply because we who are in Christ would undo it in a heartbeat if we could go back.

And we know we would be better if we could unlearn, we would be better if we could unsee, we would be better if we could unexperienced the things that have crept into our souls.

Many of us know what it's like to be left in the cold and dark and alone, feeling dirty and apathetic and used up and broken.

I know that's many of us. And we would do it different if we had the power to undo it. Sin against our bodies?

Of course, you better believe it. And just a word here, is

God picking on sexuality? Does he have a specific hangup? Does God have some sadistic desire to hold us back from pleasure?

Is he hung up on it? Is he kind of like a little like, oh, they're doing that sex thing again?

Does he like to suppress us? I think the world imagines that his instructions in scripture surrounding human sexuality come from a place of desiring to make us uncomfortable or something like that.

Many think he hates the body. Many think he wants asceticism and a lifestyle of misery. Many think he's a cosmic killjoy who invited him to the party, right?

No fun at parties, but church, God loves us.

God is good and he loves us. Oh, how very much he loves us.

And he who has made our bodies is here declaring that sexual immorality will be a significant net loss to anyone who truly wants to live a good life with Christ.

He tells us to flee it because he loves us. And he tacks on two more final reasons in case what was said before is not enough motivation for us to flee from sexual immorality.

Not only are we to consider only engaging in things that are beneficial and non -addicting, according to verse 12, not only are we to keep in mind that our bodies are given us to proactively worship

God, not only are we to remember that God sent his son in flesh to demonstrate that he has more than just, he's more than just good with our physicality, but he loves it.

Not only does he promise us resurrection, not only are we to remember that our spiritual union with Christ in that we take him everywhere that we go, and not only are we to consider the way that sexual immorality sins against our own bodies, but we are also to consider the third unique section of the text in verse 19, our body is a temple of the

Holy Spirit. Our bodies are uniquely given to us by God and we are a dwelling place for the work of the

Holy Spirit in the world. He wants to use us in the physical world to accomplish good and blessing to each other.

We live in a day and an age defined by misunderstood ownership and misunderstood purpose, misunderstood function, but church, we've got to start fundamentally here, we are not our own.

And our culture cries, how dare God claim ownership over me,

I define myself. But scripture here emphatically and directly declares that which our hearts need to hear, our bodies are not our own.

Our body was given to us as a pretty high end implement that is uniquely designed to glorify God. Why do you have a body?

Ask yourself that, why do I have a body? First Corinthians is telling us in order to glorify

God and to serve him and to carry the spirit to the world around you. There's a book that I highly recommend, and we actually,

I bought, I had Linda order a couple of copies, so I think we've got like three copies of it out there. Some of you have read it,

I wish everybody would read it, if you want to dive deeper into this very strange cultural moment that we live in, we find ourselves in a crazy time of human history, just nuts.

But the book Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy cuts through a lot of the fog and gets down to the basic premise that our culture doesn't know what to do with the body.

It's a fundamental problem, that's really kind of the core and the bedrock of our problems many of our problems in our culture today.

She just highlights, just to give a little bit of a gist of the book, the world thinks of the body as a canvas on which we can write our own story.

They think of it as unimportant, so it's disposable, as in abortion. They think of it as lacking clear design and function, so homosexuality.

They think of it as a possession to edit and craft in any direction we would like, as in the transgender movement.

But more than ever, the world needs to hear the message that the Lord is for the body.

It matters because He is the one who has given it to us. It is His, and it is not merely

His by design, church. But lastly, the fourth point in the text, in verse 20, we see that those of us who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, all of us, we are all redeemed body and soul, and we are not our own.

We were bought with a price. And so, let's allow that to be the motivation to live for Him. Not law, not what can

I get away with, not how far is too far, not where's the line and can I walk and balance on this fence, but we are those who live for a

King, we live for a Lord, we live for a Master who has bought us with a hefty, hefty, gracious, glorious price.

So, as we come to communion, let's consider the great price paid to buy us back from sin, body and soul.

First Peter 1, 18 through 19 says, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

It wasn't money that was paid to buy us, it wasn't gold that was invested to buy you, it wasn't silver that was invested to buy you, it was the very blood of the

Son of God Himself that was paid to buy you. If Jesus Christ is indeed your

Lord and Savior and you're genuinely seeking to honor Him in your life and you're at peace with others here in this church, then during the next song

I'm going to encourage you to once again come to the tables and take the cracker, remember His body broken for us and take that cup of juice and you can take that back to your table and just contemplate and consider, maybe it's a time of confession, maybe it's a time of talking to Him and saying,

I have not thought in terms of my body being yours and I need to confess some things and get right with you and today would be maybe a good fresh start day for you.

But I want to remind us of three things before we come to communion this morning. Some of you started packing up but here's the application, tricked you.

There's grace and forgiveness available for any and all kinds of sin. There's grace and forgiveness available for any and all kinds of sin.

And some of us on that point, we can go, whew, okay. I think everybody here, most everybody here at least has been washed, sanctified, and justified by faith in Jesus Christ.

Maybe a few of you have not started that relationship and I would encourage you to come and talk with me about starting a relationship by which you can be redeemed and you can have your heart set free and you can have forgiveness and you also can be washed and set apart for God's purposes and justified, declared righteous in His sight and that could happen this morning.

If you come and talk with me, you can come and talk with Dan, the elder on duty. You can come and talk with Dave afterwards. There's a bunch of people who would love to talk with you about that.

But discussions about sexual immorality for the believer here has a way of rattling many of us away from the gospel of hope, has a way of getting in our, getting in us and it kind of goes, and we begin to question like, am

I okay? Am I okay with God? Is God okay with me? And if you find yourself struggling with the content of this message and maybe even wondering if you're still in the faith or maybe you're right on the cusp of making a really dumb decision with your life.

Maybe you're a teenager and your boyfriend just keeps asking and you're kind of just like, I keep trying to push him away, but it's becoming easier and easier to give in.

Or maybe you're a dude and she's just after you, it's possible. Or maybe you've been the guy that's up late at night clicking.

While as Matt Chandler says, as crass as this sounds, your real breast having wife is in the other room sleeping and you're looking at pixels.

What? How can you do that? Like, and you need help and you don't know that you need help, but you need help.

And maybe this message is a start of something here because I'm going to tell you that when we started Recast Church, this isn't,

I'm way off my notes now, and yes, I said that so somebody might be offended by that, but 15 years ago, approximately, we started this church and we had guys coming out of the woodwork confessing porn problems and we had groups talking about it and we had things going on and we had a bonfire where we all talked about it and we held each other accountable.

And you know what's really sad to me and actually concerning, deeply concerning for my pastor's heart?

It's not happening. But I'm not convinced the problem's gone away. And if the problem is still there and guys aren't confessing and aren't coming out for help, then we've got a big problem.

We've got a lot of fakeness here, if that's the case. And if you need help, you're not going to come to my office to be judged.

You're going to come to my office for an embrace and I'm not a hugger, but I will, I'll give you a hug.

And I'll say, let's tackle this together. You're coming out into the light is the point. That's the start of any victory that God wants to work in your life.

Confessing it and let's get serious guys, because the power of the church is in the leadership of the men.

And if the men are corrupt, everything's going to fail. I'm not saying we can't have a church full of women.

Is that the way God wants it to be? No, he certainly doesn't want a church full of fake men who are dallying with things on the side.

Anyways, holy cow. That was a lot. A lot of not on my notes stuff, but I would be glad to meet with anybody who wants to come to the light.

And I don't want to say this, like there is a stigma right now. Back on my notes again.

There is a stigma right now that's even worse. And that's that I just talked about the men and some of you women are struggling with pornography here.

And you're like, I'm not supposed to be. The culture says I'm weird now because I'm struggling with pornography.

And you get up and you talk about men's groups and it's like, what is there for me? Well, I don't necessarily want to meet with you one -on -one and talk with you if you're a woman about a struggle with pornography.

But if you want to get some help, you can email me and we can get plugged into someone that can give you assistance and help.

And I do have some resources in the area for women who are struggling with pornography. So again, whatever it might be, and I recognize

I could go down a whole list of things that you might be struggling with and I still might not hit all of them.

But you know, and if you need help, get help.

That's the second application is just straight up flee from sexual immorality. Nothing has quite the power over us to bring us to a lifetime of remorse or regret and confusion.

God loves us enough to warn us that sin against the body hits different.

If you need help fleeing, share your struggle with someone here. And the last thing, it's one thing to talk about what to run from, but the text includes a veiled comment about what we're supposed to be running to.

We could end on running from something, but we are supposed to be also running to glorifying God in our bodies.

Our hands are made to serve Him by serving others. Our eyes are meant to smile and weep with others. Our mouths are made to declare grace and praise.

Our bodies given as the highest, given to us by God as the highest end tools of worship and praise to our

God. So church, let's go out from here as we take communion and we go out from here this week.

Let's glorify God in our bodies. Let's pray. Father, I recognize that messages like this could just rip open some wounds.

It could convict deeply. It could put a cold sweat on the back of some people here.

It could be like, I thought I was getting away with it. And then this message.

So Father, if you're speaking to an individual here, you're speaking to someone and they know in their hearts that right now your voice is the voice of conviction and that today is a day to respond.

I pray that you would not allow that to go unheeded, that you would give power and strength and boldness to anybody who needs to step out in faith and confess and declare,

I need help. I need grace. I need forgiveness.

And may that start even now during communion with some cries out to you from hearts. Help me.

Help me. Help me. We thank you that through your blood, it could be declared over our lives such were some of you, but we've been washed, we've been sanctified, and we have been forensically declared justified, like in a court of law acquitted of our sins on the basis of Christ paying the penalty for us.

So I pray that we would not go into a discussion with you in darkness, but in light.

You have loved us. And so we come with open hands, honesty before you, asking and pleading for help.