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No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.
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 whore? Never. Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?
For it is written that two will become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Can't you just hear Paul? Do you not know? Do you not know? Do you not know? Do you not know?
Do you not know? Yes, you know. Yes, you know. Yes, you know. I've told you so. Well, hey, there you go. Just made that up on the fly. You can feel kind of the impatience of Paul, holy impatience, kind of rising because don't you know?
Don't you know? I've been there 18 months. I've told you these things. And even though those thousand prostitutes would descend upon the city every day for worship, this is not the right thing to do. Even though you Corinthians who are rich could buy a slave, and if you're a man, you could buy a slave woman, and she would have to do whatever you wanted as often as you wanted.
This is not the right thing to do. Now, Paul is going to work through this issue here, and he says, to even make it more horrible, you see what Paul says? He makes a first-person comment there. Shall I then, shall I, Paul, take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?
Never. Shall I do that? He's been saying, I don't want you to do that, but imagine now Paul, the apostle Paul. Pick your favorite preacher. I don't care who your favorite preacher is. Shall John MacArthur do that?
And you'd say, no, that's a repulsive. Sometimes we're thinking things happen around the building here, and sometimes I'll drive up to the back and I'll see things that people are trying to do, and they're hiding themselves from people.
I guess a good place to go is behind the church or something to do stupid things. They'll throw horrible pornography magazines in the church garbage bin, do all kinds of other things. What if somebody said, you know what?
We hate God. We hate Jesus. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to break into Bethlehem Bible Church. We're going to hire a prostitute, and we're going to bring that prostitute into Bethlehem Bible Church and right here be with that prostitute to defile this building.
What would you think? Well, my comment would be this. Paul is saying here in verses 15 to 17, that if you sleep with somebody that's not your spouse and you commit fornication or adultery or go hire a prostitute, it's the exact same thing, but 1000 times worse because there's nothing sacred to this building.
This is just a building. It would be gross. It would be defiling. It would be horrible, but it's just a building. How about having a person redeemed by Christ to then go sleep with a prostitute? You say, well, I'd never do that because, you know, I wouldn't want to ever pay for that.
That's below me. And Paul is saying this. You think it's below you? Then what do you do when you rationalize I'm sleeping with my boyfriend and sleeping with my girlfriend, sleeping with another guy, playing around with pornography?
It is no different at all. No difference at all. You can see. Wow. Paul, you've got my attention. This prostitute stuff makes me kind of uneasy. Kim and I and the kids a few years ago in Germany in sabbatical driving down south from Munich into the Czech Republic when there still was border crossing.
We crossed the border. We gave them our passports and all that. We crossed the border. I'm driving a van, a Volkswagen van with Kim in the front, four kids in the back, and we pull around this corner and there are these outdoor kind of bus stops.
I thought they were bus stops. They were places where prostitutes were and we pull up to stop signs in the city because prostitution was legal there and so the Germans would drive down there to engage in the prostitutes who were in the Czech Republic.
And we pull up to the stop sign, the stoplight, and my kids have big eyes. My kids have the big eyes like you've got big eyes right now, like you've had all sermon. They had the really big eyes because the ladies in the trench coats would show themselves a little bit and then they would look at me with my wife sitting there and my four kids and go like this.
I thought this is going to be a life lesson for my son Luke. The red light district we weren't even in. Of course sex and marriage is good and pure and holy. God designed it that you would enjoy yourself.
That's the Song of Solomon. That's Proverbs 5. When you say, you know what, I'll rule myself, I'll do what I want, I have all my excuses for doing this, strike me down dead now, he hasn't done it yet, there's no difference sleeping with your girlfriend or sleeping with a prostitute in the Czech Republic because it's defiling.
Paul said he'd never do it, never, no way, never going to do that. Look at verse 16, do you not know, do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute, same is going to be true, joined to somebody, for those of you who are engaged or want to get married and you say, you know what, we're not going to get married, we're going to just try it out, there's no difference.
Joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her and instead of a blessing, instead of a wonderful doxology that God gives between a man and a woman, the two shall become one flesh in a wonderful way, here it's not a blessing but a curse.
You want to sleep with somebody who's not your wife, you want to sleep with somebody who's not your husband, there's this joining, for it is written, the two will become one flesh. Paul says you know that, it's trite but it's true, there's no safe sex outside of marriage.
Garland said no prophylactic exists that can protect this unlawful notion from extending its defiling tendrils into every part of a person's being. Sexual sin is not a victimless crime in which no one gets hurt, this sin contaminates and breaches the union with Christ.
When I hear stories on the news about some guy who wants to sell a book and shock everybody by saying Jesus slept with a prostitute, I want to pray God get them, I feel the anger coming up from within, I feel like I want to pray in Precatory Psalms, I feel I want to say God I want you to damn them, because that is gross.
Those are the things that I think through and here's what Paul is saying, you sleep with somebody who's not your spouse, it's like you think in your mind Jesus thinks it's fine if he himself sleeps with the prostitute.
Paul said never, never because the two become one flesh, they're wedded together, joined together, cursed together, no such thing as casual sex because if you call yourself a Christian and if in fact you are and you sleep with somebody who's not your spouse, you're bringing Christ right in.
Way I used to think about it when I was younger is to say okay, am I willing to just say whatever sin it might be, God even though I can't transport myself up into the third heaven, it's as if whatever sin I'm going to do right now, it's if I go up into the third heaven before your throne room and say I could care less what you say, think or do, I want to do this and our all seeing God sees all that.
Look at verse 17, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. It could be such a good thing, it could be such a wonderful thing. What does all sin do? It torques, it twists, it dislocates, it perverts.
And here, you don't want to join yourself to a harlot or some boy lying to you saying he loves you, if you love me, you'll do this, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. So since you're joined to the Lord, don't bring the Lord into the bed of filth is what Paul is trying to say.
You're joined to the Lord, don't do that. Number four, found in verse 18, your own body is hurt when it's involved in sexual sin. How do I think rightly about the body? Because I struggle with sexual sin.
That may be your question. One, the body is for the Lord, two, your body is going to be raised, three, your body is a member of Christ, four, your body is going to be hurt. You don't want to hurt yourself.
I've seen people before in psych wards and they just hit themselves. Ever seen anybody that just hits themselves over and over and over? Walks up, I see this in cops sometimes and they get arrested, thrown in the back of the police car and the guy just takes his head and is smashing his head into the side of the shatterproof glass.
That's pretty smart. Let's see what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, 18 about how it even hurts your own body. And again, I said it last week, in case you weren't here last week, I want to say it now. If you've committed sexual sin, can it be forgiven?
Can it be restored? Remember what he said in 1 Corinthians 6, you've been what, washed? You've been sanctified, you've been justified. Christ has paid for all those sexual sins and he sees you in the righteous robes of his son.
Doesn't he? That's how the Father sees you. And there's forgiveness. But with forgiveness comes the admonition, stop, forsake, flee. This is a bad idea all around. 1 Corinthians 6, 18, it kind of summarizes this.
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. So in this verse he says, run, and he tells you why. Let's look at the run part.
Present imperative, flee. And we get the word fugitive from that Greek word. Fugitives do what? They flee. Run. And when you think of somebody running from sexual sin, who do you think of? The exact same Greek word here is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament of this young man fugitivizing, how do you say that, running.
Who ran from sexual temptation, sexual sin? Joseph. This is just Joseph right here, flee. Barnes said, escape from it? Yes. He should not reason about it, to debate the matter, or even to contend with his propensities.
Listen to this, and especially if you're younger here today, you're a teenager, you're pure, I want you to stay pure. Just listen. How many a young man would be saved from poverty, want, disease, curses, tears, and hell?
Could these two words be made to blaze before him like the writing before the astonished eyes of Belshazzar, and could then terrify him from every momentary contemplation of the sexual crime? Run. And it's present tense, it means always run, make it a habit of running.
Run for your lives, run for your lives. That's the idea. Why? The sexual sinner thinks that he or she has sex because they like the feeling. But here God says, they sin against their own body. They sin against their own body.
As God has made sex as a unique mode of self-disclosure and self-commitment in marriage, here it turns what God designed as something for good into a horrible, filthy thing that leaves stains forever.
Forgiven, yes, but stains forever. Blomberg said, the effects of gluttony are usually reversible by an increase in sweat and a decrease in calories. Some effects of illicit sex can never be undone, although they can be forgiven.
Memories, emotions, and attachments stay with us for life. This intimate entangling together cannot be reversed. Forgiven, but not forgotten. Our others think this, and it may be both. MacArthur, for instance, says that this is probably an allusion to venereal disease.
One thing's for sure, sexual sin is not harmless, it's harmful, and that's what Paul says. To say I'm going to give myself, my entire self, with a whole commitment to the other person outside of marriage is wrong, it's always wrong.
I want to give myself to you because basically I want to have my lusts gratified. Number five, the fifth reason why you should think about the body properly to overcome sexual temptation is your body's the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 19, your body's the temple of the Holy Spirit. See, it's all body, body, body, think rightly about your body. Do you not know, there it is again, do you not know, they know this, Paul taught them, that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God.
Two words for temple in the New Testament, first word for temple is the temple precinct, the big area there, outside. Then there's another one that's kind of used for the holy of holies, not kind of, it is used for the holy of holies, the place where God would specially manifest himself.
I wonder which word he uses here. Temple precincts are holy of holies. Any guesses? That's exactly right. Your body is a temple, now singular language, your body is a sacred place where God dwells in a special unique way, it's like a shrine if you will, you have stewardship involved, that's what Paul says.
And then lastly, verse 20, number six, your body was bought with a tremendous price. Your body was bought with a tremendous price, look at verse 19 and 20, you are not your own, you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.
Context of sexual body again, you are not your own, and if God has bought you, if he has purchased you, does he in fact own you? Well yes, the answer is yes. This is the place in Corinth where guess what they did all the time, they bought and sold slaves.
You buy a slave, you do what you want with a slave, including back in Corinth all the time, and I'm sure it happened all over wherever slaves were, you buy a slave so you can have sex with a slave. They work during the day, you have sex with them at night.
So you buy a slave, you own them, as sad as it might be, that was the culture then. Paul kind of switches it around and he says, but God bought you. God bought you and therefore he tells you what to do, he tells you where the arena is for sexual enjoyment, and it is marriage between, and now I have to say it in Massachusetts sadly, between a man and a woman.
And then it's the pleasure of God, God saying yes, enjoy, and we'll see in the next section, it's going to be, not God says no, that's not the Christian sex ethic. Here's where it's going to be helpful to you and glorifying to me, here's where it's going to be damaging to you and dishonoring and blasphemous to me.
And you were at an auction one day and you were auctioned off at the highest price ever. Jesus bought you with his blood, right? He was the ransom price, it was a costly atonement. Just like back at the very beginning, if it was a costly atonement out of gratitude, don't you want to serve that master and that king?
The answer is yes, I don't want to push it too far, but it is the text. It's almost like Paul is saying this, speaking of prostitutes, you pay prostitutes. Speaking of paying prostitutes, let's talk about what was really paid.
And what was really paid has nothing to do with gross, immoral, prostitute, whoredom, it has everything to do with the God of the universe, the immutably holy and just God of the universe who pays to redeem you.
You've been bought with a price, couldn't be more antithetical to the whole prostitute thing. And when God bought you, he didn't just buy your soul, he just didn't buy your personality, he bought you with your body.
You've got to read MacArthur's book, Slave, because you're either a slave to sin, slave to your own passions, slave to Satan, slave to the world, or you're a slave to Christ Jesus. The redemption price is the blood of Christ Jesus.
Free to us, costly to God. Cost a lot. And if God bought you, he owns you. That's the idea. You have not been redeemed with gold and silver, but with the precious blood of a lamb without blemish. 1 Peter 1.
He paid the price to set us free from sins, and so use your body to honor him. And then what does he say at the end? What does he say at the end of verse 20? So glorify God in your body. How do you do that?
How do you glorify God if he's given you a sexual body? And the answer is, all outside of six, no, no, no, no. How do you glorify God with your body? You take a pen and you take a little arrow and you take from the end of the period of verse 20, and then you take a little arrow and you move it right down to verse 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 of chapter 7.
How do you glorify God with your body sexually? You enjoy your wife. That's Paul's answer. Do you glorify God or do you gorge yourself sinfully? Do you adore God or do you commit adultery? Do you praise the Lord or do you watch porn?
Do you venerate the Lord or do you get venereal disease? Extol Christ or have extramarital sex? Fall on your face with reverence or fornicate with a prostitute? It just doesn't make sense. Don't you find it odd?
Paul doesn't say teenage pregnancy is costly. Teenage pregnancy could ruin your life. You could get AIDS. What does he say? What's the main motivation to not have illicit sex? Whether you eat or whether you drink or whether you have sex, you do all for what?
See, the motivation is not, I have to be careful. Am I getting pregnant? No. It's to glorify God. That's why you were born. That's why you live. Chapter 7, verses 1 to 5, we're going to see next week, is the next helpful way God tells us to overcome sexual temptation.
And that is to engage in sexual morality with your wife regularly and often. And with your husband regularly and often. I would never talk about these things if they weren't in the Bible. But I'll tell you what right now, I'm sweating like mad.
And I've got kids from 9 to 18 and they need to hear every single word of it. And the 4-year-olds just hear a word and they're just like, okay, whatever, they have no idea what we're talking about. But especially you dads, as we talked about last week.
As weird as it is for kids to think, my mother and dad are sexual creatures. And it's kind of a weird thing for them to get their mind wrapped around fathers and mothers especially. Don't you ever forget and don't you hide behind this.
Well, it's just hard for me to imagine my kids are going to be either now or they're going to grow up to be sexual creatures made by God that way. And we want to help them. If you've had a horrible past sexually, don't you want to help your kids?
Don't you want to walk your kids down the aisle? I just can't wait to walk my kids down the aisle. I hope it's the grace of God that it has happened. I walk my daughters down the aisle and then I quick stand up over here.
Who gives this woman to be married to this man? I do. Back over here. It's going to be great. To look at them, look at each other. I think, you know, on their honeymoon that night, God just says, show yourself.
Have fun. I designed this for you. When people say to me in premarital counseling, we're both virgins, I don't know whether to cry because of how sweet it is and how tender, or to get up and say, hallelujah, God, you've protected them.
It's a sweet thing. That's what I want for our kids here. It's also wonderful to think, with all that people have done and said with their bodies and with their minds, that when Christ forgives you for your sins, including sexual sins, he sees you like a chaste virgin, never sinning.
Because that's exactly who Jesus was. Can you imagine the pressure Jesus had with all the temptation? For us, once we get into temptation, that temptation's no longer around again for a while. But for Jesus, just building and building and building women, his eyes, everything else.
I think to myself, you know what? I might have a dirty, rotten, filthy mind, but I have been covered by the blood and perfect righteousness of one who is completely pure. Never looked at a woman ever the wrong way, except with a look of, I want what's best for her.
And I think for those who have committed sexual sin, we can stand in Christ forgiven. Because down at the cross, Christ paid for every sin, including these. And a God who does that doesn't make you now want to live for him.
Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for giving us the risen son, Christ Jesus. I thank you for these passages. I thank you, Lord, that we need to be taught about sex from your perspective. I pray for the fathers here, mothers, maybe single dads or single moms, that you just give them great grace as they train up the next generation.
Pure generation. And Father, we're very, very thankful we can have forgiveness of sins. Sexual sins, too. I pray for those today that struggle with pornography, that today would be the day of repentance, forsaking, and they would just be utterly repulsed by that.
You would grant them forgiveness. And you would grant them the ability to never go back. I pray for those who are engaged, those who have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, that you would keep them pure. I pray for husbands and wives, as we'll see next week, that they would just mirror Christ loving the church, committed relationship, that you blessed.
Thank you for forgiveness. Thank you for guidance. Thank you that your word transforms those in whom you've chosen. In Jesus' name we pray.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.