January 18, 2015 A.D., by Pastor Ben Willis
January 20th, 20151 Corinthians 6:12-20 [NLTse]
ELDER: 12 You say,
PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything”—
ELDER: but not everything is good for you. And even though
PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything,”
ELDER: I must not become a slave to anything. 13 You say,
PASTOR: “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.”
ELDER: (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 14 And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.
ELDER: 15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! 16 And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” 17 But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
ELDER: 18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
Sermon
Once upon a time there was a small rural community, so small, in fact, that the only church in town was a little Presbyterian church whose pastor also had to double-up as the local barber to make ends meet.
There was a man in that small community who had invested wisely and was enjoying his newfound comfort. The man got out of bed one day to go through his daily routine, looked into the mirror as he was about to shave and decided, “I make enough money now. I don’t have to shave myself. I’ll go down to the barber and let him shave me from now on.” So he did.
The man walked into the barber shop and found that the preacher/barber was out calling on some shut-ins. However, the pastor’s wife, a pleasant woman named Grace, was there and told the man, “I usually do the shaves anyway. Sit down and I’ll take care of you.” So she shaved him. When he asked, “How much do I owe you?” she replied, “$25.”
Now, the man thought that was somewhat expensive and he got thinking that he might only be able to get a shave every other day. But, he gave Grace the $25 and went on his way.
The next day, he woke up and found his face to be just as smooth as the day before. “No need for a shave today,” he thought, rather pleased, and began feeling better about such a very expensive shave. The next day he awoke once again to find his face just as smooth as the day before. “Wow!” he thought. “That’s amazing,” as he normally would need to shave daily to keep his clean-shaven business look.
Day 3 he woke up and his face was still as smooth as the minute after the pastor’s wife had finished. Now, somewhat perplexed, the man went down to the barber shop to find out what was going on. This particular day the pastor was in and the man asked him why his face was as smooth as it was the first day it was shaven. The kind old pastor gently replied, “Friend, you were shaved by Grace. And once shaved, always shaved…”
The grace God has shown us in Jesus Christ is truly amazing. There is nothing His grace has not, does not, and will not save us from, forgive us of, and cleanse us from! So amazing is God’s grace that in the early years of the Church some teachers and preachers from Rome wrote to the apostle Paul asking him if it was okay for Christians to keep on sinning. It seemed to these leaders that Christians’ continuing to sin would put God’s forgiving-grace on display for more and more of the people around them to see and be attracted to.
Paul responded, writing, “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?” (6:1-2)
Likewise, the majesty and enormity of God’s grace led the Christians in Corinth (in our reading this morning) to write to Paul, “[We are] allowed to do anything!” Yes, Paul replied, but remember, “not everything is good for you.” “[We are] allowed to do anything!” they declared. But Paul warned them: Beware that your freedom doesn’t lead you back into slavery.
The letter of 1 Corinthians is filled with Paul rebuking and correcting the Corinthian Christians for thinking themselves better than others in the church because of who had converted and baptized them, because they were suing their fellow Christians in court, because they had twisted the meaning of the Lord’s Supper and made it into a mockery, because they had spiritualized the resurrection of the dead, not believing that Jesus would bodily-return someday, and not knowing that believers would, when Jesus returned, be given new, resurrected bodies to enjoy the Lord with and to live with Him in forever…
But across this letter so filled with rebukes and corrections, Paul spoke most strongly about the Corinthians’ misunderstandings concerning sex.
Before I go on I want to let you parents know that I am going to be preaching about sex today. I am going to be talking about sex respectfully and appropriately for each and every age-level here in this Sanctuary. I want you to know this ahead of time in case you want your children to hear about sex from you before hearing about it from me. However, I hope you will let them stay, because your children are already hearing about sex at school, or from friends, and on TV, and in the music they listen to, and from the movies they watch, etc…
Just the other day a group of Christian teens, after hearing a speaker talk about the blessings of abstinence and sexual purity, were heard saying that they had never heard anyone at church talk with them about sexual immorality and God’s desire that we save ourselves before, and then they went on to talk about all the different experiences they’d already had at their young age.
So, take your kids out if you feel you must, but I hope you know you can trust me to be respectful and appropriate in all I’m about to say…
The culture we live in today is a lot like the culture in which the Corinthian Christians lived to whom Paul was writing. In the verses just prior to our reading this morning Paul mentions the greed of Corinth, the casual sex and affairs being had in the public eye, the variety of faiths being practiced all around them, legalized prostitution, the drinking and drugging and partying going on, the acceptance of homosexuality, and the pervasiveness of dishonesty and abusive relationships. It’s like reading one of our newspapers!
And Paul writes, “I know you’ve heard that on account of God’s grace that we Christians can do anything we like. But,” he says, “remember, not everything is good for you. Remember, sometimes the things we give ourselves to take us and keep us and lock us up.” And as he wrote to those in Galatia, “Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure you stay free… Don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.” (Galatians 5:1, 13) Of course, Paul focuses on sexual immorality as the chief among such snares.
In the New Testament, the word most often translated “sexual immorality” is porneia. (It’s where we get the word “pornography” from.) Porneia is also sometimes translated “fornication”, “unchastity”, or just “immorality” in general. It speaks of any type of sexual expression outside the boundaries of marriage between one man and one woman for life.
As we’ve just read, 1 Corinthians 6:18 says, “Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.” Our bodies, as Christians, are the “temple of the Holy Spirit” Paul goes on to say. (vv. 19-20) Many of the practices of the other faiths being lived out around the Corinthians often involved perverse and immoral sexual acts taking place during their worship services. And Paul is telling us that when we Christians use our physical bodies for immoral purposes, we are imitating these other faiths and we are polluting our bodies – God’s holy temple – with behaviors He calls “detestable”!
Sex is God’s idea. And the Bible makes clear that sex was created to be enjoyed between one man and one woman who are in a covenant-marriage until one of them dies. Human sexuality is God’s sacred wedding-gift to humanity. Any expression of it outside of God’s boundaries abuses and misuses the gift. Premarital sex, pornography, affairs, homosexual relations are all outside these boundaries; all abuse the gift…
Even so, as I’m sure you could in Corinth, you can hear all sorts of arguments, excuses, and rationalizations across our society against abstinence, chastity, sexual-purity, and life-long marital faithfulness. One of the most prevalent, I think, is: It’s not wrong if we love each other.
Which sounds nice, except the Lord makes no distinction in His Word between “loving” and “unloving” sexual relations. The only distinction He makes is between married and unmarried people. Sex within marriage is a part of the blessing God has given husbands and wives (Genesis 1:28), while sex outside of marriage is always spoken of negatively and is always committed outside His blessing and favor.
You can also hear some people claim that, Times have changed, and what was wrong in biblical times is no longer considered sin. And yet most of the passages condemning the different forms of sexual immorality also include such evils as greed, stealing, drunkenness, cheating, etc… We don’t have any problem understanding these other things as still being sin. No. And sexual immorality is still sin, too.
Have you ever heard someone tell you, We’re married in God’s eyes? What they are saying is that the God Who created and calls us to be proudly, publicly, and joyously married, has taken back that command so that they can do something that apart from it He Himself has always called “sin”. No, God established marriage to be one man and one woman publicly-declared to be united for life. (Mark 10:6-9) His eyes see immorality for what it is, regardless of how cleverly we might try to “redefine” it.
Of course, you can hear all manner of Christians who are living in these ways say, I can still have a good relationship with God because He understands. But the Bible shows us that we only fool ourselves when we think that we can stubbornly choose sin and God doesn’t care. In his first letter John writes, “We can be sure that we know Him if we obey His commandments. If someone claims, ‘I know God,’ but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.” (2:3-4)
As Christians, we are to live a purified life because we have been made holy through the exchange of our sin for the righteousness of Christ on the cross; we have been made completely new creations in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21) Our old natures, with all their impurities – sexual and otherwise – have died and now the lives we live we live by faith in Jesus Christ Who died for us! (Galatians 2:20) To practice any form of sexual immorality is to deny all that, and is to keep on living like our old selves and as slaves to sin. And yes, “we are allowed to do anything,” but not if anything leads us into becoming slaves, not ever again. It is through abstinence, chastity, sexual-purity, and life-long marital faithfulness that we honor God with our bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)
God’s rules, along with His acts of discipline, demonstrate His love for us. Following what He says can only help us during our time on earth. By maintaining sexual purity before marriage we avoid emotional entanglements that can negatively affect our future relationships and marriage. And keeping ourselves from sexual immorality guards our hearts, and our minds, and our bodies so that we can experience the unreserved love for our mates that is also one of God’s sacred gifts to marriage: A love which is surpassed only by God’s immeasurable love for us!