Bought with a Price: Why Your Body Matters to God

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[00:00:02] If able, please join me in standing as the one true living God calls us to worship this Lord's Day.
[00:00:41] Praise the Lord. Praise, O servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord.
[00:00:48] Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.
[00:00:53] From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.
[00:00:59] Indeed, let us praise the name of the Lord as we join our voices together, singing Hymn 165, Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim.

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[00:01:10] Let's pray together.

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[00:03:19] Almighty God, Lord of all creation, we do come before you this morning as you have called us as your people to proclaim your majesty, to give you your right, to give you all glory and power and wisdom and honor and blessing.
[00:03:37] We praise you for your never-ceasing, your infinite love for your people.
[00:03:43] We praise you and thank you this morning for your word that guides us and shows us who we are, who you are, and how we are to live in light of those infinite truths.
[00:03:55] And so we thank you for this time that you have set for us to come and worship you together.
[00:04:01] We have missed it, and we thank you for the opportunity this morning to worship your name in spirit and in truth.
[00:04:06] we pray that you would lend your Holy Spirit to us and guide us by your word so that all that we say and do during this time would be pleasing in your sight and would be uplifting to us as the sheep of your pasture. We thank you for Jesus Christ who came to
[00:04:24] redeem us and reconcile us to us so that we may return to you a sacrifice of worship. Indeed, we thank you for the way that he makes it possible that we can praise you, our transcendent Almighty
[00:04:40] God. We thank you for the blessings of worship and pray that you would receive them for your glory and honor this morning. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please remain standing and turn with me in your hymnals for our corporate voice of faith to page 859. That's chapter 20
[00:05:01] of the Westminster Confession of Faith, we will read paragraphs 1 and 3 on page 859 of your hymnals. Chapter 20 in the Confession of Faith, we move from talking about the law in previous chapters to liberty, and one commentator, Chad Van Dixhorn, said this about chapter 20. He said
[00:05:30] that Christians are alive when they believe the gospel and obey the law, and Christians blossom when they understand their liberty. So with that in mind, let's read now together paragraphs one and three of chapter 20 of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
[00:06:02] of God, the curse of the moral law, and in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin, from the evil of afflictions, the seeing of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation, as also in their free access to
[00:06:29] God and their yielding obedience unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and willing mind, all which were common also to believers under the law, but under the New Testament, the liberty of Christians is further enlarged in their freedom from the
[00:06:54] yoke of the ceremonial law to which the Jewish church was subjected, and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace, and in fuller communications of the free spirit of God, than believers under the law did ordinarily partake. They who, upon pretense of Christian
[00:07:20] liberty, do practice any sin, or cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.
[00:07:46] please be seated and please turn with me in your Bibles for our gospel reading this morning Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 through 30 this is Jesus speaking to us in the Sermon on the Mount and this is in the midst of those six antitheses
[00:08:22] where Jesus talks about an Old Testament law particularly in this case this case the seventh commandment and then applies it in a greater fuller way to our hearts and minds. So let's hear this reading of God's Word, Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 through 30.
[00:09:10] one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell and if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell the grass
[00:09:27] withers and the flower fades but the Word of God will stand forever amen well

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:09:37] is my great joy at this time to invite Patrick and Tegan Schaefer Ford as they present their daughter Margo for baptism, and I'd also invite Elder Emeritus Kearney Caldwell to come forward to assist. Our directory of public worship
[00:10:12] and our form of government tell us that believing parents are encouraged to present their children for baptism. It's always worth repeating why it is we baptize young children in our tradition and in our church. And it goes back to
[00:10:28] the fact that God is a God of covenant. God is a God who has established relationship with his people and that includes the family the household we see this first of all in the old testament with abraham who was a pagan who was called graciously by god into relationship
[00:10:45] with him and we're told that abraham believed god and it was counted to him as righteousness and all of the covenant promises that god made to abraham were signified and sealed to him with the sacrament of circumcision that sacrament was to be applied to abraham after he had placed
[00:11:03] his faith in god but also to his son isaac when he was but eight days old before he could place his faith in god because what the sign and the seal represented wasn't the faith of isaac but
[00:11:16] the good promises that god had made to abraham and his household and to all the children who would follow after him and as we move into the pages of the new testament we see that the
[00:11:27] sacramental sign switches from circumcision to the waters of baptism but the emphasis is still the same on the god who has made the promise to his people the promises for you and for your children and so as we baptize little margo this morning she's very excited by the way as we
[00:11:45] baptize little margo this morning we understand that we are not putting salvation on her that That this is not about what we are doing or even really about what Patrick and Tegan are doing.
[00:11:55] It is about what God has promised to His people and to their children.
[00:12:00] And so we look to the Lord in faith that in His time, by His Spirit's power, what is applied here today, what is signified here today, will become a reality in Margo's life when she places her faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:12:13] And so Patrick and Tegan, I have a series of questions for you that I would like to ask now.
[00:12:17] Do you renew the vows which you made when you received the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and entered into the full communion of this church?
[00:12:27] Do you?
[00:12:27] Do you acknowledge that your child is a sinner in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit?
[00:12:35] Do you claim God's covenant promises on her behalf?
[00:12:40] And do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for Margo's salvation just as you do for your own?
[00:12:45] and finally do you now covenant and promise in humble reliance on the grace of God to bring Margo up to love God and serve him to the end that she may come to commit her life to Jesus Christ as
[00:12:58] Lord and Savior do you and to you the members of this congregation I have a question for you as well do you the members of this congregation and of the church of Jesus Christ undertake with these
[00:13:10] parents the covenant responsibility for the Christian nurture of this child if so please signify by standing as you are able. Patrick and Tegan, I want you to just take a moment and soak this in as you see that you are not alone in the task that the Lord has given you to raise Margo
[00:13:30] in the Lord. You have this covenant community, this covenant family that is vowing before God in you that they will come alongside you all the years of her life to assist you in this.
[00:13:39] So be encouraged today that you are not alone. Thank you. Congregation may be seated. Come here baby girl. Hey, Margo. Margo James Schaefer, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the
[00:13:57] Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Let's pray together. Oh Lord, our God, we thank you for your good promises. We thank you for what you have signified today through the waters of baptism, that you have established a relationship between yourself and your people. And this
[00:14:17] relationship extends not only to believing parents but to their children as well lord all the covenant promises all the covenant blessings are signified and sealed in the waters of baptism and when the condition of faith is met they will be fully realized in margo's life and so father our prayer
[00:14:35] this morning would be that that realization would happen even at a young age that she would come to a saving knowledge of jesus christ and that as she grows she would develop her into a young woman who
[00:14:45] is strong in her faith, who serves you and serves your church well. So to that end, we pray for Patrick and for Tegan as they undertake the opportunity, the task of raising this child up
[00:14:56] in the fear and admonition of the Lord, that you would give them courage, that you would give them love, that you would give them compassion, that they would always be quick to speak to her about
[00:15:05] Jesus, to point her to the grace of the gospel. And I would pray for the members of this congregation who have just entered in to a covenant with this family, that we would be found faithful in coming
[00:15:15] alongside them to this end as well so father we thank you for your grace we thank you for your love father we thank you for all of this in jesus name amen amen thank you y'all may be seated
[00:15:27] thank you carnie well let's turn again in our hymnals this time to number 253 singing together

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:15:41] there is a fountain filled with blood let's stand let's pray together oh lord our god we do rejoice

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:19:30] and the salvation that You have provided for us, Your people, through the blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
[00:19:37] Lord, we thank You that You did not withhold Your only begotten Son from us, but gave Him and with Him all things to us by Your grace.
[00:19:45] And Father, now through worship, we have opportunity to You to return to You a portion of the things that You have given to us through the giving of Your tithes and our offerings.
[00:19:54] We ask that You would be glorified through these gifts and that You would use them to build up Your church.
[00:19:59] and we pray that we would give with cheerfulness of heart and we pray it in jesus name amen please

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[00:20:06] be seated please be seated as we look to the lord in prayer this morning i mentioned during

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[00:23:33] announcements that eric meberg had a few prayer requests for us as he is on this trip encouraging missionaries one of those was for his own personal health he's developed a bit of a cold and so just
[00:23:43] simply praying that this would run its course quickly and that he would be in good health for the rest of the trip. The other one is more of a scheduling thing. All the plans that they had
[00:23:52] made, all the schedule they had made has been sort of thwarted with flight cancellations and other disruptions. And so just he was asking that we would pray for a spirit of flexibility, a spirit of grace for all those involved as they are having to sort of adjust on the fly. And we look forward
[00:24:08] to hearing a full report from him in a couple of weeks when he's with us. So we'll pray for Eric this morning. And I would also encourage you to continue to pray for the Goodrum family as Miss
[00:24:17] Ruth is still under hospice care at the local hospice house. Pray for Freddie and for Casey as they wait by her side during this time. So let's look to the Lord in prayer this morning.
[00:24:31] O Lord our God, along with the psalmist, we can say together, we love you, O Lord, our strength.
[00:24:37] You are our rock and our fortress and our deliverer. You are our God in whom we take refuge, our shield and the horn of our salvation our stronghold we call upon the lord who is worthy
[00:24:51] to be praised and we are saved from our enemies indeed oh lord you are worthy to be praised from the rising of the sun to its setting you oh lord are to be praised and we thank you that you
[00:25:06] have given us this day the lord's day we're all around this globe your people are gathering together to worship and to praise you for your grace for your love for your forgiveness for your power for your majesty and for your holiness and we thank you lord that we are counted among that
[00:25:24] number father we do thank you that you are a god who loves your people and you love us so well that you have provided us a savior jesus christ well we thank you that you have also provided us your word
[00:25:39] and you have given us collectively your church indeed oh lord you are a father and you have not left us as orphans in the world but have adopted us into your family and we thank you and we praise
[00:25:51] you for this unmerited grace that you have shown to us lord we also thank you that you are god who is on mission you are on mission to call people to draw them to yourself men and women all across
[00:26:04] this world. And we thank you this morning for those whom you send for this task. Lord, we thank you for those who go with the gospel into all the nations proclaiming the truth and the wonders of
[00:26:17] Jesus Christ. And we thank you too for someone like Eric Meeberg who can go and minister to those ministers, who can shepherd those shepherds, who can encourage these missionaries who are serving you, particularly this week on the continent of Africa. And we would pray, Father,
[00:26:33] for His ministry to them this week.
[00:26:35] We thank, Father, of His personal health as He has developed this cold that You would give Him quick relief so that He can focus purely on those with whom He's ministering to.
[00:26:45] We also know, Lord, that You are sovereign over plans and over schedules, and though their plans have been disrupted by flights being canceled and other things, Lord, we pray that You would use this for those divine appointments
[00:26:56] that You have in store for them.
[00:26:59] We pray, Father, that He indeed would be an encouragement, a true Barnabas to those to whom he serves and we look forward to hearing a report of the work that you would have done through him in a couple of weeks time we also pray for the needs of this congregation
[00:27:12] and we do think of the good room family and ruth in particular lord we ask that as she draws nearer and nearer to a homecoming that you would deal gently and kindly with her and we pray for freddie
[00:27:23] and for casey as they wait by her side along with friends in this congregation who know her and love that you would be near to all of us and bring us comfort and peace.
[00:27:32] Lord, we pray for other families that are going through difficult times, matters of health, treatments for various diseases, griefs, loneliness, whatever the case may be.
[00:27:41] Lord, we thank you that you are present and you are near to your people.
[00:27:46] Lord, we pray that as we enter into or go through the rest of this service this morning, as we prepare to hear from your word, that even now you would be preparing our hearts and minds to receive it
[00:27:56] and that your spirit would be sifting us.
[00:27:58] Lord that you would bring convicting power so at the end of the day you might get all the glory in our lives and we ask this in Jesus name Amen

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:28:07] and thank you choir I stuck my head in the choir room a week or so ago and told

[00:30:50] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:30:50] the choir that after three weeks of no church they better nail their anthem today and they said to me well after three weeks of sermon prep you better nail your sermon today so touche if you've got your Bibles with you I invite
[00:31:06] you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. It has been a couple of weeks since we were last together, which means it's been a couple of weeks since we were last in our
[00:31:15] study of 1 Corinthians. So I want to take just a quick moment to remember where we are in this letter. After the new year, you'll remember that we picked back up with chapter 5. In the fall, we looked at chapters 1 through 4 where Paul was dealing with one set of issues
[00:31:33] that he had found out about within the life of the church.
[00:31:36] And then as we came to chapter 5, we see Paul shift his focus to a new set of problems, another set of problems that had been reported to him by Chloe and her people.
[00:31:45] And primarily in chapter 5, that was sexual immorality within the church.
[00:31:51] And the bigger problem was that the church was allowing it.
[00:31:53] The church was tolerating it rather than confronting it.
[00:31:58] And then when we moved into chapter 6, we saw that Paul also looked in at some of the infighting that was happening within the church. They were taking each other to court, dragging each other to public court with lawsuits. And then once again, we saw that
[00:32:12] the church wasn't dealing with this as a church in-house. And so if you look at the first four chapters coupled with the last couple of chapters that we've looked at, the dominant theme throughout 1 Corinthians to this point is that that church looked more like the world than the blood-bought
[00:32:32] bride of Christ. They had been operating according to the wisdom and the morals of the culture rather than striving for holiness after God. And so as we pick back up then with the second half
[00:32:47] of chapter 6 this morning, that's what I want us to keep in mind. That this church was living according to the wisdom of the age rather than the wisdom of God and yet still telling themselves
[00:32:58] that they were okay because they were faithful to the gospel and there are many who would say that the church today in our time and in all our culture is guilty of the same thing that we
[00:33:13] collectively as the church have taken the values the morals and the wisdom of society and tried to syncretize them with our faith which means then that this passage is not a letter or not a text
[00:33:28] just for a church 2,000 years ago in the city of Corinth, it is a passage that God intends for our ears to hear today as well.
[00:33:38] So let me read for us 1 Corinthians 6, picking up at verse 12.
[00:33:46] All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
[00:33:50] All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
[00:33:56] Food is meant for the stomach, and stomach for food.
[00:33:58] And God will destroy both one and the other.
[00:34:02] The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
[00:34:09] And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.
[00:34:13] Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
[00:34:17] Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?
[00:34:21] Never!
[00:34:23] Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?
[00:34:27] 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
[00:34:42] 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
[00:34:57] bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Let's pray together. Lord, indeed, we are not our own. We have been bought with a price. We sung earlier of that fountain filled with blood that
[00:35:20] flowed from Emmanuel's veins. That blood, that ransom, that blood that purchased us, rescuing us from sin and misery and delivering us into Your kingdom of light and righteousness and holiness.
[00:35:35] And You call us in Your Word to glorify You.
[00:35:39] And Father, we confess that there are sometimes places in our lives that we do not glorify You as we ought.
[00:35:44] And we thank You for Your patience.
[00:35:47] And we pray this morning as we consider yet again Your call to this holiness that You would sift us, that You would convict us, and that You would mold us more and more into the image of Christ.
[00:35:58] We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
[00:36:04] All things are lawful for me.
[00:36:07] That's how Paul opens up this section.
[00:36:09] In fact, he says it twice.
[00:36:10] All things are lawful for me.
[00:36:14] What does that mean?
[00:36:16] And why does he repeat it?
[00:36:17] What is this saying that he's using here?
[00:36:20] I imagine most of you have Bibles in which that phrase is in quotation marks.
[00:36:25] And the reason for those quotation marks is that this phrase seems to have been a pop culture slogan there in the city of Corinth.
[00:36:35] It was a motto by which many in that pagan culture lived.
[00:36:41] It was a sort of rallying cry for hedonists.
[00:36:45] Now, if you're not familiar with that word, hedonist or hedonism, suffice it to say it was a philosophy of life.
[00:36:53] one that views pleasure and self-indulgence as the ultimate aim or goal in life.
[00:37:02] The pursuit of that pleasure acknowledged no barriers and no limitations.
[00:37:08] As long as it makes me feel good, I'll do it.
[00:37:13] Nothing is out of bounds.
[00:37:16] Therefore, all things are lawful for me.
[00:37:20] now hopefully you as christians hear that and recognize that that sort of philosophy of life does not square with the gospel it doesn't square with our christian faith it doesn't square with biblical morality and yet paul is having to address it because some in the corinthian church
[00:37:37] believed that their freedom in christ meant freedom from any restraints and so they saw their faith and the hedonistic lifestyle as completely congruent with one another. I'm free in Christ.
[00:37:53] I have nothing to restrain me. I can do whatever I want without any consequences. Isn't that great?
[00:38:00] And so Paul has to intervene. Now let's think about this for a moment. I just introduced a pretty big topic, this idea of freedom in Christ, or as we heard it referred to in our reading from
[00:38:11] the Confession of Faith earlier, Christian liberty. And the first thing I want us to acknowledge and recognize is that Jesus, in fact, did come to give us freedom. That's without a shadow of a doubt. Jesus himself in John chapter 8 said to his disciples, if you abide in my word,
[00:38:29] you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
[00:38:36] And he goes on to say, and if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed. And so Jesus himself says that if you put your faith in me you are free and paul picks up on this as well in his later
[00:38:51] letter to the galatians he says to them for freedom christ has set you free of course paul is particularly talking about christ setting us free from the burden of the law of trying to earn
[00:39:05] god's favor of trying to achieve righteousness through works of the law but it seems that some of the corinthians had misunderstood both jesus and paul's meaning and they embraced an erroneous a false view of this freedom and so they saw it as a license to indulge every impulse in christ
[00:39:26] because they thought they were free from all rules and constraints and consequences it's almost like you know when you hear people say um uh or particularly americans like to say hey it's a free country. I can do whatever I want. You've heard people say this before, right? Yes, it's
[00:39:46] true that we live in a nation that provides us with liberty, but that doesn't mean we have license to live just however we want, does it? We have a rule of law in this land. There are certain things
[00:39:57] you can do, but there are other things that you may not do. For instance, you can own and you can drive a car, but you do not have the freedom to pick which lane you're going to drive in on any
[00:40:09] given day there are rules for for flow of traffic it also means you don't get to decide how fast you're going to drive on any particular road there are limits to how fast that you may drive
[00:40:21] and these limits on our liberty actually set us free to enjoy life to its fullest if you went out and drove on the wrong side of the road for any length of time you wouldn't have any freedom
[00:40:34] anymore because you wouldn't have life anymore and so these limits are really what set us free to enjoy all the privileges of life well in the same way our freedom in christ or what we call
[00:40:48] our christian liberty does not give us license to live any way we want i really appreciate the way one commentator put it he said the freedom that comes through the gospel is a freedom that
[00:41:03] exists only under christ's lordship the freedom that comes through the gospel is a freedom that exists only under christ's lordship in other words friends you cannot say jesus is lord and then not submit to his lordship and his authority in your life christ has set us free
[00:41:25] from sin he has set us free from the demands and the curse of the law but in so doing he has also enabled us to live in obedience and conformity to god's holiness and his holy standard that's why
[00:41:40] Paul goes on in that same letter to the Galatians that I quoted from earlier to say, do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. And likewise,
[00:41:53] the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2 says, live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but for living as servants of God. Listen to that. Peter says, live as you are
[00:42:07] free as servants of God. You're free to be a servant, to be under the lordship of Christ.
[00:42:18] And when we live according to that standard, then we really are free. We are free to flourish according to God's design. Let me see if I can explain it to you this way. I recently read an
[00:42:31] article that made this exact same point by asking this question. I want you to contemplate this question for a minute is a train freed or restricted by its train tracks think about that is a train free or is it restricted by its tracks now i think maybe some of us our first
[00:42:54] inclination would be to say what's restricted but consider the alternative take away the tracks put that 150 ton train in the dirt or on the sand or in the middle of the field where's that train
[00:43:11] going it's not going anywhere but when it is on its tracks it has the freedom to go wherever those tracks lead and so it is with our christian liberty our freedom in christ his lordship his
[00:43:27] holiness the truth of his word these are the tracks upon which we live our lives and as we do we are free to experience life in all of its fullness as God intended.
[00:43:41] But if we go beyond that, or if we jump our tracks because we want to live according to worldly standards, then we are no longer free, but we are stuck in bondage to sin.
[00:43:55] And so no, we cannot do anything we want, but we are set free to live according to Christ's lordship.
[00:44:03] And so we see in verse 12 then, Paul provides some diagnostic principles for the Corinthians to help discern when and how their freedom, and we would say our freedom, may be practiced.
[00:44:15] And so he says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
[00:44:23] And so the first question, friends, that you and I need to ask when we're contemplating a decision or an action or something to say or whatever else it might be, we need to ask the question, is this a good thing?
[00:44:35] is it beneficial does it help me and others does it does it help my walk with the lord or not is it helpful and then the second principle because he quotes it again he says all things
[00:44:53] are lawful for me but i will not be dominated by anything and so the second question we have have to ask is does this thing enslave me does it entrap me will this thing become my master or
[00:45:10] will it serve will it serve me and my relationship with jesus will it serve others will it be good for others or if you want to expand on the train analogy from earlier will this action will this
[00:45:27] thought? Will these words, will they keep me on the tracks or will they derail me? And this has to become an ongoing evaluation, friends. This has to become second nature to us as we navigate
[00:45:40] every single day of our lives. When temptation strikes, when impulse screams for satisfaction, when lust demands to be satisfied, we have to take each thought captive and make it obedient to Christ? Is it helpful and will it dominate me? And all that from verse 12. Let's move on
[00:46:04] because Paul moves on in verse 13 and look what we see. Another phrase in quotation marks.
[00:46:11] Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. Well this was another phrase that was popularized by the hedonists in Corinth. But it actually finds its roots in an older philosophy, one that predates the first century, one that was popular not just in Corinth, but really
[00:46:30] the entire Greco-Roman world, and that was the philosophy known as dualism, which draws a distinction between our physical bodies and our souls or our spirits. Now for those of you who were with us last fall on Wednesday nights when we were doing a study on life, death, heaven, and hell,
[00:46:49] you'll remember we talked about this at great length as we were thinking about life and what we are as human beings, that we are body and soul together. But this idea of dualism actually finds its roots in the minds of men like Plato and the other early philosophers. And what they
[00:47:05] saw was the physical world, everything around us, is the realm of decay and death. The physical world is just doomed for destruction. And it's a place from which our souls, which are pure and eternal strive to escape. So everything physical is just kind of wasting away and all that really
[00:47:26] is left is the soul. Well, this view was later embraced by another group known as the Gnostics who were prevalent right about the time of the New Testament. And they took it a step further
[00:47:36] to the point where they denigrated the body. They compared the human body to a tomb that imprisoned the true self. And the true self was the soul or the psyche or what you believed to be true about
[00:47:50] yourself. And so the basic idea was that the body and the soul have no intrinsic or eternal connection. The body is a disposable container that has no ultimate purpose or worth, while our souls or our consciousness are all that really matter eternally. And friends, if that sounds
[00:48:14] vaguely familiar to you it's because the spirit of dualism is alive and well in our culture today that the true self isn't defined by the container by the body but rather who i think i am and
[00:48:28] therefore the body is just a canvas with which i can do whatever i want to match who i think i am but what happens when who you think you are changes from one stage of life to another now
[00:48:44] can see going back to Corinth how the hedonist would take this dualistic philosophy as a bonus as a license to live however they wanted if this body ultimately is disposable if it's a throwaway container well I might as well have as much fun with it while I can before I lose it and so their
[00:49:03] view was that every urge every craving every lust ought to be satisfied if your stomach is hungry eat and drink because tomorrow what happens we die well much the same way as we see what paul's
[00:49:18] getting to here if your sexual appetite is raging give it what it wants you see the hedonists within the corinthian church syncretized that means they combined their erroneous view of christian liberty with this philosophy of dualism and concluded then that sex just like hunger is another bodily
[00:49:38] impulse that should be indulged and obeyed without consequence, which, as we find from our passage today, included sleeping with prostitutes. Now these were most likely, Paul's probably referring to temple prostitutes. Remember Corinth had something like 35 temples to pagan gods, and
[00:49:56] they oftentimes viewed the services of a prostitute as an act of worship. Well, this was a problem for the Corinthian church, to say the least. And so what does Paul do to combat this? What does Paul
[00:50:08] do to correct their false thinking? Well, he begins by showing them that your body, my body, our bodies, and what we do with them actually do matter. Look again at verse 13. He says, food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.
[00:50:32] The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
[00:50:38] Do you notice in that very last part of verse 13, Paul takes that motto at the beginning and retools it.
[00:50:48] The guiding principle for our lives is not food for the stomach and the stomach for food, but rather the body for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
[00:50:57] Your body matters to God.
[00:51:02] And if you don't believe that, look at what he says next in verse 14 about the body of Christ.
[00:51:08] He says, and God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.
[00:51:16] God raised the Lord.
[00:51:17] What's being implied here?
[00:51:19] Well, think back to every Easter you've ever celebrated.
[00:51:21] Think back to the four accounts of the resurrection that we have in each of the Gospels.
[00:51:27] When Jesus arose from the grave, what part of His being was resurrected?
[00:51:31] Was it a disembodied soul?
[00:51:34] No.
[00:51:35] He was raised with a physical, glorified body.
[00:51:40] And to prove that to His disciples, He often ate with them after the resurrection.
[00:51:44] Do you remember that one time He appeared in a room and they thought He was a ghost?
[00:51:47] And so He took some of the fish that they had in the room and He ate it in front of them.
[00:51:51] And later, when the disciples were in a boat and they saw this guy cooking on the beach, they went over and they saw that it was Jesus and He had prepared a meal for them
[00:51:58] and ate with them in that instance.
[00:52:01] Jesus was raised with a real glorified body and Paul draws the connection between the eternal body of Jesus and ours when he goes on in that verse to say just as he raised the Lord he will
[00:52:14] also raise us up by his power friends if you are in Christ the body you have now is the body you will have forever albeit in a glorified state when we die our bodies rest in their graves our souls
[00:52:34] are immediately ushered into the presence of God. But on the day of resurrection, when Jesus Christ returns, we are told that all of our bodies will be raised and reunited with our souls. And so we
[00:52:43] will live with the Lord eternally, body and soul. These bodies are not prisons from which our soul is trying desperately to escape. These bodies are not worthless throwaway containers with which we can do whatever we want no these bodies along with our souls are meant for eternal glory which
[00:53:15] means we are not free to do with them whatever we want and that glory that eternal glory is revealed in the fact that Paul says in verse 15 your bodies are members of Christ friends when you put your
[00:53:30] faith in Jesus Christ did you know that you are united to Christ not only spiritually but also physically, bodily. You are united to Christ. And not only that, but Paul tells us in verse 19 that
[00:53:42] your body is now a temple of who? The Holy Spirit within you. And the consequence of this glorious truth is what Paul says. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. And that is
[00:54:02] probably the most offensive thing that the church can say to the world today. Your body is not your own you actually don't have the freedom to do with it whatever you want your body especially
[00:54:14] if you have been united to christ in faith belongs body and soul to the lord and if that's the case then paul's argument here is how can you then unite that same body with a prostitute there's
[00:54:32] a union there's a oneness that occurs in sexual interaction which is why paul quotes from genesis two when he says the two will become one flesh so how can we forsake our union with christ who bled
[00:54:48] for us by being united in sexual sin to someone else it's completely antithetical to the gospel now i realize that some of you may be thinking well that doesn't really apply to me i've never
[00:55:06] employed the services of a prostitute so this is obviously a corinthian problem not anything i need to worry about today. And if that's true, good. I'm glad you haven't employed the services of a prostitute. But friends, this probably applies to us much more readily than you might recognize.
[00:55:23] Let's not forget, for instance, what we heard from Jesus a little while ago in the Sermon on the Mount. I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent and has already
[00:55:33] committed adultery with her in his heart. You know, I'm convinced that the modern Christian has more opportunities for the sort of sin Paul is talking about here in this passage than any generation before, thanks to our phones, thanks to our computers, thanks to our TVs, thanks to
[00:55:54] literature, all which give us constant access to every kind of pornography, every kind of licentiousness, every kind of sexual immorality that the human mind can conceive. And it's gotten to the point where as pastors, we have to assume that most of the men in a congregation are
[00:56:14] taking this stuff in one way, shape, or form. And not just the men, but it's becoming increasingly prevalent among women as well. And if that sounds crass to you, sit in my office for a couple of
[00:56:24] weeks. Friends, how can we, who are members of Christ, take this in and justify it to ourselves that I'm already forgiven, and so I'll do this thing, I'll indulge this lust, and then I'll just
[00:56:44] pray and I'll be good to go. It's the same problem that the Corinthian church had. Syncretizing the values of the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ and using it as license to live however
[00:56:58] you want because really it's already already paid for. Friends, if that's true for you, you need to hear Paul very clearly when he says in this passage, you are not your own. You were bought
[00:57:16] with a price. And that is both a gracious and a convicting word. First of all, it's gracious because friend, if you are here and you are falling under the conviction of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit, it is a gracious word to know that you have been bought, that his blood
[00:57:31] really has covered over our sins and that he is faithful and just to forgive us of sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness and praise God for that. But it should also be powerfully convicting and challenging for us because it tells us that our bodies ultimately belong to the Lord
[00:57:47] and what we do with our body matters supremely to Him. And so Paul leaves us with two commands.
[00:57:58] Two commands for you to contemplate as we leave here today. And the first is found in verse 18 when he quite frankly says, flee from sexual immorality. He doesn't say try to avoid it.
[00:58:14] He doesn't say, do your very best to get around it.
[00:58:18] He says, flee.
[00:58:20] Literally, run away from it.
[00:58:25] And I can't help but think of that picture in the book of Genesis with Joseph in Potiphar's house when his wife tells Joseph, come to bed with me.
[00:58:34] And what does Joseph do?
[00:58:35] He literally runs away.
[00:58:37] He runs out of the house.
[00:58:38] He takes himself away from the situation, away from the temptation.
[00:58:43] He gets away from it.
[00:58:44] and that's what paul is telling us here as well flee from sexual immorality it has no place in the life of a believer but of course not every temptation involves a physical person so what do
[00:58:59] we do about our eyes what do we do about our minds that tend to wander that tend to look that tend to linger well in his second letter to the corinthians paul tells us he says we take every thought
[00:59:11] captive and we make it obedient to christ this is how we flee from this sort of immorality and then the second command we find and that we'll end with today is in verse 20 the very
[00:59:25] last words of this chapter glorify god in your body friend you are called to flee from sexual immorality and you are called to glorify god in your body and of course every good reformed presbyterian knows the answer to the very first question of the catechism what is man's chief end
[00:59:44] man's chief end is to glorify god and to enjoy him forever isn't it funny how the hedonists in the corinthian church were looking for enjoyment we're looking for pleasure not in god but in the
[00:59:56] stuff of the world when true joy true pleasure is found in the lord and our catechism rightly ties the two principles together that when we glorify god we are able to enjoy him forever and we will
[01:00:11] find great joy in our lives as we seek to glorify him in our bodies friends you have been set free through jesus christ from the dominion of sin you have been set free by jesus christ
[01:00:29] from the lusts of this world so use that freedom to glorify god in your body and find true true enjoyment in him let's pray together lord our god there's difficult passages like this that remind us of the truth that that our hearts are continually looking for something to worship
[01:01:00] something to idolize something to give themselves over to and even though we have everything we need and more in jesus christ the remaining corruption within us sometimes calls out to us all of us face
[01:01:21] temptations of various kinds in this particular text and in our particular cultural moment that very often is a sexual immorality father there are all sorts of sins that do not bring you glory And so we would pray this morning
[01:01:39] that you would search us, that you would know us, that if there are places in our lives, in our hearts, in our minds that we have not submitted to your Lordship, that even today we would fall before you
[01:01:50] in repentance and tears, surrendering that portion of our lives to you and to your Lordship.
[01:02:00] But Lord, also reassure us of your love.
[01:02:03] Reassure us of your grace.
[01:02:06] Reassure us that even though we may be discovering new parts of our lives, you know us through and through.
[01:02:15] And that over the course of our lives, you are pleased to refine us more and more into the image and likeness of our perfect and beautiful Savior, Jesus Christ.
[01:02:25] So Father, be glorified in us, not just this day, but all the days of our lives, we pray in Jesus' name.
[01:02:32] Amen.
[01:02:38] Our closing hymn this morning is actually found on the back cover of your hymnals, entitled With Harps and With Vials, Let's stand together as we sing.

[01:02:48] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[01:02:48] If you are here today and you have never known this love

[01:06:15] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[01:06:15] that we have just sung of Jesus Christ, if you have never known the washing away of sin through faith and repentance, please don't leave today without speaking with me, Pastor Luke, or one of our elders.
[01:06:25] We would love to pray with you and counsel you in the way of salvation.
[01:06:28] Now as you go, go with the blessing of God Almighty.
[01:06:31] May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father Almighty, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all both now and forevermore.
[01:06:40] Amen.