Do You Not Know?

Let what you know about Jesus control your life

So let’s talk philosophy for a few minutes.

When I was doing my undergraduate work at Mercer in Macon (Go Bears!), I took a course called the philosophy of religion.

It was pretty intense.

My professor was an interesting man.

He washed his clothes every weekend.

The way I knew that was, every Monday, he wore a clean pair of pants and a clean shirt.

Then on Tuesday, he wore the same pair of pants and the same shirt.

Each day the chalk dust on his pants intensified and the sweat stains under his arms got bigger.

He really was what you would expect a philosopher to look and act like.

A little eccentric, but very deep.

But you know, each of us is a philosopher in our own way.

We might not sit and ponder and think for hours about the deep and hidden mysteries of the universe.

But whether we mean to our not, we pick up a belief system, a philosophy over time.

Our philosophy is influenced by our parents, relatives, friends.

Now by television, the movies, sports, streaming services, social media.

Because all of these are selling a product - they are selling a philosophy.

And we have to have a philosophy to know how to live.

1 Corinthians was written into a Greek culture - they had a philosophy.

A few messages back, we talked about Sophia - the rational wisdom the Greeks adored.

One of the things they believed was that ultimately matter was not good.

But that your spirit was good.

They believed that when you died your spirit kind of melded into the cosmic consciousnesses, into the One, into the good.

So whatever you did in this body was inconsequential.

Your body is imperfect, it is not good.

We are mind, body and spirit and one day our bodies will fall away.

So if we want to eat, drink and be merry, well, why not?

Tomorrow we die, right?

And our spirits live on to become one with the great good so why waste the moment?

As I got ready for today, this bothered me.

We don’t think that way anymore so how could this text really relate to us.

Our modern philosophy is radically different.

Nothing - and I mean nothing - has any ultimate value.

There is no God, there are no gods.

There is only this life.

When you die, science says your brain starts firing off chemicals to make you think you are seeing a bright light.

To make you feel content and happy

To basically ease your psyche into the nothingness its going to so you aren’t terrified as you die.

So if that is the case, what you do with your body doesn’t matter.

So if we want to eat, drink and be merry - well, then we should.

In fact, do what you want to do because it’s all meaningless anyway.

So the “enlightened” among us are preaching that whatever you feel you are, you are.

And whatever you are, can do whatever it wants to do.

There is no guilt, no shame, nothing because none of it really matters.

There’s nothing left but a desperate race to experience as much pleasure as possible.

If you’ve ever seen something and asked, “How can they do that?”

Well, there’s your reason.

So we have the Greek philosophy that when we die our imperfect bodies fall away and we meld with the cosmic One.

And we have the modern philosophy where when we die we are simply dead - the story ends and that’s that.

And I thought, how do those relate to each other?

Then it came to me - then both end in the same place.

They both end in bondage - in this world.

Paul uses the word “dominated.”

They both end up dominated by an insatiable desire to experience everything a body can experience.

Literally, “if it feels good, do it,” because it’s all you get.

Don’t be surprised by what you see anymore.

With all of their might, people are doing everything they can to feel good.

Now, before we can dive into the text, there is one other philosophy we need to understand and that’s the Hebrew philosophy.

Paul was a Hebrew - a Jew of the Jews, remember?

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23

1 Thessalonians 5:23 ESV

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Kind of sounds like the Greeks right?

Mind, body and soul.

The difference is, the Hebrews believed those three things comprised one being.

It’s like we are a trinity - we are three things, spirit, soul and body, yet we are one entity.

Now you might be thinking - yes, but when I die, my spirit will go to heaven - and I’ll agree.

But it doesn’t stop there either, does it?

When Jesus returns, there will be a bodily resurrection.

And once again, you and I each will be spirit, soul and body, yet one entity, inseparable for eternity.

As Christians, we believe in the resurrection of the body.

That’s key to our contentment.

And that’s key to this passage.

Turn with me if you will to 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.

I’ve got to warn you again, this week and next will have some PG moments.

Again, I’ll be as delicate as I can be, but again mom and dad there will be a few words that might cause some conversation later.

If you are joined by live stream, welcome.

We are glad you here - and if you can come in person please do.

And if you want to contact us you can always go to our website, fbcgray.org and click on the guests tab

And it will tell you what to do.

And if you are our guests, this is how we worship.

We take a book of the Bible and we work through it word for word.

2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,”

We believe that.

There is much to be learned about our infinite Lord.

So let’s get started.

Hear now the word of the Lord from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

1 Corinthians 6:12–20 ESV

“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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let’s pray:

Father, thank you for your word.

Help us today to handle it with integrity.

Help us to be curious to know what You want us to know.

And Lord, apply it to our hearts.

You are our great God and King.

We truly want to follow you with all we’ve got.

Forgive my sins, Lord, so that nothing will interfere with your people hearing Your word.

In Jesus’ name - Amen.

Very simply, here is the background for this text.

Just like every major event - be it the Superbowl, be it a conference or a trade show, just like every event today there were a host of working girls ready and available if you wanted one.

This had nothing to do with religious observances like some of the fertility cults.

It was simple supply and demand.

There was a lot of demand in Corinth and there was a lot of supply.

And some of these enlightened Corinthian Christians were in on the action.

You would think they would know better - but you’d think modern churches would know better too.

1 Corinthians 6:12-13 ““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.”

Notice there are quotes around “All things are lawful for me,” and “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.”

Those are things that Paul said - he taught them those very words.

Paul said those things to teach them about grace.

Grace is the Lord giving us good things that we don’t deserve.

But they got confused.

And this is how.

In the Old Testament, there were 613 commandments - we go with the big 10 but Jews go with 613.

In order to be good, you must follow every last one of those 613 commandments and listen, that’s bondage.

Can you imagine trying to live your life every day following 613 rules to the letter?

Can you imagine remembering 613 rules?

If you break one, you know you’ve got to sacrifice your best animal so your sins can be forgiven.

And then you start over again trying to keep the 613.

Because you want to be a good person and people were watching you - the sin police was real.

Their version of preachers would call you out when you didn’t do what you were supposed to do.

But Paul taught them that one of the main things these 613 laws taught us is that we can never keep them.

In fact, keeping one was too hard for Adam and Eve and we’re no different.

These laws taught us we are rebellious creations and we’ll fight against God when it would be easier to follow Him.

But, He loved us so much, that He sent Jesus as the final sacrifice to die for our sins.

So once Jesus died on the cross, and we trusted that He died for us.

And we proclaimed the risen Jesus as our Lord, we were saved.

And - and - we didn’t have to worry about the laws anymore.

You don’t discard all of them - but you don’t worry about all of them.

“All things are lawful for me.”

I can eat catfish and shrimp now - “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.”

You eat it - you digest it and that’s that.

You don’t worry about keeping all of the laws in order to be good - Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection made us good in God’s sight.

Not rule keeping - that’s what it means.

But some of the Corinthian Christians did the same thing that modern culture is doing right now.

They took one thing and they made it into an ultimate truth.

“All things are lawful” came to mean that if I wanted to do it, I could do it - without consequence.

I’m saved.

Nothing can separate me from the love of Jesus Christ.

So if I want to frequent a working girl, then what difference does it make?

All things are lawful - God still loves me.

That’s craziness right? It’s absurd - but is it?

You’ve heard “God is love” used a lot lately, right?

Three words out of a 13 word sentence.

Three words out of a 2,517 word letter.

Three words out of a total of 807,361 words in the Bible (NASB).

Three little words, 9 letters whose meaning has been expanded to mean that every Christian in every Christian church must accept and welcome and embrace every kind of sexual perversion known to man and a few we are still inventing.

Because God is love and love is love.

That is no different from the way the Corinthians used “all things are lawful for me.”

There is absolutely no difference - those who do that are just as misguided as those in the Corinthian church who claimed they could do anything.

And let’s talk about why.

What we do with our bodies is of ultimate value

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “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.”

Three times in these verses Paul uses the phrase, “Do you not know...”

It’s a device - he’s really saying - you know this already but let me remind you.

Let me remind you that your body is a temple.

A temple is a place of extreme value because of what it contains.

When I was at New Providence, someone came by one night and stole the copper out of our air conditioning units and broke in and stole a bunch of toilet tissue.

Not sure what the two had to do with each other, but OK.

But we were really upset.

Really, you stole from a church?

What kind of person does that?

What kind of person paints graffiti on a church wall or a swastika on a synagogue?

What kind of person breaks into a Catholic church and trashes their altar?

All things we have seen lately.

The only people that can do that are people who don’t understand the value of that place.

They don’t understand that it is the house of God.

Paul says, do you not understand the extreme value your body has?

Your body is a house of God - it is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

That’s kind of a throw a way for us, we’ve heard it so many time.

I have God in my heart.

I have Jesus living in my heart.

No - that’s too glib.

Your body as a child of God has ultimate value because you were created in the image of God and you are indwelt by the spirit of God.

The Holy Spirit lives in the child of God.

It’s not that I’ve got Jesus living in my heart.

It’s that I’ve got a new heart - not of stone but of flesh.

And God has written His law on my heart and He’s sent the Holy Spirit to reside in me.

To guide me to truth.

To convict me of sin.

To comfort me and to make me brave.

This flesh and blood was important enough for Jesus to die for and for the Holy Spirit to reside in.

“For you were bought with a price.”

Remember what we studied - we are spirit, soul and body and yet one entity.

Our spirits weren’t saved by Jesus - we were saved.

The whole us - every part of us.

We were enslaved to sin and sin was going to kill us.

The only way out was for someone to buy us out of that slavery.

And that’s what Jesus did.

He paid the price to set us free.

To make “all things lawful for me.”

To make us realize that God really is love.

That the Father really does love us.

And now that He has purchased us, He has a claim on us.

So what I do in my body is important.

Because it is His temple.

But one other thing too.

We believe that one day our bodies will be resurrected.

Should Jesus not return before I die, my spirit will reside with Him in heaven.

But one day in the future, Jesus will return.

Like He called Lazarus out of the grave, He will call every Christian out of the grave.

1 Thessalonians 4:16 ESV

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

At that moment, our bodies will be reunited with our spirits.

Spirit, soul and body will be changed to bodies like Adam and Eve had in Eden.

The earth will be returned to Eden - a new heaven and a new earth.

This body.

My body.

Your body.

“So glorify,” praise, honor, “God in your body.”

So what does that look like - to “glorify God in your body.”

Verses 14-18 show us a way.

Paul quotes from Genesis 2:24-25

Genesis 2:24–25 ESV

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Do you not know that the only Godly expression of sexual intimacy is within marriage?

Do you not know that marriage only belongs to one man and one woman for life?

Do you not know that marriage is a covenant - it is one partner saying to the other - that regardless of anything that happens, whether it is outside of us, whether it is you, regardless, I pledge I will be faithful to you until one of us dies?

Do you not know that you belong to Jesus - that you were purchased from a sure eternal death by Him?

Do you not know that you were baptized into his death?

Do you not know that because you died with Christ, that you will be raised with Him as well?

Your whole body - this body.

Do you not know?

Because you know, let what you know about Jesus control your life.

It would have been so easy to use this passage to deliver an impassioned speech about adultery, promiscuity.

About pornography and perversion.

About the entire spectrum of LGBQTIA++ expressions.

But there are two things I know.

Those of us who have committed sexual sin know it.

And just like Adam and Eve, we’ve felt the guilt and shame of sinning against God.

And against our own bodies.

We know because of the Holy Spirit in us that what we have done is rebellion against God, and it was wrong.

We know that no amount of physical anything will ever quench our thirst for acceptance.

Only Jesus can quench that thirst.

We’ve tried to be accepted by doing so many things.

But nothing worked - except Jesus.

Let me invite you this morning to confess your sin to the Lord.

To repent from your immorality and to have your sins washed away.

Regardless of your past, you can be washed whiter than snow.

To everyone else and especially our young folks.

Your body is of so much more value than any act you can commit with any person.

I know you “burn with passion.”

That’s actually a Bible phrase - you’ll see it soon.

But the Lord has made you so much more valuable than a single act.

Or a single night or even a long unmarried relationship.

You will find your greatest fulfilment if you will follow the Lord exactly as He has instructed.

May the Holy Spirit make you strong.

Satan wants to have you.

I pray the Lord will deliver you from the evil one.

And to us all, let what you know about Jesus control your life.

Let us pray:

Quick invitation:

The Lord’s Supper

The body and the blood of Jesus set us free from sin.

The body and the blood of Jesus sealed us into salvation.

The body and the blood of Jesus guaranteed our resurrection.

There is power in the blood of Jesus.

As we come to the table, let us remember how He made us valuable and give thanks.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 ESV

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

(Deacon Pray)

If you are a baptized born again believer in Jesus, you are welcome to share this table with us.

We ask that everyone exit your pew to the left.

Come to the server in front of your section and when you are served, you may eat the wafer immediately.

If you are gluten intolerant, please go to ___________________ table and let him/me know.

After you receive the body and the blood of Jesus, please return to your seat so we may dismiss with a song.

Won’t you come?