Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll Week 1- Value

Big Idea: Your value isn’t determined by your physical relationships

Primary Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Supporting Scripture: Genesis 1:27, Psalm 139:13-14; John 3:16-17

CAPTURE (Why should students pay attention to and care about your message?)

· Let's play a quick game of Real Show or Not?.

· Is this a real show?

o Love Island—a bunch of single people all live on the same island for a few weeks looking for love… and stirring up drama.

· Yeah… it’s real… and massively popular. What about…

o Love on the Spectrum—a show about people on the autism spectrum navigating their dating relationships.

· Also real. And honestly? It’s more endearing than you might think. How about…

o Love is Blind—people talk to each other through a wall and propose before ever seeing each other.  

· Somehow real… and it’s just as awkward as you’d think.

· But do you know what show I’ve never seen?

o I’m Single and Crushing Life.

· Why is there no show celebrating people who are single and thriving?

· Our culture has convinced itself that our value is somehow tied to whether or not someone wants to be in a relationship with us.

· Somewhere along the way, we started believing that that our bodies, our hearts, and our lives are only valuable if they’re validated by someone else’s attention.

· Today we’re starting a new series called Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

o Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk honestly about some of the biggest pressures people your age face.

o We’re going to look at what it means for us to understand the value that God has given each of us… especially when we consider our relationships, our choices, and the influence we have on those around us.

o We’ll kick things off by discovering that our value was established long before you even thought about being attracted to another person.

SCRIPTURE (What does God’s Word say?)

· We’re going to start with a couple of verses that may not sound like they have anything to do with relationships at first—but they have everything to do with them.

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.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – NLT)

19 Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you.  20 God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body. (MSG)

· Corinth was a city known for being immoral. In fact, there was a Greek verb, “to Corinthianize,” which literally meant to practice immorality.

· One of the biggest problems in the church itself was that some believed what they did with their physical bodies had zero impact on their relationship with God.

· Paul wanted them to understand that following Jesus isn’t just about what you believe… it’s about how you live.

o That’s why he told them, “Your body is a temple.”

· When we hear “Your body is a temple,” we might think that we should eat better, drink more water, and get more sleep.

· To the Corinthians, this was a complete shift in how they understood their relationship with God.

o In the ancient world, a temple was where a god lived.

o When Paul said, “Your body is a temple,” their first thoughts immediately went to the temples of Apollo, Poseidon, Aphrodite, or any of the dozens of other temples found in their city.

· When Paul said, “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” he was saying:

The God of the universe has chosen to make His home in you.

· The ideas that our bodies are holy and that God lives within us go all the way back to the very beginning.

27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27 – NLT)

· Our value can’t be determined by our relationship status or by whether someone else likes us or not.

· Our value is rooted in the God who created us, who loves us, and who lives within each and every one of us.

INSIGHTS (What might this Scripture mean?)

1. You were created with value.

· When you were born, you didn’t have a GPA, followers, or a relationship status—yet, you had value.

· If it wasn’t from your achievements, your influence, or your relationships, where did that value come from?

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. (Psalm 139:13-14 – NLT)

· God knit you together. That word means He carefully crafted you, piece by piece.

· Your personality, your gifts, your quirks, even the things you wish you could change about yourself. God designed all of it on purpose.

· Throughout Scripture, we see how God’s action demonstrates how valuable we are.

16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17 – NLT)

· If you own something and someone offered to buy it from you for one million dollars, what would that tell you about its value?

· God saw that each of us was in danger because of sin.

· Jesus took our place, facing the punishment we deserved, because to God, we are worth everything.

· None of this is because of anything any of us did to earn our value. It’s because you were already worth it.

· That means you don’t become more valuable when someone thinks you’re attractive or if someone asks you out.

· You don’t lose value when someone turns you down or when a relationship ends.

Your worth was set before you took your first breath.  

2. The Holy Spirit lives in you.

· Knowing that the Holy Spirit lives inside each of us can change how we see ourselves.

· in the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures that existed when Paul wrote this letter, people generally believed that the gods chose to live in the various temples found throughout the Roman Empire.

· That made sense, because the temples often were made from giant blocks of marble, decorated with gold, silver, and the finest precious stones.

· What does it say about each of us that God would choose to live in our hearts instead of an expensive, extravagant, and beautifully furnished temple?

· I remember when I bought my first used car in high school.

*Show Pic*

·1993 Toyota Paseo

Since I paid for it myself after working on a construction crew for 5 summers, I treated it like gold. No food wrappers, no muddy shoes, no leaving a mess behind. I kept it spotless.

I put a CD/cassette tape player in it with detachable faces (so no one would steal it,) 3- MTX Blue Thunder 10” Subwoofers, and a light inside that would adjust to the extremely loud beat I had going on in that car. Y’all, it was so loud that my spoiler was knocked off by the sound.

· I asked others to do not make a mess in the car whenever I would take them somewhere. Why did I do all this? Because it was mine, and I knew its value to me.

· If that’s how I viewed my first car, imagine how God views you.

· As much as I loved my car, He loves you so much more.

· Not only did He create you and send His Son to die for you, He chooses to live in your heart.

· When you look in the mirror, you're looking at a living temple, a place where the God of the universe chooses to dwell.

· If your body is sacred enough for God to live in, then it's sacred enough to be treated with incredible care and respect… by you and by everyone else.

· You're a temple… and temples are meant to be honored, protected, and treated as holy.

“Holiness of life is not an optional extra. It is….God’s saving work in us. Accordingly, they are not free to live as they please. The ground of this claim is that they have been bought at a price.”

-Alex Deasley

3. Your value shapes your choices.

· When we begin to see our value the way God does, it can significantly impact the way we make decisions about our own bodies.

· Our bodies matter, and we don’t get to treat them like they don’t.

· If someone asked you out and started pushing you to go further than you're comfortable with, what would guide your response?

o Would it be fear of losing them, or the knowledge that your body is a temple, that you're worth far more to God than what someone else may or may not think you are.

· When you start making choices in light of the value God has given you, you stop asking questions like:

o “What can I get away with?”

o “Why does this even matter?”

· You start asking questions like:

o “What honors the God who lives in me?”

o “What am I created to do with my life and my relationships?”

o “How can my choices reflect the incredible value God has placed in me?”

· Instead of measuring worth by who wants you, you start measuring choices by whether they honor who you already are.

William Barclay writes: “The great fact of the Christian faith is not that it makes us free to sin, but that it makes us free not to sin.… When we really experience the Christian power, we are no longer slaves of our bodies but take full charge of them”

ACTION (How could we live this out?)

1. Identify one lie and replace it with the truth.

· This week, try to identify one specific lie you’ve believed about your own value.

o Once you’ve identified it, write it down.

o Underneath it, write down what God actually says about you.

o You can use one of the verses from tonight (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 139:13-14, or 1 Corinthians 6:19-20), or you can find another passage that talks about your value.

o Put it somewhere you’ll see it later in the week.

o Every time you see it, read both the lie you once believed, and then God’s truth that replaces it.

2. Challenge the narrative.

· This week, be intentional about offering a different perspective when you hear cultural messages about relationships or our bodies that contradict what God says.

· Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is simply remind people that there's a different way of seeing things.

· You're offering another voice, one that sees value the way God does.

· That kind of gentle truth-telling can plant seeds that matter more than you think.

3. Establish boundaries that honor your value.

· Some of you might be sitting here thinking, “This is great, but I've already crossed lines I wish I hadn't. Is it too late for me?”

· No. It's not too late. Your value wasn't determined by what you've done. It was set by God before you were even born.

· God's grace is big enough to meet you exactly where you are right now, no matter what's already happened.

· Moving forward means accepting the grace that Jesus offers and making different choices starting today.

· This week, think about one relationship where you need to establish a boundary… or strengthen one that's already slipping.

Pre-decide BEFORE you get in a situation that could be compromising the boundaries you will set so that you will honor God. Read through these verses and others in the WORD that talk about how God wants us to live. And then in prayer and with your parents (if they’re Christians) or a Christian mentor that you trust, establish boundaries BEFORE feelings come. And STICK to those boundaries no matter what. The Holy Spirit of God will enable you to live this out.

· Instead of thinking of a boundary as a wall to keep people out, remember that it’s an expression of the value God has placed in you.

· It's saying, “I know who I am, I know whose I am, and I'm going to make choices that reflect that.”

· If someone consistently can't respect your boundaries, then they're not treating you with the value God has given you.

· If that’s the case, really ask yourself if that relationship is something you want to continue.

If you’ve never had a bf/gf, don’t be in a rush! Jesus said this: Matthew 6:33 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

This is a command to prioritize God's rule, righteousness, and will above all earthly concerns- including romantic relationships.

Seek God, and He will reveal the right, godly person for you one day. Or he may tell you to be single your whole life. Either way, you’ll be fine if you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

· This week, remind yourself of God's truth, challenge the cultural narratives that contradict it, and establish boundaries that honor the value God has given you.

*PRAYER*