The temple i am
Soul Ties • Sermon • Submitted
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Purity
Purity
Introduction: Ushers come down for tithes and offerings
We have our news letters if you didnt grab one please make sure you do so before you head out today so we can stay up to date on things just in case i miss them here today
Had a great time this past wed. As My beautiful wife brought us a word out of Phillipians
What makes a church a good church?
You ever visited a church with a friend or moved to a new location and decided you needed to find a church that you would be able to bring your family too?
Weather you were invited or you just hoped on into a random church we usually are walking into the place and looking around really being as picky as we go…we sit through the worship and it was good
made your foot tap a little bit...
so you figured you enjoyed worship. then you hear the announcements and hear the word and it speaks to you.... So we enjoyed the service but yet the next week we go check out another one just in case....
This process is called evaluation...
Imagine if we were the churches evaluators....We would look at a church and say okay i see you yall are doing it good i see yall are loving one another…yall are helping one another out okay nice. i see you guys are defienly reaching people so thats good too…yeah check grade A for this church they are loving good..
Thats a great church right there.
This is what we do we look at a church and we see this is a great church and we dont go off what the bible says we go off what we feel.
Weve asked the question of well did they love, yes
did they help yes…but we didnt open the bible and see what it says.
Let’s see this more personally. Maybe we are here and this week we did our bible study/quiet times through out the week.
Let’s say you opened up to your passage and you began to read about it and you pulled some information that really hit you hard…building your character, being humble, how to love better. What worship is about whatever it may be...
See what tends to happen is we pull something out of the scripture and we will be like
OOOOh that means this and that and this…so we will look at this and be like oh great word, great truth. and we will begin to apply it in our life’s.
So after we get it we don’ t ask God for nothing, we come up with how were suppose to get it, or how were suppose to live it out. We sit there and come up with how everything’s suppose to look.....we tell people see look here i Got it from the word see i got it from the word we can show it off but d
but the problem here is you got this revelation from the Word but you haven’t gone back to God to see what your suppose to do with it.
This tends to lead us on a path where it doesn’t come to fruition. Leaves us exhausted trying to reach a goal we should be heading towards, but heading the wrong way to get to it.
Year of Jubilee is a year of restoration: Returning to help the poor.
upon our first confession of believing in God
Upon that moment there are two things that happen for us.
you say Jesus is the savior of your life
you say you are going to make him Lord.
The savior part is the easy part the popular part. you are saying i accept you jesus i surrender my life to you, you be my savior..
He saved us From our sin, eternity in hell
when we accept Jesus eternal life starts then.
See we gotta get this we talked about having this kingdom perspective last week. See we dont keep these bodies. So our bodies arent saved our souls are....come on let me get an amen!
He is our savior but he is also our Lord.
Now the first one is easy because we just recieve it, the second one is a little more difficult because there is a lot of change we have.
We have to allow Him....to be the lord over our
Emotions
Spirit
Body
Finances
Parenting.
Lord is the master ruler and controller.
we decide Im not gonna do what i wanna do anymore, ima gonna do what you’ve called me to do and what your word has instructed me to do.
We have to be careful here. Because we come into this and we think we can keep this and that.
See we have choice and choice is surrender not what we surrender its the whole package.
So we submit not some of who we are to his Lordship but we submit everything that i am and everything that i have so that Jesus can be Lord.
See today we can see we are in control,
Wheather we are evaluating a grade of a church, or we evaluate the Word of God.
We have the power, and it was granted to us from God under our freewill. To make decisions in our lifes to be santified with God or to stay in a state of comatose here in this world.
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.
For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;
that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable,
not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God;
and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before.
For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more,
Its interesting here that at the end of our passage we see God taught the Church love paul didnt need to move on that. they were doing good.
however when it came to the part of living it out the church was struggling.
Just wanted to point that out so we can see how important it is that we began to live out the Life Jesus wants for us.
So listen were talking about Jesus being our Lord what does Jesus want from us?
How’s My temple?
How’s My temple?
Vs 3 explains it God’s will…which JEsus only wants God’s will thats why he came and died for our sins...
Vs 3 says Its is God’s will that you should be Sanctified.....aka holy
Jesus cleansed the temple multiple times he wants the temple to be cleaned…Wants it to be holy...
You ever met anyone that thought they were holy? There is a game weve played over at the carpenters house where the first person starts is labeled as the Most Holy Person..
Whats a definiiton of Holy? I think in this world weve made Holy someone who Thinks there are spiritual.
YOu know what ive mean weve had those talks of oh yeah we should listen to the pastor becasue he’s so holy..or that persons so holy…almost in a funny way we are saying it.
If we make Holy this funny thing these quotation marks of someone who thinks they are Holy Before the lord. then thats what we see. ANd across church you see exactly this defintion come to life. Because holiness is a conversation about the radical person in the congregation who always hears from the lord we quotation mark we over exaggerate the term holy..
Which unforutely dumbs down our relationship with God into this religious mentality with God. Where we have decided no one can become holy but we can do our daily 30 minute prayer and 1 hour service on sunday to give God what he needs so we cn be happy.
Its important you and i understand Holiness....who agrees with me?
But IF God’s will is to make us Holy dont we need a Clear Biblical Definition of this?
qodesh is the Hebrew term for Holy which is found in the ot more than 400 times, iTs something important ot God.
Qodesh means apartness, sarcredness or seperateness.
God expects us to be holy to be set apart......
Holiness is really about living our lifes to please God, instead of living them to please ourselfs.
We have learned in this life to live a life of fulfillment…if you are living your life in total happiness all the time then youve done well. You have all the things that make you happy then you have the definition of a good earthly life.
The Believer is raised through the bible to live a life to please God.
See what this means is that if you and i are going to live a life as a believer we are going to look alot different than the world around us.
We have to be Set apart......
Set apart…
in the way you do life,
in the way you do marriage,
in the way you do buisness,
in your work ethic,
in the way you raise your kids…the way you speak,
in way you act…and alll the other things that go on with life.
Its going to look different if you live to please God
So Paul here is going to give us some insight on what this looks like for us to be set apart. and He compares it plainly from the worlds view to believers view
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God;
The theme here is sex, sexual immorality…This is alot to unpack today and right now but listen sexual immorality has a root and that root we are going to see clearly…See where a seed has laid its foundation comes the root.
See if this world has planted a seed in your mind then today we are going to extract the root.....By the Power of the Name of Jesus i pray we see this clearly in the next few minutes.
If we can identify the root of this its going to go such a long way.
(a point here maybe)
Greek word of (Sexual Immorality): porneia
Now across most english translations of the bible we see this world translated to sexual immorality. And is used in refrece to impurity and immorality.
At the core of Sexual immorality what is happening…you are defiling the body created to be in Holy Matrimony with God…and upon the biblcal defintion and instructions of marriage...
The thing about immorality is it doesn’t happen over night…
immorality as in is the sin against our own bodies.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
Listen Paul is talking to the believers not the world…to know that we are saved and still to be sinning against our own bodies is ever worst.
we understand that Your body is a temple upon the Holy Spirit.
usually we see in immorality it leads to idolatry....when it comes to the sin of our bodies it begins with a lust…a longing for something that looks so attractive to us at the time.....This takes us to a place of worshiping this thing…and its always a thing…a relationship you want....a person you want....some sort of materialist item that you want…the over infatuation of a item....Lust...
but we dont have time to unfold that today.
When you and i decide to live our life for ourselfs we tend not to think we are going to go down this road that can entrap us or ensnare us to tightly to the wall of sin…we tend not think that a little bit of happiiness in our lifes at the cost of saying hold on and wait god will cost us the freedom that Christ presents us.
So we have too choose not to entagle our bodies with that type of stress..it takes self control....
So the second question is....
How’s my Self-Control
“Marshmallow man” Walter Mischel is an Ivy League professor known for his experiments in self-control. Nearly 50 years ago, he created a test to see how various five-year-olds would respond to being left alone with a marshmallow for 15 minutes with instructions not to eat it — and with the promises that if they didn’t, they would be given two. The New York Times reports,
Famously, preschoolers who waited longest for the marshmallow went on to have higher SAT scores than the ones who couldn’t wait. In later years they were thinner, earned more advanced degrees, used less cocaine, and coped better with stress. As these first marshmallow kids now enter their 50s, Mr. Mischel and colleagues are investigating whether the good delayers are richer, too.
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
When we wait we decide to take a step back. What are we doing when we wait but saying im not going to satisfy these fleshly desires im going to Trust that God has a plan for me...
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 25:28 (NIV)
Like a city whose walls are broken through
is a person who lacks self-control.
a person who lacks self control allows everything into thier lifes and they are influenced by it all.
You wanna know what this looks like....a person…bare with me here im not talking about you but this may be your friends....a person who thinks they know who they are because of the influential people around them. HOwever they never identfied themselfs with no one around…Because of this they never built up the courage and strength to obtrain self control in certain areas....
Yall i know this because i use to be this guy…running after the world looking for acceptance. looking for value in the people around me…its not there. its only found in Christ Jesus.
Because i found this out i can have faith knowing that God!!!
2 Peter 1:5–9(NIV)
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;
and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; a
nd to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
When we discover Gods way,
we submit to Gods way,
and we do things God’s way we get freedom.
When we don’t submit to Gods way,
we don’t do things God’s way
we want to do them our way ....we have bondage.
This isn’t what we want.
So many people are saved but not set free.
because Pieces in our life were not allowing Holy Spirit to take.
We must ask God to help us in our self control…but ultiamely you must try. God honors the Try.
We try to maintain self control by continuously praying Jesus you are my Lord guide me and give me strength to serve you today.
When we try we will see evidence in our lifes.
The Evidence
The evidence that weve made Jesus our lord.
See at first look we are like Paul in
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
However Jesus amen!
See sin runs deep in us..but with jesus in us we have the answer to subdue this sin. to push it aside and with jesus we can have the strength to stand up and say no to temptations.
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.
It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
we begin to see the subtle changes in our lifes....which add up to be huge changes in who we will forever be.
We fight less. we fight less with our spouses, with our bosses, with our stubborn kiddos....even the not so stubborn ones....We fight less with ourselves.
But we have to submit our bodies as honorable sacrifices before the Lord. Sanctified and Holy.
Heres that word humble....we talked about it Wednesday.. to cast our own worries aside. to case not our worth but our importance to the side…we know we are important thats why god is in the business of restoration.
Were gonna close now but one more story.
MIka and I along time ago went up to carmax and bought us a nice luxery car…04 audi a6…i loved it..drove nice looked nice…it was our “family car” that can go from 0-60 in fast amount of seconds faster than a 2000 chevy malibu with a busted radiator..so i loved it. I figured the kids couldnt be late to anything anymore....
But we drive this luxery car off the lot after loads of paper work and we drove it for a few days getting used ot it and i remember taking it to the gas station and filling it up with regular gas.....she started to sputter and act really wierd…again to us its a brand new car we were upset..we took it back to carmax they said something had blown they fixed it since it was under warranty and we went on our way..next time we filled it up we saw it takes premium only...
I had realized i made a mistake.
In our life were going to make those occasional mistakes..those things we never saw as a bad thing or immoral or whatever the case may be. However when we come to Christ we allow him to be Our Lord He begins to submit His ways to us. Begins to show us and guide us through the Holy Spirit on Impurities in our life. See God created us. He bought us…and he knows how we should be. We dont come to God and figure things our He has it figured out he knows i dont take regular gas That im a premium kinda guy.
He didnt read the manual he wrote it.
I pray for all of us that we can come before him today and confess with our mouths. ask for forgiveness for at times living our life the way we have wanted to. I pray that we can understand and see clearly the root of impurities in our life’s is this selfish mentality and we can begin to surrender constantly more and more things.
Listen when it gets hard when you feel like you need to satisfy yourself call someone....and also know this God will honor you maintaining a posture of Self Control over your life. The Holy Spirit wants to give you the help you need to say no to ultimately Bodily Harm to give you the mental and physical strength to be set apart from this world.
All you have to doo is call upon the name of Jesus
I hope you have been encouraged in the word this morning and i pray that you can now see clearly the distinction between earthly living and Christian Living.