Well, good morning. Let's open
up this morning's service, the gospel hymnals to number 36,
number 36, covenant love. And if you could all please stand
number 36. Behold my soul, the love of God,
behold the grace most free. Before all worlds His purpose
stood, His heart was fixed on me. Elected by eternal love,
the covenant firm and sure, the triune God agreed in love, salvation
to secure. My soul was given to the Son
He promised to redeem By blood and righteousness His own He
would my soul reclaim In the due time Emmanuel came To live
and die for me He lives today and bears my name, Christ is
my surety. In love He sent His Spirit down,
who gave me life and grace. He drew me and I followed on,
my Savior to embrace. Now I rejoice in covenant love,
amazing grace I sing. I now am conquered by His love. My Savior is my King. Y'all can be seated. Good morning. Everybody looks refreshed. Extra
hour sleep last night. We're going to continue our study
in First Corinthians chapter six. First Corinthians chapter
six. I want to thank Robert and Michael
for their faithfulness to prepare and preach Christ for you last
Sunday. And I want to thank you for your
prayers. We had a good trip. Jimmy and
Sarah are married now and I guess today get back from their honeymoon.
So we were very encouraged. Alright, let's pray together.
Our Heavenly Father, we're so hopeful that you would be pleased
this morning to make Christ known to our hearts. Lord, we come
before your throne of grace, poor, without anything, and needy,
unable to help ourselves. How we ask, Lord, that you would
be merciful to us We pray that you would cause Christ to be
lifted up in our hearts and that we will be drawn to him in love. Lord, that you would anoint your
word and cause us to have a good understanding. Enable me to speak. Enable us to hear. We ask it
in Christ's name. Amen. next sunday we will celebrate
our twentieth anniversary as a church uh... jennifer my daughter
our daughter is uh... putting together uh... a list of the number of people
that are going to come home so that we can have the right amount
of food here so uh... i want to encourage you to bring
guest sometimes people will come for a special event uh... But
if you do, please let Jennifer know. She needs an accurate head
count so that we can have the food catered. All right? So that's
next Sunday. Can you believe it, Bert? Twenty
years ago. Alright, you have your Bibles
open to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. I've titled this study, Glorify
God in Your Body. Glorify God in your body. It's what the scripture says.
In order for us to understand this passage of Scripture, there
are some words that need to be defined. You ever read a book
and it has a glossary of terms at the beginning of the book?
Then you have to get the accurate definition of the words before
you're able to understand the book. And I want to just take
a minute this morning to do that, to define some words. The first
word I want to define is the word sin. Now, sin is used in
two tenses in the scriptures. It's used in the form of a noun. And it's used in the form of
a verb. And that's very important to
understand. Turn with me to 1 John chapter 1. 1 John chapter 1. Verse 8, if we say that we have
no sin, now that's a noun. A noun is what we are by nature. So if we say that we have no
sin, nature, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Now that's what We are our Adamic
nature. We come into this world as sinners. We come into this world without
any righteousness before God. Paul said in Romans chapter 7,
to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is
good I find not. When I would do good, evil is
ever present with me. That's our sin nature. We are completely dependent upon
God to present to Himself, through the person of His dear Son, a
righteousness that we might have acceptance in the presence of
God. Because by nature, we have no
righteousness. By nature, everything that we
are and everything... What did the Lord say in Genesis
chapter 6? He said, when He looked down from heaven into the hearts
of men, He saw that every imagination of their heart was only evil,
and that continually. Now, in order for us to have
any understanding of our sin nature, we have to have a revelation
of Christ made to us. Because our sin nature is relative
to His sinlessness, to His perfection, to His holiness. And so as we
stand before Him, we're brought to the conclusion that Isaiah
was brought to when he said, I saw the Lord. high and lifted
up. And what's the first words out
of Isaiah's mouth? Woe is me for I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. I
live among a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the king. And Isaiah concluded he was going
to be a dead man as a result of seeing Christ seated upon
his throne. And so we cannot see ourselves
as we are in our nature until we see Him for who He is. That's clear all throughout the
Scriptures. Peter, when he saw the resurrected Christ, he said,
Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Job had heard of
the Lord by the hearing of his ear, but when his eyes saw Him,
he repented in dust and ashes and abhorred himself. And he
said, Behold, behold, I am vile. So that's what the Lord is saying
here. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. That's the
noun. That's the nature of every man. Now, the only difference, get
this, the only difference between all men in the world, the only
difference between you and Adolf Hitler, the only difference between
me and Adolf Hitler, pick anybody you want, pick the most evil
person you can think of, is not the sinfulness of our nature.
For all of our natures are sinful. It's how much of that sin is
restrained by God. That's the only difference. It's
the only difference. We all stand before God completely
sinful, sin nature, corrupt, unrighteous, unable to save ourselves,
poor and needy. If we say that we have no sin,
we lie. We lie. We don't understand the
truth. And that's the only thing that
distinguishes one man from another is how much God restrains our
evil nature. And when we see Christ, one of
the things that we cry out from our hearts when we're able to
see ourselves for what we are and the potential that's there
in our nature, is, Lord, lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from the evil one. Lord, I can't even stand temptation.
I know if I'm tempted, I'm going to sin. I know that this sin
nature, this noun that is within me, will break out if you don't
restrain it. And that's where the verb comes
into play. Alright? Look at the rest of
this. If we confess our sins, that's still a noun. That word
confess means to speak the same thing. That's the literal interpretation
of that word. To speak the same thing. So to
confess your sin doesn't mean that you are able to make a sin
list and identify all the corruption of your heart and everything
you've ever done wrong. There's not enough time for that. And even if you spent your whole
life doing that, you'd never plumb the depths of your sin.
It just simply means to agree with God, to say the same thing
about your corrupt nature that God says about it. What's He
say? In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth
no good thing. That's my sin nature. All right? If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us
of all unrighteousness. Oh, that the grace of God would,
in revealing Christ to us, enable us to fall down before Him and
agree with Him about our sin nature. Lord, I have no righteousness. All my righteousnesses, all the
things that I trusted in, Paul said, that which I thought was
to my gain, That which I was doing in hopes of earning favor
with God, man by nature, that's what he does. He goes about trying
to establish his own righteousness. But he's ignorant. Romans chapter
10 of the righteousness of God. He doesn't know Christ. For Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. We have the hope of knowing that
when we are able, by the grace of God, to look to Christ for
all our righteousness, our sins have been put away. God made
him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. Now, Look at verse 10. If we say that we have not sinned,
now that's a verb. The problem with most folks is
most folks interpret sin only in its verbal context. They see
it only as a behavioral problem. And folks get, religious people
get an assurance of their salvation by what they do and what they
don't do. I cannot tell you how many times
I've had people say to me, well, you know, I prayed and I asked
God to save me and my whole life changed. and now what's the what's
the assure what hope what assurance do you have well I don't do this
anymore and I don't do that anymore and I do the other and they're
looking at their behavior they're looking at the verbal context
of sin for the hope of their salvation now let me say this if that's in nature is not restrained
by God And it's allowed by God to break out in our lives. It will take away the assurance
of our salvation. You will lose, you'll lose your
comfort. You'll lose your assurance. You
think that David was sure of his salvation for the better
part of a year when he was trying to hide his sin with Bathsheba
and Uriah? What did he say in Psalm 51? Restore unto me the
joy of thy salvation, the bones that thou hast broken. David's
sin, verbal sin, his sinful behavior had robbed him of the comfort
and hope and assurance of his salvation. Did David ever have
any doubt that he had a sin nature? No, he begins that psalm, doesn't
he? He said, in sin my mother has conceived me. He's not talking
about the act of conception between his parents, he's talking about
when he was conceived in his mother's womb he was a sinner.
That's the noun portion of sin. He knew that he was a sinner
and couldn't do anything about it. But the verb sin in his life
had robbed him of the assurance of his salvation. So don't get
assurance of your salvation by the fact that by what you do
and don't do, that can only come through faith looking to Christ.
But know that if sin is a is is if God enables him to break
out in our lives and he does he does from time to time to
show us our weakness show us our dependence upon Christ to
break our hearts over the evil that's within us we we we do
lose assurance of our salvation don't we and I'm so he says if
you say that we have not sin we make him a liar in the word
is not in us And then in chapter 2 verse 1,
He says, My little children, I write unto you that you sin
not. That's the verb. I've given you this word because
I want sin to be restrained. I want sin to be restrained,
don't you? If you know Christ, if you've seen Him any part of
His splendor and His glory and experience His grace and His
love, you hate the sin of your life. You don't want it to break
out. My little children, I write unto
you that you sin not. But if any man sin, and you will,
we don't want to. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. So we don't solve our sin
problem, the verbal aspect of our sin problem, by not sinning. You see that? So when sin does
break out, we don't fix that problem by changing our behavior. We fix that problem by looking
unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. If any
man sin, he has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the
righteous one. So when the Spirit of God convicts
us and the Lord allows us to break this sin out of our nature,
we don't correct that problem by making a new commitment, or
by resolving our sin problem, or by saying, I'm not going to
do that, we solve that problem by coming to Christ. Does that
make sense? Is that so clear? So sin is a
verb, and you see that in your behavior. And sin is a noun. You see that in your nature. Nothing we can do about our nature.
We cry out to God to restrain our behavior. Now, there's another word I want
to define before we look at our text. And that's the word flesh
and body. Remember the title of this message
is glorify God in your body. And the Bible makes a distinction
between flesh and body. That which is of the flesh is
flesh. The flesh profiteth nothing. The flesh is that sin nature
that we just talked about. The noun aspect of sin. That's
the flesh. And we're all the same in that
regard. We all come into this world with a fallen nature. We
all come into this world as the sons and daughters of our father,
Adam, and we inherit that nature, and that's the flesh. And what did Paul say in Romans
chapter 7? In me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth
no good thing. Now, our bodies are different. in Romans chapter 12 after the
gospel is so clearly declared in 11 chapters of Romans what
does the Lord say I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies
of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and
be not conformed to the image of this world, but be ye transformed
by the renewal of your mind in Christ Jesus." So our bodies
are different from our flesh. Flesh is what we are by nature. That's a spiritual thing. Bodies
are what we are. That's how we live. We can't
say of the body, the body's not profitable. The body is profitable. The body, I mean you can profit
me, I can profit you with the things that we do in our bodies. We profit one another by speaking
encouraging words to one another. We profit one another by helping
each other. We profit the gospel by what
we're doing right now. I'm doing this with my body,
preaching the gospel. declaring Christ. You are sitting
there in your body and in your body you're listening to the
Word of God. So without the body we're not
even here are we? So there's a difference between
the flesh and the body. The flesh cannot be improved
on. The flesh is nothing but corruption. The flesh is our
sin nature. But sins committed in the body
is a whole other story. And that's where every child
of God wants to be restrained. And the scriptures makes it clear,
we are in Christ, in Christ, Not only have we been delivered
from the penalty of sin, but we've been delivered from the
power of sin, the bondage of sin. When Paul said in Romans
chapter 7, the law is holy, but I, how did he say it? He said,
but I am sold. He said, I am sold under sin. He said, he's talking about the
sin nature. He's talking about the noun aspect
of sin in all of Romans chapter 7. That's the noun aspect of
sin. He said, I'm a slave to it. My old man can do nothing but
sin. It's just that's my flesh. Oh God, restrain it. Restrain my flesh. I don't want
it to break out of my body. I don't want, I want my body
to glorify Christ. That's what, that's what the
Lord is saying in our, go back, go with me now to our text. First Corinthians chapter six,
verse 12, all things are lawful unto me, but all things are not
profitable. They're not expedient. All things
are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power
of any." Turn with me to 1 Corinthians
chapter 9. 1 Corinthians chapter 9. Look
at verse 25. And every man that striveth for
the mastery is temperate in all things. Oh Lord, help me to be
temperate. Paul said another place, rejoice
in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice, let
your moderation be known unto all men. Lord, don't, don't let
me be so out of control in my body that I, that I, that I'm
given to extremes. or it enabled me to be temperate.
And it's only by the grace, it's God that works in you, causing
you to will, that's the nature, and to do of His good pleasure. now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown but we an incorruptible he's talking he's using an analogy
of of sports and uh... paul was a sports fan obviously
because he used this on several occasions but he's saying that
for man wants to master a sport if he wants to win the race he's
temperate he he he's careful about what he eats He's careful
about his sleep. He's careful about his exercise.
He's temperate in all things. And they do it to win the glory
of man. Our desire is the glory of God.
Glorify God in your body. That's our text. I therefore so run not as uncertainly,
so fight I not as one that beateth the air. He said, I'm not a shadow
boxer. No, I've got to buffet my flesh, but I keep under my
body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when
I preach to others, I myself should be reprobate. That's the word cast away. Reprobate. Oh, I don't. Lord, if you allow
what I know is in my nature, this sin nature, It's just like
my sin nature is no different from Adolf Hitler's. Lord, if
you don't restrain it, you allow it to break out in my flesh,
and that's the way I live my life in this body, I'll prove
myself to be reprobate. So he says, Lord, I want to be
temperate, and I need your grace for that. It doesn't mean that not doing
certain things makes you more holy or more sanctified. That's
all in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. But it means what Paul says here,
go back with me to our text in verse 12, I will not be brought
under the power of any. Meats for the belly and bellies
for meat. But God shall destroy them both.
Now the belly is a physical picture of the spiritual flesh. We feed our bellies with meat. And that word meat, it doesn't
mean It's used in the Bible to speak of all kinds of food. So
vegetables are meat too. Okay, bread is meat too. When
God speaks of meat, he's speaking of food. And so he says the belly's
for meat and meat's for the belly. But you know, there's gonna come
a day where I'm gonna die. My body's not gonna need meat
anymore. You're not gonna be able to feed
this body. And so he's saying, you know,
keep that in mind. These fleshly desires are just
to sustain the body in this life so that the body might glorify
God. Now the body is not for fornication. What is fornication? all sexual
activity outside of the virtue and sanction and and blessing
up of the marriage union and he's saying now you go to cool
Corinth was much like our society though there was those of you
that are older you know there was a time when it that not too
many years ago it was not socially acceptable to live together outside
a marriage Now that's just, young people have grown up thinking,
you know, that's just the way life is. Everybody does it. Everybody
does it. There was a time when, you know,
when homosexuality was considered something that was wrong and
now it's celebrated in our society. You know, what I'm saying to
you is that we live in a very similar culture now that the
Corinthians lived in. You can go to Old Corinth today
and there are remains of signs all over that city pointing to
the local houses of prostitution. uh... prostitution was part of
life it was it was matter fact it was a part of their religion
you went to the temple you could hire male and female prostitutes
in the temple to aid you in your worship of that pagan god that's
how that's how corrupt this nature what this nation was this this
culture was And they didn't have the word of God. They didn't
have the law. They didn't have the truth. What
benefit is it to be a Jew? Much in every way, for we have
the oracles of God. They didn't have any of that.
So they just indulged themselves, and now God's saving people out
of that culture. And the Lord's saying to them,
meat's for the body, and body's for the meat, but this thing
of sexual purity, that fornication is not... I mean, that's outside
of what the body should be doing. But the body is for the Lord.
You remember the distinction between body and flesh? Flesh
is always flesh, but the body belongs to the Lord. And it's
for His glory. And every child of God wants
their body to glorify Him. And the Lord for the body. Lord,
I'm in need of you just like the belly's for food and food's
for the belly. He's saying the body is for the
Lord and the Lord's for the body. And Lord, I need you. I need your restraining grace.
I need your ability. I need, as Michael reminded us
last Sunday, I need you to draw my next breath. And God hath both raised up the
Lord and will also raise up us by his own power. Now, here's
the means by which God restrains our flesh. You're a child of
God, you want your flesh restrained. You know how evil it is, you
know what you have the potential to do and be, and there's not
anything that anyone has ever done that you couldn't do. You
know that. But you hate it about yourself.
And the last thing you wanted to do was to break out in your
body. and so the Lord the Lord's giving us his restraining grace
and here's what he's saying your body's gonna be resurrected number
one your body belongs to the Lord you've been bought with
a price you're not your own you're gonna be raised from the dead
in your body know you not that your bodies
are the members of Christ you're united with Christ now Solomon
Solomon, when he built the temple, he said, he said, Can earth,
can the earth contain the Lord? No. He said the heavens and the
heavens of heavens cannot contain him, much less this house that
I have built. So Solomon was under no illusion
that the house, the temple of God, where God promised to meet
with his people, where the worship of God was going to be taking
place, that Solomon built this temple, he was under no illusion
that the house itself could contain the glory of God. And now, The
Lord is saying what that physical house could not do, your body
does. Your body does. You're a child
of God. You're the temple of the Holy
Spirit. God resides in you. And if you're a child of God,
you're saying, Oh Lord, don't let me shame you with my body. I know what my flesh is. But I want my body, I want my
life, I want my conversation. That's why Paul said, I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by mercy of me, present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. Why? This is your reasonable
service. Lord, restrain my flesh. Then Shall I then take the members
of Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid! God forbid was the pattern of
life in Corinth, that's what they were doing. Should I do
that? God forbid! What, know ye not,
that which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, saith he,
shall be one flesh? That's what the Lord told Adam.
When you come together in the marriage union, the two of you
are going to be one flesh. And your bodies are a picture
of Christ and His church and that spiritual union that takes
place between Christ and His church. This is God teaching
us those very things that would motivate us to cry out for Him
to restrain our flesh. This is the means of faith that
God gives us. And every child of God says,
Oh Lord, my body's yours. I want it to glorify you. But he that is joined unto the
Lord is one spirit. One spirit. Flee fornication,
oh Lord. give me the grace to run from
it did every every up you don't don't toy with it don't play
with it it's it's you can't you can't resist the temptation too
powerful all you can do is run from be a coward be a coward
when it comes to sin and run from it as fast as you can the
verbal aspect of sin Every sin the man doeth without
the body, but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his
own body." So not only we're taking the Lord into this, and
we're sinning against the body of Christ. What? Know you not
that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in
you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? Your body
doesn't belong to you. The world talks about being free.
Well, I'm free. I can do what I want. No, they're not. They're slaves
to their body. They're slaves to their nature.
You're either going to be a slave to sin or you're going to be
a slave to Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world
in order to lead captivity captive. So he goes into the very pit
of hell and he takes those who are slave to their sin and makes
them a slave to Christ. You're bought with a price. Oh,
you've been bought with a price. Now in this day, if you were
going to be married, you would purchase your wife. And I understand
from some of my reading that even the wife would purchase
the husband. But you would give to the parents gifts as payment
for this. And the Lord's saying, you've
been bought with a price. But it wasn't with silver and
gold. It was with the precious blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the teaching of God to
his children to cause them to desire their flesh to be restrained
lest it break out in their body. You've been bought with a price.
You're not your own. Therefore, glorify God in your
body." Oh Lord, let the words that I speak honor Thee. Let the things that I do honor
Thee. Lord, I want to glorify You in
my body and if that's going to be the case, then I have to glorify
You in my spirit also. My heart's got to be given. Sin. It's a noun and it's a verb. You're not going to do anything
about the noun aspect of it. It's as bad as it can be. And
it's as bad as any other man on the face of this earth. The
only difference between all of us is how much God restrains
the evil of our nature from becoming sin as a verb. All right, let's take a break. I'm