Brethren, let's turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter 6. Often we hear the warning against
Phariseeism, that form of religion that imagines
men are made righteous and holy, even more and more holy by the
works of the sinner under the law. They say that by obeying the
law and by keeping the law and these things that they're either
made righteous or they say that by these things they're made
holy. And it's false. Christ is both our righteousness
and our sanctification. When God saves you, He makes
you to behold Christ is our justifier, our justification, our righteousness,
and He is our sanctification. Christ in you is what makes you
to be sanctified and keeps you sanctified. But our text deals
with another form of godliness. This is a form it's dealing with
and it's teaching us that it's just as dangerous. And it's that
form where one imagines that he's an heir of God because he
has learned a system of doctrine, even true doctrine, the doctrine
of grace. And all the things he does in
his religious exercises seem consistent. He comes to church.
He speaks and says the right things and what have you. And
yet, he's not been made a new creature. His life has not been
changed. His heart has not been changed.
His conduct has not been changed. But he goes on living in sin
and rebellion against God and against men. Now this appeared
to be the case at Corinth with some. There were many grievous sins
which they were committing. And Paul bluntly corrected them. They needed to be corrected and
he bluntly corrected them. He's telling them just flat out,
stop it. It's not the conduct of a saint.
It's unbecoming a saint. Stop it. But what I want you
to see here is that speaking under the inspiration of the
Spirit of God, or writing rather, under the inspiration of the
Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit never moved Paul to use the whip
of the law to correct these brethren. Not once. He didn't use that
to try to affect obedience in them. Saints of God are not under
the rule of law. We're not under the rule of law.
We're not moved by bit and bridle. Galatians 5.18 says, If you be
led of the Spirit. You see what I'm saying? That's
who leads us. If you be led of the Spirit,
you're not under the law. Romans 6.14 says, You're not
under the law, but under grace. God's saints were married to
our first husband, the law. when we were dead in sins. We
were under the law. But Christ came and because He
took the sins of His people, because He satisfied justice
for His people, that first husband, the law now, is dead to us. And we're dead to that law. And
so, we can lawfully be married to another. And we're married
to Christ, our husband. And He's a loving husband. And
it's through Christ, by Christ, that we actually now bring forth
fruit, like a husband causes his wife to bring forth children.
Scripture says, Wherefore, my brethren, you also become dead
to the law by the body of Christ, that you should be married to
another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should
bring forth fruit unto God. Philippians 1.11 says, We're
filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto
the glory and praise of God. So you see, what I'm saying to
you, God's saints aren't motivated by law, we're not constrained
by law, we're not ruled by law, we're constrained by the love
of Christ. That's what the scripture says,
in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision.
And that stands for works of the law, not this work of the
law is going to avail, or whether you don't do this work of the
law, it's going to avail. Here's what avails. Faith which
worketh by love. You see, we're not under the
law, brethren. The Scripture says the love of
Christ constraineth us. So, for that reason, instead
of using the law, the Spirit of God gave something much more
powerful, much more powerful that will affect obedience when
the Spirit of God blesses it. And here's what He gave. He gave
them five holy motives of grace. Five holy motives of grace. And what I want you to see is
this. Instead of using the law To turn God's saints, the Spirit
affects obedience in God's saints using the motives of free and
sovereign grace given us in Christ. Now let's see this, and we're
going to begin in verse 9, and I'm going to try to go through
the end of the chapter, but we may not get there. We'll see. First
of all is the motive of a good hope. Verse 9, Know ye not that
the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Now that's
a warning. It's a stern warning. But in
it, there is a motive of hope. There is the message of our hope.
God's saints have a good hope. We shall inherit the kingdom
of God. An inheritance. Think about an
inheritance now. The father writes out his last
will and testament and he has his inheritance reserved for
somebody. And inheritance is not earned.
It's earned. It's free. And you know who it's
given to? It's given to sons and daughters.
It's given to the children. Listen to this. The Spirit itself
beareth witness with our spirit. And we are the children of God. Children. And if children, then
heirs, heirs of God in joint heirs with Christ. And like I
said, this inheritance is freely given. It's not earned. You don't
work for an inheritance. You have an inheritance freely
given to you. Peter said, Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His
abundant mercy, according to the free gift, that He's given
us. He's begotten us again to a living
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance. And that inheritance is incorruptible.
It's undefiled. It fades not away. It's even
reserved in heaven for you, He said. For you who are kept by
the power of God through faith unto salvation, which is already
ready. And it's ready to be revealed.
in the last time. Christ said, when we stand there
with Him in the last day, He's going to separate the goats,
He's going to put on the left hand, the sheep He's going to
put on the right. And He says after He's spoken, He says, then
shall the King say unto them on His right hand, to His sheep,
Come ye, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from before. the foundation of the world. Now brethren, you get this promise
down in your heart and you think on this now. Before God ever
made this world, He prepared a kingdom for you who believe. How did He do that? because He
put the whole work in the hand of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
to come forth and redeem His elect people and save us from
our sins. And there's no possible way Christ
could fail. Christ our King would prepare
the kingdom and so in the mighty purpose of God, that kingdom
was prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So what
are we now, brethren? As we go through this world,
we're sojourners. You know what a sojourner is?
When I took that trip the other day, I was a sojourner down there
in Haiti and in Mexico and in Jamaica. I was a tourist just
walking through, looking at the sights, that's all. But I wasn't
putting down stakes there. I wasn't going to live there.
I wasn't saying this is it for me, this is my life right here.
No! I had a home somewhere else I
was looking at. And we got another home we're looking at. We're
looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. It's got sure
foundations, and that's what we're looking for. So now listen
to this point. Here's my point. Here's what
I'm trying to show you. When we err in sin, and we do, that's
what these Corinthian brethren, they were erring into some grievous
sins. I mean some terrible things.
And we do, we sometimes stumble and fall. And when we do, when
the Spirit of God blesses this word to our hearts, using this
motive of this good hope we have, this inheritance we have, it's
more powerful than any whip of the law could ever be. We got
an inheritance. We got a good hope. So with that
in mind now, hear the admonition. He says now, we have this good
hope, but he says, know ye not that the unrighteous shall not
inherit the kingdom of God? The unrighteous are not going
to inherit this kingdom. The unrighteous, what does that
mean? Well, there's three ways a man's unrighteous, three ways
a man's righteous. A man's unrighteous in his person. He's guilty in Adam. He's guilty
before the law of God. He's without Christ. He's without
hope. And the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
He's guilty before the law of God. And then there's the unrighteous
in heart. They haven't had the Word of
God written on their heart so that they're in submission and
delight in the Word of God. Instead, they delight in ungodly,
unholy, unrighteous imaginations, vain imaginations. Their heart's
not been... They don't have a new man created
in them. They're not going to inherit the kingdom of God. And
then lastly, those who are unrighteous in their lives. They are unsanctified and so
their lives and their conduct is unchanged. They live in an
unholy, unjust, unrighteous, ungodly deeds toward God and
men in everything they do in life. It's the course of their
life. It's the tenor of their life
to just live in base immorality with no repentance, no mourning
over their sin, no desire for God and to follow after righteousness. They have no hunger and thirst
for righteousness. They shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
And it's these last two meanings, the heart and the lives. That's what he's talking about
here, particularly. They all apply, but these last
two in the context of what he's talking about. I'll show you
that. Look at verse 8. He says, Nay, you do wrong, See
that word wrong? Look at verse 9. Know you not
that the unrighteous... See the word unrighteous? The
word wrong and the word unrighteous are translated from the exact
same Greek word. The same word. So let's read
it like this, verse 8. You do wrong. You do unrighteousness. And you defraud. You rob by fraud. And that your brethren. Then
he says, Know you not that the unrighteous, those who do such
wrong, shall not inherit the kingdom of God? You see, when
we read the word unrighteous, what we think of immediately
is how we are as we're born in this world. There's none righteous,
no not one. That's what we think about. And
that's true. We have to be justified by our
Lord Jesus Christ. But in the context, the unrighteous
are the unsanctified. They're those who love and revel
in unholy, unjust, unrighteous thoughts and deeds in their lives.
And the saints at Corinth believed God. Paul started at the beginning
and talked about how they had been blessed of God and had all
these gifts. They came behind and no gifts
and God would confirm them to the end. But they was in a society
like our society and they were surrounded with just every kind
of sin imaginable and they were falling into some very grievous
sins. And so Paul gives this stern
warning to him. But he does it with hope mixed
in it. With hope mixed in it. I was finishing the message yesterday
and I got an email from a friend that had his bulletin and there
was an article in it by Pastor Maurice Montgomery. And the title
of the article was, A Born Again New Creature in Christ. Perfect. Just went right along with my
message. And he had this statement in the article. He said, Precious
soul, if the faith you have has not caused you to think differently,
love differently, and live differently than you did before you possessed
it, then the sooner you get rid of it, the better. Now, many would deceive us and
have you say, well, that walking and trying to honor God, we can't
even do that. We're so sinners that we can't
put away these sins and they try to deceive you. Now listen
to the Word, verse 9. Be not deceived. Be not deceived. Your fleshly mind will try to
deceive you. Be not deceived. And it's throughout
the Scripture you find that. Paul said, let no man deceive
you with vain words. Because of these things comes
the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. John said, little
children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness
is righteous, even as Christ is righteous. Now he's looking
here. Now let's go through. Be not
deceived, neither fornicators, those unmarried, engage again
unmarried sex. And we're talking about this
is the continued course that never turn from it, never save
from it, just continue in it all their life. Nor idolaters,
worshipping false gods, worshipping self. Nor adulterers, extramarital
affairs. nor effeminate, that means of
no certain stance, of no certain affinity. In other words, a man
doesn't have a true stance for the gospel. You hear men preaching,
they kind of try to waver between the truth and the false gospel
and all. That's to be effeminate. That's
to not be, you don't stand for the truth. You see these fellows
who are, they're not, have no affinity in gender. They're called
transgender. This is what we're talking about.
nor abusers of themselves of mankind. The pretty word for
it is homosexuals. God's word for it is sodomites.
Nor thieves. That's preachers who preach for
money. That's folks who won't work, who live off the welfare
of others when they could work. Thieves. Nor covetous. There's
lusting after riches and ambitious for this worldly rank and for
all these other things here. Nor drunkards. That means to
be intemperate in excess, in pleasures, in luxury, in food,
in wine, in drugs. A drunkard, a worldly man living
in excess. Nor revilers, foul-mouthed, nor
extortioners, robbers. None of these, he says, shall
inherit the kingdom of God. Now this is not the general tenor
of the life of one of God's saints. So my God is sanctified. This
is not the life of one of them. This is not their life. He might
fall into sin, but he repents and he mourns and he weeps and
he asks forgiveness of God and he clings to Christ. But these
that He speaks about here don't do so. They don't do so. But
He does it, you see, from the motive of telling you, you've
got this good hope of inheriting the Kingdom of God. That's what
I want you to see. Now look at this next motive.
It gives the motive of God's grace. First you have the motive
of this good inheritance we have. Then you have the motive of God's
grace. Verse 11. He gave that long list of awful
sins, and He says, and such were some of you. Now brethren, when
you read that list of sins, and that's not an exhaustive list,
you can find a lot of other sins listed in other places, but that's
enough right there. Do you read that and say, whew,
boy, there's some things in there that... troubling to me. I see my old
man, I see my flesh, you see what I am." Well, he says, such
were some of you. Such were some of you. Were some
of you. We were once living in disobedience
to God, unrighteous, unholy, and we would have never changed.
We didn't want to change, and we couldn't change. What we just
read about, that's the pit from which we were dug. And that's
an awful, awful pit. So what made the difference?
What made the difference? Verse 11, but ye are washed. Scripture says we're washed in
regeneration, by the washing of regeneration. The Holy Spirit
of God, we're washed. Washed from it. Verse 11, but
ye sanctify. It means to be set apart. You
loved it. You couldn't do without it. It
was your life to do these things. You'd end the day with no remorse
and you'd get up the next day and start all over again. He
took you and he brought you out of that. He brought you out of
that. He set you apart from it. He
set you apart from it. You were that. He brought you
out of that. He sanctified you out of that.
And He made you holy in your heart. He made you pure in your
heart. How? The Holy Spirit entered in. Holy
Christ, our Lord, our Holy Redeemer entered in. And He sanctified
the place when He entered in. He's the new man in you that
makes you that inward man that makes you desire for righteousness
and to walk in a way that's honoring to Him. He made you pure in heart. Pure in heart. Verse 11, but
you're justified. This is that righteousness we
talked about at the beginning, that first righteousness. We're
justified by the blood of Christ. We're not only washed, we're
justified. was justified from all our sin,
all that sin that we were in, all that sin that we committed
when we were in that pit. God took all our sin and put
it on His Son. And his son went to the Calvary's
tree and bore the penalty. He bore the justice that all
God's people owed to God. So that when he said it is finished
and he laid down this life, there was nothing else to be done.
Justice said, I'm satisfied. God said, I'm satisfied. They're
justified from their sins now. And when God brings you to faith
in Christ, and He's washed you, He's sanctified you, He's made
you holy, He's made you consecrated to God, and He brings you and
sets you down before God, and He says to you in the court of
your conscience, now, you're righteous because Christ has
made you righteous. When God imputes to you, I'll
get you to do something. Go through the scriptures and
study impute, imputed, imputation, reckoned, and what you'll find
throughout the Old Testament is when God imputed to somebody,
it was because of something that had happened and it was the just
reckoning of what they really were. And when God imputes sin
to us, I mean, yeah, when He imputes sin to us, it's because
Adam made a sin. And when He imputes righteousness
to you, when He's brought you to this place and He imputes
righteousness to you, it's because you really are righteous by what
Christ did in Christ the Lord. He's not saying to you, I'm just
going to treat you now like you're righteous. He's not saying to
you, I'm just going to act like you're righteous and I don't
remember your sins. I'm going to pretend like they're not there.
No, brethren, Christ put them away. Christ put our sins away. He purged our sins. He justified. He made us righteous so that
when God comes to you, He says, this is what you really are. I want you to get that, brethren.
Get that. That's what we are. Now, with
all the sins they were falling into at Corinth, you know what
you might expect Paul to say? This is what you were, and you're
just now the same thing. You're just a bunch of reprobates.
That's not what he said, is it? He said, no, such were some of
you. But God's brought you out of
that. Brought you out of that. That's not the tenor of your
life. That's not what you're walking in. You may have fallen,
but get up and get out of that because that's not you. God has
brought you out of that. Now, when He's brought you out
of it, He's saying, now don't go back to it. Don't go back
to it. He brought you out of it. God
bethinks you were the servants of sin, but you obeyed from the
heart that doctrine that was delivered to you, and now you've
become the servants of righteousness. So He gives them that holy motive.
There's nothing that humbles a believer like seeing that awful
low, low pit from which we were dug. And there's nothing that
strengthens us and invigorates us and comforts us like seeing
that grace that God's bestowed upon us in Christ to make us
perfect before Him. The deeper the depth, the higher
the grace, the higher the heights of the grace will shine forward.
Now that's a good motive there. Now thirdly, I'll go more quickly
on these other three. Thirdly, the motive of profitability. This is a good motive. The motive
of profitability. Look here in verse 12. All things
are lawful unto me, But all things are not expedient, they're not
profitable. All things are lawful for me,
but I will not be brought under the power of any. You know, this
motive is so basic, it really is so basic, but it's so profound.
Why would we do anything that would be unprofitable for us
spiritually? Why would we do anything that
would be unprofitable for us spiritually? Why would we do
anything that would be unprofitable for our brethren, for Christ's
church? Especially when we know that godliness is always profitable. And it has God's promise with
it. Now you see, what he says here, all things are lawful for
me. Believers are free from the law. When you're righteous, past,
looking to the past and looking to the future, God says you're
righteous, you're justified, you have no sin. All throughout
your past life and all throughout the future life that you don't
even know yet, God took all the sins and put them on Christ so
that now God says you don't have any anymore. When I sin tomorrow,
in thought or word or deed, it's paid for by Christ. So, when
you're righteous, you see what I'm saying, when you're righteous,
and God will not impute sin to you, then He showed you, He brought
you out from under the curse of the law, and now, you know,
all those dietary laws, and all those, you know, eat this and
you can't drink that, and all these different things that God
gave in the law, I'm free from all that now. He's fulfilled
the law for me. I'm free from all that. Everything's
lawful to me. I can eat what I want to. I can
drink what I want to. It's lawful to me. And something
else too is, at Corinth, most all those sins we just saw, they
were all legal. They were all legal in their
society. There was nothing against the law of that. In fact, at
their idol temples, They engaged in fornication,
adultery, idolatry, all those things. There was thieving going
on there. All those things were happening in their worship service. It was all legal. But you see,
just because something is legal and lawful doesn't mean it's
profitable. Just because it's lawful, that
doesn't mean it's profitable for me. And just because it's
lawful doesn't mean it won't make me a slave to it. There's
many things that are lawful in this world. And yet, if you start
taking part of it, it will make you a slave to it. You'll come
under the power of it. And you'll be a slave to it.
Do you see that? Just because it's lawful, that
doesn't mean it's expedient. That doesn't mean it's profitable.
And it doesn't mean it's not going to bring you under its
power. Lawfulness does not equate with profitableness. Just remember
that now. So, I'm not to become a slave
to my fleshly appetite, to my desires, and to my fleshly wants. And when there's something indifferent,
things that might be lawful, meat, drink, whatever, but if
it's going to interrupt my fellowship with God, or it's going to interrupt
my fellowship with my brethren, because they're going to be offended
by it, then I'm not to have so much lust for this and be under
its power so much that I say, well I don't care, I'm going
to do it anyway. That's what he said. So if my liberty is
going to cause a brother to stumble, I'm to set it aside. Now look at this furthermore.
He says, God has made so many things for us to enjoy in this
life. Verse 13. Meats for the belly
and the belly for meats. You got to eat. He made the belly
for meat and the meat for the belly. See, there's nothing wrong
with that. But, he says, remember this,
earthly things are not profitable for us eternally. But God shall
destroy both it and them. We need to eat. We need to drink.
But eating and drinking is not our life. Christ is our life. You see, always remember, we
get caught up in these earthly things that we enjoy. But those things are not going
to necessarily profit us eternally. And God's going to destroy them.
And He's going to destroy the flesh one day. It's going back
to the grave. I was just sitting here with
Will and he was pinching my skin and looking at how wrinkled my
skin is and then he held his hand up and showed me how smooth
his hand is. I said, you know what did that
to my hand? Sin did it. I'm going back to the dust. And
I said to him, and it's going to get you too. So remember that. These things
are not our life brethren. But God didn't make our bodies
for us to follow the lust of the flesh. He made our body for
the Lord. Look here in verse 13. Now the body is not for the
fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now
those at Corinth, you've got to understand the time. And it's
easy to understand this because I think people think this in
our day. When they heard that God had
sent forth His Son, and Christ went to that cross, and He perfectly
fulfilled the law for His people, in every jot and tittle, so that
there's nothing left unturned. It's all fulfilled, and now believers
are not under the law, we're under grace. When they heard
that, what they heard was, then fornication's lawful for me.
It's lawful for me to commit fornication. It's lawful for
me to commit adultery. Just think of that, brethren.
Think of that. Think of a man coming to the
house of God, and he worships God, and he calls on God, and
he believes, and I'm saying he contends for the truth of the
gospel. And then he goes out, and the rest of his days, Monday
through Saturday, he spends his time trying to find some other
man's wife that he can have an extramarital affair with. Whatever you know any of these
things they don't go together do they? Don't go together So
he's telling them here the Lord didn't make our body for fornication.
He made our body for the Lord He didn't make our body for any
of those other sins. He made our body for the Lord for the Lord
and Following Christ and glorifying him. That's always profitable
That's always problem. There's a lot of things lawful
for you in this world that aren't necessarily profitable But living
for God is always profitable. I want you to read that article
that I wrote in the bulletin on the back on godliness. Read that when you get home.
There's nothing about godliness that's harmful to anybody. Not
to you, not to your brother, not to your... All it does is
promote unity and fellowship and good. That's all. So what
he's saying here is, yeah, you're lawful. It's lawful. to enjoy
some things, it's not profitable. But, not fornication, not these
sins, that's never lawful for a believer. God made your body
for that. God made your body for the Lord.
And living for the Lord, trusting Him, looking to Him, learning
of Him, heeding His Word, following Him in all things, glorifying
Him, and honoring Him, and seeking not to dishonor Him, and not
to bring shame on the Gospel, is always profitable. And it
has God's promise. It has God's promise. Godliness
is profitable unto all things having the promise of the life
that now is and of that which is to come. God gives you many
promises. He's going to bless you in this
life. You'll see that in the bulletin, in that article. And
He gives you promises of life to come. Godliness is profitable. And we know the promise of God
is yes and amen because of this. Look at verse 14. God has both
raised up the Lord and He will also raise up us by His own power. So we know this is yes and amen.
Everything God promises is yes and amen. So we know that it's
profitable to follow the Lord. Look at Philippians 3 verse 20. So our conversation, our citizenship
is in heaven. From whence also we look for
the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body,
that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according
to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things
unto himself. This is a much better motive
than the yoke of the law. This is for our good. This is
telling you to live. All these things are for your
good. Use your body for good. And it's profitable by God's
grace. That's a good motive, brethren.
Good motive. You know that's so, don't you?
You know that's so. If you overindulge in things,
you know that it always ends bad. It always ends bad. But you can't overindulge in
the gospel too much. You can indulge in it all you
want. Go to excess in it all you want. And you just bless
more and more and more. And one day, He's going to raise
these bodies glorified with Him. Remember that. Now here's the
next thing. The fourth motive is the motive
of oneness. The motive of oneness. Look at
verse 15. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members
of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid! Get what that said now. What? Know ye not that he which is
joined to a harlot is one body? For two saith he shall be one
flesh. But he that is joined unto the
Lord is one spirit. flee fornication. Every sin that
a man doeth is without the body, but he that committeth fornication
sinneth against his own body." Do you see what a powerful statement
that is? God's grace has made us so one with Christ that each
of our bodies, yours and mine, you and me together, who know
God, who are called by God, we are members of Christ's body. Your body is a member of Christ's
body. Member of Christ's body. He that's
joined to the Lord's one spirit. You're one. That's mystery, mysterious. And I know we don't enter into
it now. But that is such a mystery that we're one and we'll never
be separated. We're one with the Lord Jesus
Christ. One with Him. One with Him. In
the illustrations of a husband and a wife, they leave their
mother and their father, they forsake their mother and father,
and they unite to one another. And no matter what happens, they're
one flesh. They're one. Me and that woman
right there are one. We don't have two bank accounts,
we got one. We don't sleep in two beds, we
sleep in one. Except for last night, Will was
in my bed. We sleep, we do everything one. It's one. If I'm going to, you
know, when we buy gifts sometimes it's hard to buy gifts because
it's all coming from the same account. But you are one in everything. And that's the illustration of
how we are with Christ. We're one with Christ. Now look
at this this powerful motive to put away fornication. Shall
I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of
a harlot? God forbid. Flee fornication. Every sin that
a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication
sins against Christ's own body. That's what he's talking about.
Not only do you sin against your own body, you sin against Christ's
own body. Take Christ's body. If I unite, Leave that woman
and unite with a harlot. I'm uniting Christ's body with
a harlot. You see that? Is that not motive tonight? To
flee fornication? So try to remember this. If you're
falling into temptation, try to remember and ask God to bless
it to your heart. Ask Him to teach you in your
heart that this is Christ's body. And I'm about to desecrate Christ's
body. He says, don't just say, well,
let me think about it. He says, flee fornication. Brethren, we could say that for
a lot of these other sins too. Flee it. This is, what I'm saying
to you, I know that, you know, it's easy to sit and listen to
a message when you're talking about the Pharisee and him trying
to be righteous by his works. But this is just as dangerous.
Just as dangerous. But the point I'm trying to show
you is, it's not law that's going to make you and I want to serve
God. It's not law that He's going
to use to sanctify us, to keep us looking to Him. It's these
motives of grace. You're one with Christ. One with
Him. And then look at this last thing.
It's the motive of ownership. The motive of ownership. Verse
19. Know ye 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? For ye are bought with a
price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. Everything we have
We have freely given. I'm speaking to believers now.
Everything we have, we have freely given to us of God by His grace. Everything. Salvation is by grace. Start to finish, it's all of
grace. Free grace. Freely given. The Holy Ghost which is in you,
you have of God. He gave He gave it. And so we're
not our own. Our bodies are not our own. Christ
bought us completely. Look at 1 Peter 1.18. I've got
a couple of scriptures and I'm going to be done, but I want
you to see these. 1 Peter 1.18. 1 Peter 1.18. For as much as you know, You were not redeemed with corruptible
things as silver and gold. Look down at verse 19. But with
the precious blood of Christ. That's how we were bought. With
the precious blood of Christ. As with a lamb without spot,
without blemish. What did it cost to purchase
me from sin? What did it cost to redeem me from iniquity? To
redeem me from the curse of the law? God gave His Son God gave his son and Christ the
Lord came and he gave his own body All his feelings and all
his all the everything about him was he was touched with everything
that Our sin creates he was touched with the feeling of our infirmities
He owned those sin as his own sin. I He was just so deep and
mysterious, brethren, but it was such an infinite price that
was paid in the suffering he endured, in the separation from
God that he endured. All this is included in that
precious blood. It's precious blood. Precious
blood was poured out. And now look at Ephesians 1.13.
Because he paid that price and bought his people. You're not
your own anymore. You've been purchased. You don't
belong to you. You've been purchased. Look at
Ephesians 1.13. He says there, After you heard... I'm sorry, Ephesians 2. I lost
my place. Oh yeah, verse 13. After you
heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,
after He regenerated you and gave you faith to believe, you
were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. He's preserving His
people. He's not going to lose His people.
And that Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. He talked
about that inheritance. What's the earnest? What's the
down payment? How do I know that I'm going to have it? God's given
me a heart to believe in. The Spirit of God's in me. Watch
this. Until the redemption. There's another redemption coming.
It's called the redemption of our bodies. He's coming again
to redeem us to Himself, to bring us home to Him. And look what
that redemption is going to be. It's the redemption of the purchased
possession unto the praise of His glory. And that's why He
says in our text, you're not your own. You're bought. You belong to Christ. You're
purchased. You belong to Christ. Am I going
to take that which is the possession of my Lord and my Savior and
go out and destroy it? He said it's His. It's His. Therefore, our text says, therefore,
Now let me review. Therefore, having this hope of
inheriting the kingdom of God. Therefore, knowing God's grace
that found us polluted in our sins and washed us and sanctified
us and justified us. Therefore, knowing how profitable
it is to live for God, to have the promise that God will bless
us and keep us. Number four, knowing our bodies
and our spirit are one with Christ. And number five, knowing Christ
has purchased us with His own blood so that we're not our own.
He says there, therefore glorify God in your body and in your
spirit which are God's. You know, when we preach the
gospel, this is going to happen. It can't help but happen. I've
had it happen to me. When you preach the gospel, somebody's
going to always charge you with preaching licentious doctrine. They're going to say to you,
well if you tell sinners that they're forgiven and all the
sins of God's people are put away and they're made righteous
and God will never impute sin to them again, then all you're
going to do is give them a license to go out and sin. All that does
is make them say, well if I'm not going to be charged with
my sin, I'll sin all I want to. Listen to me. God sanctifies His people. He
puts in you a new heart and a new spirit. And He makes you to hate
sin. He doesn't make you want to live
in sin. He makes you hate sin. It may take time. We grow like
babies grow. And it may take time for God
to bring you out of those sins and bring you out of it. But
God He sanctifies his people. He makes you mourn over it. He
makes you hate it. He makes you repent from it.
He doesn't make a sinner want to live in sin. And to say that
this gospel does that is to charge God with folly. It's to charge God with evil. It's not so. This gospel makes
us want to live for God. And I'll tell you, I know it's
hard sometimes to hear these things, but it's hard for me
to preach them. I told Joe yesterday, I'm sitting here trying to prepare
a message and I feel like an utter hypocrite while I'm trying
to prepare it. But it's needful. Look at those
motives of grace. God gives us grace to live for
Him. I pray that. I pray that for me, I pray that
for you. Amen. Alright, brethren, let's stand
together. Thank You, Lord, for this Word.
Cause it now to Make it effectual and cause us
to really, truly be separated from our sin, these scandalous
sins, these things that You do give Your people power to put
away. Make us do it, Lord. Make us do it. And when we have
difficulties with these things and have trouble with these sins,
Make us to know, Lord, that You never leave Your people, never
forsake Your people. Make us to know the sin is all
of us, the grace is all of You. Keep us, Lord. Separate us. We
ask it in Christ's name. Amen.