1 Corinthians, and we're going
to begin reading in chapter 7, but we're going to read the last
three verses of chapter 6 to remind us the starting point
which chapter 7 begins at. Now, we know that the chapters
that are in the Scriptures set forth as men sought to make
the Scriptures more easily read in the contemporary way because
there were no numbers of the verses or whatever in the original
manuscripts. But these things were set up
and of course we believe the Lord guided the hands of those
that did these things and they are useful for us. But I think one thing that happens
because we do have chapters and verses in the Scriptures is a
lot of times when people read it, they read it in a disjointed
fashion. And of course if you've ever
read any of the Koran, then you would know what a disjointed
supposed scripture would look like. And I'm not advising you
necessarily to read the Koran. I think it wouldn't hurt you
to read it because it would cause you to rejoice in what the Lord
has seen fit to give us and how deluded, in my estimation, someone
would be that would ever compare such drivel as there is in the
Koran to what's in this book right here. I mean, there's no
comparison between the two from a literary standpoint, let alone
from a spiritual standpoint. But the Scriptures are not disjointed. In other words, they're not set
forth just mumbo-jumbo. Well, here we're going to talk
about this for a while, and now we're going to jump over here
and talk about this for a while. When Paul is writing these letters,
he starts at the beginning and he goes through to the end and
he has a theme and a purpose in what he is setting forth.
And if you miss that, then there is a tendency among those that
sometimes men do what they call verse-by-verse studies, but they
do it in a disjointed fashion as if each verse stands on its
own. Now we know that every verse
in the Bible means exactly what it means, but in order to know
what it means, And the point that's being brought forth, we
have to read these things in the proper context in which they're
given. And read what it is that Paul's
trying to teach. Now we know that Paul started
off his letter, as he always does, pointing to Jesus Christ. And he began the basic theme
of what he is telling the Corinthians here was not to trust in men
or claim to be followers of men and their teaching, but that
our message and the truth that we would believe must come from
the Lord and we must seek it as He would apply it to us. Now
I would never counsel you to believe anything anybody says
because they said it. Now, if somebody says something
that is the truth, I want you to believe it, but I want you
to believe it because the Lord taught you that it is the truth,
not because the person taught you that it is the truth. And
that is what Paul is telling these Corinthians. And so he
has been talking to them about some pretty practical measures. that were taking place among
the church there and problems that they had and things that
they needed to deal with. And so he ends the end of chapter
6, which was really just carrying on his thought, but we're going
to look at it in that way. It's verse 18 of chapter 6. It says, flee fornication. Now,
I'm going to reiterate this again. The term fornication, while it
can be applied to a specific sin, it is nonetheless, the Greek
word for it is porneio, which simply means sexual impurity
or sexual impropriety. That is, any form of sexual relationship,
thought or deed which is outside of the realm of that which God
has ordained. That's what fornication is. Now
anybody that doesn't believe himself to be a fornicator has
never known what it is, what the word means. Because every
man, woman, boy, well, every woman and man is guilty of these
things. And we know that we are. And
we don't need to go into details about all the different forms
and things that these things come in, but they are endemic
in man. That's just the way that we come
forth from the womb. As we come forth speaking lies,
we come forth when we come to an age where these things become
prevalent in our mind. That is just the nature of man.
And so Paul, in no uncertain terms, says to flee from it.
Whatever form it might take, wherever it is, flee from it.
Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. That is, it
is outside. If you steal something, you just
stole something. That did not have any personal
effect on you. If you told a lie, you just told
a lie. Now, we know that all things
do have a point in our mind, but what he is saying here is
that every sin that a man doeth is outside of his body. But he
that committeth sexual impurity sinneth against his own body.
Because that's you. That's your makeup. You're sinning against your own
self. What? Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost?" He said, would you doubt that? Don't doubt it. Don't you know
this is a true thing, that your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost, which is in you? Now he's speaking to believers,
is he not? Of course he is, because the natural man doesn't have
the Holy Ghost dwelling within him. Only those who are born
again by the Spirit of God have the Spirit of God dwelling in
them. which is in you, which ye have of God, you got it, you
were born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God, as John says, and ye are not your own." Now, what did Adam and Eve, what
was their major sin? They said, Our own. Is that not what they said? Well,
it doesn't matter what God said, we're going to do this. That's
what they said. And so Paul says, look, you're
not your own. You've been what? He said, for
ye are bought with a price. Now, we're gods in the first
place because He made us. But thinking of that in terms
of the fact that we go on in our life, we have run contrary
to the way of God. And He said, Now, in a greater
sense than you were His by creation, and He has the right to do with
His own as He wills, He can create one vessel unto honor and one
unto dishonor as it pleases Him. And what can man say about that?
If He created the whole human race just for the purpose of
destroying it, who could say anything about it? I mean, what
could a man say? Not one thing. I mean, if God
said to a man, look, I've got you and I made you just to destroy
you. Now, He said He did that with
Pharaoh, didn't He? He said, what could a man say
if the Lord raised up Pharaoh? He said, even so, I have raised
up Pharaoh. for this end, that I might show
my glory, that I might rain judgment upon the wicked, and that you
might see that it is so. And who can argue with that?
Can a man say, well, that's not fair? Why? What grounds would
you take that on? I mean, God made it. He said
it would be that way, and that's the way that it is. And, you
know, those who by the grace of God have been given a mind
and a heart to bow their knees unto Him, they say, well, even
so, Father, for it seemed good in thy sight. I mean, what can
we say about it? It's not a thing in the world. But even beyond that, Even beyond
that very notion, ye are bought with a price because the Lord
Jesus Christ came into the world to redeem us, that is, to purchase
us, to buy us back from that slavery into which we sold our
own souls. We gladly went into the way of
sin. And yet the Lord in mercy saw
us in that state which we didn't even care if we got out of. See,
this is the problem that men have. It's like men think that
everybody's out here trying to get out of this state. No, men
love the state they're in. Now, they might like to be in
a, you know, from a standpoint, I mean, if a man's poor, he'd
like to have more money, you know, and all of that kind of
stuff. And sure, yeah, man would like to not have illnesses and
things that go wrong in his life. I mean, everybody, that's just
natural. Everybody would want that. But that's not what we've
bought from. What we've been bought from and
delivered from is the sure destruction which the Lord demanded of all
who break it. For the Lord said, The soul that
sinneth, it shall die. for all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. But in the mercy of God, He has
demonstrated the glory of His grace in sending the Redeemer,
the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world to purchase that object
of His affection, the church of God, the people of God, those
who are called the elect of God, those whom He chose in Christ
from before the foundation of the world and says, You are bought
with a price. Now, if you have been bought
with a price, then there is a consequence that is expected. You are bought with a price, therefore
glorify God in your body and in your spirit. Now, some are
of the notion that the obedience of the children of God is to
be just a spiritual thing. Oh, well, we believe we want
to serve the Lord, but we'll just go on and do whatever we
want to do in the flesh because it doesn't make any difference
anyway. Now that's a form of Gnosticism that says that because
they say, well, sin doesn't really exist in the real thing. And so it's okay,
that's just the sins of the body, so just go on and do that. Just
do whatever you want to. Now, there are those that say
when we preach the grace of God and we tell men what grace actually
is, that what we're telling men to do is just go on off and sin
and do anything you want to in the body because it's all right,
because God's grace is sufficient. Now, I can't know of anything
that would be more contrary to what the Scripture teaches than
that, would you? I mean, I've never seen that
in the Scripture. any such of a thing. I see the grace of God
on every page. I know for a fact that everything
that God has done for His people, He has done because of His grace.
And every benefit that man has ever gotten from the hand of
the Lord, he has gotten it because of the grace of God and not because
of any effort expended on his part. But the Scripture is very
plain when it says for us to glorify God in our body as well
as our spirit. That is, we are concerned with
what we do with these hands. We are concerned with what goes
on in these bodies and in these minds. Now Paul said we are in
a mess because of what we are by nature. And he said the good
that we would, we don't do, and the things that we want to do,
the things we don't want to do, we do. That's because of the
innate corruption that yet dwells within us because we've grown
and prevailed together in these bodies. We are what we are, but
when the Spirit of God comes and He teaches us that we're
bought with a price, then He also gives to those same people
a desire to glorify God in our bodies as well as in our spirit. Now, not a man among us is doing
that in the fashion and to the degree that is demanded by the
Word of God. But there is a desire that is
placed within us. Just like the Lord said to His
disciples when they fell asleep in the garden, He said, The spirit
is well and the flesh is weak. And we do dwell in weak, fleshly
bodies. And we are prone to fail at every
junction and turn along the way. But that doesn't change the fact
that the Spirit of God works in us both willing to do of His
good pleasure and He is guiding us and teaching us quite often
by our own foul deeds and ways what we are by nature and that
our hope is in Christ. That's the glorious thing. And
that is the message and the lesson that we are learning. And that
is what Paul is saying, for you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit with your gods. We belong to Him.
Therefore we do not have any business running off out here
and seeking to fulfill every whim of our flesh that comes
up just because we want to do something. That would be contrary
to what we know that the Spirit has taught us. Now concerning
the things whereof ye wrote unto me, evidently they had written
unto Paul asking him some specific questions about the matter of
marriage. specifically perhaps including
divorce and remarriage. They had questions about these
things because this issue had arisen among them primarily because
of those... You keep in mind that this was
a very pagan culture. And so when the Lord called his
people out from among them and gathered them together in these
churches, quite often either the husband or the wife was not
necessarily called by the Lord. And so there was an unbelieving
husband and a believing wife or vice versa. And so this caused
quite a bit of turmoil, as you can imagine. I mean, if your
wife was a heathen idolater, and she wanted to worship Malcolm,
or she wanted to worship one of these other heathen gods,
and she had these shrines set up in your house, or whatever,
and wanted to do that, that would cause a little bit of conflict,
don't you think? If you knew, by the grace of
God, that Jesus Christ alone was to be worshipped. And so
these things were causing problems. And so they had evidently written
questions. What do we do? What's the proper thing to do?
Now concerning the things where he wrote unto me, it is good
for a man not to touch a woman. Now, of course, what he means
by that is that it is not a bad thing if a man should choose
not to be married. In other words, there is no There's
nothing in the Scripture that demands that a man has to take
a wife or that a woman has to take a husband. That's not a
requirement. You don't have to do that. I
mean, there's nothing in the Scripture that would indicate
that you must do that. But, he says, nevertheless, because
you are what you are, because you have, those natural urges
and desires that are placed in people by nature. He said in
order to avoid sexual impurity, let every man have his own wife
and let every woman have her own husband. Now, that's really not complicated. You know? I mean, that doesn't
require a whole lot of explanation. That's just exactly what it means.
I mean, that's why the Lord gave it one of the reasons why the
Lord invented marriage, why He made the human race as He did,
was for men and women to come together and for a husband to
have a wife and a wife to have a husband. That's just the way
He designed things to be. And so he says, Let the husband
render unto the wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife unto
the husband. That is, they are to dwell together
as one. They are to come together, even
as we know what Scripture sets forth as what the subject Paul
has been talking about, about the fulfillment of sexual desire. And the Lord gave that as a good
thing in the context in which he gave it as a good thing. And
what was it? Let every man have his wife,
and every wife have her husband. And it's him and her. I mean,
now that's just the way that it is. Now, if he'd wanted it
to be some other way, he could have made it some other way.
But he made it that way. Nothing I can do about it. I
mean, I can't answer everybody's question. Well, what about this?
I don't know about all that. I do know this. I know what the
Lord said and what it put down here. And it's just plain, you
know, it's natural that this be the way that it is. And that
is the way that it is. So the wife is to render to the
husband due kindness or affection, and likewise also the wife unto
the husband. The wife hath not power of her
own body, but the husband, and likewise also the husband hath
not the power of his own body, but the wife. Now hearken back
to what he just said a few moments ago. He said, Ye are not your
own. You are bought with a price.
Now, marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ
and His church. And any form of marriage or any
aberration of marriage which does not point to that is not
a thing that is glorifying to God. And so it is that He says
here, The wife hath not power over her own body. He said, you're
bought with a price, you're not your own. And this is the relationship
that exists between a husband and a wife. Now, you know, this
is, again, it doesn't take a whole lot of explanation about this.
And everybody is guilty of violating this very concept here. Men think probably more so that
the woman is guilty of the violation of this than the man. But that's
just because of the nature that we have. But nonetheless, these
things are designed And we don't have power over it. I don't have
the power to deny these things from my wife, nor does my wife
have the power to deny these things to me because of the bond
that we have as being one flesh. We're not our own. We're bought
with a price. Even in marriage, we're bought
with a price. That is, we belong to one another, and we don't
have the say-so of our own body. Likewise, also the husband hath
not power of his own body. Now, we don't like that, do we?
Well, I ought to be able to do what I want to do. No. No, not if you have a wife or
if you have a husband. You're bound to the husband. You're bound to the wife. That's
just what the Scripture says. Defraud ye not one another, that
is, don't deny coming together in the bonds of matrimony that
the Lord has set forth. He said don't neglect that. Defraud ye not one another except
it be with consent for a time that ye may give yourselves to
passing in prayer and come together again that Satan tempt you not
for your incontinency, or that is, your self-denial, because
These things are natural and that is the way that God would
have us to be. We are not to deprive ourselves
or one another of these things lest we fall into a dangerous
place. But I speak this by permission
and not of commandment. He's saying that about what he's
saying here, and he's saying basically, I'm not telling you
how to do this, when to do it, and what have you, but he says,
I'm telling you this by permission, that is, I'm showing you that
you have the liberty and the Lord to apply these things in
the fashion in which you see fit to apply them. But with these
concepts firmly in mind, this is a commandment that you are
not your own. That is a commandment. He is
not talking about permission there. But then he goes on to
speak further about this. He says, For I would that all
men were even as myself. Now how was Paul? There is no
record in Scripture that Paul had a wife. Now he said, In one
place I have the power to lead about a wife, and speaking to,
I believe it might have been the same Corinthians, but he
said, I've got the power to do that, and you need to recognize
that I have that power to do that. But he's saying to them,
I would that all men were even as myself. Now evidently Paul
did not have those needs of having a wife, and some people don't. And that's quite all right. Nothing
wrong with that. And there's much benefit to that.
And he goes in detail later on as to how that is beneficial. But he said, I'm not speaking
this to you by commandment. In other words, I'm not saying
to you, now you need to go out here and be like me. He said,
I would that all men were even as myself, but every man hath
his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after
another. God didn't take cookie cutter and make everybody the
same. He made some who are eunuchs
by birth, that's what he said in another place. And some have
been made eunuchs by choice and then some have just simply given
themselves over to the kingdom of God without regard to these
things. Every man, after his proper gift,
one after this manner and another after that, I say therefore to
the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide
even as I." So what he says here is that those who have not been
married and those who have been married but do not presently
have husbands or do not presently have wives, he said it would
be good if you just stayed unmarried. But he says, I am telling you
this by permission, not by commandment. He says it would be good if you
remained unmarried from that standpoint. But if they cannot
contain, that is, if this is not in the cards, and this is
not how you were made, and this is not what gift you have been
given, then he said, let them marry. For it is better to marry
than to burn. Now that means to burn in lust,
to burn in the sexual impurity of the mind or the actions of
the flesh outside of marriage. He said, It is better to be married
than it is to burn. And unto the married I command,
yet not I, but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her
husband. Now this is primarily having
to do with the question that was raised to him, I believe,
concerning whether or not A woman should depart from her husband
because he's an unbeliever or vice versa. It says, let not the wife depart
from her husband. She doesn't need to decide that.
Now, today we live in a society when divorce is probably more
common than marriage. I think it probably is more common
than marriage. At one time it was sort of a
rare thing. And people kind of whispered
about it. People don't do it now. They
have parties. We're having our divorce party. I mean, it's kind
of like, it's just an expected thing. Well, you know, so and
so, they'll be together for four or five years or ten or whatever.
And then, you know, I mean, You tell somebody you've
been married for over 40 years, and they say, my, what's wrong
with you? I mean, you're crazy. I mean,
something's wrong with you. But that's what the Lord said,
didn't He? He said, let not the wife, or the husband, you can
put it in there either way, let not the wife depart from her
husband. Don't let the husband depart from the wife. Now if
the wife says, I'm not going to depart from the husband, and
the husband says, I'm not going to depart from the wife, how
could you have a divorce? I mean, how can that happen?
It happens because somebody says, I'm going to depart. I mean,
two people can't stay together unless it be agreed. And the
Lord said we ought to be agreed on this matter right here. Let
not the wife depart from the husband. That doesn't set down
any conditions, does it? He says, well, it's okay for
the wife to leave the husband if he does this. Or it's okay
for the husband to leave the wife if she does that. He doesn't say that. Now, he's
going to talk about some things down here, but he doesn't ever
say it's a good thing you need to leave your husband. Now, I've
heard people say, oh, well, you need to leave him. You need to
leave her. Well, you'll go outside the Scripture
to find that. I mean, and believe me, I'm not
saying there's not situations that arise when maybe from a
human standpoint in the flesh that might be the thing. I mean,
you know, we may talk about some of those situations. That might
arise, but I'm going to tell you this, you're going to look
hard and long in the Scripture to ever find where Paul said
to do that or where the Scripture indicates that you should do
that. No, what Scripture says is let the husband and the wife
be together. That's what it says. That's through
thick and thin. You know, it's amazing to me,
in every wedding ceremony, well, I don't even know, of course,
they might not even say that anymore, but it used to be a
pretty common thing to say, you know, we'll stick with you through
sickness and health and wealth and whatever I can't even say
exactly how it's supposed to go. But anyway, the idea is when
we take the vows, whatever happens, Till death do we part. And I
guess people just think that's just something you just say.
Because they can just automatically forget it. Well, you know, times
got hard and we just couldn't make, we couldn't get along with
about, you know, the money. I didn't like the way he was
spending money, or she was spending money, or this, that, the other.
And so we had a hard time, so we just decided we'd just go
our own separate way. Sickness in and out. penury and
wealth, poverty. Wealth, it doesn't make any difference
according to what Scripture says. That's just the way that it is.
Now, people come up with all kinds of things that they want
to say as to good reasons to leave, but there's not a good
reason in the Scripture. And how do we know that? Because
of all of all who should depart from his wife, who has just cause
to depart from his wife, it would be the Lord Jesus Christ. Would
it not? I mean, if anybody could build
a case for why somebody ought to leave their wife, it would be the Lord Jesus Christ. Nobody could say one word If
he said, I'm done with her. I've had it. She's been unfaithful
to me. She spent all my money. She wasn't
thankful for anything I ever did. She didn't express no gratitude.
She took me for granted. Took me for granted, you know.
And all those things, just come up with something. I don't care
what it is. You can come up with a thousand things. And if anybody
would have just caused to put away his wife, it would be Christ. But he said, I love her. He said,
I'll die for her. I'll buy her back from the whorehomes
to which she went. She's mine. And I won't let her
go. Oh, what a glorious thing, dear
brother. We're bought with a price. Therefore, magnify the Lord in
your body. He didn't say it was an easy
thing, did He? See, that's what's happening
today is everybody wants... everything's easy. Everything's
got to be easy. And so things get a little tough.
We say, oh, well, we'll just do something different. You know? We don't have that option as
the sons of God. If we walk obedient to those
things that the Lord has said to us in His Word, then those
things just aren't optional things for us. May the Lord help us.