You Are Not Your Own

other preachers in the word of
God, above all those that God used to write authoritatively
the message of God to us, that he preached that salvation was
by the grace of God. He preached the grace of God,
I think, in such a way that none other preached it. But we also
take note in our text this morning that the Apostle Paul was very
much concerned and with great earnestness He preached about
holiness in the life of a Christian and warned the Christian against
those sins that would, what we might say, would bring a reproach
upon the Lord and would cause them to denounce in their own
hearts and lives the blessed gospel of Jesus Christ which
they profess that saves them. We believe that a man ought to
live the coming to the gospel of God's free grace. We believe
that a person who has experienced the grace of God in truth and
has had the Holy Spirit implanted in his or her heart, that we
believe that they should live as though they had this treasure
in earthen vessel and that they were the Lord's people. Now,
the Apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians here, and if
you recall the city of Corinth, if you've ever heard anything
about it, you remember that it was steeped in paganism and in
lawlessness, and they were very famous. for their temples, their
idolatry, and for their luteness and extreme sinfulness, sensuality
in the flesh. And so the Apostle, when having
preached to these people, there were a number that were converted.
We read about the history of this church in the 18th chapter
of the book of Acts, and how the many of the Corinthians herein
believed and were baptized. And so there was a church that
was formed under the inspiration and leading of the Spirit of
God. And as this church was formed, there were many, many heresies
in it that had to be worked out by the plain preaching and teaching
of the Apostle Paul. And so in this chapter, we find
him exhorting the Lord's people. We find him speaking very pointedly
and plainly to the Lord's people concerning their behavior as
being the temples of the living God, seeing that the Holy Spirit
was dwelling in them, seeing that the Spirit of God had been
planted in them how that they should guard this sacred temple
that the Lord had raised up. And so we want to begin here
in verse 13. He says, meats for the belly,
and the belly for meats. It was a common saying among
the Corinthians that the cause of the appetite which men had
for meats that it was necessary to satisfy that appetite, that
the belly was for meats, and meats was for the belly, and
so therefore we ought to just enter in and eat to the full
and enjoy ourself, and any appetite that we had in the flesh, it
ought to be satisfied. We ought never to deny any appetite
that the flesh has. Now that was what the libertines,
if you want to call them that, among the Corinthians, that was
their motto, that's what they said. Now the Apostle Paul says
this to us. Now he says, but God shall destroy
both it and them. He's saying that there's going
to come a time when God is going to destroy both the belly and
the meats. that men use to satisfy their
physical hunger. That day's going to come. The
day's going to come when men are no longer going to need the
Lord's people, physical sustenance. They're not going to need any
physical nourishment any longer. And he goes on to say, now, the
body is not for fornication. It has never been for fornication. The body has never been to commit
the sin of adultery and fornication. That's not the purpose of the
body. Even though that mankind has
that particular appetite, as he also has an appetite for food,
for meat, for his belly, the body is not made to be indulged
in these sinful acts. He goes on to say here that the
body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body, meaning that
the body of the Christian, that Jesus Christ is Lord over that
body, that that body is for the Lord. It was designed as an instrument
of righteousness unto holiness and it was raised up by God to
use it in order that he might use it for his glory and that
it might be holy, that it might be righteous. I know that as
the Apostle Paul said, in my face there dwelleth no good thing.
I understand as Paul spoke of it in Philippians that these
are vile bodies that we have. I know that there is the grain
of holiness about us that the Holy Spirit has not created.
Forget this body. Paul says it's not for fornication
and for adultery, but it is for the Lord. And we'll remember
that this body is the Lord's. It belongs to Him if we be a
child of God. And this will be clearly brought
out to you this morning. Now he says in verse 14, And
God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by
his own power. He's telling us here that when
the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, after he was crucified, that
he was put into a grave and God raised him up from that grave. Now as we look at this scripture,
we find also that God is going to raise us up by His power. That God is not done with these
bodies. While that He will not have flesh
and blood and glory, God is going to raise up these bodies and
He's going to give them, as we read in 1 Corinthians 15, immortality. That this mortal is going to
be swallowed up with immortality. And that this corruption is going
to take on any corruption and we're going to have a glorified
body. Now, proof of this is the fact that God has put His Spirit
within us. We read, and I want to read, at least two scriptures
to you this morning to show you that if God has put His Spirit
in you, that that is a down payment, or it's the earnest, it's the
guarantee that God is going to raise up that body of yours in
resurrection and that He's going to give you a glorified body. Now, I want to read these scriptures
to you so that none here We're going out of this place this
morning feeling that this body of theirs, that it actually is
theirs to do with as they please. That they can live like they
want to. They can give it away. They can sell it to Satan as
cheap as they would. They can do what they want to
with this body. I want to show you that God has a purpose in
your body and that God's going to use it yet. Now I want us
to look in Ephesians chapter 1 and I want us to read verse
13 and verse 14. Ephesians 1 verse 13 and 14 in whom you also trusted After
that you heard the word of the truth of the gospel your salvation
in whom also after that you believed You were sealed with that Holy
Spirit of promise the Holy Spirit of promise That Holy Spirit which
came into your heart, into your mind, which cries out, have the
Father in us, is the spirit of promise. Promise of what? Promise
of what, I ask you? It's the promise that the Lord,
as He raised up Jesus Christ, will also raise you up by His
power. Now notice in verse 14, which
is the earnest, or which is the down payment, which is the earnest
money. When you go out here and you
would purchase a house, it's necessary for you to put earnest
money down when you start trying to negotiate with the people
that are selling the property. You put $1,000 earnest money
down. And this shows the people that
you are dealing with, that you're dead in earnest, that you're
really mean business, that you walk to buy that property that
you're a serious, serious buyer. Now when the Lord Jesus Christ
died for us, when the Holy Spirit came down from glory above to
indwell our hearts, that was the earnest of our inheritance. That showed us or proves to us
beyond a shadow of a doubt that God means to yet raise up these
bodies of ours in resurrection. Notice what it says. Until the
redemption of the purchased possession under the praise of his Lord. Until the time when he comes
back for the body. Until resurrection morning. He's
put the Spirit in us to show us that these bodies are his. That he's bought them and he
yet will resurrect them. Now turn back to 2 Corinthians,
chapter 5. 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, and
I wish to read the first five verses of this chapter. For we
know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,
we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. For in this we groan earnestly
desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven.
If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked.
For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not
for that we could be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality
might be swallowed up with life. Now he that hath brought us,
for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the
earnest of the Spirit. Now, Paul very plainly and boldly
here tells us that the purpose that God hath brought us for,
the very purpose that God hath raised us up for, the very purpose
that God has laid hold upon us for, is that He might give us
a house from heaven, a glorified body, and that it would take
these bodies, and when they're stripped off, they would be changed,
and that we would have a glorified body. And that is what he's telling
us here when he says, "...who hath also given unto us the earnest
of the Spirit." to evidence that, to prove that, to show us that
this thing is not something that may or may not happen, but is
something that is definite in our future, that we're definitely
going to be glorified, and these bodies are going to be resurrected
and be like unto the glorious body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God. It does not yet appear
what we shall be, but we know when He shall appear that we
shall be like Him for we shall see him as he is. And so these bodies are going
to be made like unto his own glorious body. Alright, and so
that's what Paul means when he says, we'll also raise us up
by his own power. Now in verse 15 he says, know
ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then
take the members of Christ and make them members of the harlot?
God forbid. Paul says, With Lord God forbid
that anybody who belongs to Christ, who's in Christ, who has the
Spirit of God within him, should ever join his body, which is
actually a member of Christ, unto a harlot. What know ye not,
in verse 16, that he which is joined to a harlot is one body?
For two saith he shall be one flesh. What an awful thing to
take a member of Christ and to join him to such an evil, evil
person as is here described. Now he says, but he that is joined
unto the Lord is one spirit with the Lord. The man and the woman,
the boy and the girl, that's born of God's spirit, has been
born from heaven, is joined to the Lord. And he's one spirit
with God because God has put his spirit in him or her. All right, now notice. He says,
plead fornication. Plead fornication. You might
stand and fight with other sins and struggle with other sins,
but fornication is not a sin that you fight with. Fornication
is a sin that you must put on your track shoes, as it were,
and flee. You must run from the sin of
fornication from adultery. This sin, you must flee from
it. You cannot stand, look upon it, think upon it. Imagine things
about it. You must plead with all of your
might, running as one who was running from a terrible calamity
that was about to happen to him or her. You must run and plead
from this awful sin of fornication. Every sin that man doeth is without
the body, but he that committed fornication sins, degrades his
own body. He sins against His own body.
But know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost,
which is in you, which ye have of God? And ye 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. Alright, now what's
Paul telling us here? He's telling us quickly. He tells
us that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost and therefore
ought not to be profaned. Secondly, he declares that to
be unchaste in body is a sacrilegious desecration of our manhood, a
violation of the sacred shrine wherein the spirit takes up its
dwelling place. That's what he's saying. And
then he drags us for this sin of fornication to sin of adultery,
he drags it to the foot of the cross, and there nails it hand
and foot as a criminal to the cross. Listen to His language. These are His words. You are
not your own. You are bought with a price.
That price being the blood, the shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, beloved, listen. It is no
small thing to be holy. It's no small thing to be holy. We must not say that we have
the faith of God's elect. and then fall into the sin that
the unbeliever is living in habitually every day. I say it's no small
thing to be holy as the people of God, because without holiness,
the book of Hebrews says, no man shall see the Lord. Now our
outer life is the test of our inner life. What about our outer
life, brethren and sisters? It's a test what we are outwardly,
shows what we are inwardly. And I think we speak mighty powerfully
when we go out into the world, live separately, and when we
walk as God has commanded us to walk in his word, having no
fellowship with the untruthful works of darkness, even abstaining
from the very appearance of evil. This is the way that we speak
of that which God has done in our inner life. Now let us never
be content to live with a faith which can live itself in hell,
if you please. If we can live like hell, it's
evident that we have not the faith of God's elect. But let
us rise to that which will save us, which is the faith of God's
elect in truth. which will purify the soul and
cast down the power of evil, and will dethrone, if you please,
evil in our very hearts. And let us stand up by the grace
of God, the throne of Jesus Christ in these hearts, Jesus Christ
being Lord in our lives, destroying this awful evil and this building
corruption of the flesh, and the Lord Jesus Christ reigning
there in the spirit of holiness as he would in the hearts and
lives of all of these people. Now that's the practice for our
message this morning. We want to speak this morning
on verse 20, primarily verse 20. And so the message is this. For you're both the Christ, Therefore,
glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
Now, the first thing we want to point out in this text is
a fact. It is a fact, indeed, that the
people of God have been bought with a price. Yea, it is a blessed
fact that we have been bought by the blood of the Lord Jesus.
Now, in the second place, we talk about the plain consequence
of our having been bought in the third place, we'll show you
a natural conclusion from the things that we've already said.
Now let us look at this scripture here. You're a bought with a
price. I said it is a fact indeed. Now the Lord through the mouth
of the Apostle Paul could have said to us, he could have said,
you've been created by me. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are mine. The Lord, by creation
alone, He could have commanded us to be obedient unto Him, the
Great Lawgiver. He could have commanded us to
respond to everything that He said by the very fact that He
created us. But that's not the language of
the Apostle here. His language is, He are both
with Christ. And now he could have commanded
us also by the providence of God and by the very care of God
of our lives every day. He could have said, I am God
that gives you your very breath. I am God that nourishes. I am
God that sustains. I am God that gives you all things
that are necessary to life. Therefore, Lord, by me in your
body and in your spirit, which are mine, But he didn't say that.
He didn't say that. He could have said it because,
you know, in Him, in God, we live and move and have our day.
And it is true as we traverse this earth here that we are eating
God's food when we eat. It is true that we're drinking
God's water. It is true that we're wearing
God's clothes. It is true that everything that
sustains us, that it comes down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no bearableness, neither shall we turn Him. It
is true that God does provide and in order demand obedience
of us, but that's not what the Apostle says. The Apostle Paul
says that ye are bought with a price. Now, beloved, listen.
It is either a fact or it's not with you. It is either a fact
or it's not. Now, I believe this morning,
if you truly be a child of God, that you would not deny, you
would dare not deny, ye are bought with a price. And you would stand
your ground. You would stand and say, yes,
it's true of me. The Lord Jesus Christ, this shit
is blood. He bought me with a price. Now
let us look just a moment at how the Lord Jesus Christ has
bought us. We said it is a fact. Now, if
you be here this morning and it's not known to you whether
or not you've been bought or not, oh, what a pitiful state
you're in, what an awful state you're in, if you have not the
assurance that you've been bought and that you're owned by the
Lord Jesus Christ. But all of you that believe on
Christ, you that know Christ, and you that rejoice in Christ,
and you that know that you've been bought with the price and
have the blessed assurance of it in your soul, let's think
just a little bit about it. Now you can turn back, if you
will, in your Bibles to the book of 1 Peter. The book of 1 Peter,
I want us to read here a couple of verses. In 1 Peter chapter
1. And let's read verse 18, 19,
and 20. Three verses here that we want
to read. And we want to think just a little bit about how the
Lord Jesus Christ has bought us. He says in verse 18, the
writer does, for as much as you know that you were not redeemed
or bought with corruptible things of silver and gold from your
vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers,
but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, who barely or truly was ordained
before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these
last times for you. And ah, do you know, we think
about sometimes these verses and we read them over and they
drop, the words do, off of our tongues as melting butter would
drop. But listen, friend, it's a wonderful
thing, it's a marvelous thing, and it ought to chide our hearts
that we can speak of being bold with the price without our hearts
being moved to tears, without our very hearts aching with bitterness,
because it is a wonder that fills angels with amazement that God,
that the very blood of God has been shed to redeem the fallen,
the sons of Adam that have been given to Christ in the cup of
grace, those that the Father had set His love upon in eternity
past. It is an amazing thing that God
loved us enough that Jesus Christ was willing to come down here
and suffer in our womb instead. As the Lamb without scorn and
without blemish, He was willing to buy us back from the slave
market of sin. Now, every one of us here, if
we know anything at all about the Bible, we're well aware of
the fact that we were bond slaves of sin before the Holy Spirit
came to us and brought us to our senses and brought us to
Christ. We were bond slaves of sin. We
were shackled with the chains of sin. We'd been taken captive
by Satan often at his own will. We would fall in prey to Satan. Satan had us in his clutches.
But there came a time when the Lord Jesus Christ came, and when
the Lord Jesus Christ broke the shackles of sin and showed us
that His blood had been shed in order that we might be freed,
that we might be emancipated, that we might no longer be in
the clutches of Satan, but that we might have the glorious liberty
that's only promised to the sons of God. Alright, now we were
under the just sentence of divine justice at that time. We were. The divine justice said, the
soul of the sinner that must die. Divine justice said, cursed
is he that continueth not in all the things that are written
in the book of the law to do them. And oh, that scripture,
how it ripped our hearts, how it spoke to us. And every time,
as I was reading this last week, a brother of Warburton's, John
Warburton's, the book is, the title of it is, The Mercies of
a Covenant God. And he was talking in that book
about how that verse of Scripture broke his heart when he was in
a lost condition. And every time he went to church,
he would watch the preacher because he thought that every time the
preacher opened the Bible, that he was going to open it to Galatians.
and he was going to read that scripture that cut his soul like
a knife. Cursed is he that continueth
not in aid of lay law. Those things that are written
in the book of the law to do them. And so it is that we were
in that state of sentence under divine justice, and it was that
that sword of justice was hanging over our very heads, and it would
soon, we felt it would soon that it would soon quench its fury
in our own blood, that it would soon damn us to hell, that we
would soon be separated from all mercy forever and ever. Ah,
we were under the sentence of divine justice. Do you know We
were in that state, we felt before God saved us, we felt that if
God sent us to hell, that we would have to there defend Him
for doing so. That we would have to stand before
the demons of hell and before the very devil himself and defend
God for sending us there because we were sinners. We were sinners,
we were undone, we were unclean. We were ramblin' sinners against
God. We'd broken His law. We had to trample under our feet
those things that were sacred. We had trampled underneath God's
holy law, and we would have had to defend God for His right in
sending us off into that awful place. We were under the sentence
of divine justice. All right, and then, it was inevitable
that God would punish our transgressions we've done. It was inevitable
that God would send us to Hell. But here, Christ, as we find
and reveal by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, He stepped
forth. He stepped forth, and the Lord Jesus Christ, he was
willing to be our surety. He was willing to be our substitute.
He was willing, he was willing to come, not only willing, but
able to come. He was without sin. And he stepped
forward near the lamp without blemish and without spot, and
he was willing to bear his back to the lance that should have
fallen upon us. Ah, he laid his soul underneath
that sword, and that sword of divine justice quenched It's
fury in Him when it ought to have fallen upon our heads. The
Lord Jesus Christ, beloved, has redeemed us forever. We were
redeemed right then and there when the Lord Jesus Christ was
made to be sinned and when the bloodhounds of God's justice
sought Him out and fetched from Him, as it were, that payment
which the law of God exacted upon every soul that sins, and
that is the payment of death. The Lord Jesus Christ, He did.
He did in reality die for us. Ah, it was with a precious. It
was with a precious price. It was something precious He
paid for you. It was His life's blood. That's
what it was. That blood of Christ was shed
to buy our souls from death and hell. And it's a wonder. There's
a wonder of compassion. There's a wonder of amazement
in this truth that the Lord Jesus Christ has bought us with a price. Now we think about him in the
Garden of Gethsemane. We think of the awful agonizing
prayer there in the Garden of Gethsemane. If it be possible,
let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, thy will be done.
We know he sweats over great drops of blood there in the Garden
of Gethsemane. And then the Lord Jesus Christ
was taken out. Oh, and so we picture Gethsemane,
and then we picture Golgotha. Oh, we look upon the brow of
that hill, and there the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, the sponge,
the vinegar, the nails, and the spear that crashed into His side,
the Lord Jesus Christ spilling out His last blood. It was there
that it whispered down to me, to you, if you please. child,
it's there where it whispered down, I want you with a price. The Lord Jesus Christ has shed
his blood, and this is an amazing thing. Now, to every person here
present, as I said, it's either a fact or it's not. It's either
true or it's not that he has bought you with a price. Now, let me just say a few things
about this. If the Lord Jesus Christ has
in reality and truth spoken unto us and said, I want you for the
price. If when you read these scriptures
they stand up and they speak as it were right to your heart,
you are up for the price. Listen to me. This is the most
important fact in all your history. Now it doesn't make any difference
where you were born. It doesn't make any difference
what your name is. It doesn't make any difference who your parents
were. It doesn't make any difference about your past. What's happened to
you? The good things that's befallen
you in your life? The greatest fact in all your
history is even that the Lord Jesus Christ has bought you with
a price. You might well say, let the day
perish wherein I was born, yet this is not a fact to me. And
if this is not a fact to you, you might well say, let the day
perish wherein I was born. Because the greatest fact in
any of our history is that we were both on Mount Calvary when
the Lord Jesus Christ was hanging on that cross, that we were in
Him, and that He was suffering in our womb and stayed in our
place, and that our hell was being suffered there by Him,
and it was for us. It's the most blessed fact in
our history. And in the next place, your connection
with Calvary is the most important thing about you right now. Most important thing about you. You say, well Richard, I've got
a pretty high position in this place or that place, and you
know I'm this and I'm that. Don't make any difference about
what you are now. The most important fact about
your situation now is that you're connected with a loving connection
to Calvary and to that place where Jesus to let it die, to
that place where Jesus represented these people. That's the most
important thing about you. Do you feel that? Oh, if you
feel that, it's not difficult to be the Lord's man right now,
the Lord's free man. It's not difficult to serve Him.
It's not difficult to love Him. It's not difficult to walk in
His ways, to please Him, to follow Him. It's not difficult. Don't
need any whip to get you to do it. You just say, I'm the Lord's
free man. Because the most important thing
about me now is that I have a connection with Mount Calvary. Alright? And this will be the most important
fact in all your future existence. What do they sing about up in
glory? In heaven. In your future existence. Through
the cycles of eternity. Ah, when we're up in glory, our
glorified memory, what will it be thinking about? What will
we be meditating about? What will we be singing about
in glory above? Ah, you can turn quickly to Revelation
chapter 5, and you can quickly see what will be the theme of
glory, the song of glory, what we'll be thinking about of yonder,
when the robe is called yonder, and we've answered here, and
we've joined the holy angels in the service of God day and
night. Listen to what it says, Revelation chapter 5. We read
again in verse 9 that they sung a new song, saying, Thou worthy
to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast
slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every
kindred, tongue, people, and nations, and hast made us unto
our God kings and priests, and we shall reign upon the earth.
And so the theme there will be that thou hast redeemed us, under
yourself, not from glory, the highest mountain, the highest,
the very highest mountain that we were ever on in our lifetime
will be Mount Calvary. That will be the highest mountain
in all of our lives is Mount Calvary, where Jesus bled and
died, where the price of our religion was paid out in full. All right, now, let us pass to
the second heading, and that is a plain consequence. If we've been bought with a price,
then there arises a plain consequence. And that is, first of all, in
a negative way, you're not your own. You're not your own. If
the Lord Jesus Christ has bought you with a price as we described,
and it is a blessed fact that He has bought these people, then
you're not your own. Oh, what an awful privilege.
What a wonderful privilege, we should say. It is that we are
not our own if we be the Lord's people. We're not our own. You
think with me about a ship on the sea that has been deserted.
of all of its crew. And here the ship is out on the
Atlantic, and it's been deserted, and it's all alone, as it were,
on the waters, and the waters bump at the ship, and the ship,
the storm comes, the ship is rocked, there's nobody at its
helm, and it's as an errant man there on the waters, and it's
all its own, and it's dashed to pieces by the flood, by the
flood of waves that come upon it. But as the people of God,
what a wonder it is that we are not derelict today. What a wonder
it is that we are not our own here in this world. I think one
of the most awful things that could be true about this is that
if it could be said You are your own. You belong to yourself. You're not owned by anybody.
You're just out here in the world. Nobody is at the helm. You don't
have anybody directing your life. There's no providential blessing
coming to your life. God is not governing your life.
You belong to yourself. You know, I think of that poor
sheep out on the mountainside, and if that sheep could think,
I believe that one of the most blessed things that can come
into the mind of that sheep as it's wandering out there on the
mountainside is that that sheep, that I have a shepherd. I have
a shepherd that will not lose willingly his property, but that
shepherd will come and bear me wherever I find myself. That
shepherd will come and fetch me. That shepherd will get me.
That shepherd will bring me. He'll not allow me to be lost.
He'll not allow me because I'm owned and I have a shepherd.
And it's wonderful, as a child of God, not to belong to ourselves,
but to know that God owns us. To know that God Almighty has
invested a tremendous price in us. He shed, Christ did, His
own precious blood in order that God might say, I owe you. You belong to me. You're not
your own. You're not your own. So I say, in a negative way,
it's wonderful. We have a pilot on board. That
pilot is the Lord Jesus Christ. God Almighty has pledged himself
to be our God forever and ever, and God will be our God. He'll
never abandon us and leave us where it may be said, Ye are
your own, because you're not your own. Alright? Now let's
just look at a couple things here. In the light of this, my
body is not my own. And that's what Paul's been teaching
us this morning. In the context here, our body
is not our own. We cannot do with it what we
would. We have no right to injure ourselves. We have no right to
enter these bodies. We have no right to be intemperate.
We have no right to in any way, in whatever way you might want
to say, we have no right to enter that property which belongs to
the living God. Because these bodies are borrowed,
if you please. You remember when one of the
sons of the prophet was hewing wood with Elisha, the prophet
of God, and he had an axe. And he was hewing the wood and
the axe head came off and went out into the water in the creek. And he said, Alas, master, alas,
master, it is borrowed, it is borrowed. And you remember that
the prophet made the arm of the cloak and the redeemed the head.
But his pride was, alas, master, it is borrowed, it is borrowed.
Some people might say, well, if it's borrowed, it don't make
any difference. It's not ours, so it's no loss to us. But a
child of God, one who knows that his very body has been bought
with a price, knows that his body belongs to God. It belongs
to Him. Your body is a member of Christ.
That individual recognizes that his body. And that he cannot
injure it, that he cannot be intemperate with it, that he
cannot in any way give himself and body to anything that's going
to destroy that which belongs to another, and that is to God. And you remember that. Because
there's a whole lot of things that we can just in our own hearts
make application of this truth with. You can make it about alcohol. You can make it about drugs.
You can make it about galactomy. You can make it about whatever
you want to. You can take whatever you want and apply it. And it
must be applied and seriously faced by every child of God.
You can't take this body and use it like you want. It belongs
to the Lord. He bought it with a price. All
right? I think we have no right to exercise
any capricious government over ourselves. We don't have any
right. His will must be our will. We
don't have any right to say, well, I'm going to take my life
and do with it what I please. And you know, one of the reasons
why it's so difficult in our day for us to declare, to demand
of men and women the full rights of the Lord Jesus Christ of all
men and women is because those who profess To know the Lord.
Those who have made a deceit as it were. Those who say that
they are now saved. What we call in our day saved.
Because they are constantly crying out, you will not let this man
rule over us. We will not have this man rule
over us. And they from there know what the word of God says
and have no regard. For the claims of the Lord Jesus
Christ upon their lives, the claims of the Christ in the Bible,
they never heard the voice of a demanding Christ. They never
heard that voice. And so they're constantly crying
out, in rebellion, we do not have this man to rule over us,
because they're not saying it in actual words, they're saying
it by their conduct. And I remember back in my experience
as a pastor in my younger days, how that I dealt with some people
who gave me the understanding that they were not going to be
told by God or man what they were going to do, yet they were
members of the church. They were professing people of
God, but they were not going to be told by anybody what they
were going to do. They were going to do as they pleased. They were
going to do as they pleased. Use their life like they wanted
to. Walk in the path that they chose. Do that which is acceptable
and pleasing to their own hearts. That's not the language of a
child of God. That's not the language of a man who's faced
with what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6.20. It's not the language of
a Christian of the thought child of the living God. The language
of a Christian is, nevertheless, not my will, thy will be done. I must do the will of God. I
must do God's will. If Jesus was doing the will of
the Father when He bought me, it behooves me to do the will
of the Father every day since I've come to realize the blessed
fact that He bought me when He died. And so we must live for
Him, for His glory. Now we have no right to serve
ourselves. Our object must not be our own ease, our own comfort,
our own honor, our own wealth. If our aims rise no higher than
this, than just our personal values, then we're bought to
the fact that we're bought with a price. If that's all we want
out of life, we want our ease, our comfort, our honor. We seek that in our activity
and what we do. We're just interested in ourselves.
And I pray we missed what Paul's telling us this morning. And
we're opposed to this fact that Christ has died for us in our
wombs. Now let's look at the positive
side of it very quickly. The positive side is this. That our
body and our spirits are God's. That they belong to Him. That
they're owned by Him. This is a certainty for the child
that God has the highest honor that we can possibly have bestowed
upon us. That God Almighty has actually said in His holy word
that I own your body and your spirit. Think about yourself. You know yourself better than
I do. God knows us all better than we know ourselves. And God
has said to his people, those worms, maggots in the dust, that
Christ came to represent and to die for, he said, I own you,
you're mine. That's the positive side of it.
Your body and your spirit, they're mine! They belong to me. Why? This means that they will rise
again, as Paul said in the first resurrection. It means, secondly,
that there's no mortgage or lien upon us. It means that we have
been totally redeemed. You know, I like that over there
in the Book of Exodus. When the children of Israel would be delivered
out of Egyptian bondage, they said there was not a book of
an animal going to be left. It was going to be a thorough
redemption. It was going to be a thorough,
complete redemption. And so it is with us, beloved,
that you and I, there is not a lean upon us. We're not givers
of the flesh to live after the flesh. We don't owe this flesh
anything to live after it in its lust. We do not. The Bible
says sin shall not lord it over you. Why? Because Jesus Christ
has delivered you. And now the thought is, as Paul
expressed it in Romans, is that we're sin abounded. Praise God.
does much more abound than the people of God. Those who have
experienced the grace of God in regeneration, they also experience
the grace of God in daily deliverance. Power, fresh power coming from
God into the soul every day to quicken them, to enable them
to face the foes of their lives. the devil, Satan, and the world,
and so on, and they're able to stand. And it's wonderful when
we lie down at night after hard days of struggle and difficulty,
after we've been faced with our own inward corruption, after
we've been faced and we've been made to see what we are by nature,
it's wonderful to lay down at night and say, and let those
words from the cross echo in our ears, it is finished. It
is finished. It is finished. You have been
completely bought and paid for. Now, I do not believe In this damnable heresy that
we hear so much talked about is so dishonoring to God, and
that is that a person can be born again, he can be quickened
by the Spirit, he can be put into Christ, and then he can
be lost again. This is a terrible, terrible
heresy because it does dishonor. I am the living Lord Jesus Christ
who died in our place at last. It does dishonor to Him. Jesus
said, I give unto my sheep eternal life. They shall never perish.
Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. You say, well,
I got to get tired of hearing that verse. I don't get tired
of quoting it. The scripture says that you shall
not be plucked out of His hand. My Father which gave to me is
greater than all. No man can pluck them out of His hand and
that's you. I've heard these Armenians that
would say, well, no man can do it but you can do it. You can
take your own self out of the hands of the Lord. Well, if you've
been truly bought with a price, He's not left you under any lien
or mortgage, and you don't belong to anybody else, no part of you
belongs to anybody else. You've been completely, thoroughly
redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and it's finished! And
you'll never belong to anybody else. You'll always belong to
the Lord Jesus Christ, because He wants you. Master Jesus is
ours! And we're His, thank God, forever
and ever. All right, then that brings us
to the natural conclusion of all this, and that is this, therefore
glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are His.
So in the purity of our bodies, Paul's talking about it here,
not being unchaste, not degrading, then the sacred temple of the
Holy Spirit in the purity of our lives. Yes, in the actual
practical holiness of our lives. Away with these that would say,
let us do evil, that good may come. Paul would say, God forbid
that you that are dead to sin should live any longer therein.
That's the language of the apostle Paul. God forbid. And so in the
purity of your own bodies, let us glorify God. Alright, the
scripture says, whether we eat or drink, We'll do all the glory
of God. Whatsoever we do, we'll do it
all for the glory of God. Having an eye toward God's glory
in everything. Whatever we do. Let's think about
it, beloved. Have we been living for the glory
of God? Is that the cry of our hearts? Lord, I work today to
support a family. But I've given the family to
Christ every while I'm working for Christ. Lord, when I go out
here in the world, And I do that which I am given to do, that
which I must do every day to earn a living. Am I living? Am I youthful? Am I fully surrendered
to thy will? Is my life? Is my Friday with
Lord Thy will be done? If it be, then I think you are
living for the Lord God. I think that's the intention
of your heart. If you want God's will to be done, if you're willing
to be faint into that which God chooses for your life, if you're
willing to have every talent that God's given you be used
for His honor and His glory, if that be the case, then I think
you are and you do desire and you want God to be glorified. And so much it must be in the
heart of a Christian that must be his pride, Lord be glorified.
Every sin I give, every time I open my mouth to speak a word
for God, may it not be in any way to show others what I am. or to call attention to myself,
but may it be that God will be glorified. When I give a witness,
a testimony, may it be that I might ascribe greatness unto our God
and exalt Him among men. Whatsoever we do, whether we
eat or drink, let's do it to the glory of God. Do it on purpose,
brother. Do it for God's glory. And if
you use that to check, your life, and to check your activity. It'll
help you a whole lot. What are you doing in your life
that can be said that is for the glory of God? What are you
doing? What are you doing that can be
said that is not for the glory of God? What I'm doing is not
for His glory. The natural conclusion of all
this is that we're to glorify God in our bodies and in our
spirits, in our zeal for the Lord. Ah, listen. We've worked
hard for sin. We really did. When we were in
the ways of sin, we worked mighty hard. We were the servants of
Satan. And brother, let me tell you
something. As it were, we were a willing horse in the service
of Satan. We drew his wagon mighty fast
and mighty swiftly. We were willing to bear the load
that Satan put upon our backs. And we were real energetic and
zealous. Ah, we remembered all the words
of the different songs that came into our ears. And we were very
quick to tell the stories that came. All how we served Satan
before. And all the awful oaths that
came out of our mouth. We could very quickly and freely
speak and curse and blaspheme the name of God. We were in service. We were with the servants in
the service of Satan. And now that we're here, now
that we've been born again, Now that we know the price, now that
we know it in fact, how jealous we ought to be in the service
of the Lord. How willing we ought to be when we were in the service
of Satan. We would take our earnings and
we would spend them in foolishness and spend them for our own self-gratification. How much now should we be willing
to be spent and used and use all that we have that God's given
us to be used to that end that He would desire, that end that
He would purpose, what He would show us in our lives. Be willing
to be used to the death for the glory of this one Jesus Christ. Willing servants. Sell us, third
servant, just like we were in the service of Satan. Alright,
now when a man sets himself up as one owned by God, and I'm
going to close now, but when a man goes out into the world,
and he sets himself up, and he says to somebody, I'm not my
own. He says to the people he works
with, I'm not my own. He says to his own family, I'm
not my own. He says, God owns me. I'm God's
man. Ah, he costs us a great deal
of curiosity, does he not? He does indeed. Because people
say, wait a minute, I've never heard that verse in my life.
Here's a fella that claims he's not his own. Here's a fella that
says that God owns him. Here's a fella that says he's
God's man, that God has purchased him and bought him for the price.
Let's look to see what kind of a fella this is. Let's watch
this fella. Let's observe this fella. We're
going to see something here. Ah, but what do they see? What
do they see? What do they see? Let it shame
our hearts what the world sees. The Bible says your lights in
the world, lights that are set up on a hill cannot be here.
The Bible says let our light so shine before men that they
might see our good works and glorify our God which is in heaven. Our Father which is in heaven.
Our God which is in heaven. Glorify Him. Listen to me now. We better take heed to ourselves
about how We represent the God we claim owns us when we get
out here in the world. We're going to have to keep to
ourselves. We're going to have to be very careful about this.
We're going to have to watch this thing because men are curious
and we've told them God owns us. God has bought us. We belong
to Him. That's our testimony. I'll tell
you there's some Christians that you would never know. You would
never know. You would never know that they've
been born with a Christ if it wasn't for the label that they
wear that tells you. They tell you, you know, they
say, I'm Christian. But if you used to watch them,
they didn't know you was one. And if you used to watch them,
listen to the way they talk, listen to the way they carry
on, listen to what they do. You just watch what they do in
the world. And if it wasn't for the label that they tell you
that they wear, I'm Christian, you would never know that there
was a Christian. And ah, for the kind of people,
bless God, who are all out, who are enthusiastic, who are very,
very much concerned about the practical application of what
we've been talking about this morning. Oh, I know I'm his,
and I might be more fully his in my daily life. in my daily
practice, in my daily walk, that I might be full of Him, that
I might show these curious observers around what a God-bought man
really is, what a child of the living God really is in truth. A man is filled with the Spirit,
walking in the Spirit, not fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind. A man who is crucified, mortified at the deeds of the
body. A man who is alive in the Lord. A man who has the elect
of God has put on as one holy and beloved of God vows of mercy,
kindness, and all of the gifts and graces of the Spirit, the
fruits of the Spirit. Let's walk in that manner. So
as to glorify God in our bodies and our spirits, which are His.
Now that, as I said, is the natural conclusion of the blessed fact
and of the plain consequence That's the natural conclusion.
May God bless it to your heart. I hope none of us are ever the
same again. I hope God has so birthed this
truth into ours that we go out of this place, never forget it,
as we traverse the rest of our pilgrimage in this world. Let's stand on our feet. Brother
Howard, will you lead us in a hymn?

You Are Not Your Own

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You Are Not Your Own

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