Text: Ephesians 4:22-24; I Corinthians 6:12-20 Title: Detoxing Your Relationships Sexual Insanity Pt.2 SERMON BUMPER Let s open our Bibles to I Corinthians 6. We re in this series entitled Detoxing Your Relationships, and again today we re talking about detoxing from sexual insanity. The Bible s clear teaching is that God graciously gave physical intimacy as an expression of love between a man and a woman who are married. Anything outside of that is sinful and hazardous to our relationships. ILLUSTRATION Physical intimacy is like a fire. In the fireplace, it keeps us warm so let it blaze. The will of God is to keep that fire kindled within the marriage fireplace. Outside the fireplace, it burns the house down. There s shame, guilt, disease, unexpected pregnancy, a crippled prayer life and a ruined witness and lots of other horrible consequences. Now believers in every age have wrestled with sexual temptation in our hearts, but also with the insanity that surrounds us in our culture. Every age seems to find new ways to pervert God s good gift. It was true in the ancient city of Corinth where believers had to stand strong and pure in that immoral environment. And like he did in his teaching to the Ephesians, Paul starts with a reminder of who they are in Christ. Read I Corinthians 6:9-10. Let me stop here and say that the Bible is clear that heterosexual immorality and homosexual immorality are clearly outside the will of God. There are scholars who teach that this passage doesn t apply to homosexual activity today. They re wrong. Also let me say that if you have committed sexual immorality or stolen something or got drunk doesn t necessarily mean you won t go to heaven. What keeps a person from going to heaven is not trusting Christ. But when you trust Christ you become a new person. You re part of the invisible Kingdom of God that one day will become visible. Your identity is no longer defined by immorality or stealing or drunkenness. In fact, that s what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:11 - And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. No matter what you ve done in the past, you can be washed, forgiven, sanctified, made holy, completely justified and declared not guilty when you come to Christ. And after you are saved, if you sin the same forgiveness is available when we confess and repent. And from that point forward He gives you power to overcome
temptation through His Spirit who lives in you. So let s just keep on reading here. It s a lengthy passage but you need to hear it read. Read I Corinthians 6:12-20. Now I showed you last week that the teaching on sexual integrity here in I Corinthians 6 is anchored to two connected commands. COMMAND #1-1 Corinthians 6:18a - Flee from sexual immorality. It s interesting that for other sins we are told to fight and to overcome. But with sexual immorality we are to run put as much distance as possible between ourselves and that lifestyle. This immorality includes every kind of sexual activity outside of the marriage relationship, whether it happens in a bed, in front of a computer screen or just in our minds. Run from it. ILLUSTRATION To put it another way, it s sort of like speed limit signs on the highway. I know it says that the speed limit is 65 mph. But surely they don t intend for me to drive 65 mph. I know it s really dangerous to drive 90, but what about, say, 70? Isn t that close enough? Unfortunately that s the way believers think of sin, including sexual sin. It s just going a little over the limit. God doesn t say go 65 hoping we will stay below 70. Sexual integrity means we stay within the boundaries God has established. But that there s another command here in these verses that gives us an even greater and higher calling. COMMAND #2 1 Corinthians 6:20b Honor God with your body. Sexual integrity means we integrate our worship of God into everything we do with our bodies. We have a body for one reason: to be an instrument for glorifying and honoring God. We worship God with our whole existence the visible and the invisible the physical and the spiritual. Let me show you the why of sexual integrity. And it isn t just because you re Baptist or just want to be a good person. It s higher and greater than that. We use our bodies to worship God and not for sexual immorality 1. BECAUSE GOD CREATED OUR BODIES Everything God creates He creates for His glory.
1 Corinthians 6:13b - The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now the Corinthians were Greeks, and the Greek way of looking at this was that everything physical, including the body, is basically evil and of no value. What you did with, or to, your body didn t really matter. They would say, Sex is no different from eating. The stomach was made for food, and the body was made for sex. It s all biology. So sleep with anyone you like. But the Bible teaches that God created our bodies for worship and not for immorality. It says in v.13 that our bodies are for the Lord and (get this) the Lord is for our bodies. That means that every desire that comes along with this body, physical, emotional or spiritual, has already been covered by God. You have a desire for food and God has provided for that. You have a desire for love and God has provided for that. You have a desire for sexual intimacy. God has provided for that in the relationship of a husband and a wife. So we live in sexual integrity because God created our bodies for His glory, but also 2. BECAUSE GOD WILL RESURRECT OUR BODIES Now we have in v.14 one of the basic doctrines of our faith. Believer, this is what is ahead for you. 1 Corinthians 6:14 - By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. After Christ died God raised Him from the dead signaling to us what He intends to do with all of creation in the future. The Bible says one day Christ will come again and the dead in Christ will be raised with new bodies just like Jesus had when He was raised. And with our new bodies we will inhabit a new heaven and a new earth for eternity. So what does this have to do with sexual integrity? It teaches us the value that God places on our bodies. Our bodies are not like paper cups and plates that we throw away when we re done using them. God created our bodies. And, yes, because of sin we live in fallen, broken bodies that struggle with sin. But one day God will make all things new, including the bodies of all believers. So what we do with our bodies in this life matters.
But it goes even deeper. We flee sexual immorality and honor God with our bodies 3. BECAUSE WE CONNECT WITH CHRIST IN OUR BODIES 1 Corinthians 6:15 - Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! When we are saved, Christ actually takes up residence in our bodies by His Holy Spirit. The church is called the Body of Christ, and in a very real way, every individual believer is connected to Jesus Christ, bodily. So because of our union with Him what we do with our bodies, we do with Jesus. Remember that the culture in Corinth was saturated with sexual immorality. And prostitution was as common as convenience stores in our city. Some Christians had no problem engaging in this kind of casual sex. So Paul asks this incredulous question: Shall I take the body that is connected to Christ and unite it with a prostitute? By the way, the word take literally means to take away or steal. Your body belongs to Christ. 1 Corinthians 6:16 - Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, The two will become one flesh. This reference to one flesh here takes us back to Genesis and to God s intention in creation of a permanent union between a man and a woman. Jesus taught this as well. God intends for a husband and wife to become one. And the physical oneness that comes with sex is powerful. It is not just the merging of two bodies it is also the mingling of two souls. And when a man or a woman engages in sex outside of marriage, they are taking something that God intended to cement a lasting union between a husband and wife, and corrupting it in a moment of sensual pleasure. It wasn t intended for that. 1 Corinthians 6:17 - But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. So we re back to the first command:
1 Corinthians 6:18 - Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. This tells us that while sexual sin is not necessarily the worst sin, there is a power to this kind of sin that is unlike any other. Scholars tell us that the word body used all the way through our text is not just a sack of bones, and muscle and organs. It has to do who you are as a person. This kind of sin affects your whole person; it s not just about your physical body. ILLUSTRATION When I was a kid I was climbing over a chain link fence. My foot slipped and my leg got cut on one of those barbs at the top of the fence. It was a pretty bad gash and I had to get stitches. I still have the physical scar, but it hasn t scarred me in any other way. I don t have problems relating to others because of that cut. It didn t affect my self-esteem. I remember the details because it hurt at the time, but I was not wounded in my soul. But if you ve been involved in sexual immorality, or you re a victim of rape or abuse, you know that your soul is wounded. Physical intimacy is supposed to cement souls together for the purpose of strengthening marriage and for producing offspring. Sexual activity outside of that wounds the soul. 1 Corinthians 6:19 - Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? God didn t just save your soul. He saved you body, soul and spirit. And your body becomes a temple, a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. So when we engage in immorality, sin is entering into the domain where the Spirit of God lives. It s totally incompatible. Now we come to the next reason for us to honor God with our bodies 4. BECAUSE GOD HAS REDEEMED OUR BODIES (v.19b-20) 1 Corinthians 6:19b-20 - You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. That phrase bought at a price paints the picture of someone who is set free because someone else paid the price. This is what the Bible calls redemption. By His death on the cross Christ paid the price for our freedom from slavery to sin.
We are no longer slaves to sin but servants of God. He is our Master body and soul. So honor God with your body. And that becomes the highest motivation for our life. But people still think that it just isn t realistic to expect that a guy and a girl can remain sexually pure or that a husband and wife can guard their sexual integrity. ILLUSTRATION Pastor J.D. Greear tells the story of when he was having this conversation with some college guys he was ministering to. When he challenged the guys with this truth they couldn t believe it. Sexual desires are so powerful you just can t control them, so why try? J.D. said, Yes you can, and I will prove it. He said, Suppose you re alone with your girlfriend in her apartment and things are getting really heated. There s a point where you ve both lost control and you think there s no turning back. And the guys say, Yeah, that s what we mean. J.D. continues: Suppose that at that moment your girlfriend s dad walks in the door. He s a Navy Seal just returned from Afghanistan and there you are with his daughter. Do you think you can stop? Sure you can. Why? The presence of the father has changed everything. What if in the moments of great temptation, whether it s sexual or any other sin, we could remember that our heavenly Father is in the room? In fact, through Christ, by His Spirit, He is actually living in us. That s the secret to self-control. That s the motivation for fleeing sexual immorality. That s the calling to honor God with our bodies.