Would you follow along please as I read?
All things are laughable unto me, but all things are not expedient.
All things are laughable for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
Food's for the body, and the body for foods.
But God shall destroy both it and them.
Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
And God hath both raised up the Lord, and hath also raised up us by his own power.
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 the harlot?
God forbid!
What?
Know ye not that he who is joined to the harlot is one body?
For to self he shall be one flesh, but he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit, free fornication.
Every sin that a man doeth is outside the body, but he that comitteth fornication sinneth against his own body.
But know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom 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.
To understand some of what Paul is saying here, we need to remember something about the heavy religion practiced there in Corinth.
The course worshiped the Greek or Roman mythological gods.
In Corinth was a temple that was dedicated to the so-called goddess Aphrodite, as she was known to the Greeks, or Venus, as she was known to the Romans.
Aphrodite supposedly sprung from the foam of the ocean.
And that's where she gets her name, Aphrodite, it means, from the foam.
Aphrodite of Venus was the goddess of love.
Part of the worship of Aphrodite and her temple in the city of Corinth involved so-called sacred prostitutes, or harlots.
Rather than being ashamed to have relations with such a person, the citizens of Corinth were encouraged to do so, because to them it was not desecration, but it was consecration.
It was an act of worship for them to have relations with those women who were part of the temple of Aphrodite.
Apparently, some of the Corinthians were having a tough time breaking their old ideas.
In other words, they were still carrying on to some extent in this immoral practice.
And so the apostle writes to them to remind them of some important truths regarding the believer's body.
We want to look at those today.
The pastor Paul came to the city of Corinth to deliver to them the message of salvation by grace.
He declared to them that they were no longer under the condemnation of the Mar, if they trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, but they were delivered from condemnation and were set free, they were liberated.
Apparently, some of the people of Corinth took that idea, I am free from the Mar, everything is okay, to an extreme.
And so Paul begins in verse 12, our text today, by quoting some of them.
He says, all things are lawful.
You see, that's what they were saying.
Everything is okay.
It doesn't make any difference now.
We're not under law, we're under grace.
God forgives us by grace.
Therefore, all things are lawful.
But, says Paul, all things are not expedient.
Again, he quotes them, all things are lawful.
Paul says, yes, that's true for me too, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
In this first verse, verse 12, the apostle gives to us some important principles regarding the use of our bodies.
When Paul says all things are lawful, he is not saying that what the Bible clearly condemns is suddenly okay.
He is not saying what.
He is saying that in the realm of things where the Bible does not clearly delineate right and wrong, he says, rule out liberty.
All things are lawful for us.
But then he gives two principles that sort of bring that idea, all things are lawful, into focus.
There are still those today who say, well, I'm a Christian, I live under grace.
And I can do whatever I want to do. I am liberated.
You see, the idea of Christian liberty means that I am set free from one master, sin, that I might serve another master, Jesus Christ.
It does not mean that I am free to do whatever I want to do.
It means that I am set free to give myself now to Jesus Christ and to be a slave to him.
And so Paul says, yes, in this realm of things that are questionable, all things are lawful, you have liberty.
But he says, remember these two important principles, and then he gives them.
He says, all things are lawful, but all things are not expedient.
In other words, all things do not bring profit to me.
That's what the word expedient really means. All things are not profitable.
It's a combination of two words, a verb and a preposition.
In the original language, it means to bring with.
Paul says, yes, there are things that I may do. I am free from the last condemnation.
But in so doing, I am not bringing with that up any profit to me or to others.
It gives no advantage. There is no benefit to it.
And so he says, Paul, should I then be involved?
Now, this can be applied to many, many areas of our lives.
Let me just select one isolated area.
This is not a hobby horse with me.
I only select this area so that it will go down to the realm where the rubber meets the road and gets to be a little more practical, perhaps.
Here's one way this principle can be applied.
Among believers, there are those who feel that attending a movie is wrong.
Certainly, there are some movies that are absolutely a disgrace to anybody to see.
But there are those who say we've heard about some of the good movies as they've even.
Is there a law in the Bible that says I cannot go to a movie?
The answer to that is no, there is not.
There is not a law that says thou shalt not attend a movie theater.
In fact, there is. It's in the book of Hezekiah, and I don't have that one in my Bible.
So it's lawful to go.
But is there any other scriptural principle that we might bring to bear on that?
Yes, I think the very thing before us now can be brought to bear.
And before I attend a theater, I should consider this question.
What benefit will my going bring to me?
Is it necessary for me to go?
Is it going to build me up in my faith?
Is it going to bring advantage to me or to others?
And I need to seriously weigh that question as I decide whether it's right for me to go or not.
There are other principles involved.
We're going to get to some of them in chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians.
We'll hang around a few weeks.
We'll go home in the meantime and come back, but we will get to those in chapter 8.
But this is one principle that needs to be applied to that specific question,
and it can be applied to other things as well.
So principle number one, does it bring spiritual profit?
This action that I'm considering, which I'm free to do, is it expedient?
Question number two, also in verse 12.
Paul says, I may do all things, yes, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
In other words, he was saying this, will this enslave me?
There's no law against it.
I am free in Christ, but will this action become my master?
Again, this can be applied in many ways.
I may select one, but perhaps a little bit far out, but maybe it applies to somebody here today.
We have a very dear friend who attends a church that we've formerly pastored,
and her problem began to develop when she realized that she could not stop eating chocolate.
She was a chocolate hawk.
Now, I like chocolate. I don't know about you.
My wife especially likes it. She likes double chocolate chip cookies with chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips in it,
and she would probably eat it with chocolate spoons and chocolate dishes if she could find some.
I'm not quite that far out, but I like chocolate.
I don't know any place in the Bible where it says eating chocolate is sin.
I hope it doesn't.
I'm not going to look you about because I like it too much.
So it's an authority to eat chocolate, but the question is, can it become enslaving?
It can.
It doesn't for everybody, but for our dear friend it did.
Her husband realized that she was eating too much chocolate.
I mean, after a while you do begin to realize that.
And so he told her, no more chocolate.
She said, okay.
And then she began to hide it around the house.
She put it up in the closet in the back, in the back of the drawer, so that all over the house she had chocolate hidden.
And finally one day she woke up and realized that although there was no Bible commandment against eating chocolate,
it had become her master.
She craved it. She had to have chocolate throughout the day.
And she realized that for her, chocolate was sin because it became her master and she became its slave.
That's what Paul is saying here.
So there's no law against it.
So you're free in Christ.
But will this bring you into slavery?
That's a principle regarding our bodies.
We need to keep that in mind.
Now the apostle goes on to talk about the purpose of our bodies beginning in verse 13.
The first thing he says to us is what the body is not for.
Basically he says it is not an instrument simply to give me pleasure as I gratify my body appetites.
And he seems to be talking in two areas here.
First he talks about gluttony.
He says the body is not for gluttony.
Oh yes, food is for the body and the body is for foods.
Apparently that was another one of the crendius statements.
The Roman world was well known for its gluttonous feasts in which the people would grudge themselves upon food
and then leave the banquet hall.
They would get rid of the food they had just eaten and come back in and eat some more.
Now you don't have to do all that to be a glutton.
But that shows the extreme case of gluttony in some of their feasts.
And their statement was well the body is made for food and foods are made for the body.
Let's have a good time with it.
Paul says yes and the Lord is going to destroy both foods and the body.
Both foods and the body are temporal he says.
The body he says is not made for sinning with gluttony.
And then he gets to the real point he is concerned about in the context.
He says neither is the body for fornication.
That's number two.
What is the purpose of the body?
First it is not for gluttony.
It is not for foods.
Although food is necessary.
It's certainly lawful to eat food and we all enjoy doing it.
But there's more than just eating to life.
Did you know that?
Number two he says nor is the body for fornication.
The four we have defined fornication in its broadest sense.
And refers to sexual immorality of any kind.
Paul states here clearly unequivocally that the body is not for sexual immorality.
Now we live in a day when that is traditional thought.
That as you grow up everybody does it.
And you're foolish if you don't take advantage of satisfying your sexual appetites.
The Corinthians felt that way.
They felt that it was just a normal body appetite just like eating food is normal.
And therefore it's intended to be a satisfied.
And so they did it in the way that we talked about earlier at the temple of acrobatic.
Paul says the body is not for fornication.
Even though it's acceptable in the culture of that day in the city of Corinth.
He says no it is not for that.
Did you hear that?
In our own culture today which is not unlike the Corinthian culture in some respects.
The body is not for sexual immorality.
And what is the body for?
Let's put it in a positive mode.
What he says very clearly in the last part of verse 13.
That our bodies are for the Lord and the Lord is for the body.
In other words our bodies are the Lord's instruments for accomplishing his work in the world.
That's what our bodies are for.
That's the purpose of my body and yours.
The Lord Jesus Christ is at this moment in heaven physically.
But he dwells in us by his spirit as we will see in a few moments.
And he uses our bodies to accomplish his work in this world around us.
As part of the purpose of the physical body that you have and which I have.
Again in verse 14 he reminds us that our bodies are permanent.
Now the Corinthians followed the kind of reasoning that said the body is something that is just in the way.
It encumbers the immaterial part of us.
Therefore whatever you do with your body it doesn't really make any difference.
Only the inside, the immaterial part, counts.
Therefore do anything you want to do with your body is just be careful of the inside.
And Paul is saying look I want you to know that your body is a permanent body.
Now by that he didn't mean that we would always live in the same identical bodies that we have now.
But he says the Lord and God have both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us by his own power.
And Paul is looking to the day when our bodies will be resurrected from the grave new bodies,
demerified bodies.
And he says that you and I will always live in this body.
Now there is a period of time if we die in Christ before Jesus comes when we will be separated from our bodies,
our physical bodies.
Our souls are going to be with Christ, our physical bodies are laid into the grave.
You understand that.
We also believe that the New Testament teaches that there is a temporal covering for the soul
in this intermediate time from death until the resurrection.
But Paul is saying in general that we will always have a body.
We will never be spirits just floating around the universe somewhere.
It is God's plan that we will always be in a body.
So he says the body isn't something that is going to be destroyed and forever set aside.
He says your body is something very, very special.
God gave it to you to live in this world.
It is fitted now for this life.
Some day he's going to raise us up like he raised up Jesus.
Our bodies are going to be fitted for the spirit world as well as the physical world.
It will be fitted for eternity, not just time.
It will be a new body, but we will always have bodies.
So Paul says what you do with your body is important.
Thirdly, he says in verses 15 and 16 that our bodies are joined or united with Christ.
Look at what he says.
Don't you know that your bodies are the members of Christ?
He says shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of Inharlet?
God forbid.
He says, in fact, don't you know that he who is joined to Inharlet is one body?
Then he quotes from Genesis, two said he shall be one flesh.
What he is saying here is that to abuse my body in the way that he describes here is in a sense to take the members of Jesus Christ and to unite them with Inharlet.
He says God forbid that you should ever do that.
Frankly, that is a repulsive and disgusting thought to me.
It was to Paul that he intended for it to be just as disgusting as it seems.
Because he says our bodies are the members of Christ.
Therefore to commit this sin, he says, is a sin against Jesus Christ in an unspeakable way.
And because our bodies are the members of Christ, finally he says our bodies are sacred, verses 17 and 18.
He says not only are we one with Christ in that sense, but we are one in a spiritual sense.
He who is joined under the Lord is one spirit, free fromnication.
Every sin that a man doeth is outside the body, but he that committed fornication sins against his own body.
He says because our bodies are sacred and because we are one with Jesus Christ, we are to free fornication.
To commit fornication is in a sense to commit spiritual bigamy.
Because you see the act of marriage or the act of love is not just a physiological act,
but it is a spiritual act that involves the very only part of us.
That flies in the face of the whole philosophy of our world system, but it is God's revelation that it is so.
If we are but animals and the products of evolution, then what difference does it really make what we do with our bodies?
But if we are more than that, if we are in fact the creation of God as the Bible says that we are,
and if this act of love is the intertwining not only of body but of spirit, then what we do in that act of love is very, very significant.
And so he says, free fromnication.
Our bodies are not toys to be played with.
God has set into motion certain laws of health that cause violation of the very thing we are talking about to be punished by disease.
The apostle here comes down as strongly as he possibly can upon the immorality or the immorality, whatever you want to call it, of our day.
The purpose of our body is that it is the Lord's.
It is for his use to accomplish his will in this world.
It is not for our use so that we can fulfill unlawfully the appetites of our bodies.
Having said that, let me say very, very clearly that the appetites that our bodies have are given to us of God.
God has wonderfully provided for our appetites to be fulfilled and satisfied.
But outside of the way that God has provided for it, it is sin.
No matter what color we try to make it, it is sin inside of God.
No matter what excuse we use for it, no matter what the psychologist or the psychiatrist says, the Bible calls it sin.
In verses 19 and 20 we have the precept regarding our bodies and it is very simply this.
Not only are we the three fornication, but we are to glorify God in our bodies.
That is a command.
He says glorify God in your body.
There are three reasons why we are to do this.
We are going to name them in reverse order as they are found in our text.
First, what is in verse 20, he says, you are back with a price.
Therefore, glorify God in your body.
In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ has paid the price for us.
He has purchased us out of the slave market of sin.
And because we have been purchased, we belong to him and we are to glorify him in the bodies he has purchased.
That is in number two, it is found in the previous verse.
The second reason we are to glorify God in our bodies is because we are not our own and God is in us.
His spirit dwells within us.
What kind of a spirit is God's spirit?
It is the Holy Spirit, the pure Spirit.
The pure Holy Spirit of God lives in us.
How can we then take our bodies and commit the sin that he is talking about here?
Reason number three, we are to glorify God is found in verse 19.
It is not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The temple in the Old Testament was the place where God communed with his people.
That is where business was done with God.
As we have stated before, so I state again, this building that we meet in is not where God lives.
Sometimes we correct our children and we say, now don't run, this is God's house.
Well perhaps they should not run, but my friend, this is not God's house.
It's not a torn that we meet in.
This is a building.
God's house, God's temple is your body and mine, we are believers.
That is where God does his business.
He communes with us inside our bodies in our spirits.
That's why we are to glorify God in our bodies and not disgrace him with what we do with our bodies.
Our bodies are very special and very sacred and I want to close this morning by being even more explicit
than I have been in some application.
Obviously there are some things that could be said more directly,
but we want to be careful because there's a broad spectrum of ranges here this morning.
Let me apply what we have said in two or three very specific ways.
Because my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and I am to glorify God in it,
it matters how I dress.
You and I live in an age in which it is customary not to see how nicely we can dress,
but to see how nicely we can undress.
This is especially true in the summertime.
One can drive down the road or walk down the street or go to a park
and if one has eyes and a brain, one has to be confronted with embarrassment of what can be seen.
I want to implore all of us to consider this, both men and women,
but we be careful how we treat our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Not that our bodies are to be ashamed of.
God has given our bodies to us, but there is a proper way to dress them.
Nudity, which is so common in our day, or near nudity, which is so much more common even,
I think is a symptom of a society that has begun to be demonized.
In the Gospels you will find that it was the man who was demon-possessed, as we call it, or demonized,
who ran around without any clothes on.
The whole tendency of the last 15 years to undress is the part of the symptoms of the fact that our age,
upon our age, has unleashed a whole army of demonic spirits to cause the morals of our society to be broken down.
It's important how we dress.
We say, well then, how long should skirts be? Or are shorts right?
The Bible doesn't answer those questions specifically, but it does give us an important principle that's to be followed.
And the principle is one of modesty.
I think it's really up to the individual, up to mom and dad and the family, to establish propriety and modesty for each home.
And then what a person wears around the house is one thing, but what a person wears in public is another thing too, isn't it?
What a person may wear around the house, he may not wear to church.
It matters how I dress this temple of the Holy Spirit.
I wish I had about 10 more minutes to talk about that. I don't.
So I'm going to stop there.
But I pray that you will receive my words. I do not say them with any harshness.
I do not say them with any person in mind.
I am simply saying that as we dress our bodies, we reflect our spiritual understanding of what our bodies are.
It matters too what I eat.
Now, if I've been stepping on your toes, just pulling back into the pew a little more, because I've got some more walking to do.
Someone has said that we Americans are digging our graves with our teeth, and they're not far from wrong.
Because my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, I need to be careful what I put into my body, and how I treat my body,
the foods that I eat, and how much I eat.
We've talked about gluttony already this morning, but not even in terms of eating too much for the moment.
Let's just think in terms of the kind of nutrition that we eat.
In this day of fast foods and junk foods, it is easy for us to allow our bodies to be less than they ought to be because of that kind of a dialogue.
But it's also true that I can eat too much of nutritious food.
Someone has said, yeah, he's a sharp dresser, but his middle drawer hangs out.
Well, that might be said of a lot of us.
We need to be careful in this matter of what we eat.
And then we apply it in another way too.
Because my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, I need to be careful how I exercise it so that I keep it in shape.
It is true bodily exercise profits little, that is, for a little time, but there is some profit in that.
Certainly godliness is much more important.
It profits not only in this life, but in that which is to come.
Don't underestimate the importance of physical exercise and relaxation for that matter, because our bodies need that.
What I'm simply saying to you today is this.
Our bodies are God's temples.
He lives in your body.
It is important how we dress it.
It is important how we feed it.
It is important how we exercise it.
It is important how we use it.
Glorify God in your body.
Let's pray.
Father, we live in a day when there is very much emphasis upon the body.
There are so many excesses.
There are those who make gods out of their own bodies by physical exercise and discipline, until they begin to worship their own muscles.
On the other hand, there are others who are so careless they become sloppy and lazy.
And there are others who think nothing of the very kind of sin that we've been talking about this morning in fornication and sexual immorality.
Deliver us, I pray, from allowing our standards to be set by our culture.
And rather set our standards for our actions by your word.
Help us individually and as families to take the principles we've talked about this morning and apply them to our lives in a meaningful way.
With our heads bowed and our eyes closed and as we bring our service to its culmination.
I wonder today, right now, who you're sitting there,
if the Spirit of God has said something to you about your use of this temple.
After all, you're not the only one in that body of yours if you're a Christian.
The Holy Spirit is there too.
How are you treating it?
Are you glorifying or honoring God in your body?
It may be that the Lord doesn't dwell in your body because you're not saved.
You've never been born into God's family.
God doesn't dwell in you.
You don't dwell in him.
And you're lost.
If the Spirit of God is speaking to you about a need today, will you settle that issue with him right now?
Why are you seated?
As a Christian, will you say, Lord, my body is yours?
I confess these sins and name them.
And then ask his grace to give you victory in those areas where there's been defeat and failure, even sin.
If you've never trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, will you right now open your heart to him?
He's able to deliver you from the guilt, the penalty of sin.
He died and rose again for your salvation.
Will you invite him into your life to save you?
Let's stand together, please, and sing what the organ is playing.
All to Jesus I surrender.
All to him I freely give.
And as we sing this, if there's a particular need that you have,
we'd like someone to pray with you.
I invite you to come and meet me here at the front.
It's 451 if you need it.
But most of us don't need it.
We know the roads.
In coming, you're not saying that you've been immoral this week, necessarily.
You're simply saying, God has spoken to me.
There's a spiritual need in my life.
Not like someone to share this with me in prayer.
As we sing this hymn of surrender and dedication, you still ought to meet me here at the front right now.
All to Jesus.