1 Corinthians 6:12-7:9

1 Corinthians 6:12-7:9

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Glorify God in Body and Spirit

12 All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. 13 Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

18 Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Principles of Marriage

1 Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me:

It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 But I say this as a concession, not as a commandment. 7 For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that.

8 But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; 9 but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), 1 Cor 6:12-7:9

• Transcript

  And we'll make sure this goes live. Oh almost I think my computer froze on me. Hold on oh this isn't any fun when that starts happening Okay, so Facebook doesn't want to work with me Give me one moment I guess it's not going to Facebook today. That's all right well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Coffee and devotions is where every day you and I we get together. We get into God's Word. We have a little bit coffee, and we grow in our love for the Lord together and this year 2022 will make it from the book of Acts to the book of fine Lehman. So happy to be with you this morning. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get the Lord's word. Let's pray. Father, what a blessing it is to come to your word to hear from you. Father, we pray that your spirit would be working in us. Please teach us please make us more and more like Jesus. ng his name we pray. Amen. All right, so we are at first Corinthians chapter six. I need to apologize for something I did yesterday. I kind of jumped ahead. I've brought out something in the calling portion. That's not actually until today's passage it fit yesterday. That's fine, Flee sexual immorality. But that verse isn't actually until later in chapter six what we're going to be doing today so we're gonna finish chapter six and start into chapter seven. We'll get to verse nine together. Let's go ahead and go into God's word First Corinthians chapter six. beginning at verse 12. All things are lawful for me. But all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any food for the stomach and stomach for foods. But God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not think or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one with one body with her? For the two he says shall become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. With him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commit sexual immorality sins against his own body, or do you not know that the that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For You were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Now concerning the things which you wrote to me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection to her and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, a husband does not have authority over his own buddy body, but his wife does. Do not deprive one another, except with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer. And come together again, so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self control. But I say this as a concession, not as a commandment, for I wish that all men were even as I'm myself, but each one has his own gift from God. One in this manner and another in that, but I say to the unmarried and to the widows, it is good for them if they remain even as I am. But if they cannot exercise self control, let them marry For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. Well, we need to ask ourselves a, what are these two sections about? Being what's the best verse to summarize this and see what are we called to do in response to these passages? Right, so a What is this about? Well, the first part is really about these Christians. In the church who are given over to a sense of hedonism, right? This idea that that they could do whatever they want and God doesn't care you know, it's, he's, he's saved their souls, but their bodies really don't matter. That's the first section verses chapter 612 through the end of the chapter, but then in the second part of the, of this section, chapter seven, verses one through nine, this is dealing with people who are overly spiritual, right and who who are seeing marriage as as something like, not important and, and the Lord is telling us here, hold on, hold on, there's both of these are steering the wrong way. Or there's people in the church in Corinth who are saying things like the stomach for food and in food for the stomach, right? It's just natural. You got to do this right. Your God gave us bellies and we got to put food. God gave us private parts. He gave us sexual reproductive organs, and we just got to use them right? It doesn't really matter. You could do whatever you want with your body. And here's Paul says, no, no, hold on. It does matter what you do with your body. God places so much value on the body, that He rose, Jesus from the dead. We don't want to become Gnostics. We don't want to become so spiritual that we act as if God doesn't actually care about our bodies. No God redeemed us body and soul. We are not our own. We were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God with your body. And he also says that hold on. No. There's another reality. We've been united to Christ. as it would if we become one spirit with Christ. And then you go, and you and you hire a prostitute. You're making Christ interact with that. That's no hold on. Pause. No, no, no, don't do that. And also this reality that that there's so the Corinth is this major metropolitan area. Also all cosmopolitan, there's there's so much sexual immorality, prostitution is a big deal there. There's the temple to Aphrodite, and she's the god of fertility and sex and also other things like hunting and young animals, but we won't go there that I don't know how those two go together. But anyways, but there's this whole fertility gold that's around this and, and people are given over to all sorts of sexual immorality and corn. And Paul is saying, Hold on. Do you not know that the Holy Spirit lives in you? You're the temple of the living God. You need to glorify God with your bodies. Our bodies are important. This is why we must glorify God with our bodies because the Spirit of God lives in us. God redeemed us He bought us at a price and we are his body and soul. Don't come under this trap. They think that it's all about your soul, and God doesn't care about your body. No, God is going to redeem your body you are going to be raised again from the dead. Don't get this idea that somehow at the last day, you know, you're gonna go to heaven. You're going to be a spirit in heaven playing harps and on clouds and stuff like that. No. Jesus is going to come again. He's going to judge the earth and what's going to happen? Our bodies are going to be raised again from the dead. He's going to make the new heavens and the new earth all things are going to be renewed and we will live as fleshly embodied people on the new on the New Earth, right? There's the reality that God cares about our bodies. God cares about us and so he's us flee sexual immorality. So So that's first part. By the way also just to mention, God loves you and loves your body so much that he bought you a price this idea of like going to a slave auction he did be a paltry price. But he purchased you know, it was silver or with gold but he redeemed you at the price of the blood of his own son. Compare that to the paltry prices people would pay at the temples for prostitutes. No, he's loved you with a costly love. So this next section here, verses seven through eight is about marriage. There's super spiritual people in the, in the, in the church who are were acting like, well, you know, we don't want to begin over sexual morality and, and, and the physical stuff is that's just distracting. But what we really should be about, we really should be about as a spiritual stuff, so we should all stay single and Paul says, that's not a good idea. Or that that's not spiritual. Actually, that's a recipe for disaster. Right? He says Now concerning the things which you wrote to me, he's gonna say this a few times. Now concerning the things and that's one of the ways in which he changed his topics. And so he's moving now away from the things that Chloe and her household had told him, and now it's things that they've even wrote to him questions about, and what's the first thing right? People are saying in the church. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Okay, so that's what people are saying in the church are that it's, it's just good not not to engage with women at all. It's good just to be sexually celibate, entirely. It says, No, hold on here. Because of the sexual immorality, i This is verse two, nevertheless, because of sexual immorality. Let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. And this part of first part of First Corinthians seven is getting at what's used to be called conjugal rights. There's a reality. God made you body and soul. He wasn't surprised when he made Adam and Eve that they had reproductive organs or he made them. The sign of the covenant was was circumcision God knew fully about the need for sexual reproduction. And so he's talking straightforwardly with people in quarantine, you're getting it? I know. God knows what it is in Corinth with all the sexual immorality, all this all this. The word here is porn in the right it's where we get our word pornography from, right there's there's homosexual relationships between superiors and inferiors, there's all sorts of Temple prostitution going on. There's sex with slaves happening, there's all these things that are happening that shouldn't be happening. And he's saying, you know, hold on or, again we get turned the world on its head here. It's not about being totally celibate, and it's not about being given over to sexual immorality. But the narrow way of holiness is for husbands to love their wives and wives to love their husbands. There's a reality that God has given marriage. And in the marriage bed, it's pure. Now this also goes against something that's becoming more popular in Western society, and was in an extent in the ancient Near East, not so much Greco Roman times, but polygamy or polyamory is, is out of line with First Corinthians seven. Why because if a husband is sharing multiple women, then one woman can say that's my own husband. Right now. There's an exclusivity here. That's assumed right? The wife owns a husband and other husband owns the wife. We might not like that word owns, right? That's not actually in the text, but I'm oblivious. And Olivia is mine. I've talked to so many different counseling sessions where there's been this retaliation and holding back of sexual relationships by one party or the other. By the way, this is not just men, who are, you know, have this horrible idea in Western culture that the mineral horndogs and you know, the women don't don't desire sexual relations, or, but that's not true. I've had to tell wives, you know, when you use sex as a tool of retaliation against your husband, you're going to drive him away. And you're opening the door for temptation. And I've had to tell husbands, I don't care. I don't care that you don't desire to have sexual relations with your wife. You have to you married her, and your body is not your own. You need to go home and love your wife. It's this reality that we're not our own. The West is obsessed with bodily autonomy. Now, don't get me wrong here. This can be used in such a way that that husbands can just hammer down on their wives or wives on their husbands. Anything in Scripture can be used to manipulate and this can be used in a bad way. Right you have to have sex with me because God commands it. Well, yeah, but good luck actually loving your wife in an understanding way if you do that. Right. This sexual intimacy should be the culmination of emotional intimacy. You shouldn't just ignore your husband all day and then expect for him to desire to have sex with you in the evening, your husband, should you be busy about going golfing with your friends and watching TV, doing whatever you want to do in the garage, and then expect to come into the marriage bed and your wife be like oh yeah, I want to sleep with you. Probably not the reality is is that we should be pursuing our spouses, desiring not just one flesh, intimacy, but spiritual intimacy with them. And so you need to be cultivating this relationship of loving them. And I promise as you desire more and more holiness and as you work in your marriage, as you work on your relationship with God and you talk with your spouse more marital intimacy comes along with that. But this is the reality your body's not your own. You were bought at a price. Now some of you though, are single. And Paul says that's a gift in this section. He says, I wish he wishes that they would be like he is. It is good for them if they remain, even as I am. Right? celibacy is good. There's some single men in our church who do amazing work for God's kingdom. Because they have the time to do it. They have time to earn money working on extra projects, and so they give out of their excess. There are those in our congregation who who have time on their hands because they're they don't have to invest in a wife and they don't need to invest in children. And so what do they do? They give their time to the community. They give their time to the church, they build things around the church, they're always doing things around the congregation looking out for people. They will watch out for their own souls and so they're vital members of the community. One of my dear best my favorite people here in in Ed Sheeran was Bob McElhaney, go on our website or go on gentle reformation.org one time and look up an article I wrote on deacons and you're able to see a tribute that I wrote to one of these single men in our congregation. But not everybody has that gift. This is a passage that deals with realism. If you're burning with passion, and this is Calvin says different than just you a momentary fleeting desire. There might be some heat, but it's not a burning passion. If this is consuming to you that that you need to have a wife you need to get married, you need to go get married. Now this does not mean that you can go outside the bounds of the faith to go do that. But it means that you need to go and find a spouse. Maybe you need to join some singles groups on Facebook. Go go on to sovereign grace singles. If you're a reformed person and register an account there, go to family camps, go to presbytery events go to denominational conferences, involve yourself where you can go into other congregations and you can meet other people and make those connections. In many churches. There's a small group of people and especially as you get older, it becomes more difficult to find a spouse who shares the faith. I would encourage you go be connected with a broader church. So you can find a spouse who you could marry. Well, we basically covered a whole bunch of see calling in this happens we what's the best verse to summarize? Well, I think verse 18, is clear. Right? Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body but he who commit sexual immorality sins against his own body. Maybe verse 19, may verse 20, I might even go for verse 14, let me know what would you underline in your Bible as the best verse to summarize that first section is the second section on marriage. I would probably say, verse two and verse eight, or nine, let me know what would you underline in your Bible? Well there's a whole bunch of calling in here, isn't there? What is it that you need to apply in your life from this? Are you one who's been given over to sexual morality and thinking, Oh, I can still have a great relationship with the Lord. And he doesn't actually care about what's happening. Now. Jesus says He cares so much that if you look after a woman lustfully with your eyes, you've already committed adultery in your heart. Jesus cares about body and soul. And so Flee sexual immorality. I don't know what that's going to look like in your life. Does it look like you need to stop going to certain establishments. There's a look like you need to shut off the data on your phone. I would encourage every person to go to covenant eyes and put a filter on their phone and on their computers. I'm a big proponent of of not walking around with a loaded firearm with your finger on the trigger. If you're struggling with sexual immorality, put a filter on your phone or on your internet, right? It's not a big deal. It will help you and might slow down your internet a little bit. It's probably good that we slow down a little bit so we have some time to think maybe see calling for you is that you need to get an accountability partner and be honest about his struggle with sin and have somebody who you're able to have pray for you and disciple you. Maybe for some of you you've been neglecting the marriage bed or maybe you've been going outside the marriage bed. Go home and love your wife. Be content rejoice in the wife of your youth. You might say well, she's not young anymore. No, no, she was your wife when you were young when you were a youth not because she looks like a youth. Go and lover. Go and love your husband. He might have a dad bod. Oh, well. Love him. Right? The boy does invest in your marriage. Go and care for your spouse. Bring God glory. If you're single. Bring God glory. In your singleness. If you have self control. But if you burn, right if if there's this constant, physical longing to be united to someone, I'd encourage you use all available means to seek a spouse. If maybe you need to reach out to your elders and ask if they know of anybody. We don't like this in the West, but maybe there is a sense of Matchmaker matchmaker, you know, elders talking to other elders in other congregations and saying, Hey, I got this this guy who's looking for a spouse here's who here's what he's like. Does anybody have anybody in their congregation who would be interested in starting a conversation with this guy or gal? What are you called to do? And all of this, were united that Jesus Christ. Bring God glory. Love Jesus Christ value the purchased price of your redemption. And may we seek whether married or single to bring God glory? Let's pray. Father, we pray that Your Holy Spirit would be working in us. Please, Lord, teach us to follow you. In a world where sexual ethics are all over the place. God we pray that we would follow after you please Lord, watch over us to stay. Give us your Holy Spirit and empower us to keep your commands out of a heart of love for you. Thank you for making us. Thank you for redeeming us body and soul. Thank you for Jesus Christ in His name. We pray. Amen. Well, may you rejoice in Jesus Christ today. May you walk in His Spirit. May you be comforted that he loves you with eternal love. And I'll see you tomorrow. Bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai