Two Journeys

I'd like to ask you turn, in your Bibles, to 1 Corinthians 8. We continue to make our way through this incredible epistle. And look for a second time at this chapter, 1 Corinthians 8. All the branches of the American military hold to a certain doctrine in which they are committed to never leave a wounded fellow soldier on the battlefield to fall into enemy hands. It's called "No man left behind." For the American military tradition, this dates back to before there even was a United States, during the so-called French and Indian war, 1756-1763.

A group of American soldiers, named Rogers' Rangers, fought for the British against the French and their Native American allies. Rogers' Rangers used a combination of frontier techniques and Indian tactics to defeat their enemies in the wilderness. They were expert trackers, they were highly skilled marksmen with the long rifle, but they also held to an unswerving commitment to one another to leave no comrade behind on the battlefield, so they would risk the safety of the entire unit to rescue a fellow wounded soldier.

Now, many people may question the wisdom of that kind of doctrine, risking a larger group of healthy soldiers to rescue one fallen soldier, but the effect on unit loyalty and cohesiveness and pride and morale cannot be measured. Those are intangibles. After all, the soldiers could easily reckon, "It might be me that would be next to fall on the battlefield, and to know that my brothers in arms have my back, will sacrifice for me, gives us a unity and a cohesiveness to the fighting unit." It's not every man for himself then. Everyone's bonded together as a band of brothers.

Now in a healthy local church, in this healthy local church, this concept is written into our church covenant, with the statement, "We will watch over one another in brotherly love." We are committed to getting everyone to heaven. We're committed to care about what's going on in each other's lives. We are, all of us, continually assaulted by the ancient triple enemy of every Christian: The world, the flesh, and the devil. We're all at war continually. We're in danger continually. And we may be often wounded by the flaming arrows of the evil one. Two great categories of flaming arrows from Satan: Temptation and accusation. And so these things wound us. And isn't it wonderful to know that our brothers and sisters love us and care about us, and are committed in a covenant with us to watch over our souls in brotherly love, not just the elders, but everyone.

The elders are uniquely set apart for this shepherding ministry, but we should do this for all members of our church, for all brothers and sisters in Christ, because we believe that Jesus left heaven to save, eternally save, everyone that the Father gave Him before the foundation of the world. As Jesus said in John 6:39-40, "This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that the Father has given me I shall lose none, but raise them up at the last day, for my Father's will is that everyone who looks ­to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

So for us Christians, this becomes our commitment as well. We want to see the final salvation of everyone that was entrusted from the Father to the Son. The Book of Hebrews, in Hebrews 3:12-13, makes this very plain as well. There it says, "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." So we talked about those verses many times. They are behind, I think, the statement in our church covenant, "We will watch over one another in brotherly love." "See to it, church, that not one of you is developing a sinful, unbelieving heart that is in the process of turning away from the living God." Shepherd one another, ask questions about one another, get involved in each other's lives, pray for each other, know each other, because the danger is there for all of us, that we may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness, so we're going to care for each other.

Now as we come for a second week to 1 Corinthians 8, we're coming to consider the obligation that each of us has toward our fellow Christians, to live in a loving way toward them horizontally, to care what's going on in their lives, and specifically here in this chapter, to limit our liberties, to limit our personal choices to only those things that will build up our brothers and sisters. For three chapters, Paul is going to be addressing this topic, meat sacrifice to idols, and he's going to look at different aspects of it so it's not all just one thing.

Many people struggle with the relevancy of this ancient book, the Scriptures. How is the Scripture, written so many centuries ago, is still relevant to our 21st century digital age? I would say few chapters have challenged my skills as an expositor as this one, specifically in the area of application. How are you folks doing with meat sacrifice to idols? Has it been a good week for you?

I think I've done pretty well with that topic. The meat that I ate came from Harris Teeter, I think, or maybe Food Lion. It was wrapped up in cellophane. I'm not quite sure what the butcher was thinking while he was cutting it, but it didn't worry me too much. I just ate it. So you see the problem, the challenge, of taking this text which, not just the Apostle Paul, I don't think he had any full comprehension of the scope of what he wrote, what it would have in 20-plus centuries. How could he? He was just under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was writing these words, Holy Spirit guarding him from error. But it was the Spirit's intention to give this word to us, and it's my job to do the best I can to apply it to our lives.

And so, as I've sought to do that, I've thought about the issue that we began talking about last time: The idea of debatable issues, controversial topics in the Christian life. And so, freedoms that you have, that it's okay for you to partake, and that meets the criteria of this chapter. We're not talking about immoral, wicked things, no. We're talking about things that the Lord would grant to you to have the freedom to do, but which another brother or sister, if they watch you exercise that liberty, will be harmed spiritually. To try to think about think about things like that in our modern world, and I'll continue to think about it after this sermon's over. But you need to think about it too. For me, I've gone a step beyond that to say, "What responsibility do we have to brothers and sisters in Christ?" And I think, very much in the spirit of this chapter, "What sacrifices should I make for the spiritual health of my brothers and sisters?" I think that's home base of applying this chapter, and that's what we're going to do.

Now, Christians have always struggled with debatable issues. I listed out a whole bunch of them last week, which, as you noticed, I didn't solve any of them. None of them. Alcohol, movies you can watch, music, interacting with popular culture, all of those kinds of controversial issues in which Christians have tend to divided, some feeling more freedom than others, etcetera. Those have always been there. And some might say, "Listen, you know what we need? We need some really skillful theologian pastor types to give us a list of the debatable issues and then, connected with each of them, a set of limitations and dos and don'ts." I hope you're like, "No, no, don't, don't." But let's run with this for a while. Imagine we would do it. We would have all kinds of problems. First of all, imagine being in the room of that group of Christian leaders. Could you ever find a group of people that could come together and hammer out a list of what the debatable topics were, and what should be permitted, what would be forbidden, etcetera? They'd be arguing about it till Jesus returned. Secondly, even if they were able to hammer out such a list, all that would happen as a result would be a new form of Legalism, of Pharisaism, of being crushed by a new set of laws that are not given in the Scriptures.

Again, we're not talking about immoral things here, we're talking about freedoms, things that some Christians think they have the freedom, others aren't so sure. But then, that list would be the basis of righteousness in that community, and some would feel very prideful that they're keeping the list, and others would feel crushed by it and think they never could live up to it. Thirdly, and worst of all, it would miss the freedom that the Lord intended to give us in the Spirit age, the age not under law, but under grace. "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm, then, and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery." That's in the Book of Galatians. And that's what it would be.

Christ has set us free. But the question that Paul's asking here is, "Given He's set you free, what are you going to do with your freedom?" That's what's in front of us here. And the principle that we've seen already last week and we're going to continue to study is love limits liberty. Your liberties are limited by your love horizontally for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

So, as we look in for the second time, we're looking at the topic of the weak and the strong. The weak and the strong. We have that kind of language. In this chapter, all we have is the weak, we don't have the strong named, but they're assumed. If there are weak, then there must be strong, or the category doesn't mean anything. But again and again, five times in the text, he talks about weak or weakness. Like in verse 7, he speaks about those whose conscience is weak. Verse 9, "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak." Verse 10, "If anyone with a weak conscience... " Verse 11, "So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge." And Verse 12, "When you sin against your brother in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ." So, five times he mentions this idea of weakness. So, there must be, therefore, some that are strong by this same measurement.

Paul openly talks about the strong in Romans. In Romans 15:1 he says, "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves." That's very much in the spirit of the doctrine that he's giving here. So there's the strong and the weak. So the stronger brothers and sisters, it seems, are those that have understood and absorbed Paul's doctrines on these controversial issues. They get it, they understand the doctrines that he's laid out on idols, and on meat, and on paganism, and all that. They understand and that's uploaded, they get it. And now, they are living accordingly in a life of freedom, based on those truths. That's what the... Those who are the strong ones. The weak ones are those that have not gotten it, they've not accepted it. So that's the weak and the strong.

Corinthian Context: Paganism and Polytheism

 Now, again, let's take a step back and look at the Corinthian context. Their context was paganism, polytheism, the idea of more gods and goddesses than could be counted, each of them with different responsibilities. Ares, the god of war; Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Athena, the goddess of wisdom; Zeus, the thunder god. All of these had different responsibilities and different personality quirks and all that, the gods and goddesses.

And each of these gods and goddesses would be worshipped at a temple or a shrine, often with animal sacrifice. And so, the meat would be divided, some of it would be burned up to the god or goddess, some of it would be taken by the priest, he wouldn't need it for the most part, he'd sell it at the marketplace, already having been offered to the god or goddess, but some of the meat would be brought home, also already having been offered to the god or goddess. Now, the Apostle Paul came and brought the Gospel into this paganism, into this polytheism, into this darkness.

Paul’s Preaching to the Pagans

And this is what it says in Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas reading the prophecy in Isaiah 49, where God says to his own Son. "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you [Jesus] a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." Paul and Barnabas said, "This is what the Lord has commanded us." Not that Paul and Barnabas were to be the light to the Gentiles, but they were to proclaim Christ as the light shining in a dark place. And so, in the course of time, the Lord brought Paul and Silas on the second missionary journey, Paul's second missionary journey, over to the Greek peninsula, down to Athens, and Paul came to Athens and he saw this paganism, this polytheism with shrines and idols everywhere, and his heart was ripped apart by it. Deeply compassionate for those who are walking in darkness, the people walking in darkness, he wanted them to see a great light, and that light is Christ.

And so he's deeply distressed. Acts 17:16, "While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols." and so he began to reason in the marketplace, and in the synagogues, he begins preaching the gospel. In due time, he's invited to come to Mars Hill, the Areopagus, and to come and proclaim the truth that's laid out for us here in 1 Corinthians 8. The truth's that there is one God and only one God.

This is what he says there in Athens, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious; for as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription 'to an unknown god.' Now, what you worship as something unknown, I am now going to proclaim to you. God, who made heaven and earth is Lord of heaven and earth, and he does not live in houses built by human hands, and he is not served by human hands as if he himself needed anything, for he himself gives all people life and breath and everything else."

That's the message that he preached. And they got the message, they understood. He was there in Greece for a long time, preaching, and people heard his message, and so in the course of time, even his enemies were able to recite his doctrine. Like in Ephesus, where there was a riot, he said, "Paul says that man made gods or no gods at all." They got it, and that was the doctrine.

Now, if you look at our chapter here, at verses 4-6, he recites this doctrine. These are the doctrinal truths that the strong knew, they had absorbed. Look at it in verse 4 and following, "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one, for even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or earth, as indeed, there are many gods and many lords, yet for us, there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came, and for whom we live, and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came, and through whom we live."

Now, we unfolded all that last week. I'm not going to walk through that, but that's the doctrine. That's what the strong accepted, that's what they believed, that there is one God and only one God, who made heaven and earth and every human being on the face of the earth, and he made them for a relationship with him, and that the idols are nothing, they're just material, they're just artistry by human hands and they have no spiritual significance. The Jews have known that for centuries.

Don't you love that section in Isaiah 44:15-17 where Isaiah parodies the idol maker? Remember how he selects a piece of hard wood, cuts it in half. Remember that whole story? It's cartoonish, and he says that half of the wood he uses to make an idol, and he shapes it and crafts it according to the imaginations of his own mind, and the other half he uses to cook his dinner. With half of it, he says, "Oh look, I see the fire. I'm warm and I get to eat," and the other half, he bows down and says, "Save me, you are my god." It's laughable, if it weren't actually the truth in the hearts of pagans that they were doing this kind of thing. The Jews have known this. And so, Paul came to preach the truth: That there is one God, and you cannot make any representation, out of your own skill, your own imagination, that will capture God. He cannot be captured that way. And therefore, the Jews were forbidden to even try to make idols. They never could.

And that there is one Lord Jesus Christ, and God sent his son Jesus Christ into the world as the Savior of the world, that's the doctrine, and the strong know this. And concerning meat, meat is just meat, that's all it ever will be. The meat cannot catch a spiritual virus, so there's no spirituality to the meat. And so Paul says, in Romans 14:14, "As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in and of itself."

What is the "Strong" One?

So that's what the strong know. And they are free, therefore, they're set free by these doctrines to eat meat whenever they want. The problem was, as we saw last week, that knowledge was making them arrogant, it was making them boastful, prideful. So Paul says, "Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know." In other words, if you're just captivated by how much you know, you haven't been humbled by God the way you need to be, and so your knowledge is supposed to flow out horizontally and bless other people. That's what he says.

Alright, that's the strong. What about the weak who are they and what is their danger? Look at Verse 7, he says, "But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled."

A Profile of a Corinthian Convert

So you can picture an individual who had only recently been converted out of paganism. You can Imagine someone who is living there in Corinth, let's say a man who a year or so ago was converted out of paganism, or two years ago, and so he's a relatively new Christian. The pagan religion was part of his earliest memory as a human being is what he was born into, going to the temple, seeing the pagan priests offering their sacrifices in their pagan way, sacrifices to Apollo or to Artemis or Zeus or Aphrodite. They were used to this. This was part of their life, part of his life and he remembered there would be special sacred days for each of the Gods or goddesses. He remembers that calendar it's just part of his world.

And then as he got older, as he grew up, he was indoctrinated into the darker side of temple worship with temple prostitution, and he violated his conscience and he darkened his soul with sexual immorality, and with meat sacrifice to idols it was all woven together and his heart was dark, his mind was in the gutter that's how he lived. Until one day, he heard the gospel. The apostle Paul preached the gospel, he preached of a God who is pure and holy, and who's above the circle of the Earth. He is light, and in Him there's no darkness at all, and He's not served by these dark things and we have violated His laws. We have sinned against Him and we cannot save ourselves, we cannot cleanse ourselves, we can't free our guilty consciences. God knew that. So He sent His son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life and who died a substitutionary atoning death. He died in our place so that this high holy God would be reconciled to us, and we to Him.

And so, this individual heard this, and finally there was hope for him, his heart was set free. And he was finally cleansed from all that darkness and that corruption. He became a new creation. As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come." And so he felt clean, and he walked by the temple grounds from time to time to get to the marketplace, or to visit a family member, and he would thank God for delivering him out of that darkness, but he probably walked quickly to get past it as fast as he could.

But in the course of time a member of his church took him straight to the meat market and bought some meat from the vendor and sat there maybe at a booth right there on the temple grounds and ate it, just having lunch, and he the whole time is like, "What are we doing here? I thought I was never going to go here again."

The older Christian seems to be having no problem at all just enjoying the meat. But this fragile new convert is getting ripped up inside by his conscience. It's accusing him, "You're doing wrong, you're doing wrong. We shouldn't be here. Why are we here? Don't you know that this meat... This meat was offered to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Don't you know what they did when the animal was being sacrificed, and offered?" He looks up to the older Christian, says, "I shouldn't be here. I don't want to eat this meat. Is this okay? What we're doing, is this alright?"

The older Christian looks at him quizzically and just laughs, laughs in his face, "Didn't you listen to Paul about all this? We talked about this about five months ago. It's fine. Eat up." The man is not convinced it's okay. He's tormented inside but he goes ahead and eats. He finishes the meal. And as he lays in bed that night his mind is tortured, his conscience is accusing him, he doesn't know what to do, he's confused. And he's thinking about the older brother's confidence, he's like, "Well, maybe I'm just overreacting, maybe there's just something wrong with me." Later that same week this man is walking by the temple area, and smells the meat cooking and he's alone this time, and he likes meat just like anybody and he goes over and sits at the same table, but this time he's alone but his conscience is screaming at him, "What are you doing?"

And while he's sitting there, a temple prostitute that he knew personally, walks by, looks at him, gives him a smile. And he receives a heart wound, at that point. What happens next? Well, I don't know. But could it be that he might be more susceptible, than ever before, to turning his back on his new faith in Christ and going back into the old life that he just recently got rescued from? And so this is the danger for a weaker brother.

Look at verse 7. "Not everyone knows this, some people are still so accustomed to idols that then when they eat such food, they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled."

Do Not Every Violate Your Conscience

So just a simple lesson, just transferable concept right here. Don't ever violate your conscience. Ever. I mean, it's possible to have a weak conscience, in other words, it's that conscience which is pressing you to do the right and avoid the wrong, is linked to some wrong truth system, and later it will grow up and be more mature, but wherever it's linked, don't ever violate your conscience.

Paul said very plainly, "Because there is a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man." Acts 24:16. So if your conscience is accusing you and you do it anyway, you are sinning. Paul says that very plainly in Romans 14:23. He says, "The person who has doubts is condemned if he eats because his eating is not from faith, and whatever does not come from faith is sin." However you apply 1 Corinthians 8, whatever area of freedom, if you can't do what you're doing with a clear conscience, as an act of worship to God, then don't do it.

Now, eventually, in the course of growing in the Lord, the new converts hopefully will internalize the doctrine about idols and meat and will be just as free as the most mature believers, that's where they're heading. 1 Timothy 4, Paul is adamant that everything God creates is good and nothing is to be refused, as long as it's taken with thanksgiving. And he would add, from Romans 14, with faith. So that's where we're heading, but in the meantime, if you haven't gotten there yet, don't violate your conscience. That's what he's saying.

The Danger of Destroying a Week Brother

And look at the extreme language that he's using here. Verse 7, "Since their conscience is weak, it is defiled." Verse nine, "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom," speaking to the strong ones, "the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak." Again, Verse 10 and 11, "For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you, who have this knowledge, eating in idols' temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what's been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge." These are strong words, "defiled", "stumbling block", "destroyed."

Now, don't imagine this means he's sent to hell, he's lost his salvation. But we can begin thinking of what has been destroyed. His sense of peace is destroyed, his clear conscience is destroyed, his daily walk with Christ is destroyed, his fruitfulness is destroyed, his lifestyle is destroyed. He is confused, he is destroyed by your knowledge, that's what he's saying. He also used the language of wounded, look at Verse 12, "When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ." And then finally, in Verse 13, "Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again," Because I don't want to cause my brother to fall into sin.

So, the weak brother's led by the flaunting of the freedoms of the strong brother to violate and defile his conscience, to lead him back to the very place where he'd only recently committed his most disgusting sins, the sins that Paul says in Romans, "What benefit did you receive at that time from those things of which you are now ashamed?" He's leading him back to that place where he did those things of which he is now ashamed.

Alright, so the central lesson in all of this, as we've said, is love limits liberty. Verse 9, "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom, your liberty, does not become a stumbling block to the weak." And so in order to do this, you have to see the value of your Christian brother and sister. Look at their value. Verse 11, Paul speaks of this weak brother, "For whom Christ died." Christ shed His blood for him or her. Value.

And then he intensifies this. Verse 12, "When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ." You can almost hear Jesus speaking to Saul on the road to Damascus, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" In this case, He's speaking to the Church. "Why are you wounding my people by your flaunting of your freedoms?" Is your freedom, your right to do whatever you want in this area, is it worth your brother or sister? That's the question you have to ask. How much is meat worth to you?

He zeroes in on meat. Verse 8, "Food does not bring us near to God." There are many of us that need to hear that comprehensively in a lot of ways, I understand that. I have heard some people say, "We don't have idols." I remember hearing of an Indian Christian, a Christian from India, who came and was hearing an American Christian talk about all the idol worship in India. He's like, "Well, you have your own idols." "Like what?" "Alright. Your sporting venues and your restaurants." It's amazing the density per square footage of restaurants, and is it possible that we make an idol of food?

And he's saying, "Look, food does not bring you closer to God. You're not any better off if you eat the meat and you're not worse off if you abstain," is what he's saying. Is meat. Such a big deal to you? Are you willing to do all this damage to your brother just so you can satisfy your tastes, the things you like to do? You can live without it. That's what he's saying. So he makes this resolution. Verse 13, "Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again." It's a very strong statement in the Greek. From now until the end of the age, I will not eat meat, so that I will not cause him to fall.

Now, he's going to couch the terms a little differently in Chapter 10. If he looks around and the coast is clear, he's going to eat meat. But if he thinks there's a chance there's someone in the room that's going to get wounded by what he is doing, he's not going to do it. So, he says also in Romans 14:1921, "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine, or to do anything that will cause your brother to fall."

Alright, so that's the text. Let's look at applications. And I'm open for business and applications on 1 Corinthians 8. I'll be thinking about this, I think, for the next year. This is a special problem for me as a preacher. How do we apply this?

Let's go back to where we started. No man left behind, or we will watch over one another in brotherly love. Home base for here, for this is, "What sacrifices are you willing to make for the benefit, the health, the spiritual health, of your brothers and sisters?"

That's the idea. Remember how Cain murdered his brother and then when God asked him, "Where is your brother Abel?" he said, "I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?" We know that we in the Christian Church must answer, "Yes, we are our brothers' and sisters' shepherds," we are to watch over one another. And we're not to be like the priest in the Levite, in the parable of the good Samaritan, just saying, "I don't know, I don't really care. I'm just walking by on the other side of the road. I don't really know what's going on in his or her life." We can't do that with each other. So the idea here is that we're going to love each other.

Now, years ago, I gave you a definition of love, that I continue to benefit from, and I'll give it to you again. What is love? Love is a heart attraction that results in cheerful sacrificial action. I think it's a good definition. If any part of that isn't there then it isn't love. So, there's a heart that's drawn toward the brother or sister. I care about this person, I'm attracted to them in that way. They are my brother. They are my sister. My heart's drawn out so it's from the heart and as a result of that, I'm willing to sacrifice some things. If you never sacrifice, it's not a love relationship. God demonstrates his love for us.

In that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He who did not spare His own Son, that's the measure of his love. But we also learn that God loves a cheerful giver, so it's got to be cheerful sacrifice. Not, "All right, I won't eat meat." It's your fault. "If you would just get with the program here we could all just enjoy the barbecue." That's not the approach. Paul is not reluctant here. He wants to help his brothers and sisters. He's going to teach them. Believe me, he's going to teach them but that night he's not going to eat. He's cheerful, willing to do whatever it takes.

So, the sacrifice here then would be your liberty, your freedom to do what you think you can do. So eating meat. He mentions drinking wine. Apparently statistics showing the alcohol consumption in the US is going up higher and higher. Younger generations are indulging in alcohol. I was reading an article in the Boston Globe yesterday about how even non-Christians, just regular people are like, "Why does there have to be alcohol everywhere we go? At my yoga class, there is alcohol. At my job, it's part of the recruiting... We have an open keg policy at work." I'm like, "Huh. I'm not sure how much work is getting done later in the afternoon."

But it's attractive. I think this may be a prime area to apply 1 Corinthians 8. Some people realizing their problems have come out of that lifestyle and can never go back in it again, and other brothers and sisters need to respect that and be aware of the effect their freedom is having on their, on that person's soul. Anyway, if you're not willing to make sacrifices it isn't really love. So that's the negative issue.

I want to go to a higher level and say, what are you willing to do to pour into your brothers and sisters? So here it's beyond 1 Corinthians 8, but it's in the spirit of it. Are you willing to make sacrifices to help with the discipleship of other brothers and sisters? Are you willing, men to meet with other men, women to meet with other women, to pair up, to have accountability partners. To read books together, to sacrifice the liberty of your time and your energy and perhaps even your money so you can disciple each other; men with men and women with women. Are you willing to make those sacrifices so that each other can grow?

We will talk another time about what kinds of similar sacrifices we should make for evangelism. This is all in-house stuff. First Corinthians 8. 1 Corinthians 9. He's saying, "Look, when it comes to winning the lost. I'll become all things to all people, I'm willing to eat whatever the pagans eat to win a pagan, and I'm willing to eat whatever the Jews, the unconverted Jews eat to win the Jews. I'll do whatever it takes to win the lot." But that's in the next chapter. Here within... In this context, what sacrifices are you willing to do to build up the body of Christ? Hospitality could be a very vital ministry. You think about that.

I just want to say thank you. As we finish a year, another year of home fellowships, we're almost done. How thankful I am to host families. You have sacrificed your liberties, you've sacrificed your freedom, some of your money, so that you can host these home fellowship. Without that the ministry cannot happen. It's the second most important ministry of the week, and you folks do it. But we can expand our hospitality, can't we? We can do more. You could imagine people that would just cook enough food to invite a first time visitor to our church, home for a home-cooked meal every week, that's just their ministry. And they would just sacrifice an easy Sunday afternoon to serve in that way. There are just so many things that we could do, sacrifices we could make to build each other up in the faith.

Christ did it for us. He did it for us. He could have said, "It's your problem." It's your problem. And then effectively saying to us, "Go to hell." But instead he did not choose to please Himself. Romans 15 says, "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each one should please his neighbor for his good to build him up, for even Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written, 'the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.'" That substitutionary language. Christ came from heaven to earth to identify with us, the strong giving Himself for the weak.

And so as I close today, all I can do is appeal to any of you that are on the outside looking in, who are not yet Christians, come to Christ. Maybe you came here today because of Mother's Day, you came here as a family connection, and that's wonderful. You came here to see beautiful young baby faces much prettier and handsomer than mine, but it could be that God drew you here today to hear that He sent His Son to die for dark, guilty sinners. And you know the sins you've committed, and you wonder, "Is there any forgiveness, is there any acceptance for me?" There is. Come to Christ, trust in Him. Close with me in prayer.

I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 8. As we look this morning, we'll be looking at the first half of the chapter, although I had the whole chapter read. And I am just so thankful for the word of God, I'm thankful for the privilege I have to minister the word of God. I thank you for its unchanging nature. The Bible gives absolutes. It gives unequivocal dos and don'ts, never changes, they're the same in every generation. You can look at the Ten Commandments that forbid certain things with no questions at all. We don't have to wonder about it. Such as worshipping other gods, or worshipping idols. Taking the name of the Lord in vain. Murder, adultery, theft, false testimony, coveting, these things are forever and all times unequivocally forbidden for us as Christians. We don't have to wonder about it. And there are other things not mentioned in the Ten Commandments that are also similarly forbidden for us as Christians. We shouldn't wonder, we don't need to wonder what the Bible teaches about fornication, about drunkenness, about materialism, about laziness or carnal anger, arguing and complaining. The Bible is very clear about these sins.

The Bible also commands certain things clearly. Not just forbidden, but telling us that there are some things we must do. We must love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. These things are unequivocal. We must read the Bible, feed on the word of God, and pray continually, pray every day. We should care for the poor and needy, we should share the Gospel with those in our lives that are lost. So those things are clear as well. What is clearly forbidden, and what is clearly commanded. There is no doubt whatsoever about these things. We just need to obey them by the Spirit. There's no debate about them.

However, not everything is like that in the Christian life. There are gray areas, or debatable issues in daily life practice. There are things that Christians have struggled over, and debated over, and divided over. And these gray areas can become a battle zone between Christians. Now, I have to support that assertion from Scripture. Is there such a category as debatable issues in the Christian life? One pastor that I know and respect tends to see everything, everything black and white. There's no equivocal issues with him. There are no gray areas. And years ago there was a famous slogan in church history, which came out of the... I think the religious wars in Germany, as Protestants and Catholics were battling, and so this slogan came out, and it was this: "In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty and in all things, charity." That was that slogan. Well it turns out that that saying was painted on the side of the church vans when this pastor I have in mind came and began his ministry. And he had them painted over. "There are no non-essentials" he said.

So I think that's fascinating. I think it's actually important for us to see a kind of a hierarchy of certainty of truth. That there actually are core doctrinal issues we have absolute conviction about. And then it goes out from there. And the Bible itself has an entire chapter devoted to debatable issues. Romans chapter 14. Romans 14:1 says, "Accept him whose faith is weak without passing judgment on disputable matters." Disputable matters. So the whole chapter, Romans 14 is devoted to the proper resolution of these kinds of gray areas that are going to come up in Christian churches, in the Christian life. Disputable matters, doubtful issues, there are different translations. So Romans 14 in particular, I think, addresses issues that would've divided Jewish Christians from Gentile Christians. So the Roman Church was a combination church, Jewish Christians, Gentile Christians coming together to try to do local church life and there would be issues that would arise between them as the Gospel is spreading rapidly throughout the Roman world after the Jewish diaspora, they had been scattered from the Promised Land, and they were all over the Greco-Roman world. They had certain habits and patterns tied to the Old Covenant, and they'd been doing those for years.

And so then the Gospel came along, and won some to Christ from both the Jewish community and from the Gentile community, and they had to come together and do church together, and so there would be issues. And these issues were sharp, and the debates were vigorous. Probably the most significant issue was, do the Gentile converts to Christ need to be circumcised and required to obey the ceremonial law of Moses in order to be saved? We have an entire book of the Bible, the Book of Galatians, devoted to answering that: Absolutely not. That the Gentile Christians do not need to be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses in order to be saved. We have a whole chapter in the Book of Acts, Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, which sought to resolve these kinds of issues. And so the Jerusalem Council came up with certain kind of dos and don'ts, practical rules of the road, to enable Jews and Gentiles together to get along, and to love one another, and to resolve certain things. And so they came up with a list of certain things that had to be addressed, and they did that.

Present-Day Examples of Debatable Issues

So, we have our own debatable issues, too. There are certain things in our lives that we're going to struggle over. Maybe some of them are like what they struggled over back then. For example, Sabbath Day regulations, or what you can and can't do on a Sunday. That's been difficult historically for certain Christian communities to resolve. Can we go to a restaurant on Sunday, can we play sports on a Sunday? You remember Chariots of Fire, how Eric Liddell didn't feel that he had the freedom to run on a Sunday. He came out of the Scottish Presbyterian background, and that was a very strong Sabbatarian background. But others have a freer approach to the Lord's day, and so there are debates. Then there's alcohol. Christians have frequently divided over the issue of alcohol. Some Christians completely abstain from drinking any fermented beverage, whereas other Christians feel freedom to partake in moderation. All Christians, Biblical Christians, reject drunkenness and drinking to affect your behavior morally. But the question is, can we partake in smaller, more measured doses? So, that's been an issue.

Generally, a lot of these debatable issues come over the question of worldliness, what is worldly, what isn't. And so, engaging in the world, world's culture, what kind of movies you watch or don't watch, what kind of music you listen to or you refuse to listen to. I remember early in my Christian life, there were discussions in our campus ministry about whether it was right to listen to Christian rock music or not, or even secular rock, there'd be divisions about that. Nowadays, more recently, there's been discussions about the propriety of Christian rap. Christians have struggled with the kind of movies they'll watch and the movies that they would allow their children to watch, and those convictions might be different than another family, and that kind of comes to a head when there's sleepovers. So, there's all kinds of interesting discussions between the families and what kind of movies they will or won't allow their kids to watch. And that can be difficult.

Then, there's social media. As we involve ourselves in Instagram and Snapchat and I don't know what's trendy or... Really, I'm not even going to try. I don't know what's in these days. Facebook. There, I said it. All of those things. I don't partake, I've never been on Facebook, but others... Can we get involved? Twitter, which just tends to defile many that get involved. That's another topic for another day, but just the ongoing debates are incredible. You want to know the kind of things that Christians wrangle over, Twitter is the place where they seem to be doing it. Then, there's clothing, the kind of clothing that we can or can't wear. I think, especially for women, there's a struggle, a desire to be pure, but there's certain prohibitions in the New Testament about braided hair and wearing gold jewels and fine clothes and how do you do that. But then, just parents, as they have kids growing up, want their kids to dress, want their children, their daughters to dress in way that honors and glorifies God.

Then, there's the topic of education for children. Public school or government school education versus homeschooling versus private school. There's all kinds of debates and discussions about giving your children over to education or retaining it, the debates that go on with that. Even politics. This most recent Presidential election was very divisive within the Evangelical world, as the parties were very polarized, and Christians were talking like, "The lesser of two evils" or "Holding your nose and voting," others like, "No, I won't do that. I can only vote for an individual I actually could believe in, even if the person's not electable," all kinds of debates. And I'm sure I'm stirring you up. You want to know what you think about all these things. "I want an answer, I want answers on all of this." Well, I'm just saying, there are these debatable issues.

And so, for me, as a preacher, knowing that Paul is going to devote three full chapters, friends, to meat sacrificed to idols, and you're thinking, "Not a problem for us." You're thinking you're going to get three chapters off, especially given the choppy waters we've been sailing through the last number of chapters. And I will confess that I had similar feelings of ease and comfort, having made it through finally some of the issues that we've been through. But not at all, all Scripture is God-breathed and useful. And these debatable issues keep coming up.

John MacArthur, one preacher that I respect and have listened to, he talked about how, early in... When he first came to Christ, he was out in the Southern California scene, and they did a lot of beach outreaches and did a lot of things like that, and they had bonfires and that. It was part of that Jesus movement that happened out there. But one thing they were adamant about was tobacco, the abuse of tobacco, and that it was just absolutely defiling to the body. But then, he, his first ministry preaching was in a tobacco-growing area in the South, in the Bible Belt. And those people were adamant against mixed bathing, that you would never, ever have young men and women together at a pool party, or something like that. And so, there were these issues, but they had different convictions, it seems, on tobacco use.

Charles Spurgeon, speaking of tobacco use, was fond of a cigar from time to time. And he actually preached a sermon at Metropolitan Tabernacle on the danger of little sins as little foxes that ruin the vineyard. Well, there was a well-known American preacher that was there, kind of a guest of honor, Dr. George Pentecost, that was his name, and he was invited to speak a few words to the congregation. And he got up and launched in vigorously on the dangers of tobacco smoking, which Spurgeon hadn't brought up at all in his sermon on little sins that ruin the vineyard. So he goes on and he was thankful, Dr. Pentecost was thankful that God had delivered him from such a wretched and vile habit. Well, it was Spurgeon's home church and he got the final word, as he will do. And he got up and he said, "I just need to say that I just don't believe that smoking tobacco is a sin, and frankly, before I go to bed this very night, I'm going to enjoy a cigar to the glory of God."

And that became a slogan tied to him, "Enjoying a cigar to the glory of God." Someone once asked him, "How much do you know if you're smoking too much?" He said, "If you ever see me ever smoking more than one cigar at exactly the same time, you'll know that I've crossed the line."

Now, of course, in Spurgeon's day, the doctors, the physicians, didn't have the same sense of understanding of what tobacco does to the body that we do today, so things have become a little bit clearer. But there are still debatable issues, and we need some rules of the road in a local church. We need to know how we navigate so we don't drive each other crazy, and so we can come to holiness and unity on these things.

So, the context here, as I've mentioned, is meat sacrificed to idols. Look at chapter 8 verse 1, "Now about food sacrificed to idols." So, Paul is in a section of the Epistle in which he is bringing up issues that they have raised with him in their letters to him. So, he's addressing their issues, they'd asked him. And as I said, for three chapters, 1 Corinthians 8, 9 and 10, all three of those are under the auspices of answering this question, this issue of meat sacrificed to idols.

And let me give you the principle I'm going to give you again and again over the next number of times that we look at 1 Corinthians, God willing, and that is, you have freedoms, you have privileges, you have rights, fine. But love limits liberty. Love limits liberty, the exercise of your freedom. So we're going to see this theme again and again, but just let's lodge it in our minds. Love limits your freedoms, the exercise of your freedoms.

Meat and the Pagan Religions

Alright, so let's look at the Corinthian context, and try to understand what they were going through. The context there was pagan religion, the background of paganism, of pagan religion there in Corinth. The Greeks, like the Romans, were polytheistic. They believed in many gods and goddesses, and these gods and goddesses had different areas of jurisdiction, kind of like a massive government agency, where you have the Bureau of this, and Bureau of that, etcetera. So these gods and goddesses would run different parts of everyday life. And so there would be a god of love, a god of war, a god of the harvest, a god of family life, of relationships, of everything, all kinds of things.

Cities even had patron gods and goddesses. Like Athens, the city of Athens, had Athena, the goddess of wisdom as their patron deity. She would protect the city, so they believed. They worshiped these gods and goddesses at different shrines and temples. And when they did that, they frequently used animal sacrifice, just like the Jews did, animal sacrifice. And the meat from the sacrifice would be divided into three portions. One portion would be burned up as an offering to the deity. A second portion would be taken by the priest pretty much as his fee. Now, he wouldn't need all the meats that he would receive in a day, so he had a cottage industry of bringing the meat sacrificed to idols to the marketplace where it would be sold after it had been an offer to a god or goddess. And he would receive some of his income from that meat. And the third portion would be taken home by the worshiper himself to eat with his family. Keep in mind, there was no refrigeration back then.

And so this is how the people would eat meat. And so this would set up the issue. All of this meat had been offered to a god or goddess by the time that it was going to be eaten. Now beyond their polytheism, the Greeks also believed in many demons, evil spirits, who could light on meat like flies, spiritually. And the only way the meat could be cleansed was if it was offered, properly offered, to a god or goddess. Now their paganism, as I've said, extended to every area of life. So there would be continual requirements for offerings. And people lived in perpetual fear of offending one god or goddess or another. So it was just a regular part of life with these offerings to the gods.

The Gospel Came to Corinth

Now, the Gospel came to Corinth through the ministry of the apostle Paul, and a number of individuals were rescued out of satanic darkness into the beautiful light of the Gospel. So the Corinthian Christians had been recently rescued from this pagan lifestyle, this wicked pagan lifestyle, and they had fresh memories of their habits at the temple. And this included as I've mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6, temple prostitution. So not only would they be eating meat, but there would also be sexual immorality connected with their worship of the gods and goddesses. And so this wicked, this dark corrupt lifestyle was a thing of their recent past. They had just been converted out of all of that.

Not only that, the paganism was woven into every aspect of their social life horizontally with people that lived in their city. So if they were going to befriend other people, Christians, I mean, befriending non-Christians and they would... The non-Christians, the pagans, would have them over for dinner almost certainly they would serve them meat that had been sacrificed to idols. And so the question the Corinthians are asking is, "What do we do about all this? How can we understand that?" At social times like that you could well imagine if the Christians were to abstain entirely or bring their own dinner to someone else's house, how offensive that would be. And so, it was just difficult to know how to live.

Now beyond this and very relevant to the text we're looking at today, some more mature, more advanced Corinthian Christians, more doctrinally advanced, had come to a solid orthodox understanding of idolatry and all of this whole system, and had just kind of graduated beyond being concerned about this. And they were flaunting their freedoms. They like meat, they eat meat, which didn't bother them, and they did not understand what effect they as the more advanced or the more mature, the mentors, the leaders in the church were having on the younger Christians. So Paul has to write this section and address this.

Now he begins in verse 1, look at it with me. He says: "Now about food sacrificed to idols, we know that we all possess knowledge." So he's speaking to the knowledgeable Christians, the more doctrinally mature Christians. I'm not just going to call them mature because there's a deficiency in their sanctification, but he's addressing the more knowledgeable Christians. He said, "We know that we all possess knowledge." They have the right theology, but they're living it out in the wrong way.

Well, what knowledge did they have? Look at verses 4-6: "So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." So what knowledge did they have? Well, first of all, we know that idols don't really exist spiritually. There's no actual spiritual reality connected with the idol itself. Verse 4, "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one." So these Corinthian Christians have fully accepted Paul's doctrine that there is one and only one God, and that the idols that have been made by craftsmen are just physical things, there's nothing there. The gods and goddesses aren't in the idol, there's nothing to them, they're just chunks of matter. The Jews have known this, or should have known it at least for centuries.

In Psalm 115:4-8, it says, "Their idols are silver and gold made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see, they have ears, but cannot hear. Noses, but they cannot smell, they have hands but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk. Nor can they utter sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them and so will all who trust in them."

Idols Don’t Really Exist Spiritually

So this is the first point we could say that Paul says, "We know, we know this about idols." And the more mature Christians have their theology right, so they're knowledgeable about this. And these more mature, so to speak, Christians can walk through the marketplace or walk through the temple grounds even and look around and say, "This whole thing is emptiness. There's nothing here, the idols are nothing." They knew that. And they could just walk through as though they had a bubble of protection around them, because they knew there's nothing to it.

There is One God and Only One God

Secondly, we know that there is one God and there is only one God. So not only are the idols nothing, we know this, there is one God and there is only one God, that's more important than the physical idols. Far more important. There is a God who exists, who made heaven and earth, this one God wants to have a relationship with us. He loves us, He created us and wants to have a relationship with us. He yearns after us and He is a Holy God, this God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all, this one God that exists. And this one God, the Scripture reveals, is a jealous God, He will not allow us to worship other gods, and goddesses. He's forbidden all idolatry. He is spirit. You cannot make any representation of this one God. So all material representations of this one true God are false and misleading.

It says in Deuteronomy 5:8-9, "The Lord God said to His people 'You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything, in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the waters below, you shall not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.'"

The Many Gods of the Gentiles are So-Called Gods... Not Real At All

Thirdly, we know, what do we know Paul? Well, we know therefore that the many gods and goddesses of the Gentiles are just so-called gods, they're just gods and so-called lords in the heavenly realms. They're in name only, they don't really exist. Look at verse 5 and 6, "For even if there are so-called gods," right there in the Greek text, they're named gods. You could put like quotation marks around it, "whether in Heaven or on Earth, as indeed there are many so-called gods and many so-called lords, yet for us there is but one God."

So it's not a syncretism thing where we're taking the God of the Jews, and adding Him to the pantheon of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. None of them exist actually, none of them. So the various names of the gods and goddesses that these Greeks were very familiar with such as Zeus, Hera and Hermes, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, Aries and all the rest, they don't exist, and all of the stories attached to their doings are just myths, they're just made up, they're fiction. So these gods and goddesses don't really exist.

Now, it's important to hold in mind, we're not going to develop it today, but I want you to hold this in mind. Paul does assert that there is a demonic presence behind all of this. We need to keep that in mind. There actually is a real spiritual presence behind the false religions of the world. In chapter 10, verse 20, he said, "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons." So demons are god and goddess impersonators and have, from time to time, been permitted by the true God to do supernatural things to mislead people into false religions. I think that's true, and it's going to be even worse at the end of the world with the antichrist. We'll get to that in another time, we've already talked about it in the past.

The Physical World in Which We Live Was Created by God... Including the Food We Eat

Fourthly, we know that the physical world that we live in was created by God, including the food that we eat, was created good by God. Look at Verse 6, "For us there is but one God, the Father from whom all things came and for whom we live, and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." So this is the theology, Paul's taking the opportunity to teach true theology. There is one God, the Father, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the maker of all things visible and invisible, and from Him we derive our existence. As he said to the Athenians, "In Him, we live and move and have our being." And for Him, all things exist, we exist for His pleasure and for His glory. And He made all physical things, in Genesis 1 He made everything physical and called it good, very good. And for us, there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made all things, and through whom we live.

So in a marvelous, mysterious inter-trinitarian partnership, God the Creator created all things for Himself, and He did that through Jesus, that Jesus is the Word through whom all things were made. And without Him, nothing was made that has been made. And it is in Jesus, who is God's final Word to the human race, it says that God the Father has spoken to us by His Son through whom He made the universe. So, Jesus is the Word of God by which God the Creator made all things

Meat is Also Created by God

Now, this includes the meat, so the meat is just meat, that's all it is, it's just meat. And what that means is the meat cannot catch a spiritual virus. Now, it can catch other types of things, it's a different matter. But in terms of the actual meat you're not going to have any spiritual problem eating meat, meat is just meat, it's all it is. Now, we all know this, Jesus declared all foods clean, while He was still alive. So what that meant is for the Jews, all of those dietary regulations have been fulfilled in Christ. They've been obsolete. So Jewish Christians can eat pork, they can eat anything that they want, anything that they desire. And so all foods have been declared clean.

You remember how Peter was getting ready to go preach the Gospel to the gentile Cornelius, and God sent him a vision of a sheet, let down from heaven, with all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles, and birds of the air, all kinds, and a voice came from heaven saying, "Get up Peter, kill and eat." And Peter as he always tended to do said, "Surely not, Lord." Bad idea, don't say, "Never Lord" Alright? . When the Lord tells you to do something, just do it. But that was Peter, he did it four times, Never Lord, Never Lord, that's just him. Even after Pentecost, he's still doing that, "Surely not Lord, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." And the voice spoke from heaven a second time. "Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean." So, all foods are clean, so meat's just meat and all foods are clean.

Alright, so that's the knowledge that Paul says we all have. That's the orthodox doctrine. But now he's going to talk about knowledge. Look again at verse 1. "Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies or love builds up." It's not enough to just know orthodox doctrine, you have to go beyond that, you have to unite your doctrine with love, you have to unite your doctrine with obedience. Jesus said, "You know these things, you'll be blessed if you do them." You can't like the Book of James be somebody who hears the word and doesn't obey. So he's talking about knowledge.

Now, you need to understand, Paul's not against knowledge at all. Everywhere he went, home base for his ministry was pouring out biblical knowledge, scriptural knowledge. He taught everyone the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, that's what he did, he wrote the Book of Romans, think about that. He was not against doctrine or knowledge, he was all in favor. All he would say is that knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. It's not enough, you have to go beyond it. Knowledge must be supplemented by love. If all you have is knowledge, you don't move out into loving your neighbor as yourself, then it's a dead end and you just acquired all of that knowledge to puff yourself up, to make yourself arrogant, to feel superior to other people, and knowledge can do that.

Paul later in this same epistle will somewhat rebuke the Corinthians concerning this matter of love, of knowledge without love. 1 Corinthians 13:2, "If I have the gift of prophecy, and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, but if I have not love, I am nothing." He's very clear about that. So these Corinthians were flaunting their freedoms based on their accurate doctrinal knowledge and they were forgetting the effect that it was having on others, weaker Christians who are not ready to handle those freedoms.

The Corinthian’s Knowledge Was Woefully Inadequate

Now, look at verse two, their knowledge actually was woefully inadequate. "The man who thinks he knows something, does not yet know as he ought to know." That's quite a statement, isn't it? If you think you know something, you don't know anything. So that's amazing. Honestly, at one sense it really should be true. The more you know, the more you know that you don't know. Does that make sense? Maybe I should say it again slower. No, don't do that, that will be worse. The more you know, the more you know that you don't know, what do I mean by that? I'm saying it's an ignorant person who thinks that he or she has a subject mastered.

I remember years ago, we homeschooled our kids, and years ago, one of our kids, won't say his name... But anyway, one of our kids years and years ago, finished his first unit of Math and said to me, as I came home from work, "Daddy, I know everything there is to know about Math." Well, having gone to MIT, an engineer and all that, I knew that he didn't. And I knew that he had a long journey, and that Math is pretty much, as far as I know, an infinite railroad track that everybody gets off at some point. But I didn't want to crush him, I said, "Oh, that's wonderful, good for you." And that's what you do as a dad. I remember when I was a student at MIT, one of my jobs was inspecting fire extinguishers and I was brought down into the basement of the Humanities library, just one of eight major libraries there at MIT. I think between Harvard and MIT they might have 90% of the Library of Congress there in terms of volumes. But they didn't have the space for everything, so they had a discard stack down there in the basement. And there were more books discarded from the Humanities library than I even knew possibly could exist.

And I'm walking through there, and I saw some book and just being a curious sort, I pulled it off the shelf, and it was in the Humanities library, so it was some kind of humanities study of a subject I knew, I didn't even know existed. And it was 500 pages long and someone therefore was an expert at something I knew nothing about. And not only that, this expert was now obsolete, there was a better expert upstairs, and I realized that as far as my eyes could see down in that subterranean basement, there are books just like that. So, education is basically, you're moving from unknowing ignorance, to knowing ignorance. The more you go on, the more you find out what you don't know.

But actually, let's get more specific than about just general knowledge. Let's talk about knowledge of God. If you're impressed with your own knowledge of theology, you don't really know God very well. You don't know God very well. And as a matter of fact, God can, if He were gracious to you, move out and humble you. You remember the end of the book of Job? Do you remember when God begins speaking to Job after all of that wisdom, that Job's been pouring out? Job's a very wise man. Remember how God begins, starts in with Job, speaking to him out of the whirlwind? "Who is this that darkens wisdom by speaking words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man, strengthen yourself and I will speak to you. Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation?" And He goes on like that for chapters. So God, with His infinite knowledge, His omniscience, has the ability to humble us. The better we know God, we understand the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And knowledge of the Holy, the Holy One, is understanding. So our knowledge of God really ought to humble us.

Remember how Job answered Him? He said to God at the end, he said, "You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel by speaking words without knowledge?' Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things that were too wonderful for me. You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak, I will question you, and you shall answer me'. My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you, and therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." That's what really knowing God will lead you to, to being humble. But apart from that, your education in Theology, your education in any subject will make you arrogant, it will puff you up. What's really more important than how much, whether you know God or how much you know God, is the question, will God know you on Judgment Day? That's the real question, isn't it?

You know, in Matthew 7, Jesus said, "Many will say to Me on Judgment Day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.'" Now He knew them very well, He knew all about them, but He didn't know them. And so Paul says, "The man who loves God is known by God." So let me just stop and say, is that true of you as you listen to my sermon, do you know that Christ knows you? Have you trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you come to Christ as Andrew did, and as Darian did? Have you come to Christ and repented of your sins, and asked Him to be your Savior? Have you found forgiveness of sins? That's the knowledge, that Christ will own you as His own because you have come to Him through faith, and trusted in Him. That's what's more important.

Now for us who have made that commitment, we have to go beyond just mere doctrinal knowledge. Our church, I think, is a very knowledgeable church doctrinally, and I fear that there might be some of you that need to hear, "Knowledge puffs up but love builds up." I think you need to hear it, I know I need to hear it. It's not enough to just be sharp doctrinally, have all the right answers. The question is, are we loving horizontally to people around us in our lives? Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies or builds up.

Now, these Christians had been flaunting their freedoms. And they were forgetting the effect that it was having on other people. The new converts had overpowering memories of their recent lives as pagans. They remembered all the times worshipping the gods and goddesses, feeding on the meat, even indulging in sexual immorality, these were fresh bitter memories for them. And only recently had their consciences been cleansed through faith in Christ. They thought they could never feel like this, clean, pure, but now as they're getting involved in church life, there's some people further along than them, that are leaders in the church that are just doing whatever they want with this meat issue. And they're going, they're walking right into the marketplace and eating whatever, going even into the temple, it didn't matter to them. And they were flaunting their freedoms.

And so Paul says, in verse 7, "Not everyone possesses this knowledge," not everyone really understands it like they need to know. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food, they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol. And since their conscience is weak, it is defiled, they cannot eat that food with a clear conscience. And yet they eat anyway. And Paul says, your brother, for whom Christ died, is devastated by your knowledge. So in the upcoming weeks, beginning next week, we're going to develop more of this concept. But the basic idea here is, do not flaunt your freedoms, be mindful of who's watching, who's around when it comes to the exercise of your Christian freedoms.

Let's talk about some applications. I mentioned just a moment ago how grateful I am that our church is so characterized by strong biblical knowledge, for the most part. I think it would be good for us to be humbled about that, for us to realize that if we think we know anything, we don't really know as we ought to know. Our knowledge should make us humble. I'm not saying don't pursue knowledge. The answer isn't read less Bible, read less theology, that's not the answer. The question is, are we combining our right doctrinal knowledge with obedience? Are we doing the things He's told us to do, and are we combining it with love for others? Are we building up the edifice of the body of Christ?

Some Basic Rules of the Road: Questions to Ask Yourself About Any Habit (from John MacArthur)

Now, in terms of these debatable issues, I was listening to a sermon by John MacArthur, and he does a phenomenal job on all of these questions. And I want to just borrow from him, some practical advice that I found helpful and I'll just get out of the way and let him teach us. On basic rules of the road, questions to ask yourself about any habit in which you're indulging.

First of all, the question of excess, all of these begin with the letter E. Excess, is this habit hurting my walk with Christ? Am I addicted, am I doing it to excess, or is it baggage that God wants me to cut out of my life? Is it a weight that the author to Hebrews would call on me to lay aside, so I can run the race with endurance? Is this an excess in my life, this freedom?

Secondly, Expedience. Is this thing that I'm doing actually helpful for building up the body of Christ? Is it useful, is it beneficial, is it helpful? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:23, "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient," or beneficial... Expedient.

Thirdly, emulation. In doing this, am I imitating what I see in Christ? It's somewhat like the question, "What would Jesus do?" Can I see Jesus doing this habit pattern that I'm indulging in? 1 John 2:6, it says, "Whoever claims to live in Him [Christ] must walk as Jesus did." So, emulation, in doing this, that I'm doing, am I emulating Jesus?

Fourthly, evangelism. Will this habit, this practice in my life, enhance my witness to onlooking non-Christians? Will this habit actually help my testimony or will it hinder it? Will this help me lead people to Christ or will it actually hinder me? Colossians 4:5 says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders, making the most of every opportunity." Outsiders are watching, would you feel comfortable, outsiders watching you, as you do this action or this habit?

Fifth, Edification. Will this action or habit build up other Christians who might see me do it? Will they be made stronger by imitating me, watching me? 1 Corinthians 10:23, "All things are lawful, but not all things edify."

Six, exaltation. Does this action glorify God? Can I actually offer this activity up in thankfulness to God, with a clear conscience? 1 Corinthians 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God."

And then finally, example. Would I feel comfortable if my children or a new disciple, a convert that I'm having the privilege to disciple, emulated or imitated me? Am I setting a good example here? Or would I want to say to some degree, "Do as I say, not as I do"? So I think those are seven very helpful principles. Let's close in prayer.

Please open your bibles to Acts 2. We’re not going to do an exegetical walk through this text, but I want to say some things from that and then look at some other texts. There are always new things happening in this world of ours. I had not heard of this terrorist attack until this morning. And we're mindful of the fact that we live in this complex and diverse world and there are cultures very different from ours, language is very different than ours. People who answer the basic questions of life of what they will eat and how they will speak and what they will wear and how they will celebrate very differently than we do in our culture. We know that those lands have different heritages, different histories, different stories that they tell from their own past, they're very different than ours. So it's just an incredibly diverse world that we live in, but one thing unifies the human race, very much on my mind this morning, and that is fear of death, fear of death.

In 1973, Ernest Becker a Pulitzer Prize winning author wrote a book entitled "The Denial of Death." And the thesis of the book is that humanity is enslaved worldwide by a fear of dying. This man is not writing from a Christian perspective, but he said that what people do all over the world is deny, deny, deny, deny. And they find a lot of different ways to deny death and their fear of death. There are religious ways, narcotic ways, alcoholic ways, ways of success and labor and all of that, that distracts and diverts. There are cosmetic ways and surgical ways to deny that you're aging. There are all kinds of denials of death. Becker said the main thesis of his book is that the fear of death haunts the human being like nothing else. It is a main spring of human activity, activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.

Now this author back then had no answer for this. He's just making an observation. But we have the answer, amen. We have the answer to death itself and to fear of death. And we praise God, and we're assembled today to celebrate that answer. Hebrews 2:14-15 says that by Christ's death, "he destroyed him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." What a triumphant passage that is. And if I'm not careful I'll just go over and preach on that one right now. There's so many celebrating passages that we can... But liberated from fear of death. All over the world, death is known as the final enemy. We understand this, funeral rituals, very diverse, different cultures, but they're there and they're powerful, and they involve immense lamentations and overwhelming grief. It's really very simply. You just live long enough in the world, you know this reality. A certain person who's important to you is alive, he has wrapped himself up in your life in some way, he's part of your life, you eat with him, you talk with him, you enjoy his company, laugh at his jokes, maybe, work together on some project. He's woven into the fabric of your life to some degree. But then suddenly one day something happens, and you never see him alive again in this world.

Maybe you see his dead body and maybe you don't, but one thing you know, that person who you remember is gone, and you never from that time on saw them again alive in this world. That's the experience of death, every culture, every nation, every tribe, subject to the same sorrow. And there's no refuge on this planet. No one's figured it out somewhere. It could be the distant mist covered valleys of Irian Jaya, there's no stone age tribe that's found some secret to the problem of death. Or even in the barren outreaches of the outback of Australia. It's not like there's some group there that has found the secret. Or you could go to the steel and glass high rises of Asia, Macau, or Hong Kong, and all of the teaming population there and there's not some back alley there where there's some specialist that is an oriental expert in herbs and has some interesting remedies that has delivered him and everyone that comes to his shop from death. Or you could go to the farmlands of the Ukraine where people are working hard, leading a wholesome life, and they're having year after year crops growing and they live that life of a Ukrainian wheat farmer, but there's no remedy, they die with no remedy.

We've got missionaries that work in the northern regions of the Laplanders in Finland, and they send back reports that they haven't discovered a secret to death, and the Gospel is needed there, because they die just like we do. And the same thing in the jungles of the Amazon, this unites the people there too. They have all kinds of flora and fauna there, they have all kinds of interesting species of spiders and tree frogs with special poisons in them and all kinds of other chemicals that we don't have here in Raleigh-Durham, but they haven't discovered a secret to death. Not even in Durham, North Carolina, the City of Medicine, where right near us within a few minutes drive there are pharmaceutical companies that are researching various aspects of pain and suffering and disease, but none of them has conquered death and they won't. So this brings us to this Easter celebration, this Resurrection Day celebration.

Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. He has conquered death. And He is the only one. I'm not denying that some people have been resuscitated by CPR or those electrical pallets that put electricity and revive a dead heart. I don't even deny that there are in the Bible accounts of miracles of Lazarus and others that were resuscitated to the same mortal life that we now experience, but Christ alone has been resurrected, never to die again. He's the only one. And He says in John 10:17-18, "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes my life from me. But I lay it down freely of my own accord. I have the authority to lay my life down and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I received from my Father." Can you imagine anyone else making such a claim? There is no one else, no religious leader has made such a claim. I have absolute and power over life and death, my own. No one can kill me if I don't will to be killed, but I lay my life down freely and I have the power to take it back up again.

And again, Revelation 1:18, where Jesus appeared to the Apostle John, when he was in the island of Patmos in exile, and he says this, Jesus said to John, "I am the living one. I was dead and behold I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the key of death and Hades." So not only that, Jesus claims to unleash that power toward us, to give us the fruit of His resurrection victory. That's what makes all of this a celebration. He said in John 14:19. "Because I live, you also will live." Cherish that O dear brothers and sisters in Christ, "Because I live, you also will live." And again, John 11, Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." But we may ask how can we be certain of these things? I need to know how can I be certain that Christ is risen, and that he can give me that same resurrection victory? What would be the ground of my assurance, the ground of my certainty? How can we who live here in the Raleigh-Durham area, in this high tech era, this digital age, 21st century, how can we derive any kind of certainty or assurance of these things? We're skeptical people, we need to know how can we know that any of this is true?

And I say to you right now, the only way you will ever have certainty that Christ is risen from the dead, and that you also will be raised from the dead in the end is by faith in the Word of God. There is no other ground of assurance. Only by faith in the Word of God in the Scriptures will you have this certainty. If you don't have that faith in the word of God, you'll not have any certainty, either that Christ has been raised from the dead, or that you also could be raised from the dead. And the Bible is given to minister that faith to us, to feed us by faith. At the end of John's Gospel, in John 20:31, the Apostle John expressed why he had written his account of all the miracles, including the miracle of Christ's own resurrection. And said, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name." So by reading the words on the page, so you may have eternal life, you can access Christ's resurrection victory by simple faith in the Word of God.

Now you may say there are many holy books. Wise men in the past, religious leaders have written things down, there are holy books a plenty. Seems like every religion has its own library, its own set of holy books. What is the difference between the Bible and the Hindu Scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu writings? Or the Muslim writing, the Quran, what's the difference between the Bible? Why should we believe the Bible as a holy book compared to the Quran? Or the Analects of Confucius or the Sutras of Buddhism or other holy books. But what is the difference? Well, there's two central differences in reference to the Bible. The first is predictive prophecy and the second is the testimony to the person and work of Jesus. No other scriptures have this combination of predictive prophecies culminating in this perfect historical figure, Jesus, that's the difference. And Jesus claimed to have power over death and He... It is said of Him by the eyewitness that He was physically raised from the dead.

But his central evidence was the prophecies that were written in the Old Testament, and that's what we're going to spend the rest of our time on, feeding our faith on the prophecies. What is written? The Jewish religion was founded on Scripture, the writings of Moses, and then of the Prophets, and they were assembled in what we call the Old Testament, the 39 books of the Old Testament, written centuries before Jesus was born. And the Jewish life and religion was based on the Scriptures. Moses said in Deuteronomy 32:47, concerning the words he had written there in The Five Books of Moses. "These are not just idle words for you, they are your life." But not only did Jewish Scripture contain the laws by which the Jewish nation was to live, it also contained God's predictions about the future and this is what makes the Bible unique, God's ability to predict the future, and then tell the prophets what was to come and they wrote it down. There's no other religion in the world that has this aspect of predictive prophecy of foretelling.

As he said in Isaiah 46:9-10, "I am God and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning from ancient times what is still to come. And I say, my purpose will stand and I will accomplish all that I please." I love that, that's Isaiah 46:9-10. He says, I declare to you, I speak to you the end from the beginning. I tell you where we're going with all this. No other religion does. The Bhagavad Gita doesn't do it, the Quran doesn't do it, the Sutras don't do it, the Analects of Confucius don't do it, but Scripture does. And it was all asserted centuries before Jesus was born, the central event in human history was the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth and it was all predicted centuries before He was born. And so Jesus, after He was raised from the dead, went to His own disciples there in the upper room, and this is what he said, Luke 24:44-48. "He said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Then He opened their minds, so they could understand the Scriptures."

He has the power to do that. He has the power, and I actually prayed for this yesterday that this would happen. In my mind, in your minds, in the minds of any unbelievers that might be here that were invited to come worship with us, that He would open your mind by the power of the Holy Spirit to understand the Scriptures. He has that power to do it. And Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He told them this is what is written that Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Well, that was just the beginning of a 40-day period in which Jesus trained His disciples in the Old Testament Scriptures. It was the greatest seminary in history.

Now, we're right near by Southeastern Seminary. I happen to teach there from time to time and I love it. It's one of the greatest seminaries in the world, it's nothing compared to that 40-day Seminary. And I think all of you students that are at Southeastern or any of you professors, you must assent to this, that you would rather sit at Jesus' feet than any of the esteemed faculty at Southeastern. But the topic of that 40-day seminary was very clear. This is what is written, this is what the prophets said would happened, so that their faith would rest certainly on the unchanging, the written Word of God, Acts 1:3. "After His suffering, Jesus showed Himself to these men and gave them many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, and spoke about the kingdom of God." Now, what Scriptures did He share with them? We don't know, but we do know how Peter and the other Apostles preached on the day of Pentecost. And we do know how the Apostle Paul wrote the Book of Romans and all of the Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures that he used to feed into them. Now, Paul was not there in that 40-day seminary, but he received a special tutoring session from the Holy Spirit. But it's the same Old Testament prophecies and scriptures.

And I'm going to look with you this morning at the three greatest Old Testament prophecies of Christ's resurrection from the dead, and then the three greatest prophecies of our own resurrection from the dead, also from the Old Testament.

And we begin with Psalm 16, this is the one that Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost. Now, if you look at Acts 2, we're going to just give a setting of this, this preaching that he did. The day of Pentecost was one of the three major festivals in the Jewish year. It was very close in time to the Passover just 40 days later, and so, pilgrims would come from all over the Greek speaking, the Roman world, the Jews from distant lands, and converts to Judaism would come to Jerusalem for the Passover and they would stay over for Pentecost. Thousands of Jews have made this journey and they would stay. Now, Christ was crucified, in fulfillment of the Passover symbolism was crucified on Passover Friday, He was buried just before the Sabbath, He was raised to life on the third day after the Sabbath, the first day of the week. Now for 40 days, Jesus met with the disciples to go over these Scriptures and He told them that at the end of that time, they should wait in Jerusalem for the gift that the Father would give them, the Holy Spirit who would be poured out on them from on high. And Jesus would ascend up to heaven and that He and the Father together would pour out the Holy Spirit.

Well, then Jesus did ascend and the church went back to the upper room, and they are waiting in the upper room for the gift that the Father was going to send. On the day of Pentecost, the gift was given. The Holy Spirit was poured out from on high, and they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And there's the sound of a violent tearing shredding wind, powerful like a hurricane level wind and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. And this crowd gathered of these pilgrims that were there for Pentecost, gathered around the house where they were staying, because they heard the sound of the wind. And Peter and the other Apostles went down and began to preach the Word of God to them. And what was amazing is that people heard all of them hearing one message, but they all could hear that one message in their own native languages. So God was doing something in their minds so that they heard, their eardrums would vibrate, but they would hear it in their own mother tongues.

And Peter preached this incredible message, and in verse 22, he talks about the life and the miracles of Jesus' ministry. He said in verse Acts 2:22, "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you, through him as you yourselves know." So many of those people were eyewitnesses to the miracles Jesus had done. But then Peter in the next verse lays the blame for their death right at their feet. He just lays it at their feet. They had seen Jesus' miracles, they knew who Jesus was. And God and handed Him over to them, the Jewish nation, for judgment.

Look at verse 23, "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge…" Stop right there. Let me just tell you, God had worked this whole thing out before the foundation of the world. There's no surprise, He didn't throw this thing together at the last minute. Not at all. He knew exactly what He was going to do with the problem of sin before He said, "Let there be light." And He made this whole plan, that's how He was able to speak through the prophets and let out a little bit of information to mark Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior of the world. But anyway, Peter said, "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of lawless men, wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross."

"You did it." He was blaming the nation of Israel, along with the wicked men, the lawless men. Peter then declared very simply the greatest good news in human history. Look at V\verse 24, "But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him." Oh, don't you love those words? Can you just spend the rest of the day meditating on Acts 24? God raised Him from the dead, and freedom from the agony of death, why? Because death couldn't hold Him. It's impossible for death to keep hold of Jesus.

And then in verse 32 again, "God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact." So the church was based on the power of eyewitness testimony, "We have seen Jesus alive." This is a matter of historical record. In space and time, we saw this individual, we touched Him, we ate with Him, we saw Him. Eyewitness.

But God knew that was a temporary... A temporary status. Very soon after that, the physical evidence of the resurrection would be gone, maybe later that same day it was gone. And the eyewitnesses themselves would be arrested, and would martyred, and even in John's case, die of old age in exile, and they'd be gone. And future generations would only have one thing, the Bible. Only have the scriptures. That's all we would have. And the eyewitness would write down what they saw, and so we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we have... But it's the same thing, the Scripture. And so only by the prophecies of Scripture can we believe that these things are true.

And so Peter there in his Pentecost message, turns to the solid foundation of predictive prophecy, and he turns to Psalm 16. It was the resurrection that had been predicted by King David a thousand years before Jesus was born. Look at verses 25-28, and that's chapter two. David said about Him, "I saw the Lord always before me because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will live in hope because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the path of life, you will fill me with joy in your presence."

So that's Psalm 16. The Jews had been reading it for 10 centuries. It was well known to them, they didn't understand the meaning. And they hadn't really thought it through. They hadn't put two and two together. Peter puts it all together for them. He said, "Look, David, King David wrote this... " He didn't say, a thousand years ago, but they knew, a long time ago. And he wrote these words speaking of the defeat of death and decay at the grave, a corruption, "You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy one see decay." Think about it. Peter makes the point here, David could not have been speaking about himself, because David himself died and was buried and his body decayed. Look at verse 29, "Brothers, I can tell you confidently, [boldly, clearly] that the patriarch David died and was buried and his body is here to this day." It decayed. Remember the death of Lazarus and how the sisters were worried that if you took the stone away too early after four days, there would be a bad odor. You know what decay is all about, the corruption of bacteria, of worms eating the body, the defilement of the body because of sin. The body is sown in corruption and it's sown in dishonor. That's what decay is all about. But this prophecy says, "You will not abandon me to the grave, and you will not let me see decay." Well, Peter says... "He's not writing about himself because he died and decayed." But who's he writing about?

Look at what he says verse 30 and 31. "He was a prophet, and he knew that God had promised him on oath that He would place one of his descendants on His throne. Seeing what was ahead [I love those words], he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay." Just ponder that, what other religion? Seeing what was ahead, and we would add writing what he saw. It's predictive prophecy, he was not talking about himself, to declare in words and write it down and have those scriptures handed on from generation to generation of Jews. Have the scribes copy them, all of those Hebrew letters, copy them, the generation after generation, not think it through.

But the time had come for the veil to be removed from their minds and from ours, and say, "How could this be possible? How could someone die and see no decay?" And this is this testimony that is given in Scripture. It gives us the certainty that Christianity is true, and that Christ is risen from the dead. No other religion has these predictive prophecies. And these prophecies center on the most important issue in life, how we sinners can be forgiven by almighty God, and how we can live forever, and not die. That's what these predictions have to do.

Well, what other prophecies do you think that Jesus showed to His church? I want to give you two others, Psalm 22 and you can turn and look there if you would, and also one other, Isaiah 53. First Psalm 22, again written by King David, so a thousand years before Jesus was born. Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross. He said, "My God my God, why have you forsaken me?" Psalm 22:1.

I've often thought to myself that's Jesus' way of saying, "After all this is done, go back and read Psalm 22." But it also was a real sense of abandonment by God, with Him as our substitute. God made Him who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God, that exchange at the cross, and so that sin, our sin was laid on Him, and God in some mysterious way, abandoned Jesus. And He says, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" Now, that... This Psalm breaks into two main sections, and Peter spoke about it, how the prophets spoke of the sufferings of the Christ and the glories that would follow. That's a good two-part outline to Psalm 22.

The sufferings of Christ come through the first section, the subsequent or following glories is in the second half of Psalm 22. Jump down with your eyes if you would at verses 14 through 18. This is a description of the physical process of crucifixion. It says there, "I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax, it is melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me, a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. People stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing."

Well, there are many details in this Psalm that were directly fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, including His garments being gambled over, but especially amazing are these words in verse 14 and verse 16. Verse 14, "I am poured out like water... " Dehydration. "And all of my bones are out of joint." Disfigurement. And then verse 16, "They have pierced my hands and my feet." So again, this was written a thousand years before Christ was crucified, but it was also written about three centuries before the Assyrians invented crucifixion. Nothing like this had happened to anybody in David's time. David's hands and feet were not pierced, his bones were not physically put out of joint, he wasn't dehydrated, he wasn't surrounded by a bunch of enemies, and his garments were not gambled for. Again, he was a prophet, and he spoke filled with the Holy Spirit, seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the crucifixion of the Christ.

But then at a certain point, the Psalm just turns and gets really happy. The Psalm just turns and gets really happy. The Psalm just turns and gets really celebratory. Look at Verses 22 through 25, "I will declare your name to my brothers in the congregation, I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise Him. All you descendants of Jacob honor Him. Revere Him all you descendants of Israel, for He has not despised or disdained the sufferings of the afflicted one. He has not hidden His face from him, but has listened to his cry for help. From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly. Before those who fear you, I will fulfill my vows." Suddenly, this suffering individual is celebrating a great deliverance in the great assembly.

Look at verses 29 through 31, "All the rich of the earth will feast and worship. All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him. Those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve Him, future generations will be told about the Lord, they will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, for He has done it." This is resurrection, triumph, victory. Now, I was going to take the second half of Psalm 22 and put it in the second category, predictions of our own resurrection, but I kept it here.

"All of those who go down to the dust… who cannot keep themselves alive... " Do you know who that is? That's us. And on the basis of Christ's piercing, on the basis of His crushed status, and His death on the cross, we will live forever. This is the celebration of Psalm 22.

Now, Isaiah 53. Go and look at Isaiah 53, specifically verse 5 and 6. If Psalm 22 describes clearly how Christ died, Isaiah 53 describes very clearly why Christ died. Isaiah 53:5,6. Jesus' death was as a substitute for our sins. The centerpiece of Christianity was, or is substitutionary atonement.

Atonement literally means "at-one-ment." We were estranged from God, and through Christ's substitutionary death, through His suffering, we are made at one with God, reconciled with God. And no verse in the entire Bible, including the New Testament teaches substitutionary atonement as clearly as Isaiah 53:5, and also verse six. Look at it, "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Written six-and-a-half to seven centuries before Jesus was born.

Why did He die? He died because we all like sheep have gone astray. Because we're sick with sin and we need healing. Because we're rebels. We have all turned away from God and followed our own path, and we deserve to be condemned to hell, we deserve to die eternally for our sins. And God sent His son, His only begotten son, Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, to come into the world, lead a sinless life under the law of Moses, never violated the law, but then die an atoning death, a substitutionary atoning death. Look at Verse five, look at the substitutionary language. "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds, we are healed." Again, notice in verse five the word pierced.

That's a very unique, interesting word. I picture a sharp implement, a sword, a needle, an awl, something like that going through with force, a membrane to the other side. That's what piercing is. And there are actually four prophecies in the Old Testament linked to the death of Jesus in which the word pierce is used. How do you explain it? But here it's not actually talking so much about the mechanism of Christ's death, but the purpose of it and the results. By His wounds we are healed. Now, you may ask healed from what? Let's just keep it in the context first. Healed from sin, healed from turning to our own way and doing what we want. Healed from rebellion. Now you say... I've heard some people say this means also physical healings involved. Oh yes, infinitely so, more than you can imagine, not like the health and wealth prosperity Gospel where you can be healed from a cold. I mean healed from everything, from every pain and suffering you can ever imagine in a resurrection body for eternity in heaven. That's the healing He's going to give you. And all of it blood-bought.

Verses 7 through 9 in Isaiah 53 also depict details of Christ's death and burial. "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before it shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and who can speak of his descendants, for he was cut off from the land of the living [that means dead]. For the transgression of my people, he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and was with the rich in his death."

You don't need a grave if you're not dead, so he died. But he was buried in a rich man's tomb. I've often thought about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who were hidden secret disciples of Jesus before He was a corpse. Think about this. Did the Romans do guilt by association? Oh, big time. Would they have wanted any of Jesus' secret followers, to arrest them and maybe execute them? Absolutely. Where then did Joseph and Nicodemus suddenly get their courage to ask for the dead body of Jesus and bury Him with lavish spices in Joseph's rich man's tomb. Where did that courage come from? I tell you, it came from the Holy Spirit.

Did it come from them reading the prophecies and saying, "You know Joseph, we need to go and fulfill this prophecy right here. We need to be certain that He's buried in a rich man's tomb." Nothing of the kind, they just suddenly, out of a love for Jesus and a sorrow at His death, took up courage and got the body and buried it in a rich man's tomb. But Isaiah predicted it seven centuries before Jesus was born. Look at the end, verse 10 and 11, "Though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days." Oh, He has a future, a history after being buried. Yes, He does.

"The will of the Lord will prosper in His hands." Praise God. Verse 11, "After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied, and by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities." He was buried, and after the burial, He will see light. He will see His descendants, and He will rejoice. Resurrection. Well, those are the three greatest predictions of Christ's death and resurrection.

What about our own? Do you see that this day would not be a happy day for us, if Christ is risen, and ascended and glorified, and we all end up in hell? It's because Christ is willing to take His resurrection victory and give it to us. He's the champion. He wins the championship and He gives all the plunder and the booty and the gold medals, and all of that to us. He already has all that, He's going to be seated at the right hand of almighty God. He did it for us, and it was written down and predicted centuries before He was born.

Turn, if you would to Isaiah 25 and 26. We'll start at 25. On Maundy Thursday, I talked about this Isaiah 25:6-8. I'm not going to walk through it carefully, but just read it. Isaiah 25:6-8: "On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that unfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. He will swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth, the Lord has spoken." There is a rich feast coming, a banquet, and what's amazing about this banquet so lavishly described is that it really comes down to one thing: The destruction of death.

He's going to destroy the shroud that's wrapped around the corpse, the sheet that unfolds all nations. He's going to swallow up death forever and we are going to celebrate.

Now look to the next chapter, Isaiah 26:19. "But your dead will live. Their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning. The earth will give birth to her dead." A clear prediction of not Jesus' resurrection here, but the resurrection of those who went down to the dust, whose bodies did decay, who were buried, but the earth is going to give birth to her dead. You have to put the two together. By Christ's resurrection victory, death has been destroyed and the earth will give birth to her dead.

Turn to Job 19:25-27. Job was a godly man who suffered greatly, the loss of all his possessions and his children in a single day, and then the loss of his health, but these immense sufferings could not shake his trust in God. So look at Job 19:25-27. There he wrote, "I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end, he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" So after the worms have eaten me up and after my body has been destroyed, because my redeemer lives, I in my own flesh will see my God. Job 19:25-27.

The final one is Daniel 12, Verse 2 and 3. Turn to Daniel 12:2,3. Prophet Daniel lived six centuries before Jesus was born. God gave him amazing visions of the end of the world, and the greatest promise of all concerned the bodily resurrection of the dead from the grave into eternal glory. Daniel 12:2-3, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." That's the doctrine of the general resurrection. But then Verse 3, "Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever." Now, that's a glorious resurrection, resurrection glory. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will arise and shine with radiant glory.

Look again at Verse 13. Daniel as usual was overwhelmed by the vision, didn't have any idea what he was talking about, was just told to write it down and not worry about it, and then was given this specific prediction concerning himself. Look at Verse 13. "As for you," this is an angel speaking to Daniel, "go your way till the end. You will rest," that means you will die, "and then at the end of the days, you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance." How powerful is that? So, this morning, we've looked at clear predictions of the death and resurrection of Jesus and clear predictions of the general resurrection of the righteous into bodies that will shine and live forever.

What application can we take from this? Well, you don't have to turn there, but go back in your minds to the end of Peter's Pentecost sermon. After you get done preaching, it says that the people who heard him were cut to the heart or pierced in their hearts, and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" And Peter and the other apostles replied, "Repent from your sins and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." He didn't say it, but he could have added, "And you will be raised in a glorious resurrection body at the end of the world." So simply, all of you who hear me should believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. If you've never done that before, Welcome. I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad that somebody invited you. Maybe you just decided to come to church because it's Easter. If you did not come in here knowing that your sins were forgiven by faith in Christ, this is the time to cross over from death to life spiritually, and Jesus' resurrection victory will be yours for all eternity.

Peter said it plainly, "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." For those of you that are Christians, let me just say this to you. Be healed emotionally. You need emotional therapy. You're like, "Well, how do you know that?" I just know because I need it and I know all of you. It's like, "Yes, another Easter. We need to sing and celebrate and the music needs to be a little bit louder and a little bit faster tempo, and so we'll do that, and the preaching needs to hit a certain pitch, and all that," look, set all that aside. That'll all be gone within, by the afternoon. Do you realize that almost all of Jesus' disciples and apostles emotionally reacted the wrong way to the news of the resurrection? They're all off. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were just straight depressed. And furthermore, some of our women have told us that the tomb is empty and we can't make hide nor hair of it. They don't know what's going on. And Jesus said, "How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken to you." And He healed them by the ministry of the word. They didn't know who He was. His identity was hidden from them. But at the time... By the time He got done, their hearts were burning within them based on the scriptures.

Think about Peter, Peter sees the actual evidence for the resurrection, and he went away puzzled. Peter.  John saw and believed. Peter went away wondering. What about Mary there at the empty tomb and she's weeping and she sees the physical evidence for the resurrection and she's just weeping and crying? And the angel says, "Woman, why are you weeping?" "They've taken my Lord away and they put him somewhere and I don't know where he is and I want to get him and bring him back and bury him. I want to finish his burial." That's what she was about. Focused, focused individual. Alright? "I got to finish his burial." "No, you don't." And then Jesus appears and she thinks he's the gardener. It's one of the great moments in redemptive history, Mary thinking Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, is the gardener.

"Sir, if you have taken him, tell me where he is and I'll get him and bring him back." Really? What's the plan, Mary? Then Jesus just spoke out of tenderness, and said, "Mary," and she immediately, with the hearing of her name, fell at His feet and worshipped Him. So I don't know what your emotional state was when you came in here. Maybe it was fine. Maybe you're just filled with joy, but I know this: Our joy is under constant assault by the world, the flesh and the devil. And my job here isn't to heat you up to a fever pitch and send you out like a coach at halftime and you're losing by three touchdowns. That's not my job. My job is to preach the Word and say you have a lasting permanent basis for unchanging joy, and you may be sometime sorrowful, but you can be always rejoicing based on these facts. So emotional therapy.

Thirdly, let's put sin to death by the Spirit. We have the power to live in Christ a resurrected life. His resurrection physically gives us proof that we can live by the Spirit a resurrected life spiritually in holiness. Put sin to death this week by the power of the Spirit. The things that depress me the most in my life are my own sins. We don't need to sin ever again. We are set free from sin. Think like this. It was impossible for death to keep its hold on Jesus. It was also impossible for Him to sin. Some day, it's going to be impossible for you to sin. The more you live like that now, the more joyful you will be and the more fruitful you will be. And finally, let's go out this week as messengers. The staff went out on Monday and were handing out invites to Easter. Two-thirds of the people we talked to didn't know it was Easter. I was excited about that. You know why? It means we can do the same thing next week.

Don't tell them it's Easter, but you can tell them we'll be celebrating the resurrection. We'll do that for sure. They don't know. We are becoming an increasingly post-Christian, pagan society. People don't know these things. They don't automatically go to church on Easter anymore. So let's go out and tell them this week that Christ has risen and that they in Him can live forever. Close with me in prayer.

This Wednesday, Andy Wynn and Wes Treadway and I were meeting in my office around 10 o'clock to discuss some aspects of our new member process, and Wes felt the ground shake. I didn't feel it but he did and went like, "What is that?" And we received some communication from someone that was near the scene of the gas explosion that something had happened, and actually the communication we received was that Kaffeinate is gone. So it was a coffee shop that Andy went to that very morning, that very morning. And so we went right up this aisle, through those doors, down the... And we could see smoke billowing up. There were helicopters over North Duke Street at that point. No sirens though, I thought that was strange how the helicopters were there first, and then as we walked past McDonalds, then the sirens started.

We got as close as we could. We were over at West Village and there was already a tape barrier there, and we were just looking at the smoke billowing in the air and just praying. Saw a man there whose was flecked with blood, his ear was bloody, very, very minor injuries. But he was somewhat stunned, not really conversational. I told him that I was a pastor, and he wasn't opposed to talking, but it was, it was just, wasn't there. Just a lot of disorientation, a lot of sadness already. And then things as they developed, come to find out the one person who died, Mr. Lee, was good friends with Andy Wynn and others have communicated with him. His shop is gone. I looked at the photos this morning of North Duke Street. Google Earth had a before picture and then there's some pictures after. And that whole building right in the middle of the block is gone, like a tooth that was knocked out, it's just a gap there.

And for me, as I get up to preach today and I look at the text, I realize just how sovereign and perfect God orchestrates things. I wrote this sermon weeks ago, weeks ago. Paul wrote the text centuries ago, millennia ago. But look what he says. In verse 29, he says that time is short. Time is short. Verse 31, he says that the form of this world is passing away. And so for me, I think about Psalm 90 where Moses, the man of God, says, "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." In that same Psalm, Psalm 90, he said, "You turn men back to dust saying, 'Return to dust, o sons of man.'"

In 1734, Jonathan Edwards presided at the funeral of a young man, a teenager who had died in two days from pleurisy, from a sudden fever that seized him. It was shocking to the young people of that church or that community. And he went to Psalm 90:5-6, and there in those verses, it talks about grass that flourishes in the morning, but in the evening it's gone. And he invited them to look on the dead face of this young man who just two days before that was flourishing with the beauty of youth and now he's dead. And he zeroed in on the brevity of life, and the young people in that particular community who were just wailing with grief at their friend, but also at the shock of it, quickly turned with renewed zeal to the gospel and to Christ and to the Bible and began one of the greatest awakenings that's ever happened in history there in Northampton, 1734. And Jonathan Edwards wrote down about these incredible occurrences. It was published in England, George Whitfield and others read about it, and the revival spread over there in amazing ways. It became what some people argue is the greatest awakening, the Great Awakening, that's ever happened. It all started, in some ways started with the death of that youth, that untimely death, and people realizing again that we're all going to die, that time is short. Time is short.

And so all I can do as a minister the gospel here is to remind you of that so that you can look at what Jesus called the signs of the times. Should be enough evidence already. We didn't need another blast or another sudden removal of buildings like happened in 9/11. We don't need another reminder, we have had plenty to know that it's appointed for each one of us to die, and after that, to face judgment. And so what we need to do is remind ourselves of the joy that next week Christians are going to be celebrating. We don't have to wait for Easter. We don't have to wait for next week. We can focus right now on the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead as our only hope, and that we can get ready to die by trusting in Christ. We can be aware of the fact that our time is short and that God has made provision for sinners like you and me by sending His only begotten son. He has made provision for this sinful world by His son being born of the Virgin Mary, living a sinless life, doing signs and wonders, giving amazing teachings.

There was a current event in Jesus' day in which a massive tower fell over and killed some people, and people were shocked. And in the theology of the day, there was an assumption that they were worse sinners than the people that survived. Jesus said that was not so, "but unless you repent, you too will all perish." Jesus would say the same thing to all of us, if we do not repent of our sins and find forgiveness in Christ, we will likewise perish. Now when we say likewise, we need to realize the death of the body is as nothing. Jesus said, "Don't worry about those who kill the body and after that can do nothing. I'll tell you who to fear, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in Hell. Yes, I tell you fear him." So the physical destruction of the body is a picture of the real death that's coming, what the Bible calls the second death. And Jesus is the deliverer, the savior from the second death. And so all I can do for me as a minister of the gospel is say, current events continually remind us of the fragility and the brevity of life. We've seen it, you don't have to live in that or the other city where there's a terrorist attack or some other natural disaster. We're wired in, we're tuned in, we know. It happened in our community so we can see it with our own eyes, but we have evidence every day.

And so as we come to 1 Corinthians 7:29-40, we come to a really timely word, don't we? And Paul's been talking about marriage, and the message he gives here is you should see your marriage from an eternal perspective, or your singleness from an eternal perspective. That's what he's saying. We should look at everything from an eternal perspective. And we will do so if God gives us faith. Faith is the eyesight of the soul, I've been saying this for years, by which we can see invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future. But you know, faith is also the eyesight of the soul, where we can see physical realities properly. We can see the physical world from a faith perspective, and that's exactly what Paul wants us to do. Look at marriage, look at singleness, look at your earthly situation from a spiritual or eternal perspective.

The Present Crisis

Alright, so let's look at the flow of argument here, what Paul is doing. Alright, in verses 26 through 29 he's talking to single people and to married people and he's talking about how they should see their marital status. He says, "Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are. Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife, but if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life and I want to spare you this." Verse 29, "What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short." So that's the run-up into the text we're looking at today. So in these verses, in verses 17 through 24, Paul advocates that as much as possible people should remain in the life situation they were in when they were called to become Christians. Don't try always to be improving your earthly situation. How can I make my earthly life better? Don't think like that. Be content in the situation you're in. We saw that last week. Now in verses 25 through 28, he applies this general rule to the case of unmarried people, virgins, people who have never been married. He says to them to stay single if you can. If you're able to control your desires, if you're able to control and not burn with passion, as he said earlier in this chapter, then stay single if you can. That's what he's advocating.

In verse 26, he says, "In light of the present crisis," is one of the translations, meaning there are different ways to look at that, but first start with the persecution that Christians undergo as Christians in this world. That's a crisis. Or it could just mean what life is like in this present world. This chapter is a timeless chapter, so we shouldn't just think there's some unique thing going on there in Corinth, and therefore Paul is giving very time-bound instructions, but once that little crisis is over then all bets are off. He's not saying that, there is a timeless word the Holy Spirit is speaking to us here. So there seems to be a timeless present crisis. So that would be a persecuted setting or just the general struggles of this present life, this present world, that might be a way to understand this present crisis.

Alright, Paul himself understood very much of persecution. He's in prison continually, again and again. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit had warned him that prison and hardships would face him every city he went to. So he was very aware of what that present crisis looked like. Imagine how much grief his calling would have caused him if he had a wife and young children to look after, how difficult that would be. How would he provide for their needs from prison? Paul says concerning himself, he has the single-minded devotion to the calling of the Lord and the present crisis, the persecution, is not going to stop him at all. He said that he is ready not only to be bound but to die for Jesus, he's ready for that. But he's speaking as a single man, he's got that kind of freedom, that's what he's saying. If he were married, he says, "I would have a deeply divided mind."

The Troubles in This World

Well, even beyond the present crisis, married people, Paul says, face many troubles in this world, and Paul says compassionately and wisely that he wants to spare them of those troubles. Well, what kind of troubles does he mean? Well, start with simple physical provision, food, clothing, shelter, other basic necessities, medical care, the different things of the physical worlds. Marriage frequently implies, usually implies children. And when women are pregnant and then they give birth to newborns, they need care, they need a shelter of protection and provision. The newborn clearly needs care that he or she cannot care for himself/herself. And so there needs to be a bubble of protection, and in ordinary patterns God has provided that through a godly husband and godly father. From the very beginning in Genesis 2:15, He put out Adam in the garden to serve and protect. And so that is extended how much more, not just the garden, but the family, wife and children, serve and protect. So a godly husband would be called on to do that.

Jacob was very aware of that. You remember when Esau came to meet Jacob, and he was talking together and he wanted to escort Jacob back into the promised land, and he said he didn't want to  do that, but this is the reason he gave, Genesis 33:13, Jacob said to Esau, "The children are tender and I must care for the ewes and the cows that are nursing the young. If they're driven hard for just one day, they will die." So he's very aware of the weak in his family and his flock and the need to take a slower pace for them. Paul says concerning the care for your family, for the elder, your aging parents, in 1 Timothy 5:8, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." So that provision is very physical, the need to care for their ongoing needs.

So once you have a family, you begin to have practical issues of, let's say, housing. So home ownership brings you into many issues that take a ton of time to address. You who are homeowners know exactly what I'm talking about. It seems almost limitless what you can do for your house. So the metaphor of putting a roof over your head, it becomes actually not metaphorical but physical, you need to be sure that the roof doesn't leak, and so every period of time, you need to replace the roof, and so you thank God for a hailstorm because then the insurance company will pay for much of it.

And so when our inspection happened, we were grateful for the damage done to our roof. Do you see the kind of thinking you start doing? I'm going to put a roof over their heads, but we need to be sure that it doesn't leak. So you've got upkeep, you've got preventive maintenance, you've got car repairs, budgets, long-range financial planning, college for the kids, planning for your own retirement, all of these kind of things. And everything you own is being broken down every moment by existence in this hostile world. Jesus talked about moth and rust destroying. And so that's true, things just break down. They get destroyed, they become decayed, they rot. Fire is a fast destroyer, water is a slow and patient destroyer. And so these things are going on all the time. And you don't want to be the Proverbs sluggard who someone goes by and looks at your property, and it's overgrown with weeds and it's ramshackle. That would be a poor witness. And so just being a good steward you're going to be thinking about these things all the time, considering them. Beyond that, you've got the medical needs of your family, your wife and children, if they're sick or they have some kind of chronic medical issue, it's going to dominate a portion of your time, energy, and money.

So these are just the realities of a settled normal family life. These are the kinds of troubles Paul said, "I would spare you." A single person, Paul advocates, is much more free to move around in the world, not so tied down with these levels of concern. You remember in Matthew 10 when Jesus sent out the apostles two by two, He sent them free, physically free from things. Remember He said, "Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts, take no bag for the journey or extra tunic or sandals or a staff, for a worker is worth his keep." Now, we'll talk about that later in 1 Corinthians 9, how those who preach the gospel should make their living from the gospel. But He's saying, "Don't go encumbered, find some place and just stay there as a base of operations. And don't think you're going to be lavishly provided for, but you'll get enough, and just preach the gospel." So there's that kind of freedom Jesus was giving the messengers of the gospel.

Christians Need an Eternal Perspective

Well, in any case, Christians need an eternal perspective. If we look at verse 29, He says, "What I mean brothers, is that the time is short." Again, verse 31, "The world in its present form is passing away." What a powerful expression, this present form. There is a future form of this world coming. I believe not on an entirely new Earth, but in a resurrected Earth with some continuity, free from decay and death. But this present decaying, dying world is passing away. And he says in verse 29, "The time is short," literally, "It has been shortened or compressed." There's an intentionality here. Have you ever noticed that time isn't linear? Have you ever had some experiences where the time just drags out? It seems to have slowed down to a stop. I was in some lectures at MIT I'll never forget.  This two-hour lecture, I think... Yeah, I don't remember the topic. It was on medieval history, I think, and the lecture had this monotone...And it was a long two hours. And then there are other times it's like you've been looking forward to this thing and it's just gone, time flies when you're having fun, this kind of thing, it's not linear. I don't know what this means, but there's a sense that the time has been compressed, it's been shortened. And so Paul says the present sufferings aren't even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in the future world because the time is just so brief. Hebrews 1:2 calls it "these last days." We're in the last days. Been in the last days for 2000 years.

1 John 2:18 shortens it even more and says, "This is the last hour." So there's this sense of urgency, a brevity of life. Very soon Jesus will come. Three times in the final chapter of the final book of the Bible he says, "Behold, I am coming soon," Revelation 22. This is going to end very, very soon. That's what we're saying. We with the faith perspective, we know that. We know it in ways non-Christians don't. We have a sense of a vivid reality of the brevity of life. So James says in James 4:14. "What is your life? It is a mist, a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live one more day and do this or that.'" So we've got a faith perspective. We're trained by the Word of God to see our lives in this world differently than unbelievers. They act like life will go on as it always has. It's kind of essential to the perspective of an unbeliever is to think things are always going to go on like this, and to forget Hebrews 9:27, "It is appointed to each one of us to die once and after that to face judgment."

Every Christmas time, my family and I, some of my family, watch the musical Scrooge with Albert Finney, the 1970 version of Christmas Carol. And in that the Ghost of Christmas Future brings Scrooge to a grave. And there's a headstone on the grave and he's just kind of stunned. And then he gets brought around and sees his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge, on the headstone, and he staggered, he's stunned, "Oh no, may it never be." It's like what world are you living in? You don't know where this is all heading? You're an old man. This is coming soon. But we Christians, even if we're young men and young women, even if we're teenagers, we need to know it's all going to end very soon. It's a mist and a vapor. Don't be shocked to think in the future, if the Lord doesn't return in our lifetime, that there will be a grave and perhaps a headstone with your name on it. Picture It. Jonathan Edwards had the young people look at the dead face of their teenage friend. Look at the face. Look death in the face and be ready. That's what the Christian faith tells us to do.

This Will All Soon End

So we are prepared for the brevity of our own lives, and we're going to die. And we're going to die at a time the Lord ordains. All the days ordained for us were written in His book before one of them came to be. And our Christian faith prepares us for the future end of not just our lives, but actually of the entire world. It's all coming to an end. Not just one building on 115 North Duke Street, not just one of the... All of the buildings, all of them. All of the businesses with their buying and selling, all of the empires with their rising and falling, all of the inventors and the composers and the authors and the creators with their creativity. It's all going to come to an end, and the Bible says soon. It's all coming to an end soon. We need to be ready. Verse 31, "This world in its present form is passing away."

Paul’s Rather Shocking Applications

Alright, so Paul makes these applications. Look at verses 29-31, "So from now on, those who have wives should live as if they had none, those who mourn as if they did not, those who are happy as if they were not, those who buy something as if it were not theirs to keep, those who use the things of this world as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away." So there's almost a rhythm to this, like a poem. Let me reread it and insert a phrase that I think will line up with Paul's meaning. "From now on, those who have wives, let them live as if they had no wives. And those who weep, let them live as if they did not weep. And those who rejoice, let them live as if they did not rejoice. And those who buy, let them live as if they did not really possess it. And those who use the things of the world, let them live as if they didn't use them at all." So Paul is teaching an eternal perspective on all of these temporary conditions, even marriage.

Now, these words could be taken out of context and twisted to mean something Paul didn't really intend, especially when it comes to marriage. I'm going to say something to you husbands. Do not quote this verse to your wife because you want to watch the Masters Tournament when you get home from church and she wants you to do something else. It says right here, "From now on, those who have wives should live as if they had no wives."

Don't do that. That's not what Paul's saying. Ignore your wife, especially when she tells you to do something you don't want to do, that's not what he's saying. What he is saying is even if you are married, even if you are in the covenant relationship that is the most significant human relationship there is on earth, the most lasting human relationship there is on earth, still live like what it really is, temporary, because it is. It is, it's temporary. Live that way. You will both die some day, if the Lord doesn't return in our lifetime, you're both going to die, and your marriage will end when the first of you dies.

Your present physical relationship is temporary, but if you're both Christians, your spiritual relationship is eternal. You will spend infinite time as brothers and sisters in Christ and a short amount of time as husbands and wives. You will spend an infinity of time, both of you as part of the bride of Christ, married in a spiritual mystical way to Christ. That's what you're going to spend eternity doing. This physical marriage now is a blessing from God, it serves certain purposes on earth, but it's temporary. That's what he means. See it that way. So it is vital for couples to hold on to each other loosely, as in God's hand. If your spouse dies and you continue to live, your life on earth is still valuable. You are still valuable. Your life is hidden in Christ, not in your spouse. Christ is your life, and when he appears, you will appear with him in glory, not your spouse. I've seen some godly people grieve with a healthy grief when their godly spouse dies, with a healthy grief. And I've seen them recover from that grief and then live fruitful lives in the years that follow the death of their godly spouse. I've seen it happen, but I've seen the opposite too. I've seen godly couples, one of them lose a spouse, and then that remaining person shrivels and dies soon thereafter, literally within a year. I've seen it happen.

So when Paul says, "Those who have wives should live as if they if they had none," he's saying, "Have an eternal and wise perspective on your brief life together. Even if you're married for six decades, if you're both Christians, you're going to spend infinitely more time together in heaven than you'll ever spend on earth. Just keep that in mind."

Paul then extends that to every area of life in this physical world. Hold onto everything loosely. If you weep, don't act like your weeping is eternal and permanent, it isn't. Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. Paul says when you come to a Christian funeral, don't weep like those who have no hope. It's a temporary weeping that you're doing. We should always remember the place to which we're going. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there'll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. That's where we're all heading.

In the same way, those who rejoice in some earthly things should act as if they did not. It's too easy for us to get wrapped up in earthly successes and be too elevated. I'm a big sports fan, it's easy to see the emptiness of sports championships when in the locker room, they're interviewing the newly crowned champions to see if they can repeat next year. It's like, "What? Let us enjoy just this evening." Anyway. I wonder about those who go out on the Super Bowl field to clean up the confetti. What a job that is. Do they use snow shovels and big barrels? What do they do to get rid of the confetti? Or pity the individual that goes into the locker room to scrub the dried sticky champagne off the lockers. But the moment's passed. It's over, it's nothing, it's just nothing.

For a long time, FBC had a collection of old softball trophies. Some of you have been here long enough to know exactly what I'm talking about. Third place trophies. Third place in the city softball tournament 1981. Why did we keep it? There was a while that some of the staff were starting to do pranks with a particular trophy. It was a garish trophy for second place, I guess, had three levels with a Triumphant wreath holder at the top. And it kept showing up on people's doorsteps on Christmas Eve or whatever. Jason Duesing, my secretary, sat up there while I was preaching with his arm around the trophy.

So that was mine. I'm glad it wasn't up here. I think they've been cleared out. I don't know, I think they're gone. We were ruthless with those, we weren't worried about any residual team members from 1981 remembering the glory days when we finished third in the Durham Softball tournament.

Honestly, most of the things that we celebrate in this life are so clearly temporary, like the tinkling glasses on New Year's Eve and then it's just over. Honestly, even good wholesome Christian joys should be tempered by the realization that our lives here on earth will soon pass away. The birth of a child, the happiness of a wedding should be celebrated in light of eternity. Those who rejoice should do it knowing that the real joy comes from something else. Honestly, you can enjoy those things better if you think that way. It's the best way you can enjoy the birth of a child and your wedding day. The best way. And Paul says, those who buy something, don't act like it's really yours to keep. It looked at best in the store, and then from then on it's downhill. Everything you own, you don't really own it. God is loaning it to you, and He has a very clear intentionality to why He gives it to you. There's a clear kingdom purpose for the money and the things you buy. Think that way. Don't think like, "I really possess this thing," Because honestly, if you think that way, the reverse is true, it really possesses you. That's really what's going on. It has become an idol, it's something you can't live without, and any created thing you can't live without is by definition an idol.

So why is this? Because this world in its present form will soon pass away. You are an alien and a stranger here, you're just passing through. And in this context, that includes how you should think about marriage.

Now, in verses 32-35, Paul then transitions to give his clearest defense for the practical and spiritual advantages of singleness. He's already established the temporariness of this life, and then he advocate singleness in light of that. Look at verse 32 and following, "I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs, how he can please the Lord, but a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world, how he can please his wife, and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs. Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world, how she can please her husband. I am saying this to you for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord."

So Paul is not some killjoy, he's not some strict ascetic. He's not anti-marriage, not at all. His argument here is amazingly practical/spiritual, it's a combination of practical spiritual thinking here on singleness. He wants to free Christians from the inevitable practical issues that are going to dominate daily life as a married couple, especially as parents. The concern, some translations say anxious, that you're anxious about the things of this world. It reminds me of the story of Martha and Mary, remember that? Where they had Jesus over, and Martha was distracted by much serving, it said. It's the same Greek word. Her focus is on getting as many different varied dishes to the table hot and ready to eat for the honored guest and for that time, and so she's spending zero time with Jesus. But Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet drinking in his wisdom.

And so there is that same idea, you're going to be distracted from what's really going on here. And we can look at that every moment we could have an encounter with Jesus, and if your interests are distracted by making your earthly situation the maximal best it can be... There is a reasonable serving that Martha and Mary could have done, getting a meal on the table, but it doesn't need to be the best it was ever... because you only have Jesus for a short time. So he says, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, 4but few things are needed—or indeed only one.a]">[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Really, if Martha heard that properly, it's not like she's excluded. "Just stop. Sit down, sit down, listen to me."

And so I wonder if there's some of that where as a single person, you can just do that better. You're free, you're able to focus on the Lord and concern for Him. So he wants to free both men and women from the earthly physical concerns so they can be more devoted to the Lord. So a single man can be much more single-minded on pleasing the Lord than a married man. The married man to some degree is serving two masters, Jesus Christ and his family's bodily needs, not just his wife, but the kids too. So he's serving two concerns; his mind is divided, Paul is saying. Got to be.

When you think about the Apostle Paul, and I'm going through 2 Corinthians with my men's Bible study on Thursdays, and Paul gives his litany of sufferings and its staggering what this man went through. No one went through more suffering than the Apostle Paul for the gospel. I mean in 20th century church history. There's nobody even close, nobody. And as he lists his physical sufferings he gets to this one point, listen to this, 2 Corinthians 11:27, "I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food. I have been cold and naked." Wow. Now, for Paul as a single man, as an apostle, a frontier trailblazing church planner to the unreached Gentiles, that is heroic. But if you hear a story about a married man with little kids, toddlers, often hungry, thirsty, cold and naked, we almost wonder if it might be abusive. You feel like his job, among other things, is to be certain that their bodies, their little bodies, are provided for. It just makes sense. And so Paul is arguing for a certain level of freedom in the Gospel of which he is the ultimate display.

Paul Also Addresses a Godly Single Woman

He also addresses godly single women, verse 34: "An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs. Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord both in body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world, how she can please her husband." There are many throughout church history, especially the history of missions, many godly women that have forsaken marriage so they can give themselves fully with undivided devotion to their calling. Think clearly about Lottie Moon, who is... The IMB's annual Christmas offering is named for her. She was I think engaged to Crawford Toy at Southern Seminary. But she was called to mission, she was called to China. Sadly, he was called to false doctrine, and so she wisely turned away from him and just went on as a single woman heroically serving the Lord.

You got the same with Amy Carmichael who lived as a single woman, and who served in India and was hugely instrumental in issues of child trafficking, this amazing heroine. When she realized, Amy Carmichael realized that God was calling her to singleness, she had significant fears about that life, and she wrote of those fears in a letter to one of her adopted children. This is what Amy Carmichael wrote, "The devil kept on whispering, 'It's all right now, but what about afterwards? You're going to be very lonely.' And he painted pictures of loneliness. I can see them still. I turned to my God in a kind of desperation and said, 'Lord, what can I do? How can I go on to the end?' And He said, 'None of them that trust in me shall ever be desolate.' That promise has been with me ever since. It has been fulfilled to me and it will be fulfilled to you."

So these great women of God were freed from fears and lived lives for the Lord without the responsibilities of marriage. But a godly wife spends much of her time meeting the bodily needs of her husband and children. Think about the Proverbs 31 woman, she's a hard worker, and she gets up, Proverbs 31:15, while it's still dark, so that she can provide food for her family and portions for her servant girls. Verse 27, She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. A busy life, hard working life. Paul's talking about exactly that.

So Paul's concern here is for eternal fruitfulness for how this is all going to look on Judgement Day, not for restriction. He's not trying to restrict people. Look in Verse 35: "I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint on you, but to promote good order and secure your undivided devotion to the Lord." So the Greek word is a noose or a harness. "I'm not trying to put a noose on you or a harness on you. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to set a certain category of you free, so that when you see this instruction and you have the gift of singleness, you're set free and you'll be able to serve the Lord. Again, friends, this is not for everyone. I was raised Roman Catholic. Roman Catholic priests, it's required that they take a vow of celibacy. They have forbidden marriage for their clergy. Paul calls the forbidding of marriage the doctrine of demons, and it's led to all kinds of terrible excesses throughout centuries of Roman Catholic history of forced celibacy on men and women who clearly did not have the gift of singleness by how they lived their lives. Even worse, in the medieval Catholic system there's a hierarchy of holiness, and the single people that took vows of celibacy and vows of poverty and all that were at the highest level, and then your average married couple very low on the pecking order.

Now, listen, I believe that some of the greatest heroes and heroines have taken Paul's advice and been single, but the overwhelming majority of the redeemed in Heaven will have been raised in godly Christian homes where you have a Christian marriage, a godly husband and wife raising the children in the nurture and admonition Lord. That's the normal mechanism by which the elect get to heaven. Two-thirds, as many as two-thirds of the redeemed in heaven will have had at least one godly parent who poured into their lives. It's normal. So even missionaries that go and set up among unreached people groups, they're hoping, if the Lord doesn't return in their lifetime, to set up a healthy church with healthy families, with husbands that follow Ephesians 5, they'll love their wives as Christ loved the church, the wives submit to their husbands as to the Lord, the two of them raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, that's the normal way. But there are some people that are called to singleness and Paul's advocated.

Alright, so verses 36-38, should we get married or not? Answer, I don't know. [chuckle] You have to decide that for yourself. I'm sorry, let me read the verses. "If anyone thinks he is acting improperly toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if she's getting along in years and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning, they should get married. But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, who's made up his mind not to marry the virgin, this man also does the right thing." Verse 38, "So then he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better."

So Paul turns to address, if we could say, couples in the pipeline. Maybe they're already betrothed in the pattern of the ancient near east. They're already betrothed together, but they're not actually gotten married yet, or maybe they're not even betrothed yet. They're just single. So what should we do about it all? What about us? And you can imagine a man saying, "My betrothed is eager to get married. What should I do?" And Paul says, "If you think you're behaving improperly toward her... " So I don't know exactly what that means, but it could be that maybe you've made certain pledges verbally and talked about how excited you are to get married. And her heart is kindled and she doesn't have any gift of singleness. She's excited. And for yourself, you don't know what to do; if you feel like you're doing her injustice then get married. That's what he's saying. Even more, however, if your conscience is telling you that you have the gift of singleness, and you're solidly under control and you have no obligations restraining you, your conscience is free, then if you can, stay single.

So in the spirit of the chapter, he says, "If you marry, you do well, but if you can stay single for you, you do even better." It's the only way to understand the better, that he's not setting up a hierarchy. For that person with the gift of singleness, they will do better if they stay single.

Then finally he addresses widows. "A woman," verse 39:40, "is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord." He must be in the Lord. Must be a Christian marriage. Verse 40, "In my judgement, she's happier if she stays as she is, and I think that I too have the Spirit of God." So just the same advice he's been giving, stay in your condition now if you can.

Alright, so applications. I gave the central application at the beginning of the sermon. Life is short, time is brief. I'm amazed... Are you okay? Here we go. We'll find out in heaven what that was all about. Anyway, let's keep going.

I am amazed, I say this with all reverence, that more people weren't killed on Wednesday. And apparently the reason was there was a smell of gas that enabled people to take warning and get out of there. So if I can just say, take warning and get out of there. Flee the wrath to come. Flee to Christ. Years ago in the early 90s, I was pastor up in Massachusetts, and there was a hurricane that was coming. And everyone heard about it, they heard the forecast, they believed it, and they went and put these big Xs with duct tape on their windows, I'll never forget it, because you could still see the adhesive years later, but they took warning and they were trying to protect from glass shards being everywhere. And I thought to myself, "Why can't you take warning concerning your soul and the fact that you're going to die and flee to Christ?" But it's because it's spiritually discerned.

Now, if God gives you the gift of faith and flee to Christ while there's time, flee to Christ. Now if you've already fled to Christ as a Christian, then just understand the wisdom of this chapter. What he's saying is look at everything in your life from an eternal perspective. Look at your marriage, say, "How can we be a married couple for eternity, with a perspective toward eternity? We know our marriage is temporary. How can we best make the most of the brief time we have together?" And so it is with every condition. "I'm buying this thing Lord. How can I make best use of this thing I'm buying for eternity? Because I know some day it's going to be destroyed. What can I do with my life so I can live best maximally for eternity?" Close with me in prayer.

Just like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 7, as we continue our study in this incredible epistle. And I want to ask you a question that came powerfully into my life as I was writing my book on Christian contentment. It's something that stands over me every day, every moment of my life, it is this question: has Christ crucified for sins on the cross, raised to life again, by the power of God, ascended and seated at the right hand of God, interceding for you… Has Christ done enough for you to be happy today, or must he do a little more? And whatever, you would say, honestly, I really think he needs to do a little more that is apparently not enough based on my mental state right now, I would challenge you that whatever additional thing you want him to do is probably an idol.

It's probably some created circumstance that you're putting too much weight on, you feel you need that in order to be happy, and it is not true, and the Lord wants to weed that out of your heart. And what's remarkable is that, I believe, though he doesn't use the language, the overt language of Christian contentment in this section that you heard Topher just read for us a moment ago, he is arguing from a perspective of Christian contentment and he's going to apply it to life status generally, and to marital status, specifically.

We live in a discontented age we live in, a discontented world, we are surrounded by miserable people, people who are discontent, when they sit and when they rise when they leave home when they stay at home they're discontent with their jobs, they're discontent with their material possessions, they're discontent with their mode of transportation, they're discontent with the traffic and with the weather they're discontent with the season. In the winter, they say, if it were only summer, in the summer, they say if it were only winter. Now, I've learned in the Christian life, to see more and more, sin is never just out there with all those people. Sin is right here in my own heart. I am also discontent from time to time in all of those situations.

Now, as I look at our world, I look at what we're facing. And I think about even the text that we're in in the section I think there may be no topic that brings as much discontentment in this world as marital status. People yearning, single people yearning to find their soul mate. Yearning to find someone who will bring meaning into their life, I'm talking about non-Christians, just listening to the songs that are sung and then if their relationship falls apart, they act as if they cannot go on living now without that person. And then, sadly, even once people get married, they seem to be discontent in that marriage. They finally got what they wanted and within a short amount of time, their disillusioned and their discontent, and so people are discontent in marital status.

And so I think it's a beautiful thing that God wants to speak into all of this and give us words of wisdom as Jesus said so beautifully to the church, so many years ago, the night before he was crucified, I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. And He comes to us by the Holy Spirit, and by the Scripture, and he comes to us today to speak into this situation of being content in any and every situation, the rare jewel of Christian contentment. Now, here in this context, let's try to understand the context. The Apostle Paul is answering a question that was put to him.

He is in a new section in the epistle 1 Corinthians 7:1 he said, "Now concerning what you wrote to me quote it is good for a man not to touch a woman." In other words, it's good for us as Christians who are now redeemed or in a whole new realm of the Spirit, and turn our backs on the realm of the flesh to abstain from all sexual interaction completely. Now that's what some of the Corinthians were thinking and had written to him.

Now, in the context, we can see why some might think that they were living there in Corinth in a pagan world, super-sexualized and corrupt sexually, and we see the corruption even in the church, in 1 Corinthians 5, there's a man there that has his father's wife and Paul says you need to act decisively and excommunicate that man immediately. 1 Corinthians 5, then in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, he lists, a series of sinful life patterns that you have to be redeemed out of or you're not going to go to heaven. And four of them relate to sex, fornication, adultery, effeminacy, homosexuality and then other sins besides, and he says that When the Gospel came, and you believed in the message of Christ and him crucified, you are radically transformed as he will say In the next epistle, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is gone, everything has become new. And so He says there in that context, such were some of you, you are ex-fornicators, ex-adulterers, ex-effeminate, ex-homosexuals.

And ready for the Kingdom of heaven, ready to enter eternity and then in the second half of that chapter, 1 Corinthians 6, he deals with some in the church that had not forsaken the habit of visiting temple prostitutes. And Paul has to address them very vigorously about sexual immorality, and the need for complete sexual purity. And then he brings up a new section, but it's right there in context. Problems with sexual purity, he says, "Some of you are saying to me it's good for a man not to touch a woman period. So even within marriage that we would have complete sexual abstinence. And Paul, in addressing that has said, "I don't deny, that for some people, that is true, people who are given the gift of singleness, celibate singleness."

It is good for them not to touch a woman or vice versa for those women sisters in Christ to not be with a man that is true, but not everyone can accept it. Some have the one gift, and some have the other, and so he elevates the two gifts that God has given for sexual purity, in this world, which is celibate singleness, and then Holy marriage, and so he's going through and he's addressing all of these things, and he addresses various marital status to the single people, to the Christian couples, to those that are married to non-Christians, and he's been dealing with all of that. Now in the midst of all of this, practical advice about how to live a healthy God-honoring life, sexually.

He gives us a central lesson, that's going to unify our text today, look at verse 17. "Nevertheless each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him in which God has called him. This is the rule that I lay down in all the churches." So, just retain the place in life you are in. He said, This is what I say all the time and he's going to go through various life situations and He's going to apply this same lesson in verse 18 to the circumcised. He says, "Stay circumcised." To the uncircumcised he says, "Stay uncircumcised." Then he gives this lesson again look at verse 20, "each one should remain in the situation, which he was in when God called him," or in which God called him verse 20.

Then amazingly, he addresses slaves of which the overwhelming majority of the early Christian church, were slaves. There were millions of slaves in the Greco-Roman world, and so many of the early Christians were... You know, not many wise, not many influential, not many of noble birth, they were slaves, many of them and so he says to the slaves... To the slaves, he said don't let your slave... The fact that you're slaves bother you, that's incredible. Don't let it trouble you. But if you can get your freedom, do it. However, in verse 24, each person should remain with God, in whatever circumstance, he was in when called. So God is enough for you, that's what he's saying. You should remain in your walk with God in whatever circumstance in which he called you. Then in verses 25-28, he returns to home-base which is the topic of marriage and singleness, so he's been dealing with general life situations, but then he returns to the topic of marital status and he addresses virgins, unmarried single people, who've never been married. And the advice he gives generally to them is stay where you are.

Don't be pining and yearning after marriage. Don't be yearning to change your circumstances. And he begins his overt advocacy of the single life which he continues in the next section, we're not going to address it today. And the central lesson again, verse 26, Look at it, because of the present crisis. I think it is good for you to remain as you are. It's the consistent teaching throughout this section of 1 Corinthians 7. Now I think in all of this, Paul is arguing not overtly, but from the perspective of Christian contentment.

God gave me a great gift and a great privilege of studying this topic for a couple of years and writing a book on it, and I learned so much from it. Now, I wasn't going to tell you this, but this is kind of a low point in my life. Over the last week and a half, I was doing a radio interview based on this book and the radio host called me "the guru of Christian contentment." What in the world should I do with that? I was speechless, which is not a good way to be in an eight-minute interview. No, I'm not a guru of anything. Let's start there. And certainly not of Christian continent. I feel very much that God gave me the gift of studying this because I needed it as much as anyone I know. I'm not claiming like Paul did to have learned the secret of contentment in any and every situation. Just I am claiming I need it.

And so I think he's arguing for that. I'm not going to try to force a square peg in a round hole. I think that's exactly what Paul's doing here. He's saying you should be content in your life situation. And frankly, that will be the best way you can possibly be single and the best way you can possibly be married is to be content in Christ.

What is contentment?

Now, what do we mean by contentment, what is that? Well, just in a simple kind of definitional sense, contentment, to me, is just in a mental or emotional state of peace and happiness that's just when you think of... It's a combo... A combination of peacefulness and happiness. So I think that's when we would use the word, I'm content. Worldly contentment is totally based on favorable circumstances. Your five senses are satisfied. So picture late in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, alright?  When that chemical in the Turkey is kicking in and nobody's really watching the football game any more half of the people they're asleep. So that would be kind of a picture of worldly contentment bellies full, people sleepy. So there's that picture.

Or imagine a sports fan going to bed the night that their team has won the championship and all the adrenaline's worn off by them, but they're just laying there, going back over the game in their mind and they're just happy, follow this team all year and they won the championship.

Or imagine a young married couple, on their honeymoon, and they're cuddling together, on a beach and the sun's going down and it's just really beautiful and they're just completely happy in each other and happy with their life circumstances.

Or imagine a law school graduate has just gotten a pretty prestigious placement and everything's falling into place, and they're walking across the campus of the law school, and they're just happy with what happened today.

Or imagine a baby nestling in her mommy's arms, warm, protected happy, trusting, wordless, but just everything's fine. So these are all pictures of normal, worldly, earthly contentment.

Christian contentment is a supernatural thing, it is not worldly, it's not based on earthly circumstances, it is based on invisible spiritual realities. It is based on a fact of an Almighty God, who is your adoptive Father who loves you. A God, who sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross for you. Not just for sinners in general, but for you, He died for you. And you know this by faith and your sins are forgiven and you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing your future inheritance, in Heaven. And all of that, plus the promises that God has made for your future covering now until the day you die and then just really take off after that filling you with hope based on your faith and the promise of God contentment is based on those things, not on any earthly circumstance and you come to realize that your earthly circumstances are just props and window dressing or dress-ups like kids used to do which God has given you for a certain purpose in this world. He's got some work for you to do, and He's giving you that and that it includes prosperity and affliction both. He's just kind of dressing you up and putting you in a setting for his own purposes. And you just look at every earthly thing that way, all of it, including marriage.

Paul and Contentment in the Philippian Jail

Now, the Apostle Paul other than Jesus is the greatest teacher, an exemplar, a living example of Christian contentment there has ever been. And I think to me, one of the key moments I've mentioned it more times I can count from this pulpit and I never tire of mentioning it, because I think about it probably every day. And that is Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail, the greatest picture to me other than Christ, the picture of Christian contentment. You remember how they were arrested for preaching the Gospel, actually for doing an exorcism and they were beaten publicly.

And they were thrown in a nasty dark dungeon and they were put in the inner cell where there's no light, and their feet were bound in stocks and their backs were bleeding, and their stomachs were empty and their tongues were burning with thirst and the stench must have been incredible, and they were hearing the curses, and the complaints of other prisoners and at midnight they began to sing praises to Jesus. I'm like, "Oh God, give me that contentment give me that life I want to be like that, I don't want to be like I have to be bought off God, if you don't buy me off, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to be angry at you. I just want to be so filled with Christ that I can sing in whatever jail you put me in." So that's Paul and Silas. And so, they displayed it.

And you remember what happened, how God moved it supernaturally and how there was this incredible earthquake and the prison doors flew open and everybody's chains, fell off, but no one ran away and the Philippian jailer was about to fall on his sword because he lost all of his prisoners no fault of his own, but Romans were merciless. But the voice comes out from the inner cell. Don't harm yourself. We're all here and the jailer calls for lights, rushed in, fell trembling before Paul and Silas, brought them out and said, "What must I do to be saved?" question that changed his eternity Believe in the Lord Jesus, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. And that's true for all of us right now, that's the source of it.

It may be that God brought you here today to hear this moment in the message not so much to think about marriage or singleness, but just to hear that statement, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, saved from what? Saved from hell. And saved from missing heaven. Which is so good that even if there were no hell, if you missed it, it'd be like, hell, did not be there. But there is a hell, there's a fire that never goes out and if you believe in Jesus, you will be delivered from what you and all of us as sinners deserve which is condemnation and hell.

And that becomes the basis of lasting contentment for the rest of your life no matter what your marital status, is. Believe in the Lord Jesus and the Philippian jailer did he and his family, and they cared for Paul they washed his wounds, they fed them and beginning of the Philippian church along with the other converts that had already been made an amazing story.

The "Thank You" Note

Well, in the course of time that same Philippian church sent Paul, some money when he... They'd heard he was in prison again, and he was in prison in just about every city that he went and preached and it's incredible and he was in prison and they sent him money and Paul wants to thank them so he wrote an amazing thank you note. When I write a thank you, I write it on thank you note Stationary. It says thank you on the front. And then I just say Thanks for the money, something like that. And I try to put in some Scripture verses. Paul wrote the letter of Philippians.

That's his thank you note, And as he's writing Philippians, he can't just say, thank you for the money when he gets to that topic in Chapter 4, he's got to say this about the money. Thanks for the money. But I want you to know I was fine before it came and I'll be fine after it's spent. Just wanted you to know. Please don't take offense. My real reason for being happy the money is not that my belly will be filled or I'll be a little bit warmer at night because I have a blanket. No, because actually, I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, I know what it is to be well-fed, and I know what it is to have nothing.

I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, living in plenty or in want. I can do everything, through Him who strengthens me. However, it was good of you to send the money. And off he goes. Now, the word that Paul uses for contentment, there in Philippians 4, translated content is self-sufficient. It's an amazing word, and it should blow your mind. He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. That doesn't sound in Christianity to me. It seems like that's the very thing we're supposed to be weaned off of, is self-sufficiency.

 We're supposed to learn that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, and apart from him, we can do nothing. Paul knew that better than anyone. Now, what did he mean? I think he was referring to God's self-sufficiency. And basically, I have learned to be like God, is self-sufficient. I'm going to change it a little bit. I've learned to be God sufficient or Christ sufficient. If I have Christ, I don't need anything else. I don't need anything else if I have Christ. And he said earlier, in Philippians, he said, "For me, to live is Christ. And to die is... " Do you remember? Yeah, I now hear that this way, "more Christ."

Not better than Christ or different than Christ, more of Christ in heaven. I get to see Him face-to-face. I get to be in his presence, so either way, I can't lose. So what does that mean? I don't actually need food. I don't need water. Wait, Paul. If you don't get food and water, you'll die. Mm-hmm, which is better by far. I don't have to eat. If God wants me to stay alive, he'll feed me. I don't need air. If God shuts off my air supply, I'll get there faster, but if God chooses to keep giving me air and food and water and enough, he wants me to keep living, I'm going to serve him. For me, to live is Christ, that's what I want.

Like, wow, if that's true, then that's just pretty explosive. Yeah, this is a very explosive idea. What it means is, I don't need to be noticed by other people. I don't need to be praised by other people. I don't need my freedom. I can be in jail. Alright, I don't need any of the earthly circumstances I thought I used to think I need. I don't need them. If I have Christ, I have enough. That's the foundation of contentment. And so he's saying that. That is the power.

Learning the Secret

And the secret. Wait, he says, "I've learned the secret." Now. The secret means that Christian contentment is possible but not guaranteed. Want to use a secret language? Do you know it's possible to go to heaven as a discontent person? You can be discontent from now until the day you die and go to heaven. But why would you want to do that? Why be in such a miserable condition, when you could be praising and trusting God every day? So it's possible but it's not guaranteed. Paul says "It's a secret to be learned, but I learned it so it is possible." And what is the secret? It's right in the text. Philippians 4:13. "I can do everything through Him who strengthens me."

There's an ongoing strengthening work that God does through the spirit that enables us to be content in any and every situation, to be filled with the Spirit. If you look at the fruit of the Spirit, two of the elements of the fruit of the Spirit are joy and peace. Does that sound familiar? Put them together. That's contentment, so I can be filled with the Spirit and displaying the fruit of the Spirit in any and every situation, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit in me. Conversely, when I meditated on the word strengthen, do you know that discontentment is a display of weakness? It is so weak to be discontent. Weak. I don't want to be a weak today. I don't want some circumstance to come and I'm blown or tossed by that circumstance, and now I'm complaining and I'm whining and moaning and murmuring against God, which is a great sin.

Defining Christian Contentment

Well, that's Paul on contentment. And I also had the privilege of reading Jeremiah Burroughs. Jeremiah Burroughs was a Puritan pastor, and he did a series of sermons on contentment based on Philippians 4. And he gave this dense, theological description of Christian contentment, which I will now recite to you. And then I will hope to unpack it a little bit. Jeremiah Burroughs wrote it, and he was published posthumously. Rare jewel of Christian contentment, is what he says. "Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submit to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition."

Let me break it apart. First of all, it's a frame of spirit. It's an attitude or a demeanor of your soul. It's described with four adjectives. It is a sweet frame of spirit, as opposed to bitter or sour. Ever met somebody who was bitter or sour? You don't want to be around people like that. But someone who's content, it's sweet to be around him. It's an inward frame of spirit. In other words, it's not... We go to acting school and we learn how to act happy. It's a heart work. It is a quiet frame of spirit like when Jesus stilled the storm, you're just tranquil under your father's hand, you're tranquil in it. It's a peacefulness as opposed to murmuring and roiling and re-pining and controverting against God, and complaining and moaning against him.

And it is a gracious frame of spirit. It's something that can only be worked in you by sovereign grace, supernatural grace. So that's the frame of spirit. The second part of the definition is God's wise and fatherly disposal, or let's keep it simple. God as your Father makes decisions about your life. He decided when you will be born, and he has already decided when and where you will die. And who of you by worrying can add a single day to his life? All the days ordained for you are written in God's book before one of them came to be.

And not only that, not only is he the alpha and the omega of your earthly life, he is every day in between. He has made lots of fatherly decisions about you, and they are wise, these fatherly decisions. And he could have said kingly, because he's a king and you're the subject, and he's just going to do what's best for his Kingdom no matter whether it's best for you or not. But Burroughs used the word fatherly, meaning he just tenderly loves you and the two come together because what's best for His kingdom is what's best for his children. It's the same thing, and he is in a marvelous way making fatherly decisions about you. So the third aspect is, it's a frame of spirit that freely submits to that. You're not going to fight it anymore. You're not going to be angry about what God's doing in your life.

But you're going to submit to it because He's your father, and you're a child. He's the king and you're the subject. He's the master, and you're the slave. You're going to submit, but not only that, you're going to delight in it. You're going to delight in what God is doing in your life, even if it brings great sorrow and suffering. How could Paul and Silas delight in being beaten and thrown in a jail? Well, at that time, maybe it's hard to delight, but looking back years later, and they saw what happened and the Philippian jailers family and how that church grew and all that, they can delight in it then.

And you may not know everything that God's choosing for your life, but God has a wise plan and He is wisely bringing you through suffering, or through prosperity. He knows exactly what he's doing. That's Christian contentment. I could go on at length but I'm going to just move now to 1 Corinthians 7. I believe that Paul openly teaching Christian contentment, Philippians 4, clearly exemplifying Christian contentment in Acts 16, is teaching on marriage and singleness out of the perspective of Christmas contentment in 1 Corinthian 7.

So look. Look and see if you can't see that idea. Look at Verse 17. Now, I'm going to read the New American Standard Translation in verse 17. "Only as the Lord has assigned to each one as God has called each. In this manner, let him walk." That's powerful. As the Lord has assigned to each, the Greek word here is means to divide or measure out or separate, to put a boundary around you. Alright. As God has made an assignment to you. Now, that assigning language is the language of God's wise and fatherly decisions about your life. It's the language of providence. God has made a providential decision about you.

Alright, Verse 17. "Only as the Lord has assigned to each one as God has called each…" There's an allotment here. Now, the grammar is a little unclear and you're going to see it in the different English translations. It has to do with the word call and what is God calling. Is it that he's calling you to follow Christ and to be a Christian, and you're in the middle of a specific life circumstance when he did that and the calling is to be a Christian in the midst of that life circumstance, or does the calling extend to the life circumstance itself? He called you to be single. He called you to be a slave. He called you to be circumcised. He called you to be uncircumcised. The grammar doesn't settle it. And as a matter of fact, most of the translations go about 50/50.

Better safe to say, in the midst of your life, He called you to follow Christ. But I could say that the calling might extend also to these specific circumstances that he's addressing. Now, Paul repeats this mentality in all these life situations that we've seen. To the circumcised, that is to the Jews, he gives this advice. And to the uncircumcised, that is the Gentiles, he gives this advice. Look at Verse 18. "Was a man already circumcised when he was called?" In other words, was he a Jewish man. "He should not become uncircumcised. Conversely, was a man uncircumcised when he was called, he should not be circumcised."

Now, this is interesting because it's pretty obvious to any who gives even a little amount of thought to it. There's no way you're going to become uncircumcised. But what He's saying is, if you are living as a Jew, in the pattern of life as a Jewish person, and he's going to deal with this in-depth in Chapter 9, he says to the Jews and became like a Jew. Had to do with your eating, your lifestyle, the patterns of your life. Don't stop all that. Just keep on living like a Jew. And conversely, if you were a Gentile, you don't have to become a Jew in order to be saved.

He deals with this at length in the book of Galatians, saying, circumcision doesn't save you. You don't need to be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses in order to go to Heaven. And so, he gives that again in verse 19. "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing." It is not going to help you spiritually. Those days are over. Jesus died on the cross, He was raised from the dead, He destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, of those ceremonial rules like circumcision and dietary laws and all that. Blown up. Now we've got one new person, Christian, some Jews, some Gentiles, but one new person. So you don't need to become the opposite. You Gentiles don't have to become Jews. You Jews don't have to become Gentiles. Just be what you were in the midst of your life when you were called.

And he says circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts. Now, that's a mind-blower. I can actually find commands concerning circumcision in the Old Testament. A law-abiding Jew would say, "What do you mean keeping God's commands? We're commanded to be circumcised?" No. Not anymore. Not anymore. And the same thing, we were commanded or forbidden concerning dietary laws. We'll get to that in chapters 8-10 about eating. Not anymore. Those things are fulfilled. What commands do you have in mind? Well, those moral laws that are timeless, which Jesus summarized powerfully for us. The first and greatest commandment is this, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength." And the second commandment is like this, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Keep those commandments. That's what matters, not circumcision or uncircumcision.

So, be content in your daily lifestyle. In Verse 20, he says each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Next, amazingly, this is mind blowing. He addresses slaves. It's really quite remarkable. Look at Verses 21-24. "Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you, although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord, is the Lord's freed man, and similarly, he who was a free man when he was called, is Christ's slave. You were bought at a price. Do not become slaves of men. Brothers, each one who is responsible to God should remain in the situation God called him to."

This is incredible. If you are a slave, don't let it bother you. Now this is, it's revolutionary. You can reach such a place in your heart, in your soul, where the fact that you're even a slave and can't walk away doesn't bother you at all. You know you could spend the rest of your life in that condition. Most slaves did. And you can go from, as a Christian slave, you can go from that to being lavishly rewarded on Judgment Day by the master, for how you carried yourself. You actually belong to Jesus and all of the service that you're rendering your earthly master, if you do it right, you're really rendering it to Christ. He goes through all this in Ephesians and Colossians, so you actually can live free-er than your master, if your master is not a Christian.

He's enslaved to sin. Jesus said, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin." But if Jesus sets you free, you'll be free indeed, you are free in Christ from the real chains, which is it in and death and hell. You're set free from that. You are Christ's freed man. So don't be bothered by your status as a slave. Don't let it weigh on you day after day, saying, "I can't be happy as a slave." Yes, you can. However, he says, if you can get your freedom, do it. It's incredible. So, if an opportunity to get free and to become free comes, fine, but you need to carry the same attitude, because once you become a freed man, you're going to be Christ's slave in the midst of all that.

You'll be free to do whatever you want, go wherever you want. You'll be free to go where the Lord tells you to go. And not only that, but you're going to be in bondage to other people based on circumstances like the parable of the Good Samaritan. You're walking by and somebody's bleeding by the side of the road, you're not free to walk on by. You need to serve that man in love. So, you're going to end up being even horizontally serving to everybody. It's a whole different way of thinking, isn't it? It's powerful. So I love it. He says, If you can get your freedom, do it.

Think. Let's go back to the Philippian jail. Alright. When the chains fell off and the doors came open, Paul didn't run away. Why? Because it would have been illegal, and they would have had to send someone after him to bring him back. And do you realize, if he and the other prisoners had done so, the Philippian jailer would be in hell right now? He would have committed suicide that very night. Never in all the Bible do you see anyone so dangling over hell that's later rescued. This man had drawn his swords ready to fall on it. But because Paul was submissive to God's will in his life, he stayed put. He stayed as a prisoner until the law said it was time for him to go, which they did the next morning.

And they sent messengers saying, "Okay, you're free to go." Paul said, "Wait, wait, wait a minute now. You enslaved us and beat us without a trial, and now you just want us to go away? No. You come and escort us out." But one thing Paul didn't do is say, "Actually, we found a kind of a home here in the dungeon. We love it here. I know there's nothing to eat or drink and I know it stinks and it's dark, but we have learned to be content here and we're going to stay in prison." Not at all. If you can get your freedom, do it, but it's not why he's alive. He's alive and whether he's in prison or free, he belongs to Christ.

Alright, so now let's take all that and apply it to marital status. Look at verses 25-28. "Now, about virgins, I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one, who by the Lord's mercy, is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are. Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned."

So he begins by addressing virgins or the unmarried. They were perhaps they had been betrothed, but not yet married. Paul says, I do not have a specific command from Jesus on this. So he didn't have a word from Jesus in terms of the catalog of sayings of Jesus, but he speaks as someone who has been trained by God's mercy to speak wisdom into situations. So, he's going to give them advice. And what is that advice? It's predictable. Stay in the condition in which you were called. That's what he's saying. If you are married, then stay married. He's already covered that. The only way to end the marriage would be a divorce and that is not lawful. But it's more than that, isn't it?

Stay married as a content man or content woman. Don't be pining after a better marital status. Don't wish you had a different spouse. Be content in your life situation. Bloom where you're planted, flourish where you're planted, stay in the condition. But if you're single, he says, stay single if you can. Don't allow your mind to be dominated by worldly things. This life is brief. Our time here is temporary. And verse 26, he says, "Because of the present crisis, I think it's good for you to remain as you are." That means just the difficulties of life in this world, and even more, if you're in a persecuted setting. If you might die any day as a Christian, it's better to die as a single person than to leave behind a spouse and kids. So he says, in light of the present crisis, stay single if you can.

So, be content in the circumstance of your life. Don't say, "My life will begin when I find my spouse. Until then, it's all a waste." Don't think like that. Verse 27, "Are you on married? Don't seek for a wife." Don't seek. The keyword here is seek. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Seek the face of God and prayer. Seek what pleases God and find out what God is seeking in the world. He's seeking people to worship Him in Spirit and truth. John 4. He is seeking and saving the lost, Luke 19:10. Don't seek for a wife or a husband.

Do you not see, that's not why we're here on Earth. Even if you had found the most godly spouse and have the most wonderful decades together, at some point, you may well become a widow or a widower. What, does your life end at that point? Your life is not your wife, your life is not your husband. Your life is Christ. Just as Bob was praying from Colossians 3, Christ is your life. When Christ who is your life appears, your wife isn't your life, your husband isn't your life. And so, think like that. Don't seek for this, but he does give this tepid endorsement. If you do marry, you have not sinned. Thank you, Paul. Alright, that's not the final Bible's final word on the blessings of marriage. We covered that already, but he said I just want you to know, if you do choose to marry, you found sin.

Now he's about to make his extended defense of singleness and we'll get to that, God-willing, in the future. So, let me just apply this as we finish. Have you learned the secret of Christian contentment? Are you learning it? Is Christ crucified, resurrected enough for you today, or does he have to do more? If you're a single person, is Christ crucified and resurrected enough for you or do you have to have a spouse? If you are married, is Christ's crucified and resurrected enough for you to be genuinely happy in your marriage, no matter what the situation is with your spouse?

Are you able to be content in Christ, in any and every situation? Are you able to look at your life circumstances? Maybe your medical situation, maybe you're hurting, you're in pain, maybe your spouse is. Maybe your housing situation is not what you want it to be, maybe your job situation is not what you want it to be. Again, if you can improve those things, do so, but don't live for them. Christ is your life.

A final advice here is, bloom where you're planted. Don't be yearning for what God hasn't given you yet. The other day I was watching with one of my kids, the original clip from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And do you remember how she was singing "Someday My Prince Will Come." Do you remember that? Oh yeah, I forgot that song. It's an interesting song musically, it's a little quirky. Jazz musicians did bunches of riffs on that tune. But it's like, no. I mean, and you could just say, "Oh it's so hokey all that," but I'm telling you, it's incredible. Discontentment is like, "Someday, my X will come. And when that X comes, then I'm going to be happy and fulfilled." Don't live like that. Christ has already given you everything you need to be content today. Live like it. Close with me in prayer.

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 7:8-16. We're going to be walking through that today as we continue to look at the practical instructions that God has for us, originally given by the Apostle Paul to a specific local church there in Corinth. But in the wisdom and the providence of God through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, elevated into perfect scripture and put in into the canon for us so that we can read it and learn from it. So we're really sitting at the feet, not so much of the Apostle Paul, but of the Lord Jesus as He speaks to us by the power of the Spirit.

Now, last week as we began talking about marriage, I laid out God's marvelous purposes of marriage and how God ordained it from the beginning for many blessed purposes. I remember I laid out those seven purposes, first, for partnership, that we would be free from loneliness, that it's not good for the man to be alone. God said concerning Adam that we will be delivered and freed from loneliness in this world.

Secondly, the blessing of marriage and pleasure, specifically in marital union, the delights of sex within marriage, in the Song of Songs, which celebrates that and how it was established from the beginning, the man and his wife became one flesh and they were naked and felt no shame, and there was the pleasure of that union.

Thirdly, we saw for procreation, because God intended that through Adam and Eve, the earth would be filled, that they would be fruitful and multiply, and there would be people in the image of God who would be knit together in their mother's wombs and that God intended a vast army of the redeemed up in Heaven and the holy way by which children will be brought into this world as marriage and so procreation.

Also purity, how marriage is protection from sexual immorality, and from all of the wickedness that Satan would pour into our souls by that seems like sometimes gaping hole in the wall, the fortress wall, of our souls. And so there is purity.

And also with that, we talked about protection, a physical protection certainly from the elements, protection from the difficulties of life in this physical world, that's true, and the husbands can protect the wives in some senses, and the wives can protect the husbands in some senses, but also again with the issue of sexual protection, the need that we have for each other, and we talked a lot about that last time.

And also productivity, that the two come together and they're productive in their labors and they help each other, they buttress each other's weaknesses and they're able to cooperate and do remarkably productive things. They're able to fill the Earth, and subdue it, and rule over it together in a marvelous partnership.

And then finally, portrayal, how marriage is a portrayal or a picture of Christ in the church.

And so all of these things are the beautiful blessings of marriage, but we've also been seeing and discussing how rapidly sin entered the world. In the very next chapter, in Genesis 3, the serpent came and brought sin into the world and attacked that first married couple. And so there has been tremendous distress in marriage ever since. Martin Luther put it in his humorous way, as only Martin Luther could do. I tell you what, of all the figures from church history, who would I want to spend the evening with the most? He'd be my first joys, him or Spurgeon. What a fun evening that would be, if you could speak German. I'm assuming the translation issue is dealt with, but just to be able to sit at the table and listen to this man and his wisdom and the humor. But this is what he said about marriage:

"Good God, what a lot of trouble there is in marriage. Adam has made a mess of our nature. Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their 900 years together. Eve would say, 'You ate the apple,' and Adam would say, 'Yes, but you gave it to me.'" 900 years of that, I guess. And some of the deepest questions of our life center around this issue of marriage, of singleness, of love because these are powerful forces, and God... And I love how Jesus said, the night before He was crucified, said, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you." And by that, He meant the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the counselor who would come and give us instruction in all things. And here, we need instruction concerning singleness and marriage, and so that's what's in front of us.

Now, the Corinthians were in a very messed up context in terms of marriage back then. Their conception of marriage before the Gospel came to town was significantly corrupted. In the Greco-Roman world, there were four patterns of marriage in the pagan world that they lived in.

First, there was slave marriage. Many of the... Much of the world, the Greco-Roman world, were slaves, a huge percentage of the population, and as Paul said, and we saw in 1 Corinthians 6, "You're not your own, you're bought at a price," that's a language of slavery, we are Christ's slaves, but even just physically, those individuals who are slaves were really not their own. And so, what could happen is two slaves could come together in what was known as some kind of a tent marriage, that's a literal Latin expression, a tent dwelling, together which would speak of a temporariness. We, in our slang, might use the language of "shacking up," but there was that sense of coming together, and who knows how long it would last because if the master didn't like how they were together, he could break them apart, he could sell off one of them, et cetera. And so it was a very temporary setting, and so many of the church back then were slaves. Paul addresses them right in 1 Corinthians 7, now we'll not address it today. He is dealing with slaves and therefore with slave marriage. And so, there's a lot of mixed-up scenarios. There's a lot of mess. And it doesn't follow the pattern of one man, one woman, and covenant relationship for life; it was a sick pattern there in the pagan world. And so what is the church going to do? And what Paul did was not to try to break up everything but try to teach them the sanctity of marriage, what marriage is, and if they were in this tent relationship, to make the best of it and live up to the pattern of marriage as God originally ordained, even though a wicked or tyrannical master might break it apart physically or in terms of the actual ethical situation.

Secondly, there was common-law marriage. A man and a woman would live together, for them for one year, I think in our culture, common-law marriage is seven years, but one year, and at the end of the one year, they'd be identified as husband and wife and so the church had to address situations like that where people were living together and there'd never been a ceremony, there'd never been any kind of vows taken, there was no real legal status, but it was a common-law marriage. Again, Paul doesn't say anything about what they ought to do other than the sanctity of marriage that exists wherever it exists, and to live up to it, to God's pattern and to what God would intend.

Thirdly, there was the marriage by sale, and this is where... Would be where a wealthy father would sell marital rights to his daughter to a suitor, and if the man could come up with the bride price, then he would give his daughter to her in marriage, and that was very common in that part of the world.

And then finally, the highest form of marriage in the pagan and the Greco-Roman world was patrician marriage and this was among the nobility, and so, a man would marry a high-born woman and she would be his legal wife in patrician marriage, and therefore, the children that she bore would be his legal heir, his legal heirs. But sadly, they would be frequently hardly any kind of love relationship between the two. There would be a lot of adultery, a lot of sexual immorality. Each of them, it would just be understood, they would have partners, not their legal spouse, and so this is just very common in the pagan world. So that was the situation and the Greco-Roman patterns. Beyond that, as we've seen in the Book of 1 Corinthians, they were tremendous pressure sexually, the pagan religion was very corrupt sexually, and so, a lot of times, the gods and goddesses were worshipped by means of temple prostitutes, both male and female. And we discussed this clearly in chapter 6.

Also, there would be Christians from the Jewish background there in the church, and they would have a very different view of marriage than the pagans did, but they would go so far as to say that you're not normal if you're not married, something's wrong with you. There'd be even a sense of a curse on the women if they were barren, and you see that a lot in the Old Testament, but there's a sense of what's normal and right, that's fine, but they go maybe too far and say there's something abnormal with you if you can't find a spouse, like something's spiritually wrong with singleness. And so Paul has to address that, and he does so on the platform of His own life and His own example. We'll talk about that.

On the other hand, there would be some ex-pagans who were very philosophically-minded and very... So they believe high-minded and said, "Now that we've come to Christ, we're in the realm of the Spirit, not of the flesh," and so as we saw at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 7, they said, "It's good for a man not to touch a woman at all." And so even in marriage, it's time for just total abstinence. And so into all of this messed up mental scenario or spiritual scenario, Paul has to give the biblical truth and he's commissioned by God to speak timeless truths about marriage, and in the providence of God, though he could never have known how many generations of Christians he would speak to that God ordained, he would speak to every generation of Christians about marriage.

And we need it, because we're messed up, too, when it comes to marriage. We have to be honest. Our culture is in a decaying orbit of relationship with Judeo-Christian values. We're moving more and more culturally toward paganism, so, to see the kind of ways that pagans understood men and women coming together, don't be surprise to see some of those things coming back. We also know that there's terrible assaults on marriage as I've already mentioned in my prayers, leading to divorce. Divorce statistics are staggering. Somewhere around 50% of all marriages end in divorce. 41% of all first marriages end in divorce. 60% of all second marriages end in divorce. 73% of all third marriages end in divorce. So you can see even in those statistics, the pattern of serial monogamy, with the corruption of illicit divorces in between.

And so we need to hear the Biblical truth on the issue of divorce. The average first marriage that doesn't end in divorce lasts about eight years, and soon after marriage, a lot of pressures come on the couple: Pressures, financial pressures, sexual pressures, relationship pressures, scheduling pressures, and it drives them apart, and if they don't have the resources of the Word of God and the Spirit, that it is very likely that they could end up in divorce.

But the United States, for all of its troubles, has only the sixth highest divorce rate in the world; the worst is in Russia: Three-quarters of all first marriages end in divorce. And so this is a problem worldwide. And beyond all of these staggering and depressing statistics is the reality of what divorce does to the children and to extended families and friends and everyone that knows the couple. It's like a bomb that's dropped in and has concentric circles of effect. It's devastating. The costs are staggering. The problems are not new, and the Corinthians face their own problems with marriage as we have seen, and only the Word of God has the power to help us face our problems as well.

So we turn now to 1 Corinthians 7:8-16, and Paul addresses four categories of people in the Corinthian church, and his words are timeless and relevant, and each one of you that's listening to me here today will find yourself in one of these four categories. It covers everybody. First, those who are presently unmarried of various categories, and those are addressed in verses 8 and 9. And then secondly, Christians who are presently married to other Christians, so that's addressed in verses 10 and 11, and then Christians who are presently married to non-Christians, and the non-Christians are willing to stay married to them, those are addressed in verses 12 through 14, and then fourthly, Christians who are presently married to non-Christians and the non-Christians want to leave or actually do leave, and that's in verses 15 and 16. So, Paul's words, you're not going to cover every little detail or every scenario, but this is a very great place for us to start as we try to understand marriage.

So let's begin with commands to the unmarried in verses 8 and 9. "Now to the unmarried and the widows, I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." So let's try to understand this category. He uses a simple term, "unmarried." It's just a very simple term in the Greek, but then along with that comes the specific term, "widows." So it's probably best to take this as a broad category of all the adults in the congregation who are not presently married, both male and female. Widows, I think are singled out because they had special needs and they were understood as a special category in the church and in society. So there is somewhat of a redundancy in the phrase to the "unmarried" and the "widows"; obviously, all widows are unmarried, but I think that's what he's dealing with here. So in this category, it would be all single people who have never been married and also people who are married at one point and are no longer married.

So Paul's basic advice to this category is, "Stay unmarried, if you can." So, Paul is going to give in 1 Corinthians 7 the greatest, most detailed unfolding of the gift of singleness or the value of singleness in the Christian life. Now we'll get into this again later in the chapter, but this is especially in verses 32 through 35. And the value of staying single, if you can do it with a pure heart, sexually, if you can stay single, the value is practical because you'll be able to serve your Lord with undivided devotion. So I'm stealing a little thunder from those later verses, but that's what he says. So that's the reason why if you can stay unmarried, please do so.

Now, in a larger sense, and we're going to see this very soon, not this morning, but in subsequent sermons in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is going to argue for a basic life contentment. He's going to argue for your life is bigger than your marital status. It's bigger than your status as slave or free. It's bigger than anything that's going on. Your relationship with Christ trumps everything, all of those scenarios, and it is possible, actually, it is desired and even commanded from God, for you to be content and maximally fruitful in whatever of those scenarios you find yourself in. So don't be continually pining after something that you don't have. Don't be yearning to get out of your present situation. We'll talk more about this, I think, next week. But the basic contentment, he even goes so far as to say it to slaves. He says, "If you're a slave, don't let it trouble you. But if you can get your freedom, do it." And so in other words, he's saying, "Don't be consumed, you might actually spend the rest of your life as a slave. And if you're a Christian and if you served faithfully, the Lord sees what you've done and He will reward you," as he says in many other places.

And so don't let it trouble you. So there's a basic contentment perspective here, saying the grass is not greener on the other side. Don't imagine, "If I could only have X, if I could have that scenario, then I could really be fruitful and I could really be happy in the Lord." Basic contentment: Stay content in what you are. Whatever your lot in life is. We'll talk more about that, God willing, next week.

Paul’s Own Example

So Paul gives himself then as his own example in terms of singleness, look at verse 8: "Now to the unmarried and the widows. I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried as I am." So there, he clearly asserts that he's an unmarried man, he's a single man. Now, we don't know very much more about Paul's marital status. Many people who study the Jewish society at the time said if he was going to be in the Sanhedrin or he was a ladder climber there in Judaism, he would have been married at a young age, would've been expected, as I mentioned earlier in the sermon.

So it was just the norm in Jewish society, and so therefore, many scholars, New Testament scholars, think Paul was a widower. We don't know anything about it, we can't speculate but just assume at some point he was married and lost his wife. But we don't know, maybe he had never been married. At any rate, he clearly says, "As I am." So he's a single man. So he's arguing for the benefits of life from his own personal experience. He, the Apostle Paul, was completely free to serve the Lord in some radical and courageous and bold ways which he would not have been able to do if he were a married man. The Lord had a call on Paul's life which was quite extreme. You remember in the Book of Acts how the prophet Agabus took his belt and tied him up with it, tied himself, I think he tied himself up with it, and he said, "The Holy Spirit says, ‘'In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.'" And then everyone around Paul starts weeping and pleading with him not to go to Jerusalem.

Well, that's a lot harder to hear from a wife and kids than it is from a bunch of friends in the church. But listen to what Paul says in Acts 21:13, he says, "Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." So there's a special call in Paul's life, would have been much harder for him to do it as a married man with children that he had to provide for.

Actually, Martin Luther was very similar to this. Martin Luther went and courageously stood for the Lord at the Diet of Worms. When he was asked to recant of all of his Reformation discoveries, justification by faith alone apart from works of law, the Gospel rediscovered and he stood courageously and boldly and would not recant, but said, "Here I stand. Sinners are justified, they are made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ alone. I will not recant. I can't turn my back on the word of God for the turn away from the Word of God and conscience is not safe. Here I stand, I can do no other." That's it.

Well, what ended up happening is the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V put a ban on him. He was given safe conduct there and back, but basically, once he left the city districts, all bets are off. And a German citizen, seeing Martin Luther along the road, could take their sword or dagger any moment, plunge into Luther's heart and be exonerated of any guilt. He was a marked man, he was a dead man walking. So, Luther had taken vows of celibacy in the medieval Catholic pattern, which he later renounced as unbiblical, and felt he was free to marry, but he thought it would be unwise to get married because of that ban that was on him. So it's very similar to the Apostle Paul. He had a freedom to serve the Lord and a freedom to die, really, as a martyr, that he would not have if He was a married man. Now we'll talk more about this later in 1 Corinthians 7, this is the very case that Paul makes later on.

So here, in this chapter, he's vigorously refuting the Jews who say that only weird or defective people…the idea that there is something wrong with you if you're single. That's just not true. It may be a special calling on that individual's life, that we all acknowledge that it's rare. He is advocating, "If you can stay single, then do so." But there's a limitation, and the question you have to ask yourself is, "Can I be sexually pure as a single man or woman?"

Can You be Self-Controlled?

So look at verse 9. "If they, [the unmarried] cannot control themselves, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn," and then it's added in the translations, "burn with passion," and I think that's a right understanding, to burn with lust, to burn with sexual desire, and if you can't control yourself, the only holy avenue for you is marriage. So God gives to some people the gift of singleness, and the essence of it has to do with this verse 9, which is the ability to just move through this issue without any strong pulls.

They could be married, but it really seems a matter of indifference, not against it, but they really feel that they can serve the Lord fine without it. Paul's saying if that's how you are, then stay single, really, because you'll be set free to serve the Lord in some remarkable ways. But if you know in your heart that sexual temptation is powerful and strong, you feel like you're walking through a minefield and you can't stay pure and you don't know what to do and et cetera, then you don't have the gift of singleness. So that's what's he saying. You have to analyze yourself, you have to know yourself and then you'll know. So, if I can just stop and make an application to those of you that are single.

You may ask, "Alright, what do I do if I diagnosed myself and I don't think I have the gift of singleness? But I haven't received my gift yet, what should I do? What should I do?" That's a very good question. As you look at it, you analyze yourself, you have to say to yourself, it's true that it's better to marry than to burn with passion. But let me say one more thing. It's better to burn with passion than to sin. And God is calling on you, if you don't have the gift of singleness but you don't have a spouse yet, He's calling on you to fight the good fight of sexual purity, to stand firm in the day of test. All sexual expression outside of marriage is sin. God is not giving you permission to sin because you can't control yourself. So He's calling on you to sexual purity. So, let me just give you the basic instructions that we all have concerning sanctification.

First, "put sin to death by the Spirit," Romans 8:13. If you, by the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the flesh, you'll live. So that's the Christian life. All of us have to do it, you especially have to do it in this area, put sin to death by the power of the Spirit. Secondly, avoid tempting situations, like it says in the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Thirdly, know that God "will not tempt you beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation, will make a way of escape so you can bear up under it," 1 Corinthians 10:13. Fourthly, pray daily for a godly spouse. Get other people to pray for you in this area. God makes marriages. Jesus said, "What God has joined together, let man not separate."

I think there's an interesting kind of locational transfer that He does with Eve where he makes... God makes Eve in some other place. I don't think it's helpful to think of a workshop, but just another place, and he makes her and brings her to the man. And I think there's a reason for that, because there's a providential from the man's perspective bringing to that happens and God does that. And I've seen it again and again; it's a beautiful thing to see. But until that happens, you have to wait patiently and ask God to do that. "Bring that person to me."

Fifthly, concentrate not so much on finding the right person, but on being the right person. So for you young men, develop the kind of godly character and lifestyle in a fruitful life direction that a godly Christian woman will want to follow and want to be part of, to be a helper suitable for that life. Where are you going? It's a reasonable question for her to ask. What are your plans? What are you doing? You must have an answer to that question. And it better line up in the great commission. I am here to serve God, to the glory of God, and these are my gifts, and this is where I'm going. Well, that kind of godly man, a woman's going to want to be part of, a godly woman's going to want to be part of. So be the right person, not just waiting for the right person. And young women, same thing, be the kind of godly woman that a godly man will want to marry, and get other women to speak into your life on this.

And then sixth, be active, active, active, in serving the Lord, especially in the context of local church. Find ministry. I'm telling you, time and time again, couples find each other in the context of service. They're working together in a national ministry, in urban ministry, they're working together in something, and they just see each other's heart and they come together on a mission trip. Different things, there's certain rules about that, about the mission trip.

Please hear me about that. Alright, there's rules about that, but it happens again and again. So that's what I have on my sheet. I want to add another one. Let me say this carefully, going off-message here so that's dangerous, but let me say it. Don't be too choosy. God can bring godly people, that she's a believer, he's a believer…I remember hearing from another counselor, he's talking to this guy, and this guy said, "I don't know, I'm waiting for a... I think I'm just waiting for a 10." And this man said, this godly counselor said, "Brother, can I be honest with you? You're a seven…Maybe." So you need people like that to speak into your life. Alright? "Can I just be honest? You're a seven, alright?"

Alright secondly, commands to marry Christians. Verse 10, 11, "To the married, I give this command: Not I, but the Lord. A wife must not separate from her husband, but if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and the husband must not divorce his wife." So here, we get to the command, and keeping it simple, do not get a divorce. If we could just summarize it, that's what he's saying, both to the man and to the woman. That's the basic command, if we could just keep it simple. Now what does Paul mean at the beginning when he says, "Not I, but the Lord"? Well, in the statement that he makes when he says, "Not I, but the Lord," he's saying, "I have a word from the Lord on this, the Lord Jesus. Jesus, while He was in His physical life on earth, taught on divorce. Multiple times, actually.

And so keep in mind, the New Testament hadn't been pulled together yet, probably most of it hadn't even been written yet, and so, they were working on an oral tradition of sayings from the Lord Jesus. Remember how Luke gathered a lot of accounts together, talking to eye witnesses to write the Gospel of Luke, and so he had a saying from Jesus on this. And you just go to the Sermon in the Mount, for example, Jesus said there in Matthew 5:31-32, "It has been said anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce, but I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, [pornea] causes her to become an adulteress and anyone who marries the woman commits adultery."

So He's very clear on this, and He does the same thing in Matthew 19, where they come and ask, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" And He goes back to the beginning and He says, "It was not intended…" so it is not lawful to get a divorce for any and every reason. So Paul states it simply, first to the Christian wife: A wife must not separate from her husband. He doesn't go into the exception clause for when divorce is acceptable, namely, there has been a sexual sin. Just simply, the Christian wife must not separate herself from her husband. As we've mentioned, divorce is devastating to people. It's devastating to their psyches, it's devastating to their physical and mental emotional health. It's hard to recover. God says plainly in Malachi 2:16, "I hate divorce." The impact on children is incalculable. So Christian couples need to stay together.

And he adds also in verse 11, "A husband must not divorce his wife." But then why does he add, "But if she does," look at verse 10, 11, "a wife must not separate from her husband, but if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled with her husband." I don't know the best answer for this, but what I would say is probably divorces had already happened. By the time the letter got there, I don't know, the horse was already out of the barn, if that's the expression. There was no going back. And a lot of times, situations occur that are not the best, they're not biblical norm. And I think as in the case of David and Bathsheba and Uriah is dead, can't come back, and that the baby dies, can't come back, and then later, Bathsheba conceives and gives birth to Solomon, and God gives us a sweet, peaceful message saying, "Call him Jedidiah the Lord loves him, Beloved of the Lord." It's just a very fascinating thing. God's standards couldn't be higher, but God moves on. And if some things can't be undone, they can't be undone. And I think that's what he's addressing.

Others may have a different interpretation of that, but what He says is, "Look, if that's what has happened, if you've gotten divorced without suitable grounds," speaking of the woman here, "she must seek to undo the wrong by being reconciled with her husband or else she needs to remain unmarried for the rest of her life." That's how seriously God takes marriage and divorce.

Work it Out!

Now I remember early in my ministry here, I came across some marriage and parenting days by a man named Reb Bradley, and he was very helpful to me, gave me some good insights by the tapes that I was listening to. He had been a professional photographer before he was in vocational ministry, and he was doing a family life thing and his picture was up on a poster, and this guy finds him and tracks him down through the local church and says, "You know, you look a lot like the guy who photographed our weddings," he's calling them on the phone, "But you look a lot... " He said, "Well, I used to be a professional photographer."

And so they kind of compared notes and it's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that wedding. I remember it distinctly. Yeah," he says, "How is it going?" He said, "Well, it's not going very well," the man said. Reb Bradley said, "Oh. Well, what's going on?" He said, "Well, I think we're going to get a divorce." There was this long pause, and then Reb Bradley said, "You can't." The man said, "I beg your pardon?" He said, "I said you can't. I mean, it's true I was there as a photographer, but all of us were there as witnesses and I heard what you said to God and to us. And this is the very thing you said you wouldn't do, so you can't."

And the man said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" And he said, "Work it out." And beautifully, in the story, the man and his wife came to meet with him for multiple times of counseling and they worked it out. So, that story sticks with me, I would say every day, I think about it in my own marriage, every day, "Work it out." We have the resources, if we're Christians, to work it out. We have the resources to give and receive forgiveness. We have the resources to grow and be transformed out of terrible sin patterns. We have resources. So effectively, God puts the couple in a room with no windows and doors and says, "Work it out," and He gives the Holy Spirit and He gives the Scripture and that's what He's calling on us to do.

Thirdly, commands to Christians married to non-Christians who want to stay or are willing to stay, look at verses 12 and 13. It says, "To the rest, I say this: I, not the Lord, if any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her, and if a woman has a husband who's not a believer, and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him." So, again, the same advice. Stay married if you can. The overall advice on the whole chapter is stay in the situation you're in. A consistent advice he's going to give, with exceptions, but in this case, he's saying, "Alright, you're dealing with what we would call a mixed marriage. A Christian man with a non-Christian woman, a Christian woman with a non-Christian man." That's the scenario.

Now he speaks, he says, "This I say: I, not the Lord," now, please don't say that Paul's pitting himself against Jesus here. It's like, "I'm slipping aside. I'm going to tell you something Jesus wouldn't tell you." That's not what he's doing. What he's saying is, "I don't have an oral tradition saying from Jesus on this topic." But he is speaking as an apostle and God is expanding our understanding through the Apostle. That's how you should understand it. It's every bit as inspired as anything Jesus would ever say. So the topic's mixed marriage. Now, first of all, please hear me on this. No single Christian should ever willingly, willfully go into a mixed marriage, ever. Ever. 2 Corinthian 6:14 says, "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers," or sometimes translated "unequally yoked." "For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" Don't willingly do that, don't step into something that God said He will not bless, willingly.

Later in this very chapter, he talks to a widow who desired to get remarried. He said It's fine. Look at verse 39, "A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but [he must be a Christian] he must belong to the Lord," it must be in the Lord, that that marriage happens. However, in the strange providences of God, God frequently in His wisdom and for his own inscrutable purposes, makes mixed marriages all the time by converting one of the couple. It happens again and again and again. And we don't always understand that, but God has the right to do that if He wants, and so He's speaking into that situation. In the meantime, what should the Christian spouse do in such a close proximity with a non-Christian?

Unequally yoked, but wasn't it her fault or his fault, what should she do? Tertullian, the ancient writer, talked about the challenges of a woman becoming a Christian without her husband, and she's got new friends, she's got a new lifestyle, a new pattern of worship, everything in her life is new, and he's not part of any of it. He doesn't understand any of it. Some might have thought, "Why don't you just make a clean break of it in every respect, divorce the non-Christian, find a nice Christian man, get married, and raise a Christian family?" But do you not see the devastation that would wreak in pagan society? How Christianity, even Christ, could be seen as a home-wrecker? And Christ is no home-wrecker. And so, the advice here is if the unbelieving spouse wants to stay married, Paul says stay married, then keep the marriage intact. Yes, it's going to be challenging, but this is God's best in the situation, if the unbelieving spouse is willing to stay in the marriage, is happy in the marriage.

: And then he says a very fascinating thing: Family life is sanctified or made holy by the believer in that marriage. Some might say, "Won't I be spiritually defiled by my unbelieving spouse, especially even in the marital bed? Aren't I taking the members of Christ and joining them with somebody who's not a child of God? How can I do that?" And so he addresses that in an amazing way. "And what about our children, wouldn't they be, to some degree, spiritual half-breeds? How are we going to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?" And so look at verse 14, he says, "The unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified or made holy through her believing husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy."

So Paul is saying in some very powerful and mysterious way, the presence of a Christian in the home, especially in the marriage, has a permeating and a powerful spiritual effect in the whole household. Doesn't mean that the unbeliever is made holy absolutely in standing before a holy God. No, that only happens by that individual repenting and believing in Christ for him or herself. However, the Christian wife can have an amazing, powerful influence in that home for Christ. Or conversely, the Christian husband can do the same.

Now the fourth categories commands to Christians married to non-Christians who want to leave, verse 15. He says, "If the unbeliever leaves let Him do, so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances." ESV has "enslaved" but I like "bound." "God has called us to live in peace." So he addresses the opposite case, the unbeliever wants to leave, does leave, they're gone, person can't stand living with the Christian spouse now, doesn't want any part of this. Wants a divorce, has sued for divorce, or just left. They don't even know where they are. Just gone. Paul makes it clear that the believing spouse should not make some superhuman efforts to track the individual down, force them to stay married, compel them. How could that even happen anyway? The person doesn't want it, they don't want it. And so when he says "not bound," I think it's really important to hear, that's why I don't think the "enslave" statement is helpful, because Paul uses the "bound" language to speak of marriage. And so in Romans 7:2, he says, "By law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as her husband is alive, but if her husband died, she is released from the law of marriage." Same idea here. So I think he's saying if the unbeliever leaves, she's no longer... The Christian wife is no longer married. The marriage has ended. So that expands our understanding of lawful grounds for divorce to include abandonment, biblically, here.

So, also, and this is hotly debated, but I believe it means if you have a licit divorce, then you have the right to remarry. If God says that you have the right to get a divorce, then you have a right to remarry. Not everyone says that, but that's my conviction.

So Paul's reason that he gives here is God has called us to live in peace, the endless strife and conflict of trying to compel the unbeliever to stay in a home they don't want any part of. That's what he has in mind. The unbeliever does not love Christ, does not want to pray, does not want to raise the children of the Lord, does not want to go to church, does not want to give money to Christian causes, does not want to offer hospitality to other Christians, doesn't want any part of any of that, is a continual war, and that's not glorifying to god.

Furthermore, in verse 16, he says that you don't know what the future holds, you don't know the outcome spiritually where we're heading with all this. Verse 16. "How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?" Now the best motive that the believing spouse could have is like, "I'm going to stay in it, that they would be converted. They don't want to stay, but I'm going to stay close to this unconverted spouse and I'm going to be with them and evangelize them every day, and I'm going to pour out the goodness." It's like, you don't know that that's going to happen. You don't know that the person's ever going to be converted.

Now I just have to stop this moment and say if I can say this is the most central, vital issue there is in human life. We are talking about a detail of human life, very important detail: Marriage. But it is not the centerpiece of your life. You will not spend eternity in Heaven married to another human being; you'll spend eternity in Heaven married to Jesus in a mystical union, as we've discussed. Marriage is temporary; it's for the rest of your life, but it's temporary. The most important issue for you, for each one of you, is, are your sins forgiven through faith in Christ? I pray this morning that God would bring a lost person here to the church today to hear this: That God sent His son Jesus into the world for sinners like you and me, and all you need to do to be fully forgiven of all your sins, justified, is trust in the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be forgiven of all your sins. And it could be that you're having marital problems. It could be that you're having problems as a single, it could be you're having sexual problems.

God, through Christ and through the Holy Spirit, gives you all of the power you will need for a healthy, holy life from now on, but only if you trust in Christ. So come to Christ.

And I want to give some other applications, I've been giving them throughout, but just let's finish with a few more. First of all, just as a believer in Christ, praise God for the clarity of His Word, that God has told us everything we need for a healthy marriage. I'm not saying 1 Corinthian 7:8-16 is everything you need. But everything you need for a healthy, fruitful marriage is in the Scripture, so praise God. Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

Secondly, bring this area to God and pray regularly, no matter which of these four categories you're in. Pray for God's best in this area. And I want to say especially you married couples, pray together for your marriage. Pray for the health of your marriage, even if you feel... Very healthy marriage, good, then it should be easy to get together and pray. But even if it's not, then you probably need prayer, you need prayer more than anyone else. Get together, hold hands, and bow your head, husbands lead out and this what it means to be a Christ-like leader, say, "We need to pray for our marriage." And do that even this afternoon. Don't wait.

Thirdly, look at the blessings of marriage. Keep your eyes on that. See it's a good thing, the seven full blessings. It's a good thing to be married. Praise God for it. Be thankful for marriage. Be thankful for your spouse. Now we're going to say more about being thankful for singleness. If you are single, and you don't think you have the gift of singleness, ask God for a kind of a provisional gift of singleness between now and then. There's nothing wrong with that. "Lord, greatly reduce my desires in this area. I got it that I probably don't have the gift of singleness, I got the message. But God, would You just greatly reduce my desires in this area until You bring the right person in my life?" Just lay it out before God in prayer. Close with me in prayer.

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. We continue in our study in this incredible epistle. This morning as I was having my quiet time, I'm in the section and Deuteronomy where Moses begged to have the sentence that God had put on him, that he would not cross over the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land, because he had sinned in the matter of the rock and the water flowing from the rock, and God would not remove his sentence that he would not be permitted to cross the Jordan River. But how He had promised and at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, He would give him the final and majestic vision of all the many, many visions that He showed Moses. He would allow him to see that good land from the top of Mount Pisgah. It was the final of a series of really astonishing visions, sights, if you could put it that way, that God showed Moses. Think of the life of Moses, think of all the things He showed him, think of Mount Sinai where God descended in fire on that mountain. And Moses saw it and actually was invited up into the mountain and to see manifestations of Almighty God. What an incredible vision that was.

Or before that, the Red Sea crossing. What a spectacular vision or sight of the power of God. Think about the ten plagues culminating in the plague on the first born and the things that Moses saw with his own eyes and displays of God's power over nature, the way he turned the water of Egypt into blood and the way all those plagues came. And Moses saw it. Supernatural displays are the power of God. But what really hit me this morning as I was thinking about the text I'm about to preach on was the first supernatural sign that Moses saw. And that was when he was an 80-year-old man and he was tending his father-in-law Jethro's sheep on the back side of the desert and he suddenly saw something he couldn't explain. And that was a bush that was consumed by fire, but not consumed. It was not burned up. And he thought this was remarkable. This is something he can't explain. And I think the spiritual reality behind the burning bush may be the most significant of all of the amazing things Moses ever saw. Because it represents how Almighty God, this perfect, holy God can dwell in the midst of sinners like us.

As it says in Isaiah 33:14, the sinners in Zion are gripped with trembling saying who of us can dwell with everlasting burning? Who of us can dwell with a consuming fire? And so as we have learned who we are, how sinful we are, how corrupt and how holy God is... And that education has only begun. It's going to go on for all eternity. We will understand just how holy and pure God is and how God said in Habakkuk, his eyes are too pure to look on evil. He cannot tolerate wrong. This is a Holy God and we are corrupting our sin, and how can this fire dwell in the midst of such a combustible people as us? But He will. He'll spend all eternity in our midst. We're going to see Him face-to-face. What we have only heard about now with our ears, we will see with our eyes. We will see the glory of God and we will not be consumed by it. We will look on it. With our resurrection eyes, we will look on perfect glory, the glory of God. We will see it for all eternity and we will not be burned up. We will be in the midst of the consuming fire, and we will bask in it and delight in it. And we have now a foretaste of that future through the indwelling Holy Spirit of God.

In the end of 1 Corinthians 6, there are these remarkable words. Look again at what we looked at last week. 1 Corinthian 6:19, it says, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?" Now, I tell you, there's not a person in this room that does not underestimate that statement. The Holy Spirit of God... If you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit of God is dwelling in you like the burning bush. And if you've been at sanctification any length of time, you know how combustible you are. You know how much it is true, like it says in Romans 7, the very thing I hate, I do and the thing that I want to do and that I love, I do not do. That's combustible. And yet this holy God dwells in our midst. The Holy Spirit is in you and that is the consummation of the promise of God. Christ in you, the hope of glory. So what that means is someday, we will be done with sin. Amen, hallelujah. We'll be done with it. Not just sexual sin, we'll be done with all sin. And what that means is that all of the commands of God and all of His... The intentions of God will be consummated in us, the holy people of God.

And so as we go over now into 1 Corinthians 7, we need to be reminded that the Holy Spirit is in us as a deposit guaranteeing our future inheritance, but He's also in us as a power source to make us holy. And there may be no topic in which we feel the need for that as much as sexuality, as much as the attractions of the heart, the relationships of love. We know that not just from scripture, but just from culture, from love songs, from anything, what a powerful force love is, sexual attraction is. It's a powerful force. And so we need to hear from God today. We need God to speak to us and to talk to us some more in 1 Corinthian 7.

And so we begin as we transition now from chapter 6 into chapter 7 with a whole chapter on the practicalities of marriage, God's provision for marriage. And this beautiful provision of marriage Jesus Christ said was established at the beginning. When he was asked in Matthew 19 about divorce, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" Jesus brought his inquisitors to scripture and said, "Haven't you read…at the beginning, the Creator made them male and female, [quoting Genesis 1] and said, 'For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate." So we answer the question about divorce by talking about marriage. And so God established in Adam and Eve a lasting pattern of provision for marriage. And it's a marvelous provision, it's a marvelous pattern for marriage.

And I want to just begin this message here as we begin this whole chapter on looking at marriage and singleness, we're seeing what a beautiful provision this is, how God... What God intended in marriage. And so I've got seven concepts. They all happen to begin with the letter P. I don't know how that happened, just one after the other... Just happened that way. If you believe that, talk to me afterwards. We'll discuss homiletics. But seven purposes, God's purpose in marriage.

1) Partnership

First, partnership. God said in Genesis 2:18, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Adam was alone in a way no human being since that time has been alone, completely alone. There was no other human being on Earth, he was completely alone. And it was not good for the man to continue alone, it certainly was good for him to be alone for a while because that's what God did. And He did it, I think, to establish the primacy of the husband in the marriage relationship, but also to make him feel acutely the desire for a helper suitable for him. And so God said, I will craft a helper suitable for him.

It's a beautiful word, the word helper. And the word suitable means perfectly aligned to him, corresponding to him equally in the image of God, able to share in conversations, dreams, goals in relationship, a partnership, a friendship patterned after the trinity. The Father, the Son, the Spirit in some mysterious way, separate persons perfectly one. Something we will never fully comprehend. But all human relationships are in some sense patterned after the trinity, the oneness. And so the two shall become one. One means individuals but thinking the same thoughts, having the same goals, having the same love, having the same purpose. Oneness, partnership, friendship.

2) Pleasure

Secondly, pleasure. God created marriage for pleasure. Going to the text that Jesus quoted, Genesis 2:24-25. It says, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." One flesh. And then the next verse, "The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame."

So I think we all know what that's talking about, marital relations, or sex. The Song of Songs celebrates the pleasure that comes from a holy sexual relationship between a husband and wife, something that God created, something that God intended. It is one of the greatest pleasures there is in this world and God made marriage in part for that pleasure. The pleasure is so great that it seems, in terms of language, only poetry can really capture it and so there's this whole book of poetry, Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, that is dedicated to the delights of married love. Some of you are sweating a little bit here as I'm about to quote, but I've selected proper quotes here from Song of Songs. You can read the whole book on your own. But Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs 8:6-7 it says this, "Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death and it's jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot wash it away." So that's the intensity and, if we could just say, pleasure that comes in a healthy marriage, even physically.

3) Procreation

Thirdly, procreation. God intended marriage for the sake of procreation, that there would be a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people, and nation, standing around the throne worshipping God for salvation. Where would all that come from? God intended that Adam not stay alone, that Adam and Eve not be childless, but he intended that they be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth. And so He commanded them to do it and He blessed them. It's a blessing that He's given them. Malachi 2:15 says, "Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit, they are His. And why one? Because He was seeking godly offspring, children. So guard yourself and your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth." So someday, Heaven will be filled with the redeemed from all over the world as they just quoted in Revelation 7, a multitude of people. And God ordained marriage as the holy means by which children are born. Now, we're aware that children are born just as a result of sex and it's not always in a holy way and so some of God's elect came into the world that way.

But I'm just saying the pattern that God intended from the beginning was Holy marriage and the overwhelming majority of the redeemed that will be spending eternity in Heaven will have been blessed by godly parents who brought them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The overwhelming majority, maybe as high as two-thirds. And so it's the ordinary means by which God has provided for the elect to be saved.

4) Purity

Fourth, purity. The context, as we shall see here in Corinth, was a swirling pot of sexual temptation and degradation. A constant allure towards sexual immorality of many types. God's one and only provision for pure sexual activity is covenant marriage. It's is the only one. And we'll say more about this purity, since it's clearly on Paul's mind throughout 1 Corinthians 7, as it was in chapter 6 as well.

5) Protection

Fifth, protection. Protection. Strongly connected with purity is the sense of protection. The husband's body exists in part for the protection of his wife, physically, sexually, in many regards. So he presents his body to his wife to protect her in many ways, lest she stray sexually, true. But also in terms of food, clothing, and shelter. And that's especially needful in the processes of childbearing where the woman is particularly vulnerable and then the infant that's born is extremely vulnerable and God's ordinary provision is for a husband and father to meet the physical needs in that situation, to provide for his family, to protect them from dangers.

But similarly also, the wife is there for the sexual protection of her husband. By her willing presentation of her body to him, she protects him from the harlots of Corinth. So also by her industriousness, as we see in Proverbs 31. The Proverbs 31 wife, the wife of noble character, is a busy woman who, by her skills, is able to protect her family in a similar way, food, clothing, and shelter. By making clothing for them, by cooking food, by doing a variety of things, by making a home. And there's a psychological protection that comes there. Especially in protection, we should imagine and know... I'm going to talk more about this in a moment. That the family is other under satanic assault constantly. It is primarily the husband's job to protect his family from that, from every threat. Certainly physical, but also spiritual.

But also the wife by her prayers and her godly example, and her sexual willingness, and her labors, as I just mentioned, as a homemaker and industrious and profitable work, she protects him and her children from satanic assaults as well. We see some of the idea of protection and strength from joining together in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, often quoted at weddings. I think it's a wonderful quote. It says, "Two are better than one because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up, but pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up. Also if two lie down together, they will keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? The one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." So there is strength in partnering together. An aspect of this protection of marriage is that individuals are protected in the security of a lifelong covenant relationship which we promise to work things out if there are disagreements. And you're not going to get jettisoned the first time there's some difficulty, but you're in a secure relationship in which you know this person is committed to the relationship and committed to working it through.

So this forces us sinners to get in the room, close the door, and work it out. And those of you that are married couples, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Work it out by the power of the Spirit. This is protection.

6) Productivity

Six, productivity. God commanded the man and woman to take dominion over planet Earth, to subdue it and rule over it. This involves countless works of creativity and productivity. They were called on to do it together, each with differing roles corresponding to their abilities and to their calling, beginning with raising children to join with them in that world-wide work. So God gave marriage for that productivity. Now, this chapter is the central chapter in the Bible on the blessedness of godly singleness. So you don't have to be married to be productive, not at all. Paul would say that he's more spiritually productive in his own way because he's single. And we'll talk about all that in due time. But there is productivity that comes together in a married couple. Statistics bear out that two are better than one financially, especially if there are children involved.

It is a very difficult thing for a married couple to raise children, no offense to any that are here. But it's a challenge to raise children as a couple in total agreement through prayer. It's a challenge. How much more difficult is it to try to do it alone? And so a single-parent home is a challenged home. It's challenged economically, and I think statistics show also that one of the single greatest factors and guarantors of a cycle, a multi-generational cycle of poverty, is a denigration of marriage or single-parent homes. And so there is a desire that any involved in urban ministry would have, or in any kind of ministry, in producing stable nuclear families. Productivity.

7) Portrayal

And then finally, portrayal, or picture. Marriage is the greatest portrayal or a picture of the holy and perfect relationship between God and His people, between Christ and His church. Paul says in Ephesians 5, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church." Every Christian marriage is the portrayal or a picture of the perfect, beautiful unity that there will be in Heaven between Christ and His people. So those seven reasons or purposes of marriage, there may be others, but these are the ones God laid on my heart. Partnership, pleasure, procreation, purity, protection, productivity, and portrayal. So we should see marriage as a beautiful gift from God.

Like the fragrant and beautiful garden of Eden with lots of different fragrant trees in it, and this image of a walled garden is used in Song of Solomon, chapter 4, 12-16, in which the bridegroom says to the bride, "You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride. You're a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. Your plants are like an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon. With every kind of incense tree with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon. Awake north wind and come Southland. Blow on my garden that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits." So it's a multi-faceted fruitful garden, marriage is.

But we should also see it as a besieged city. It's under constant assault, marriage is, by the world, the flesh and the devil. Adam was commanded in his original command in Genesis 2-15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden, to literally, serve it and protect it. The second verb "protect", it's like to guard or stand watch over the garden and the idea is like a watchman on the walls, it inevitably involves danger, encroaching danger. We see what danger when the serpent came in the next chapter. And so Adam failed to protect the garden and look what's happened. So there's need for constant vigilance because there is constant danger when it comes to marriage. Satan knows better than we do, the terrifying power of a Godly marriage. Just like he knows better than we do the terrifying power of a healthy church, and so he wants to assault both the family and the church continually.

He knows how dangerous it is if you have a Christlike Godly loving husband serving and caring for his wife and the Godly church-like wife submitting to her husband's leadership, and them together raising their children in the nurture and admonition the Lord. He knows how terrifyingly damaging that is to his dark kingdom. And so he's going to assault marriage, and so he was assaulting it there in Corinth, the unholy Corinthian mess. We've been seeing it. The Greco-Roman world was a mess when it came to sex and marriage. We've already seen, and we're going to talk more about the details of that, I'm not going into it right now, but we see it right in the book that we're studying, 1 Corinthians, Chapter 5, remember?

A man has his father's wife. Chapter 6 talks about various categories of sinners, that people were saved out of, and a number of them are sexual. You remember in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, "Do you not know, the unrighteous, the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, [that's people that have sex outside of marriage,] nor idolaters, nor adulterers, [that's a married person having sex with someone who's not his or her spouse] nor effeminate, nor homosexuals [we've talked about those as well, and then other categories of sinners] thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, will inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the power of the Spirit of God."

So that's what they were saved out of only recently. And so, there's still corruption, and still struggles in their minds and hearts and practices. And so at the end of chapter six, we saw that a number of them were frequenting temple prostitutes, and He has to directly address that. Look again at verses 15-20. "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. Do you not know that he who unites himself with the prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said that two will become one flesh, but he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God, you are not your own. You were bought at a price, therefore glorify God with your body." So that's the call of sanctification, to take our bodies and use them for the glory of God.

So that's the context now. 1 Corinthian 7, the Corinthian church was in danger, constant danger sexually, and God was calling on them to perfect holiness. Calling them to perfect holiness in sexual matters, either holy celibacy in the gift of singleness, or holy marriage, gift of marriage. These are God's provisions for sexual purity. So that's the Corinthian mass. What about our unholy mess?

Well, I don't have to go on and on. I've given statistics, things we've talked about it, we talked about abortion, we talked about fornication, talked about adultery, sexual immorality, internet pornography, we understand the word of God is timeless and relevant. We are essentially the same people as the Corinthians were. We're not essentially different, more technologically advanced, that's true, but our spirits are just as corrupted in this area of sex and so we need help. We need help, we're in trouble and the Word of God will come to us. God had through the Apostle Paul, planted that Corinthian church as a holy colony of heaven right in the middle of that seething mass of immorality. That's what the church is. We're in enemy territory. When He disciplined the guy in 1 Corinthians 5, he said, "Hand this man over to Satan." Satan's territory is out there. The church is a holy colony of heaven. And so, it is today in 21st century America, we are called on to be holy people surrounded by this unholy sexual sin and mess.

So, God's two great provisions we are going to discuss, not in great detail, on celibacy, we'll get to it but holy celibacy and singleness, and holy marriage. Both of them in this chapter are presented positively as a gift from Almighty God. Look at verse seven, "Each person has his own gift from God. One has this gift and another has that."

So God has not left us as orphans here, He has given us gifts to provide for us. So, let's talk here at the beginning in verse one, of God's gift of celibate singleness, celibate singleness, look at verse 1. "Now, concerning the matters about which you wrote," and then in most translations, there's a quotation around it. In other words, as you said or as you wrote to me, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." That's a literal translation, King James version, as is good for a man not to touch a woman. Most translations just help us out with what that means. "It is good for a man not to touch a woman," means sexually. Doesn't mean bumping into her in a crowded marketplace, like she has cooties or something like that. It's not that, but it's just like in Proverbs 6, talks about the man who goes after his neighbor's wife, "No one who touches her will go unpunished." It's pretty clear what that's talking about and so it is here.

Now, Paul is transitioning and in these first six chapters he's been addressing topics he chose to address one after the other, like their factions and divisions in chapters 1-3, and their worldliness in chapter 4, and their lack of church discipline with this individual in Chapter 5, and lawsuit among believers. He's addressing all of these, and the issue of sexual purity with the temple prostitutes, he's bringing all these are his topics of his choice. Now he's addressing things they asked him about. And so for the next number of chapters he's going to say "Now about, now about, now about." And these are topics they brought up with him and so he's quoting this they're saying this to him, it's good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, so he's bringing up that topic. Alright, now it seems that some Corinthians aware of the depravity of human nature, and especially in this area, advocated a position of absolute celibacy for every Christian.

Anybody and everybody. Let's just stay away from sexual relations, all together. Let's just leave it alone. We are now people of the Spirit, not of the body. So you've got that Greek philosophical dualism where they're celebrating the spirit and the mind, the elevated lofty regions of the spirit of the mind and denigrating the physical carnal aspect. Well, the Bible never does that in the fact that Jesus was incarnate by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and how He was, He took on an actual human resurrection body after His resurrection. So the biblical view is not denigrating body, elevating spirit. But they were like that and say, "Well we're now people of the Spirit, so we're done with sex. Everybody should be like that."

Now look, Paul doesn't disagree up-front saying wrong, he doesn't do that. He actually in this chapter, as I've already mentioned, is going to advocate most eloquently the value and benefit of singleness in the Lord. Even in our own section here, look at verse 7, he says, "I wish that all people were as I am." In other words, single. "But each person has his own gift from God. One has this gift and another has that." So he's not refuting it absolutely, like singleness is not a good idea, holy celibacy is a gift from God. And he's going to unfold that later in great detail verses 32-35, especially. So we'll get to that in time. So yes, holy celibacy is a gift from God, but he has some caveats right away. And so, we moved quickly from Holy celibacy to the issue of marriage. He says that if you don't have the gift of holy celibacy in singleness, you are in danger sexually. So look at verse 2, "Since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband."

So the this is similar to the moment you remember in Matthew 19 when Jesus is teaching on marriage and answers the question, "Is it lawful to get a divorce for any and every reason?" He gives a beautiful articulation of the theology of marriage from the beginning and then simply says no, it is not lawful to get a divorce for any and every reason. That is not lawful. Well, the disciples heard this, in like, "Okay, so if that's the case, if it's one man, one woman in covenant relationship for life, and the only way you can get out of that is through sin, it's better not to get married." That's what they said. And so, they're addressing it, it's better for all of us to be single. Jesus then answers, totally in harmony with the theology that Paul is giving here. "Not everyone can accept that, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way, others were made that way by men and still others have made themselves eunuchs or renounce marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. The one who can accept this, should accept it."

That's a clear theology of singleness, given to a limited number of people who are capable of accepting it. Paul just elaborates on who it is that can accept celibate singleness. There are a number of Godly people, heroes and heroines that have felt no compulsion to get married. They're not under any sexual pressure, and so they can live their whole single lives like Paul did, in service to the Lord. We think about Lottie Moon, for example, who turned away from a relationship to go overseas and serve in China and was never married. And she lived out some of the words that Paul is going to talk about later, in undivided devotion to the Lord. The same thing with Rachel Singh who did the same among the Hourani people. And she just lived her whole life as a single woman. Now, there are many of our sisters in Christ that are serving over the seas, overseas with the INB that have the gift of singleness, and are fruitful in that. And also, there are brothers that are called just like Paul to celibate singleness, holy singleness. For example, Charles Simeon and John Stott and others that just never felt the need to get married and gave their whole lives in service to the Lord.

And so here, Paul says that's a good thing if you can do it, but look at verses 8 and 9, "Now to the unmarried and the widows, I say it is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am, but if they cannot control themselves, they should marry. For its better to marry than to burn." It usually helped with translation, burn with passion. Now some of the Corinthians were saying with a faulty theology that marriage itself, sexual relating with a marriage itself, is corrupt. There's an an inherent wickedness to it. Now, there is a terrible history of this in the Roman Catholic church, sadly. Augustin, one of the key leaders of the Catholic Church, theologically before he was converted, he was constantly burning with sexual immoral passion, fornication. He was a corrupt individual and it was really being delivered from that sin in particular, that brought him over into new life in Christ. He knew when that had been dealt with, that he had been converted. And he wrote incredible theology but wrote practically and strongly advocated, perhaps beyond boundaries, the gift of celibate singleness. And it became a tradition in the Roman Catholic church, and even a command in their canon law, that if you're going to be a priest, you had to be single. They mandated singleness.

And the same thing for Godly women, who we generally called nuns, and it was a hierarchy of holiness, and the highest level of holiness, were given to single people. And then if you're just your average Christian married couple, you're way down on the list in terms of a hierarchy of holiness. And we can see some of the devastating consequences of basically implying that marriage is corrupt. As a matter of fact, Paul in 1 Timothy 4:1-3 calls the forbidding of marriage the doctrine of demons. There are actually some strange cults, and I've mentioned them before, the Shakers. Christi and I went to a Shaker village when we were in Kentucky, and they make great furniture, and they have a really laudable simple life. But they taught that men and women should literally not touch each other. So there are these weird kind of ritualistic dances in which the men and women just would circle around but not touch each other and they forbid marriage.

And as I've said about the Shakers before, you better be good at evangelism because you're going to be gone in one generation. Alright, just figure that out, you'll know what I'm talking about. They just forbad marriage, it was a doctrine of demons. Now, we're going to talk more about singleness in later sermons at the present, just let me say a few things practically. First of all, we should esteem single people as complete people in Christ. There's nothing incomplete about a single a man or a woman. It's not like there's something wrong with them. I'm not saying it's wrong for a church to try to help them find spouses, but sometimes some people can go overboard. I've seen it happen. Let's move on, alright. We should see the church as a large family, including singleness. In Psalms 68, 6, it says, "God sets the solitary and families." I mean the family of God.

And so practically we should be thinking about singles at holiday times and other times in terms of whole fellowship, home fellowship, that there would be a warm welcoming of people who are single. And we know very well that they might be married later, but this is the time of singleness, for them. And so there should be a flourishing young professionals ministry in every healthy church singles ministry, that ministers well, with and to singles.

Let's talk now about, for the rest of the time, about God's gift of holy marriage. Not everyone is able to maintain sexual purity. So Paul turns to God's gift of marriage verse 2, "Since there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband." Now, again, I gave seven reasons why marriage is beautiful and wonderful. Paul isn't giving a comprehensive list of reasons why you should get married. "I want to marry you because I can't control myself and it's better to marry you than burn with passion." Don't say that, that's not a good proposal.

There are a wide range of good reasons. Look at my list, give the whole list not just this one. But Paul's just zeroing in on this issue of sexual purity. And he says, "Each man should have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband." This is God's gracious provision, and a loving gift to each other. Therefore, Paul is saying, celibacy within marriage is not good. No, it's not. So you can't take that idea and extend it now into the boundaries of marriage. Look at verses 3-5, "The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone, but also to her husband in the same way the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent. And for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control."

So Paul's strongly urging against that spirit vision that we're done with those kinds of physical things. But I want you to note how He refutes this with remarkably egalitarian language, this is actually one of the most egalitarian passages in the Bible. The husband and wife in this passage are sexual equals when it comes to each other's bodies. He goes so far as to say the husband's body doesn't belong to him alone but also to his wife. He is given to her rights and privileges over his own body. That's the theological implication of being one flesh. In the same way the wife's body doesn't belong to her alone, but to her husband. She has given to him rights and privileges in covenant marriage, that belong to him alone. And he has that freedom, he has that authority, even uses authority language. The wife has authority over her husband's body sexually. The husband has authority over the wife's body sexually.

That's the language that he uses here. The husband therefore is under a moral obligation to fulfill his wife sexual needs and similarly the wife is under moral obligation to fulfill her husband's sexual needs. That's the language that Paul's giving here. So whenever I have something difficult to say, I quote another pastor. So now I'm going to quote John McArthur at length.

"There are so many people who use the sexual aspect of marriage to manipulate what they want. If the husband doesn't do everything the wife wants, that's it, he's on the couch. Or if the wife doesn't do everything the husband wants, he doesn't even bother with her. And the husband knows, just exactly what he has to do to get the right response, so he does it. Like some kind of poor little puppy dog who has to do what he has to do in order to get what he has to get.Listen, when you withhold from your partner for any reason, you put that partner in a place where Satan can tempt them toward their lack of self-control. The first thing that happens is not only the bitterness, anguish and anxiety that comes between the two, but then the evil thoughts that come into the mind, and then the entertainment of the evil thoughts. And very often it can lead to an adulterous situation. Any time you withhold from your partner that which is rightfully theirs, you become the agent of Satan."

I think that's all true. Paul says, "Occasional times of prayer maybe." Now, this would be an interesting couple alright, to me. But it's just what the text says. "From time to time, tell you what hon, let's abstain, so that we can pray." "That's fine," says the other, "Just as long as it's not too long so that we can come back together after prayer, after the time of prayer." But that's exactly what it's saying. It should be also know how egalitarian it is, by mutual consent. They will abstain from sexual relating within marriage by mutual consent. If one of them says, "No I don't think that this is a good time for that." Then it's not happening. I mean you can pray without abstaining, but it would just be something that you could do. And if you do abstain, for the sake of prayer, he is saying the time should be brief and should end with the couple's coming together sexually, "so that Satan will not have the opportunity to tempt you because of your lack of self-control."

This gives you a sense of how regular and ongoing relation, relating should be within marriage should be a regular ongoing part. Now, Paul says, "Look, I'm not commanding you to do that." So he's going to keep open the singleness theme he's going to go, he said, "I'm not commanding you to get married." "I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that."

Alright, let's take some applications, now and we'll be done. First of all, we should see both singleness and marriage as a gift from God. God is good, he's not left us as orphans in this area. So FBC, should be a place where single people feel welcome and esteemed as complete and full members of the body of Christ. So also as I've said, single people should see their time of singleness as a unique time of serving the Lord and a special time, which God may extend for the rest of their lives. They don't know that, but they may realize, "Look, I have the gift of singleness. Didn't know that at the beginning, but I can see how fruitful my life is as a single person." On the other hand, married people should see marriage as a gift from God. And here, you have to get very specific. My spouse is a gift of God to me.

And the more you think that and the more you express that to each other, the happier each of you will be, in marriage. Think, men, think of your wife as a gift of God to you. That God chose her out for you, and she is the helper suitable for you. And in the same way, wives, you should think of that, of your husbands as a specific, intelligent gift from God. That God is showing His wisdom, His intelligence in choosing, He has made this selection for you. He's brought the two of you together and you should express this to each other frequently. How thankful you are for this person and for the things that she does for you or the things that he does for you. Of course you're dealing with a sinner. Of course they're imperfect. Of course there's going to be aspects that are not right or not the way they should be. I understand that. But the more you can express thankfulness, the sweeter your union will be.

Some time ago, I came across the poem written by a woman in the New England Puritan, Ann Bradstreet. Her anthology of poems was the first book of poetry ever published in the new world. She was a Puritan woman lived in the 17th century in New England, actually, not far from where I pastored in Topsfield. She was married to a man, Simon, who eventually became governor, of Massachusetts. She wrote this poem to her husband and it just speaks to me. It's just powerful. Listen to what she says to her husband Simon. "If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever a man were loved by a wife, then thee. If ever wife were happy in a man compare with me, women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold or all the riches that the east doth hold."

"My love is such that rivers cannot quench nor ought, but love from thee give recompense. My love is such, I can no way repay. Thy love is such, I can in no way repay. The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live in love, let's so persevere, that when we live no more, we may live ever."

It's a beautiful poem. And I remember reading and I thought, "I want to be the kind of husband that my wife could say these kinds of things to." I want all of you husbands, you're like, "I would love to be this kind of a man who would be celebrated that way." And a wife would say, "I would love to say these kinds of things to my husband."

As I finish the message today, I prayed this morning that God would bring non-Christians here to hear the Gospel. This scripture is predominantly written to the church about the gift of marriage and the gift of singleness. And they are each of them gifts, but there's a far greater gift and that is the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. It could be that you're invited here today by a friend or someone brought you here, maybe you just walked in here and you've heard this sermon on marriage and singleness. And maybe you realize that there's some corruption in your own heart in this area, maybe even sexually. But understand that's a subset of a larger problem of the sin, and the only provision there is for sin is Jesus Christ the Savior.

God sent him to die for sinners like you and me. We're all corrupt. Not just in this area but in every area. And so, I plead with you don't leave this place without talking to somebody about how you can come to faith in Christ. God sent Jesus, His only begotten son to die on the cross as a substitute for sinners like you and me, so that we can spend eternity holy and blameless in heaven looking at God face-to-face. Close with me in prayer.

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians Chapter 6. We continue to make our way through this incredible book 1 Corinthians. In the year 397 AD, Augustine, writing his confessions wrote these timeless words, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and the heart of man is restless until it finds it rest in you." Restless, un-quiet, discontent, roaming ravenous, like the devil in Job Chapter 1, roaming over the surface of the earth looking for something, some way to cause trouble. Or the demons that Jesus spoke of when he said that when the demon is set out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and doesn't find it. Or in Isaiah 57, it says, "The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. 'There is no peace says' my God 'for the wicked.'" Restless. Sin is what we do when we're not at rest with God. We try to find rest in lawful pleasures, and we become addicted to them, to food, and to hobbies and other lawful pleasures and they ensnare our souls and make us idolatrous.

Or we find rest in sinful immoral pleasures, illicit sex and other things, and we become enslaved by that. Sin is what we do when we haven't found rest in God. Now, here's the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And good news, hope is woven through the text that Alex just read. Some day every Christian will be perfectly at rest in God. Some day, we're going to be in a glorious world surrounded by the glory of God, we're going to be in the new Jerusalem, we're going to be in the new heaven, new earth, the glory of God will be freely revealed to us, and we'll be able to handle it, unlike Moses on that mountain when he said, "Show me your glory," and God said, "No one can see me and live." And as the apostle Paul said, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God." We are not ready for a full display of the glory of God, but then we will be ready. And we will come into our Sabbath rest, our final perfect rest in Christ.

There's a picture in my mind this morning from one of my mission trips. Shared with you before, but it's powerfully on my mind this morning, of a swim that I took in a Salt Lake in the Karakoram mountains in a very remote area in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, the most unearthly earthly place I've ever been in. Karakoram mountain is over 20,000 feet high, snow cap year round and we're floating in this salty lake. We were so... Our buoyancy was so powerful, we could barely stay submerged for a few seconds and we will be pushed back up. And I just picture myself floating in a sea of the glory of God in heaven. And all of the lusts that ensnared our souls in this world will be gone from me, cast into the lake of fire forever and I will be drinking in the Glory of God, so will you if you're a Christian. And the more you can by faith see that future day, the more powerfully you'll be able to fight your present sins. You'll be able to cast aside every sin that so easily entangles your feet and run with endurance this race marked out in front of you, as the author of Hebrews put it.

As Satan cast nets around our feet every moment of every day, you'll be able to cast them aside if you have a vision of what you will be some day in heaven and through the Holy Spirit have a foretaste of that heavenly joy, and you will find your rest in God even today and sin will be nothing to you. A content person is as hard to tempt as an iron wall is to ignite with a flaming arrow. So to be totally content in Christ, but friends, we're not there yet, are we? We're not in Heaven yet, in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 speaks of the warfare that we have to fight, now, while we're in this present era, while we are assaulted every day by the world of flesh and the devil we have to fight for joy, we have to fight for holiness, we have to fight in order to be witnesses to the people around us who are not yet set free, they're dead in their transgressions and sins. And so the two journeys internal journey of holiness, external journey of Gospel advance are woven together throughout this book of 1 Corinthians.

And as we read these Verses, we see that our sexual crisis is nothing new. The struggle that we are having, that's so evident, it's in the news of the church, sadly, it's in the news in the world. Much of it is tied to Internet pornography and to the allure, the continual allure and the enticements of those images, but it's not only that. The recent stories have exposed people's sexual immorality, their sexual abuse, the relentless disquiet that's in the hearts of individuals and they seek an outlet in illicit sex. Internet pornography is especially devastating. Statistics are terrible. 2.5 billion emails containing porn are sent or received every single day, 2.5 billion. 68 million search queries related to pornography. 25% of all searches are related to porn on the Internet. About 200,000 Americans are classified as porn addicts. One third of porn viewers are women, two-thirds are men. Beyond Internet pornography, there are there devastating statistics. 40% of kids in public high schools have had intercourse at least once, 40%.

Half of the 20 million new STDs reported each year are among young people between the ages of 15 to 24. Back in 2002, an online dating agency called Ashley Madison was founded with this tagline "Life is short, have an affair." In 2015 hacker stole the customer data and some noteworthy Christian leaders who were found to have been enrolled in the service much to their shame and the shame of the Church of Jesus Christ. Overall 25% of those enrolled claim to be Christians. All this points to what I've been talking about the last few weeks, a devastating weakness of sexuality for us human beings, it's the weak part of our character, of our lives. And this has been so since Adam and Eve ate the fruit and their eyes were open, they realized they were naked, and they were filled with shame. So, our sexual crisis is nothing new and we read about it right here in the pages of this ancient epistle, 2000 years old.

The Corinthians were involving themselves in illicit sex. It appears that some members of the Corinthian church were frequenting temple prostitutes. This was a regular part of the pagan religion and Corinth, and indeed around the pagan world. The natural drives of food and sex were woven together in a very satanic demonic kind of way, woven together and were harnessed in the service of pagan religions. Gods and Goddesses were worshipped in part by indulging these drives, especially the sexual drive, and also the desire to eat meat. This is the very thing that the Jews encountered when they entered the Promised Land with the Canaanites, and the religions that they had was the same kinds of things. Even worse, it seems that the members of this... Some members of the Corinthian church were arguing doctrinally for their right to frequent temple prostitutes. Basically saying, "We are people of the spirit, our faith in Christ has moved us to a higher plane, the grace of God has freed us from all guilt for sin. And what we do with our bodies is nothing, because our bodies are not important." So that's the doctrinal underpinning that Paul is seeking to address here. There is a false view of Christian freedom here in this slogan twice repeated in this text, four times in the epistle. "All things are lawful for me."

And it shows a misunderstanding of Christian freedom. So Paul has to address this ethical problem, this moral problem doctrinally. He assesses false doctrine or addresses false doctrine about their bodies and about their freedoms. And a key text is in Verse 13, look at it with me Verse 13, it says, "The body was not meant, or is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body." That's an incredibly important statement. That's why I began with the Augustine quote. "You have made us for yourself." Our bodies are for Christ and He is for our bodies. They match together. This assertion is proved by the doctrine of the resurrection, both Christ's resurrection from the dead, His bodily resurrection, and our future bodily resurrection. If God doesn't care about the body then why was Christ physically raised from the dead. And why will he raise our bodies from the dead in the future? So, a Christian's body does matter. And what we do with our bodies matters.

Next Paul goes arguing against temple prostitutes, frequenting temple prostitutes, the Corinthian church members failed to understand the true nature, both of sex, the two become one flesh and of Christian conversion. One is joined to the Lord, so we become one with Jesus spiritually, and therefore, you can't take Christ members and join them to a prostitute.

Next, he directly forbids sexual immorality with a clear command, "Flee sexual immorality." Greek word is "porneia," flee, porneia, flee sexual immorality. And then he shows how sexual immorality is an assault, not only on our souls, but actually on our bodies as well.

And finally, he roots all of this, and the fact that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, whom we have received from God. It's a very powerful argument here and he's speaking individually. We're going to unfold this. I'm just walking through the whole text now. We have received the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit, so our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. And then he says very powerfully. You are not your own, you won't get to do whatever you want with your body. You have been bought at a price. This is the language of slavery. We are Christ's slaves, he bought us and therefore the culminating statement, so beautifully. Therefore, glorify God with your body. An incredible text and how much we needed to hear it.

So let's just walk through it and it begins with this slogan in Verse 12, "'All things are lawful for me,' but not everything is beneficial. 'All things are lawful for me' but I will not be mastered by anything." So he's dealing here with the issue of Christian freedom and Paul is probably quoting some slogan here, some Corinthian slogan. That's why many of the English translations have it in quotation marks. Because he says it four times in 1 Corinthians, twice here in Chapter 6, twice in Chapter 10. And it seems that they are saying, "Look, now that I'm a Christian, anything goes. I can do whatever I want."

So that's misunderstanding Christ freedom. Now, there is a powerful doctrine of Christian freedom, Romans 6:14 says, "You are not under law, but under grace." We have been set free from the law and its condemning power. The law has no power to condemn us to help. Christ drank in our condemnation at the cross. So we're set free from the law in that sense. Paul also taught that idols themselves are nothing. They're just chunks of material made of stone or wood or metal. So there's nothing in an idol in and of itself, and so, meat sacrifice to idols is still just meat. And so, he's going to unfold all this in Chapters 8 through 10, on meat sacrifice to idols. But they took this and they brought it too far, they applied it to something that they shouldn't have applied it to, and that was sexual immorality with the temple prostitutes. Well then, whatever they're doing down at the temple, we can do. He's like, "No, no, you're misunderstanding Christian freedom."

So Paul restricts the slogan. "All things are lawful for me," or "Everything is permissible for me." In all four times that he quotes it, twice here in Chapter 6, twice in Chapter 10, he answers it back, restricts it. It's kind of like this, "All things are lawful for me, as you say, fine, but not everything's beneficial. All things are lawful for me. So you say, but I will not be enslaved by anything." He does it again in Chapter 10. So, true freedom there, Christian freedom is not doing whatever your flesh wants to do. If it feels good, do it. No, not at all. That's not what freedom is. True Christian freedom is being delivered from sin to serve God, that's what freedom is. As Psalm 119 says, "I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free." Jesus said in John 8, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin, but if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed." Jesus by his life, by his demeanor toward his father defines freedom for us, in that same Chapter, John 8:29, he says, "I always do what pleases my Father," that's freedom.

Jesus was the only truly free man that ever lived. And he was free to serve his father every moment of his life, that's freedom. Everything else is slavery. We are enslaved by hidden spiritual chains towards sin. That's not freedom. And so Paul says in Verse 12, "All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything [or enslaved] by anything." The image is definitely one of enslavement. We are mastered by anything we habitually do. We can't break the habit of that pattern. The drive of the flesh toward food and sex, and sleep, and pleasure, five cents pleasure is normal, but in sin, it's relentless and inevitably pushes across boundaries that God has set. So we're jumping fences that he's set up in his moral law. And as it pushes us towards satisfying those sensual desires, it also pushes us toward habits that end up in addictions. We end up being enslaved by what we do over and over. This is the essence of the flesh. It takes normal bodily desires and pushes them beyond boundaries and toward enslavement.

So the Corinthians who are going to temple prostitutes were actually enslaved by their lusts and their habits. Paul addresses also the food aspect of it, the eating aspect of it. In verse 13 he says, "Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food, but God will destroy them both." Probably another slogan from the Corinthians, seems they had written him a letter and so he's addressing certain things, he's going to do the same at the beginning of Chapter 7, when someone said it's good not to touch a woman, and he's going to address that. They say things to him and he has to answer them back and give them a better understanding of what they're saying. It's like, food for the stomach and stomach for food seems to be something you're saying. Well, Paul sees that and would like to point to their fleshly mindset. It is true that the stomach and food were meant to go together, that makes sense, alright? God knows that we need food, he feeds us, because Jesus said he feeds the birds of the air, and he feeds us too, he feeds every living creature. He knows we need food.

And not only that, he knows that he designed food to be delicious. There are different... So many different flavors. And so, the tongue with its taste buds was designed to sense the flavors that God put into food and to enjoy them. God knows that. But here's the point. We were not put on the planet to eat. That wasn't the reason God created us. Both food, and the stomach are temporary and neither one are the reason why God created you. They were a means to an end. And the end is to glorify God with your body. We were made for eternity, we were made for heaven, we were made for God. We were made to enjoy him, not to eat. So he's addressing this drive toward food. Now, at this point, I just want you to see the two different themes Paul's dealing with. There's one issue, and that's the enslavement of our habits and he just wants us to be free.

Lawful Pleasures and Illicit Pleasures

But there are two different types of habits that he's looking at: Lawful pleasures and illicit pleasures. Do you see them both in the text? You got the food aspect and the porneuo or the sexual immorality aspect. So I want to put two kind of substances in front of you: Honey and poison. So we're dealing with the issue of honey and the issue of poison. Why do I choose honey? Because the Book of Proverbs uses honey as a metaphor, a literal thing, true, but a metaphor for lawful pleasures, and it gives you kind of the rules of the road on honey consumption.

The first time honey is mentioned in the Book of Proverbs, Proverbs 24:13, where we are told under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, "Eat honey, my son, for it is good; honey from the comb is sweet to your taste." Thank you for the advice. I appreciate it. Honey is sweet, so you should eat some. It's right there in the word of God.

So what is this saying? Well, I think symbolically what we're saying is we're not called on to an aesthetic life of denying physical pleasures. That's not the answer here is asceticism. We're supposed to enjoy the sweet things of life, but that's not all the Book of Proverbs has to say about honey, and the next three proverbs about honey are all restrictive, like Proverbs 25:16. "If you find honey, eat jut enough- too much or and you will vomit." Well, that's just good advice, friends. Don't glut yourself on honey or you'll throw up. Okay. And then Proverbs 27:7 says, "He who is full, loathes honey."

So what's going on there? The more you partake of things you enjoy, the less you will enjoy them. All of this says let's not be ascetics, but let's live self-controlled, upright lives when it comes to lawful pleasures. And all of that is packed into this statement, certainly food for the stomach, but I'm not going to be enslaved by anything. I don't want to be enslaved by anything I do. American Christians are surrounded at all times by a sea of amoral pleasures more I think than any generation of Christians in 20 centuries of church history. We have lawful pleasures galore, food and drink and possessions, things you can buy on Amazon Prime, and you have movies that you can stream and music you can listen to and you're just...

We are swimming in an Olympic-size swimming pool of honey, and the question is, "Are these lawful pleasures enslaving us? Are we enslaved by our habits by the things we say we can do?" One simple test: If any one thing is enslaving you is fast from it. Give it up for a time. The harder it is for you to do, the more you may suspect that you're enslaved. Let me give you an example. Let's talk about the smartphone. I got my smart phone right here. It's timing my sermon, 20 minutes and 27 seconds. I'm very well aware. But the smartphone is a marvelous thing. It's just staggering the technology in this thing. It's amazing. I've found that there are two words that sum up what it does for me: Tool and toy. Tool and tool. Tool, it helps me work. It helps me to be productive. Toy, not so much. So those would be apps, things you can stream, all that kind of thing. You know. Well, however you define toy, you know what I'm talking about. So, how can you tell whether you're enslaved to your smartphone? Well, if it's near you, can you avoid reaching out for it every 47 seconds? Someone once was talking quite recently, say, "Something's wrong with my hand. It just has... It just keep reaching for this thing and checking it." So try fasting from at least perhaps toy aspect of the smartphone. The harder it is for you to do, the more you may suspect that you're enslaved.

Same thing for streaming videos or food. Try fasting. Try a day of the week for a month, let's say Tuesday, a Thursday, something like that, and just not eat and just spend the time praying. Fasting is a Biblical theme, but this is one way also a diagnostic tool to say, "Is food enslaving me? Am I living for sweets, or I'm living for meat or I'm living for something?" You're not put on the planet for that, and so a life of self-control, "I will not be mastered by anything. I'll not be enslaved by my habits." So that's the honey aspect.

Now, let's talk about the poison aspect. It's like, "Oh, how much poison should I ingest and how much?" It's like that's the wrong question. The answer: None. None. So, he addressed his sexual immorality and there is an enslavement there too. Sex is a very powerful thing, and the allure through the eye, very attractive. Proverbs 7, for example, describes an immoral woman who uses alluring techniques to draw young men into committing adultery with her. And you know the account, and she's beautiful and she's dressed. It says like a harlot, and she speaks enticing, flattering words, and she is spreading a net around him.

You can't see it, but that's what's going on. And then it says, "All at once, he turned and went in with her little knowing it would cost him his life." An arrow would pierce his liver and he would die. So there is that enslavement, and that's I think what's going on with internet pornography. There's just that enticing and that alluring that goes on and the beauty, and there's an attraction to it. So many people are addicted. They are enslaved by poison, and Christ has set us free. You're set free. If you're a Christian, you're set free. You're not a slave to sin. You don't ever need to sin again ever the rest of your life. Every single temptation that comes to you, you can see dead at your feet by the power of the Holy Spirit by specific Scripture, just like Jesus did in Matthew 4. You can kill every temptation.

You don't ever need to sin again. You're set free. So why be a fool and why allow yourself to go in for the poison that Satan's handing to you? We need to have therefore a holy understanding of our bodies. Look at Verse 13 and 14, "The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body, and by his power, God raised the Lord from the dead and he will raise us also." So God did not design us for food as we've been saying, but even more, he did not design our bodies for porneia, for sexual immorality. He built us for himself, for his own glory.

Therefore, honor God. Glorify God with your body. The reason God will raise your body from the dead is he wants you to have a body in the New Heaven, the New Earth. He wants you to be physical. Like Jesus is right now, you will be conformed to his image in every respect, and you will be energetically able to serve him in that new world. He wants you to have a body. So we need to understand that. We need to understand our bodies are a marvelous gift from Almighty God, part of his redemptive plan. The Greek philosophers, in which these Corinthians were swimming in these mentalities, were very dualistic, many of them, and they looked on the physical body as not worthy of even being mentioned. They were wanting to ascend to a higher, mental, spiritual plane.

And so, the idea of the resurrection from the dead make no sense to them. Why would you want to spend eternity in a body? And bodily processes were disgusting and repulsive to that Greek philosophical, dualistic mindset. But the biblical view is quite different. The biblical view says I will praise you. Psalms 139, "I will praise you for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." So many marvelous things about the human body, like the fact that there're as many neurological interconnections in a single human brain as there are leaves in the Amazonian rainforest. It's incredible.

2The human brain is the most complex, physical thing God ever made. And then think about the hand. I used to be a mechanical engineer. First thing that I designed was robots. I worked on robotic things. There's nothing that we can make that even comes close to the marvels of the human hand, the dexterity, the gentle, skillful movements of the fingers, the powerful grip of the hand, the fact that fingers can play a sonata by Beethoven, where you could see a rock climber hanging by four fingers over the valley of Yosemite and his entire life is entrusted to the strength of his four fingers. It's incredible and in an incredibly small package. This is a very small area and this is what God has made.

Or the ability of the ear. The ear is more remarkable than you might think. The fact is that you get, the ear is responding to pressure waves, and they become composite pressure waves. All the things are kind of summed up in one composite pressure wave, and then your ear sorts them out. So you can, for example, take a quarter and a dime and drop it on a hard surface like a glass countertop or something like that or a marble countertop and you can hear two coins, one large, one small... You could probably even say what the denomination is, quarter and a dime, and you can say how many there are. You can listen to instruments, a guitar and a piano playing the same note, different spaces in your ears just sorting that. Well, our bodies are amazing, fearfully and wonderfully made, and God intends for us to have for all eternity, only perfected.

And so we are to celebrate that, and Christ's incarnation is proof of that. God wanted his son to be physical. And so, the second person of the trinity, the word, became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and he experienced a physical, fleshly life in this world. He knew what it was like to be hungry and then have his hunger satisfied by chewing and swallowing food. I'm getting that physically. He knew what it was like to have searing first when from the cross, he said, "I thirst." When they flogged him, he felt pain. When they crucified him, he died. He was physical. But that wasn't the end of his physicality. God raised him from the dead on the third day, and he took on a perfect resurrection body that you could touch. You could put your hands, your fingers, in the nail marks.

He said, "A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have." He was completely physical. And he is the first fruit from among the dead, so we're going to be conformed to him. We're going to spend eternity in physical bodies that you can touch and we'll spend eternity in that. And all of 1 Corinthians 15 deals with the doctrine of our resurrection from the dead based on Christ's resurrection. So what this means is in Verse 14, "By his power, God raised the Lord from the dead and he will raise us also." So that means the body is a major part of God's salvation plan for us. The body matters. What you do with your body matters. So you should have a holy esteem for your body, and the doctrine that I would commend you is in Romans Chapter 6, Verse 13 and 14. Listen to this. This is exactly what I think Paul would say to the Corinthians. He doesn't say it here, but he says in Romans.  "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness, for sin shall not be your master, for you are not under law but under grace." That's what you're supposed to do with your body as you'll say later in a recap, present your body to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

Now, sexual immorality offends God. It is offensive. Look what he says in verses 15-17, it offends Jesus. "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! Never! 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. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit."

So he expands the doctrine here. The body was made for the Lord. That means our bodies are members of Jesus Christ. Christ is intimately connected with our bodies. He is our head spiritually. We are his physical bodies here on earth. And so he uses our bodies to reach out and do things, controlling our minds and hearts by the Spirit, he uses your hands to reach out and care for the poor and needy, do acts of service to the sick and dying, to do actual things. He uses your actual physical feet to walk, beautiful feet to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. I mean, he uses our bodies to serve him. We are one with Christ physically. And then he asked the question then, "If that's true, then how could I take the members of Christ and then unite them with a prostitute? Never!" There's a sense of horror here. It's not, "I'd rather not." It's not that at all. It's a sense of horror. Never, may it never be. It should be considered impossible. There's like an emotional reaction to this. How could we take this body which is consecrated in Christ and united immorally?

It's kind of like the logic of James 3 where he's talking about our tongues. Remember how he says, "With the tongue, you praise our God and Father, and with it you curse men who have been made in the likeness of God, out of the same mouth come praising and cursing, my brothers. This should not be." We'll just take that and expand it to the whole body. With the body, we serve our Lord and savior, and with the body, we send sexually. How could this be? May it never be.

And he says in Verse 16: "Do you not understand what's actually going on with the temple prostitute, what's actually happening when you're with her?" Look at Verse 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." They were underestimating sex, underestimating the sexual union as we all tend to do, looking on as a casual thing, a physical function. Well, it's not. Our language tends to minimize it like an affair. An affair is just something that happens, right? That's what we use. The affair was a such and such affair like in history.

This is not an affair or a fling or modern terms like hooking up. It's minimizing. But Paul says, going back to Genesis 2, "Do you not understand what's happening here with the act of marriage, the marital act?" Which is sexual intercourse, the actual act. "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." That's the exact same thing that Jesus quoted in Matthew 19 to talk about marriage, what marriage is. Paul applies it to the time you visited the temple prostitute last week.

So you just in some sense married that girl. Do you not understand what's happening there? It's never casual. There's no such thing as casual sex. It's just not biblically true. It's significant what's going on. So we need to make our sexual lives then deeply connected to our lives as Christians. Verse 17, "But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit." Our union with Christ is deep and it is eternal. We tend to think that I'm with Jesus most of the day, but if he would just leave me alone for a while, and then you go do whatever you want to do and then get reconnected with Jesus later on, it's just not how it is. And it extends to imaginary union with pornographic images online.

In Matthew 5:28, Jesus said, "Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." And so he prescribed in the Sermon of the Mount radical measures. If your right hand causes you to sin, then cut it off and throw it away. "If your right eye causes you to sin, then gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." And you may say, "I don't need to think about hell. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ." Yes, that's true. For those who walk by the power of the spirit as described in the following verses in Romans 8, but if you're walking according to the flesh, you have no right to say, "I'm certain that there's no condemnation for me." So if you're enslaved to sexual sin, how do you know you're a Christian? That's the question. So Jesus does mention hell, and we need to fear it and flee to Christ.

Sexual immorality also offends our bodies. Look at Verse 18: "Flee sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body but he who sins sexually, sins against his own body." So here's the clear command. Flee. Run for your lives. As Greg said in his prayer, make like Joseph with potter for his wife. Remember that woman? She saw that he was attractive, was coming after him, and he wouldn't even talk to her or be with her, and then when she had orchestrated time for them to just be alone, he would not be in the house, but ran, left his garment in her hand and ran. So that's a physical thing that happened, but it's a metaphor also for us. We need to run. We need to escape, escape the temptation. So First Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. But God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation, will provide a way of escape so you can stand up under it." Now that's a strange image. Escape so you can stand. It's exactly what I'm talking about. Escape the temptation so you can stand spiritually in Christ still holy. So find the door, whatever door God opened up for you in that tempting situation, and run through it, and also pray, "Lead us not into temptation." Don't be a fool and lead yourself into tempting situations which you've already shown you can't handle. So escape.

And he says... The reasoning here is that sexual immorality assaults the body. Now, it is true other sins hurt the body, no doubt about it. Overeating can produce heart failure. Drunkenness can produce liver failure, cirrhosis of the liver. There's no doubt about that. But Paul's saying there's a unique assault of sexual immorality on the human body and we're talking about clearly STDs, AIDS, HPV, chlamydia, syphilis. All of these terrible diseases assault the body and they're gained sexually. As it says in Romans 1:27, speaking there about homosexuality, but it's true also of illicit heterosexual sex, "Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." I think that's talking about the destruction of the body through sex.

Sexual immorality also offends the Holy Spirit. Look at verses 19 and 20: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price, therefore honor or glorify God with your body." This is powerful. We've had many times, and I love the image in Ephesians 2, also in 1 Peter 2, of the whole universal church as a temple. And there's this massive architectural project going on. Living stones quarried out of Satan's dark kingdom put in the walls of this rising temple, and it's just awesome. Here, the image is totally individual. We are individually, individually temples of the Holy Spirit.

And why is that? Because Jesus promised that the counselor, the Holy Spirit, would come and be with us and live in us. That's staggering. You have the third person of the trinity inside you if you're a Christian. The Holy Spirit is in you, and Christ promised, if we obey his teachings, he said, "My father will come to him and I will come to him and make our dwelling with him." So you have the trinity, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, dwelling inside you if you're a Christian. It's powerful. Powerful. So therefore, he says, "You are not your own." You don't get to do whatever you want with your body. You don't get to do whatever you want with your time. "You were bought at price." That's slavery language. We are... That's why Paul calls himself Christ's bondslave.

I am a purchased slave. And so Jesus bought me with his blood and that means he gets to tell you what to do. Every single day, he can tell you what to do. So this is something that I am continually having to remind myself and learn. Don't just say, "Hmm, what shall I do today? What shall I do with my afternoon? What shall I do with Sunday after we go home from church? What shall I eat? Where shall we go?" I would say, "No, don't." Say, "Lord, what do you want me to do with my afternoon? How do you want me to spend my time? I'm not my own. I'm bought with the price of your blood." Therefore glorify God with your body. That's what you're called on to do. Use your body as a vehicle for the glory of God.

Applications: first and foremost is the Gospel. I pray every week that God would bring people to hear the Gospel here to First Baptist Church. And if you are not yet a Christian, if you weren't a Christian when you walked in here, only Jesus Christ can set you free from sin. You can't set yourself free. There's not enough different 12-step programs for all the sins you're doing, and even then those resolutions could only make a temporary moral change in your drinking of alcohol or your sex addiction or whatever. The problem of sin is comprehensive and Jesus came. Our Savior died on the cross for sin universal and all of the individual sins that we committed. And so trust in Christ. Come to Christ and he will set you free and forgive you and make you his own.

Now, if you're a Christian, you've already done that. The clear command here is be very careful what you do with your body. Are you enslaved to anything? Are you enslaved to any honey? Are you enslaved any poison? So look at your lawful pleasures. Are there things that you own that really own you? Are there things that habits that you do that are amoral, they're pleasures, but you can't seem to live without them? And frankly, you seem to do them more and more, but you enjoy them less and less. Is it food? Is it entertainment? Is it hobbies? What is it?

So just look at that and say, "Am I enslaved to any of the honey here?" And then, even more deadly, "Am I enslaved to drinking poison? Is there any illicit sexual aspect of my life?" The answer this week is the same as it was last week. Put the sin to death by the power of the Spirit, death by starvation. The longer it's been since you last yielded to a lust, the weaker that lust gets. So put it to death by the Spirit. Close with me in prayer.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. This morning, I'm going to be addressing how Christ through the church, can minister to homosexuals, and minister grace to homosexuals. And as I do, I've had a lot of thoughts in my mind. I remember the first time I ever preached in this church was my candidating sermon, back in August of 1998, and I preached on Matthew 16 one of the great images and one of the great statements of Jesus. Their in Caesarea Philippi, He said, "On this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." This is a powerful image. And it's somewhat complex. It's both static and dynamic.There's a sense of the church as a rising structure, a bulwark, like a walled fortress. And then there's the sense of the corresponding evil fortress of Satan, of death, and hell. And so Jesus is going to build this structure that will last for all eternity and send it against the gates of Hades, and they will... The gates of Hades will lose, the church will win.

And so again and again, we have this same kind of complex image of the church as a fortress to be defended, and as warriors to be unleashed. Both of them are true. You get the same thing in the little Book of Jude. In Jude 3, there with Jude, the brother of James, he identifies himself, he said, "I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." So we're supposed to contend for doctrine, the faith is doctrine, especially the doctrine of the Gospel. We're supposed to fight for it and contend for it, that it not be perverted, that key elements not be lost.

But then at the end of that little book, Jude 23, he gives us another image where he urges us to snatch people from the flames, snatch people from the fire and save them, Jude 23. So that's the dynamic issue where we're sent out and trying to rescue individuals. So both of those are in my mind as we address this very challenging issue of homosexuality in our day. So you got that defensive image of a walled fortress that we have to fight for, we have to defend. Our souls individually and the church collectively is besieged by Satan, by demonic forces. And Satan's very clever, he searches out weak spots in the fortress and gives special attention to those breaches in the wall. And from the very beginning, once Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened, they realized they were naked, human sexuality has been twisted or perverted, it's a weak spot in the wall. We all feel it. And there are various versions of twisted sexuality, but it's a weak spot.

So you've got that defensive image, and you can imagine if you are a warrior on the walls and you are called on to defend it against a besieging force, if you notice, all of the besieging, attacking army suddenly run to one particular place, and give focus and attention there, you would, if you were the commander, give special attention there because clearly there's a weak spot there. So also for us individually, if you see yourself feeling again and again in a certain area, you can be certain that's a weak spot, a chink in the armor, a breach in the wall.

Now, we also have that offensive image where we're called on to snatch people from the fire. Like in the Book of Zechariah, "is this not a brand plucked from the fire?" And you can think ultimately that the fire is the fire of condemnation of eternity and hell, and to be plucked from that. And we're called on to rescue people from that who don't want to be rescued. As our text talks about, hey have been deceived.

And so another image is in my mind, I was reading recently about a disease that affects the body's central nervous system and the brain resulting in "hyperactive and excitable, erratic behavior, including insomnia, anxiety, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, excessive salivation, and an irrational fear of water." The website said once those symptoms have appeared in a human being, the disease is almost always fatal. Alright, imagine, though, you had a serum that was 100% effective for curing that disease, but it had to be administered by hypodermic injection and you had to do it. And the person's raving. They're dangerous to you, they don't want your help. How in the world are you going to administer, physically administer, that life-saving serum into their bloodstream. How can you do it?

Love would call on you to make every effort that you could, even at great risk to yourself, as they have no appreciation for what you're doing at that time, but you hope later, when their mind clears, they will understand what you did, what you risked. But that's not even why you do it; it's so that they will be saved.

Now, I could well imagine how offensive such an analogy would be to a person him or her self identify themselves in the LGBTQ community, does not want their orientation, their practices, to be seen as a disease, but as actually many of them something to be delighted in and celebrated as a positive, good thing. But we Christians, we know that all sin, all of the sins listed here, in 1 Corinthians 6, and all of the sins listed in Romans 1 and all the sin lists, whatever sin there may be, from the heavenly perspective, is sheer insanity. All of it. Fornication: Sheer insanity. Adultery: Sheer insanity. Swindling: Insanity, from a heavenly point of view.

And not only that, all of us, apart from Christ, we're raving, too. We were all irrational in our sin. As Paul says in Titus 3:3-7, he says, "At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures, we lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His own mercy…" and grace in Christ, by the power of the Spirit. Listen again to those words. At one time, we, too, were foolish. We were disobedient. We were deceived. We were out of our minds. And we were enslaved by all kinds of passions.

All of us were like that before we were converted. Even the man who wrote these words in 1 Corinthian 6 was like that, the Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus, you remember his career, and how on the very morning of his conversion, he was seething with rage against Christ and against Christians, hated Christ, saw Him as a deceiver, hated Christians, one of them arrested and killed. Hours before he became a Christian. Praise God for sovereign Grace. Praise God that's happening all over the world. People's chains are falling off, and they are being delivered from their spiritual insanity and crossing over into life, eternal life in Christ. Praise God. That's my great hope as I preach to you today. The Apostle Paul was deceived and enslaved, he was raving, and God converted him.

: So we have that defensive image of a walled fortress, that we have to contend for, we have to fight, and the offensive image of a rescue that we're called on to do a great personal cost. The two of them go together because the truth we are using to deliver enslaved souls is that which we have to fight for. We have to defend it.

Human Sexuality is a Major Breach in the Wall

Now let's return to the walled image, walled fortress image, for a minute. As I've said, human sexuality is a major breach in the wall. And in this section of 1 Corinthians, we can see that. Can't you see it? Just trace out, connect the dots. 1 Corinthians 5, the last chapter, the chapter on church discipline, was triggered by a man with a perverse sexual act. "A man has his father's wife. And you are proud!" Paul says. You should have expelled the wicked man from among you, 1 Corinthians 5. then in 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11. We have this list of sins: Fornicators, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals. Those four all have to do with sexuality.

The next section we're going to in 1 Corinthians, Paul's going to make a direct and convicting appeal to some Corinthian members of the Corinthian church to stop frequenting temple prostitutes, saying, "You can't take the members of Christ and join them to a prostitute." And then in the next chapter, in 1 Corinthians 7, he's going to go through healthy sexuality in marriage, husbands and wives coming together. He's also going to address the gift of singleness, he's going to talk about divorce and other topics in 1 Corinthian 7. So we're in a section steeped with this, showing how weakness area really is, how much special attention we need to give to it. And so we come for the third time to 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

The first time I preached on this I did it in conjunction with the lawsuits passage because that's how it fits into the flow, and I think the last sin that he mentions, "swindlers" do not inherit the kingdom of God. That was kind of the point of him giving the list.

But then we focused last week on the list as a whole and said people of that pattern do not inherit the kingdom of God, and the effeminate and homosexual was listed, but it seemed reasonable for me to zero in on the issue this morning. The end of this deception will be eternal condemnation for some precious souls. The church must tell the truth about the sin of homosexuality. We must be honest and not be intimidated. It's going to require more courage than on any other topic that we are likely to face in our day and age. We have, in the Gospel of Christ, the healing serum. It's 100% effective. Everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved. We have to tell the truth. In the name of Christ, we have to tell the truth. In the name of Christ, and for the value of the souls we're trying to deliver, even though they hate us, initially we have to tell the truth.

Homosexuality at the Epicenter of the “Culture War”

Now, homosexuality, this particular topic, is at the epicenter of what many call the culture war. Over the last half century, major clashes have centered around this issue. I could list example after example of how this issue has been a central current event. I don't have to delineate that, I don't think. If you've been living in the West at all, you know how much of an issue this is. So, recent current events you are, I'm sure aware, of the Methodist church meeting together, the denomination, meeting together in St. Louis last week to iron out some key issues on this very topic concerning, number one, would they perform and recognize gay marriages, and even more importantly, would they ordain LGBTQ people to the ministry. And they met in St. Louis, and in a shocking development, conservative bishops, Methodist bishops from Africa, said, "We are not going along with the liberal church in the West in America, and turning our back on 2,000 years of biblical teaching. You have not made sufficient arguments. We are not yielding this. Not at all," and they won the vote and all that. But I was going to Parker and Otis just about a mile from here this week, drove by the Methodist Church, there on West Chapel Hill Street, just a mile from here, decked out in rainbow ribbons everywhere. An angry statement of solidarity with the LGBTQ themes. So, this is not a surprise to us, we're not shocked to see it.

I was a little bit shocked to see the rainbow flags up in almost every congregational church up in New England, where I'm from, including Jonathan Edwards' church in Northampton. So, churches can decay on doctrinal issues. This is... Major indoctrination is going on for our young people's minds and hearts all over the place. The Durham County Library has all kinds of programs for LGBTQ teens just going on... It’s just part of their calendar. At Duke University, if you go into the Brian center, the student center there, if you go in one particular entrance, right at the right, there's a major rainbow banner there, and then the name of the office is the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity. Gender diversity. And so it's a major strategy. They have incoming freshman read books that indoctrinate people in the mindset, the faculty and staff that's doing hiring, they have to go through sensitivity training so that they can look in the mirror of their own biases, so that they can make hiring appropriate to where the institution's going. It's going on all the time. As a matter of fact, a year ago, the dean of the Duke Divinity School (this was in February 2018), was trying to give the state of the school address, you can look this up on YouTube, and the address was interrupted by LGBTQ demonstrators with bullhorns. Bullhorns. It was a relatively small room. But they did not want free speech on this; they just wanted to present their views.

The Civil Rights Angle

Now part of the intimidation that we Christians feel in this current climate is that LGBTQ activists have been strategic in linking opposition to gay rights to the opposition by racist of civil rights for African-Americans during the '60s and right up to the present day. They've linked the two, so it's becoming civil rights issue. What that means is if you oppose their views on this, you're seen to be the same as racist or a bigot. I think the fundamental concept that enables them to do that is they believe that this is a genetic thing, that homosexuality is genetic, similar to race. It's not a choice that you make. So as I said last week, I cannot be an ex-Caucasian, it's my race, it's an amoral descriptor of me, it doesn't mean anything, just how God wanted me to be. The same thing could be said of an African-American by an African-American person or an Oriental person, et cetera, any... The racial, amoral, racial designators.

They say, "This is who I am, this is how God made me to be," but that's exactly what a homosexual would say. So that's how they make it a civil rights issue. So then therefore, they believe that they are taking the moral high ground and we're down in the gutter of being hate mongers and bigots. Mainstream media has bought into this perspective sports. If you were to say something, even in the heat of battle, in the middle of a game, you were to say something, and it got heard, you're going to be... If you're on a sports team, you're going to be making an apology before a press conference within the next 36 hours, probably, if you want to keep playing.

And so because of this linking with civil rights, they say it's actually immoral, immoral, to oppose homosexuality. I think that may be the clearest example in our culture of what Isaiah warned about in Isaiah 5:20, he says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." The switching of morality is what's going on before our very eyes. Along with this is the not-so-subtle accusation that Christians are mentally ill. That actually we have a form of psychosis known as homophobia. Just like any other phobia, like irrational fear of spiders, irrational fear of high places, or crowded rooms, or small spaces. We are called "homophobes" because there's a deep-seated, irrational fear of homosexuality or of homosexuals. And if you proclaim the doctrine I'm about to proclaim from the Word of God, that homosexuality is a sin, and that if you are not transformed out of it, you will not inherit the Kingdom of God but that the Gospel of Christ is the power to transform sinners and to give you hope of eternal life, if you were to say any of that, that's hate speech, really, flowing from a deep-seated insecurity and fear of psychosis that the speaker has.

Now Christians, you know that history of this have been pounded in our culture for doing precisely that, standing up to billable convictions. You remember the baker in Colorado Jack Phillips who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission then said, "If you will not bake cakes for same sex weddings, you can't bake cakes for weddings at all." And that's 40% of his business, he had to let go a lot of his people. He took the case all the way to Supreme Court and won a very narrowly-defined victory, just because of how this Colorado Civil Rights Commission treated him. They left unanswered the future question of whether Christian bakers would be forced to violate their conscience and make cakes, et cetera.

This goes on and on, there are so many examples. Louie Giglio was chosen by Barack Obama to do the commencement prayer at his second inaugural and then was dropped when a sermon like the one I'm giving right now was found in his record as a homophobic sermon, it was called. So he has dropped. I know this from personal conversations, Christians working at secular universities like Appalachian State University, for example, if you try to be a Christian and hold your Christian convictions, you're going to be required to go to sensitivity training and to read certain books and be trained how to deal properly with members of that community.

So this is the climate we're in. I could say many other things, but you get the idea, and you probably didn't need any of this. This is the climate in which we have to stand firm and tell the truth, and why? As with everything else, for the glory of God, and the salvation of elect people who are not yet converted. That's why. That's why. That's what God's calling on us to do and to be. So we have to go back to the truth.

What does the Bible say about this? This morning, as we're driving in, I was listening to a Christian song, The Great I Am, and there was something that just really spoke to me. Maybe I needed to hear it this morning, but the line of the song says, "We fear our enemies," speaking to God, "we fear our enemies, they are Your footstool." God is not intimidated at all at bullhorns, or by raging nations, or by anything. The nations are a drop in the bucket to God. He never changes, He always tells the truth, He knows what the truth is, He knows who the Savior is, He knows what the gospel is, He knows what sin is, He's never going to change. And we get strength as we draw near to that throne of grace. As we drink in the truth, we get the kind of confidence and courage we will need to tell the truth.

So what does the Bible say about homosexuality? Well, the simple truth is homosexuality is a soul-killing sin. It's spiritual poison, just like all the other sins in that list and the other lists. It says in Leviticus 18:22, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." Many other verses teach this and I'll cite some of them in a moment. Now, homosexuality is exactly like any other sin in two very important ways and it's different than other sins in two very important ways.

How Homosexuality is Like Any Other Sin

Alright, how is homosexuality like any other sin? In what two ways? First, as I said, it's a soul-killing sin, and if you're not transformed out of it, you will not inherit the Kingdom of God, which means you would spend eternity in condemnation and hell, in the lake of fire, and eternity because of sins just like that one. Paul lists homosexuality along with the other sins. Look again at our text, 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11: "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

Now for our purpose this morning are the two key terms "effeminate" and "homosexuals." I mentioned in the last time, a few of you are confused because you held in your hand the ESV. I find it strange the ESV melts the five sins listed separated by the Greek word οὔτε into four. I don't think there was an intentional doctrinal decision here, but it was not helpful. The word for Greek for effeminate, μαλακοὶ,"means soft ones as Robert Gagnon, has shown, those that take on an external manner in dress and affect to play the feminine role in a homosexual relationship. That's what μαλακοὶ means. Homosexuals translated, ἀρσενοκοῖται, is males who lie with males. That's what that means. And so that's why we're zeroing in on this morning. Now just like any other sin, the other sins in the list, such as fornication, idolatry, adultery, drunkenness, stealing, like the other sins in this list, it has the power to condemn souls to hell.

But secondly, just like any other sin in this list, it is absolutely addressed and atoned for and transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no sin pattern that Christ cannot save us out of and transform our minds. So look again at these beautiful words: "You were washed" Oh, Corinthians, your guilty conscience was cleansed by the blood of Christ, and you don't feel guilty anymore, you were washed. And your mind is washed from filthy thoughts and from wicked lust, washed. And "sanctified," set apart unto God, as His prized, holy possession, set apart. And sanctified, gradually, little by little, transformed until you're more and more conformed to Christ. Sanctification. And then last in the list but first in our experience is justification. That's the beginning of the Christian life. You are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit so that you have faith and you are declared not guilty of all your sins. All of those acts of wickedness that that list generated: Fornication, idolatry, stealing, drunkenness, all those times, all that that sin cost you and people around you, it's all been forgiven.

Forgiven. Your 10,000-talent debt was paid in full. "Justified." And how? "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," the one who died on the cross to pay the penalty for all those wicked acts. And in the spirit of our God, we owe our salvation as much to the transforming work of the Spirit as we do to Jesus who shed His blood. They work together to save souls. And so, like any of those sins, "such were some of you," means you can be a former homosexual, formerly effeminate, you could be a former fornicator, you can be a former adulterer, a former thief, a former swindler, a former blaspheme. "Such were some of you." Jesus Christ can set you free from sins.

So I needed to just stop right here and proclaim the gospel clearly. If you are included in that group I prayed for and you came in here an unbeliever of any type, but for the topic this morning, you're struggling with this sin of homosexuality, Jesus Christ and Christ alone can set you free. Christ alone can give you forgiveness. Christ alone can save your soul. Christ alone can give you the inheritance that Paul says would be deprived of you if you're not transformed: The kingdom of God. So come to Christ. Just trust in Him to save you.

How Homosexuality is Not Like Other Sins

So, as I said, in these two key ways, homosexuality is the same as any other sin, but in two ways, it's different. First, we've already seen, as I've listed. It's receiving different treatment than the other sins in this list from Satan and from the powers that be, from the world. We are being brainwashed. You talk about the boiling of the frog. This has been going on for half a century. American culture, Western culture, has been... The frog's been boiled on this little by little by little by little, hotter and hotter and hotter until we're just kind of accepting things that were shocking when the whole process began. It's receiving special treatment. No other sin listed here has Pride days and parades connected to it. You don't see fornicators' Pride Day at Disney World, or drunkard Pride Day at Disney World or in cities all across our land. You don't see thief Pride Day. But you do see this. So it's different in that regard. And so we're going to have to show a certain kind of courage on this topic that you don't have to in the others.

Secondly, it's different and where it's mentioned and how it's mentioned by the Apostle Paul, in Romans chapter 1. So listen to what Paul says in Romans 1. Romans 1 is the clearest, most organized, systematic unfolding of the Gospel in the Bible. It's a book unlike any other book: It shines more brightly with the glory of God and the truth of the Gospel than any of the book in the Bible. In Romans chapter 1, Paul is unfolding the Gospel, he says "The power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, for in the Gospel, the righteousness from God is revealed from faith to faith, the righteous will live by faith." And then he says why we need it: Because the wrath of God is being revealed. And then He zeroes in on two sins in particular.

There are special sins that receive special treatment from Paul. And the first is idolatry, and the second is homosexuality. They are... There's a special focus. And in that section, Paul gives us what's known as natural theology, theology based on nature. So we can see from nature, from creation, that there is a wise, powerful, loving God who made it all. And you have to suppress the truth and unrighteousness to deny that, to worship and serve created things. That's idolatry. But then he zeros in on homosexuality, these are his words, in Romans 1: 26-27. He says, "For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchange," listen to this, "the natural function for that which is unnatural." Women exchanged natural function for that which is not natural. And in the same way is that "the men abandoned natural function with women and burned in their desire toward one another with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error."

Paul is arguing from nature here. It is... It should be obvious to us from nature that God did not intend homosexuality, that's the way he's arguing. And so God gave sex within the context of marriage, as we'll talk more about in 1 Corinthians 7, for many purposes, but one of them is procreation and biology tells us it's a male and a female coming together to fill the Earth, be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth. So it takes a special kind of hardness and strength of character against the clear purposes of God to be a homosexual. So in that way, homosexuality is just like any other sin in two key ways, and it's different in two key ways.

So how then can we minister the gospel of grace to LGBTQ people? So, we have to begin by addressing I think here the topic of same-sex attraction, SSA, so called, it's a relatively new concept, it's something that we have to deal with. And then it comes from testimonies, experiential testimonies of people, even people who are converted. They would say, "such were some of you" applies to me, but they say, "I struggle with these desires long before I admitted them to myself, or when I was first becoming a sexually-aware being. This was something it was part of my make-up from the start." Now, this is somewhat controversial, obviously, because you can say, "How could you say 'such were some of you,' if there's lasting same-sex attraction?" So we'll circle back to that in a minute. Behind that, of course, is the genetic basis: Is there such a thing as a gay gene?

Lots of debate on this. I personally, I'm not a biologist or a biological researcher or a genetic researcher, but I know enough about the scientific methodology to say how very difficult it would be to extract this behavior pattern from nurture and from experiences and from things that happen to individuals and zero down on a physiological aspect. I don't know how you do that. They're studying brains, they're studying genes, et cetera. How do you do that, and what kind of people are going to be the focus of your study? What questions will you ask to filter them? It's just... I don't know how it could be done, but I know why it's done. And so let me say this directly: Even if there were a physiological basis, that does not excuse sin.

We may have a physiological basis toward heterosexual sin, it doesn't excuse us. I may have a physiological basis toward drunkenness, doesn't excuse the sin. You may have a physiological basis toward fits of rage that lead to all kinds of bad outcomes. Doesn't excuse us. And so, we just have to punt on that one and say, "Look, I don't think we can ever prove it," but I'm telling you this, the statement, "such were some of you" settles it for me, doctrinally. You can, and not only can, but must, become an ex-homosexual in order to inherit the Kingdom of God. That's the clear teaching of this text. And if you can, then that says a lot to me about essential nature.

The Complexity of the Human Heart

So now let's talk about the complexity of the human heart. And here, I want to lean on a book that I want to come in to you not completely, but there's some helpful things in it, by authors named Barr and Citlau, entitled Compassion Without Compromise. And they zero in on four aspects of the human heart and the human life: Desire, orientation, identity, and behavior. So, starting with desire, that's what your heart loves and hates, what you're attracted to or repulsed from. Secondly, orientation, a dominant tendency or drive, consistent attractions and repulsions, that tend to dominate the mind. Thirdly, sexual identity, a subjective sense of identity by which an individual answers the question, "Who am I?" And more specifically, "who am I sexually?", identity. And then fourth, behavior, those are actual actions taken based on the first three.

Now, I believe, as a minister of the Gospel, no one can change his or her heart. We don't have that kind of power. We don't have the ability to perform spiritual heart surgery on ourselves. But God does. Praise God He does. And so He says in Ezekiel 11:19, "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them, and I will remove from them their heart of stone and I will give them a heart of flesh." God does that to everyone He converts. And He can do that to homosexuals, too. He can give them a new spirit and move them to obey God's laws, a new heart to love God's laws. He has the power to do that. And that's the clear link with "such were some of you."

In other words, you Corinthians who would say, "Yes, that's true of me," it wasn't all of them, "such were some of you," but you Corinthians who characterize, you're now in Christ, you can testify to the transforming power of Christ in your life. You're no longer effeminate. You're no longer lying with other men. The life has changed, praise God.

Transformed Hearts Lead to Transformed Lives

Now, all of this comes by the ministry of the Word. Transformed hearts lead to transformed lives. As Paul says in Romans 12:2, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." This is my ongoing commitment of ministry here to Christians, is the ministry of the Word of God for the purpose of the transformation of all of our hearts, leading to new patterns of behavior. That's what sanctification is all about. So, conversion and salvation, let's take those same categories and work from the outside back in.

First, behavior. If you come to Christ, that requires an immediate change of sexual behavior. If you don't change that behavior, you have not become a Christian. That's what "Do not be deceived" means, if that just continues on. Do not deceive yourself, you're not a Christian yet, and you're still under the wrath of God. Now, along with the outer behaviors, there are lesser clearer things that perhaps an effeminate person or some other person put on, they have to unlearn and it might take a while. They're not moral issues you have to address or mannerisms or things like that, and they little by little are transformed in those areas. But it may take time.

Secondly, sexual identity, answering the question, "Who am I?" Secular psychologists counseling these individuals say, "You will do psychological harm to yourself if you lie to yourself and don't tell yourself the truth about your sexual identity." "I am a homosexual." We Christians say, "That's a lie, a satanic lie." Imagine a patient on an IV drip, and some member of the medical community comes in and put some fluid in the drip, and the person's dead five minutes later. I would say that person's probably a murderer. I want to know what happened, especially if they were stable and doing fine. That's what bad advice can do to people's souls. We want to say that when you come to Christ, you have a new answer to that question." You asked me who I am. I am a Christian. I am a sinner saved by grace. I am guaranteed of going to Heaven, I am a slave to God and the righteousness and to His laws, not to sin. And so it says in Romans 6:11, "In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus," you have a whole new way of thinking about yourself.

Thirdly, orientation. This just has to do with mental habitual patterns and directions in your life. This is the very thing that must be transformed by the renewing of the mind. Mind control is very much the issue of sanctification for all of us Christians. Brothers and sisters, you have to control your minds. You have to control your thought lives. And Paul makes this very clear in Romans 8. He says, "The mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace." Those controlled by the flesh are hostile to God. "The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit itself to God's law, for it is unable to do so." Now Paul doesn't mention homosexuality there but he would include it. That's evidence of the mind of the flesh. So the newly transformed former homosexual has to control his or her thought life, just like all of us do. All of us.

And then finally, desires. This attraction, this desire, is what some would call, if they're illicit, lusts. I want to commend to you the same strategy we all have to face for illicit lusts. All of us have them. I was talking to the elders not just about SSA, same-sex attraction, but NSA, non-spouse attraction. It's a sin, too, friends, and Jesus said, you're guilty of adultery even if you do it in your heart. And so we have to fight our lust, all of us do. So how do you do it? Well, I'm going to commend to you the strategy of death by starvation. Starve it to death. The lust you feed gets stronger, the lust you deny get weaker. And so, scriptural back up for that is Romans 6:6. "We know that our old self, [our old identity] was crucified with Christ, dead so that the body of sin, [that is your actual brain and physical body, body of sin as it's trained habitually toward sin] might be done away with," or be progressively rendered weaker, or brought to nothing. The idea is that the body of sin is progressively rendered weaker so that we should no longer be slaves to sin. That is a key verse on mortification, on putting sin to death, negative sanctification. All of us have to do it, not just ex-homosexuals.

So, therefore, warfare against sin is essential for all of us Christians, including former homosexuals. Paul says in Romans 8:13-14, "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God [and I would add in my mind, these and these only] are the sons of God." Only those that are putting sin to death by the Spirit are children of God. Everyone else is deceived. So we have to be warring against our lust and against the sexual sins that assault us. John Owen on the topic of mortification of the flesh said this: "The vigor, power, and comfort of our spiritual life depend on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh." You must mortify. You must make it your daily work, you must be constantly at it while you live. Cease not a day from this work, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

Refuting Some Recent Emphases

Now I want to address some recent emphases by I think generally good evangelical ministries concerning this topic of homosexuality. There have been books, there are speakers, there are others that I think are generally preaching the Gospel, but there are some concerns I have. And it centers on a seeming message that you can continue to be same-sex attracted, whatever that means, as long as you're celibate. So four things.

Number one, God cares about the heart as well as the actions and the lifestyle. It is possible to stop sinning with the body but to continue sinning with the mind and with the heart, and it's sin. And as I just said you have to put those mental sins to death.

Secondly, It is not required that an ex-homosexual have strong heterosexual feelings. That's not required. They don't have to become an ardent heterosexual. I actually think that this is the essence of the gift of singleness. There's people who have never been tempted sexually very much at all. For them, it really isn't a weakness, and they are able to not burn, we'll talk about that in 1 Corinthians 7, not burn but just live daily life without being overly concerned in this area, they're set free from it, it's a gift. And some former homosexuals end up with that gift rather than a spouse. And that's totally fine.

Thirdly, however, there are others that God gives them entirely new desires, and they're so radically transformed in this area that they end up marrying heterosexually and have godly spouses and have a wonderful marriage and children, and they are completely healed marvelously.

And fourth, on the issue of ongoing struggles, it makes sense that where you have sinned before in an area, especially habitually, you'll have to watch that area carefully the rest of your life in ways that other people don't. So if you used to be a drunkard, you have to be really careful at places where alcohol is served, where I don't, I've never struggled with that sin. But they do. Same thing with heterosexual sins. Fornication, other things. If that's what you've done, you're going to have to put special guards on that wall of the fortress to be careful the rest of your life. I wouldn't call you at that point same-sex attracted, but you just have habits and eternal vigilance is the price of freedom for you.

Alright, finally, how can we minister grace practically. Barr and Citlau in Compassion Without Compromise give us some practical things. I'm not going to walk through all these things, but if you get in a conversation with somebody, there's nothing wrong with making an argument. I've been making arguments for the last half hour plus. Make an argument, but don't have an argument. Don't have an argument. It says in Colossians 4:6, "Let your conversation be filled with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." So, be gracious, but put the truth out there. Put a rock in their shoe. Give them some things from scripture, some things to think about. Have the right mindset. Don't try to win the chess battle. Ask questions. Say, "Why do you care so much about this topic? Why is this meaningful for you? You seem to have a strong passion about this. Tell me about that." Defuse it by asking questions, get in a conversation. Speak your convictions clearly. Say what you really believe and why. Make certain that you quote the scripture. Don't just give your own opinion. Scripture has converting power. Pay attention to the context. Where are you? If you're on an elevator and you're going six floors, don't get into this topic. Alright? You don't have time.

Barr and Citlau in their book Compassion Without Compromise, it says like we know not to yell in a library. They're not talking about having this conversation in the library, be sure you whisper; they're saying know the context. Where are you? Are you at work? Do you have time for a long conversation with the context of your relationship? Where is that person coming from? Who are you talking to? What is their perspective on this? Are they a homosexual activist? Do they have a friend who is or a brother a sister who is? Maybe it's a father of a lesbian daughter and he's maybe defending her practice because that's where he's at. Who is he? Control the thermostat of the conversation. Don't let it get too heated. And don't expect them to agree with you every time.

Paul was in prison when he wrote most of his epistles, he knew people don't always agree. And pray, you can't change the heart. I planted a seed and Paul is water, but God made it grow. You can't change someone's heart on this. What about certain scenarios that you might have? Like let's say you work for a bank that's celebrating diversity week, and your supervisor is lesbian, you've been witnessing to her, et cetera, and she comes and she wants everyone in the department to put on a celebrate diversity magnet, rainbow magnet, on the door. What should you do? Well, the book suggests, and I think this is good advice, don't put up the rainbow magnet. Whatever positive connections you make, you'll be absolutely sending the wrong signal and you may never undo the damage.

What they say in the book is that flag represents a flag of rebellion against the Kingdom of God. How can you fly it? What if they say "Why?", don't explain why. Again, the context, you're not going to win that debate. Say, "I just don't align with that particular cause." This is on work hours now, keep that in mind. If someone forces you for further explanation, say, "look, I value our friendship. I respect your right to maintain your opinions. I ask that you extend the same right to me." But at the same time, you're looking and praying for opportunities to talk to individuals at different times about this very topic.

What if you get invited to a homosexual wedding? What should you do? We're going to face this again and again and again, it's going to happen more and more. And what the book recommends is it's a decision you have to make. Don't judge other people by what they do, But when it comes to weddings, specifically weddings, they are there to celebrate the union. How can you be there to celebrate it? So you're going to, at some point, have to cross this close relationship and you have to maintain the close relationship in other ways. Show love in other ways. They've got like 20 examples of practical ministry that we can and should do, and I would recommend the book Compassion Without Compromise to walk through it.

As I finish today, I just want to say this: In Heaven, the phrase and the theology behind it, "such were some of you" is going to be consummated. We are going to celebrate God's grace in transforming all of us. We're going to be surrounded by people who have been transformed by God's grace from false religions and cults and atheism and addictions and homosexuality and sexual sin, like fornication, heterosexual sexual sin, and we're going to be surrounded and that'll include us. And we're going to be there and the only reason we'll have any consciousness or awareness of our past lives is so that we can knowledgeably give grace and glory to God for the grace He showed to us. And when we meet sinners in Heaven, we're not going to meet the Apostle Paul saying, "Oh, Paul, you're the blasphemer, persecutor, violent man, right?" And he says, "You know, I actually planted some churches, too, along the way." We're not going to be wearing the scarlet letter of what we were, but we're going to be wearing white robes washed in the blood of Christ. Close with me in prayer.

Father, thank You for the time we've had to study today this challenging the topic. Father, I pray that You would give us grace and courage and wisdom and especially love to people who are enslaved and wrapped up with chains they cannot see. Set them free through the Gospel, Lord. And God, it would be so sweet for members of our church to be there when that freedom happens. And so I pray there would be actually people who are set free by members of our church and brought to genuine faith in Christ who will be baptized here and will give clear testimony. "I lived like this, and I met so-and-so from your church and now I'm here to testify to the saving work of Jesus Christ." In Your name, I pray this, amen.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. We Christians live in an extremely distressing time in our nation, in our world, when it seems like wickedness is waxing stronger and stronger, and the church of Jesus Christ seems to be getting weaker and weaker all the time. Like we're living spiritually in a time of the plague, the Black Death that swept across the continent of Europe and took out in some communities up to a third of the population. In the same way, it seems like morality in our popular culture is contagious and the church itself has caught the disease. We see the signs everywhere, and it's rightly a cause for deep concern and relentless vigilance on our part. But we should not suppose that any of these things are new, as though we're the first generation of Christ people that has had to face the kind of wickedness and immorality, that is assaulting us.

As we come this morning to this text, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, we are stabbed broad awake by its fierce words and it's severe warning: The wicked will not inherit the Kingdom of God! And then we read carefully the sin patterns that Paul delineates here, fornication, idolatry, adultery, effeminacy, homosexuality, robbery, greed, drunkenness, reviling, swindling, and we realize we could have taken this list off the news feeds that our smart phones report in the 21st century. We realize there's nothing new under the sun. Satan has been enslaving human souls with the sin patterns in every generation. Our technological prowess through centuries of remarkable scientific achievement and progress has not changed our basic nature at all. Underneath all of it, the sinner who stands transfixed by his smartphone, is at core the exact same person that stood outside the pagan temples of Corinth ready to go in one more time.

And when our spiritual father, the Apostle Paul, is warning us I think with tears that we will not inherit the Kingdom of God, if we're not transformed from those sins by the power of the Gospel of Christ, and by the inner working of the Holy Spirit, we must be roused by those words that seem to kill but actually bring life. I've been spending a lot of time in scripture memorization in the Book of Hosea and it has been powerful for me. And at one point, God says through the prophet, "Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I killed you with the words of my mouth. My judgments flash like lightning upon you." It is God who wounds that He may heal. It is God who kills that He may bring to life, and He does all of that through words, the words of scripture. It is the work of our Savior, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from sins that will sink us to hell. And He strikes us now with words, He swings the sword that comes from His mouth, the double-edged sword, sharp and gleaming, to kill us in our sin that He may bring us to life in His holiness.

Paul's warning here contains the genuine work of the gospel, it is basically this; when God rescues people from Satan's dark dominion, He does it by transforming their hearts from within, by the power of the Holy Spirit, causing them to love righteousness and hate wickedness. From this transform heart, comes a transformed life. If that transformed heart as signaled by a changed life, doesn't happen, you will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Now a church that doesn't understand this truth and embrace this truth and live out this truth and proclaim this truth to the enslaved sinners that surround us in the community in which we live is no church at all. It's salt has lost it's saltiness and it's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by people. But a church that understands and lives out and proclaims boldly the transforming truth of the gospel as I've described it here, now that is a true church. And Paul says here, and we're going to walk through this, "Do not be deceived..." And he lists a whole set of sins that people must repent from, including fornication and greed. These are soul-killing sins but he also lists homosexuality, effeminacy.

And he gives hope to all sinners of these various categories and all sinners in categories not listed here, for he says, "Such were some of you..." Now there are other categories of sins but all sin kills the soul. And he gives hope to us through the Gospel. By saying, "Such were some of you," you can be an ex-fornicator, you can be an ex-adulterer, you can be an ex-thief, you can be an ex-drunkard, you can be an ex-blasphemer, you can be an ex-swindler, and yes you can be an ex-homosexual.

Now I had thought to address homosexuality within the context of this general list, but there isn't time in one sermon, because I want to do justice to the whole text and all the sins that are listed here, so I've decided to address the special problems of homosexuality next week. And we need special help in this area, because unlike most of the sins on this list, it's under special attack by Satan and therefore requires special attention. But I've already spoke cultural Heresy this morning when I say ex-homosexual. To some people that'd be like, for me, becoming an ex-Caucasian. It doesn't make any sense to them, but I want to speak the truth that comes from this text, that say you can be an ex-homosexual. And you can be an ex-fornicator and you can be an ex-adulterer, and all of the sins that you committed in those patterns can be completely forgiven by the blood of Christ, as the text clearly says. So may God grant us as a church, the grace to see this passage, these words straight on and honestly as they were given to us by the Holy Spirit. May God grant us the grace to accept this message no matter how much it marginalizes us in Durham, and it will. And in our world. May God grant us the courage to speak the truth first to ourselves to be honest about our own lives, our own sins, to be honest and humble, and then honestly help those that are drowning in sin around us, with the only thing that can save them and that's the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Last night, I got an image that came in my mind, I've beta tested it with a few friends, I hope it works, but I'm going to go ahead and share it with you now. It's an image that I think fits this text. And it comes from the days when the gospel is beginning to spread in China through Hudson Taylor and others. During a time in which opium addiction was a massive problem in the Orient, and there were opium dens where addicts would go and lay down on beds and smoke the drug or take the drug in and this was their life. And so I want to establish that picture in your mind of Satan's dark kingdom like that, and you walk in and there are labels over different rooms, and the fornicators can lie down in beds and get IV drips of opium there and drink in that poison. And the adulterers can go over in this room and they can lie down and they can drink in that poison and the homosexuals can go in that room and they can lay down and drink in that poison, and the thieves can drink in that, and the covetous idolaters can drink in that poison and the blasphemous can drink in that, and there are other labeled rooms. And it's as though God having roused us up from a bed of sin addiction, and we still have the effects of the drug, but we in our bloodstream, spiritually, but we can see where this is all heading. And we are called on to rouse dying sinners up off their beds of sin and get them out of that place, because if they don't they will die and that eternally. So it doesn't matter that much what room you're in, drinking in the poison of sin, the sin will kill you.

Now, there are some distinctions and differences and we need to deal with that. And as I said, I'm going to address that more clearly next week. So let's walk through this text now and see what the Lord would say to us.

Paul begins with a warning, "Do not be deceived." Look at verse nine. "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God, do not be deceived." So this is a warning against deception. Paul is urgently seeking to cut through the danger of satanic deception on these matters. Jesus said in John 8:44, "He [he devil] was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language for he is a liar and the father of lies." You must put the two images together, he is a murderer by his lies. He kills souls by his lies. You have to put the images together. Sin also in the New Testament is personified. It's given a conscious identity. And it's perceived or it's presented as a deceiver, that sin is a deceiver. So in Hebrews 3:13, "Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." Hardened by sin's deceitfulness. That means progressively changed in your hearts to become more and more rebellious against God. Hardened means less yielded, less submissive. Less sensitive to the issues, like a calloused hand that can't feel pain anymore. Sin deceives us into that hardened state. It's deceitful like it's father the Devil.

Sin lies to us, it promises us pleasure, it promises us happiness, it promises us success and prosperity, but it actually is assassinating our souls. It means to take from us everything we value in life, to make our body's sick, to make our minds racked with sorrow and anguish and anxiety. Sin means to plunder our resources and leave us penniless and suicidal. Sin approaches us in disguise. It never tells us the truth about the journey it intends to take us on. Sin deceives. And worst of all, here is the danger of being self-deceived. We can actually lie to ourselves, we have the ability to make excuses for behaviors and attitudes that the Bible clearly condemns. We can say things to ourselves like, "It's not so bad," Or, "I only did it once." Or, "I can stop any time I want." Or, "No one really cares anyway," or "Everyone's doing it," Or, "God loves me no matter what I do. God understands me. He understands my weaknesses." We can lie to ourselves like that. This is the basic deception that Paul seeking to address. I can be a Christian and still live in these sins. Matthew Henry said this, "Men are very much inclined to flatter themselves that God is just like me. And that they may live in sin and yet die in Christ. That they may live the life of the devil's children and yet go to heaven with the children of God. But this is all a gross cheat."

The Context of the Warning

Well. The immediate context here, we saw it begin to see it last week as I preached on 1 Corinthians 6:1-11, and extended last week sermon to include these three verses, but touched on them only lightly. The context Paul has been addressing lawsuits among believers. You remember how we had brother A and brother B. And that seems like brother B swindled or cheated Brother A in business out of some money, brother A was incensed and took brother B to court before the pagans, thus airing the church's dirty laundry, in front of people they were supposed to be winning to Christ. Paul basically hammers on Brother A the plaintiff, the wronged one, for doing this, for most of those verses. Culminating in verse seven, "The very fact that you have lawsuits among you, means you've been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" Than to take this brother to court in front of the pagans.

But here in this text, as I mentioned last week, he gives an even more severe warning to the swindler, to the cheat. The one who swindled his brother for money. He lists very grievous sin patterns, many of them as we've already seen, that cannot be practiced by people who hope to go to heaven when they die. And the final one on the list was swindling. And he's saying you may get away with it, you may get a better lawyer than brother A and you may win your case and you may keep the money, but your soul is in danger of hell. That's the context, that's what he's saying. So the issue there was swindling.

Now, Paul's doctrine here is this, only transformed sinners inherit the Kingdom of God. Look at verse 9, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the Kingdom of God?" This is a very strong assertion. And then he repeats it, "Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God." It's one of the translations of the list.

He says, "Do you not know that the people who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God?" So he begins with what they know. It all comes down to doctrine, doctrine primes the pump for everything in the Christian life. Comes down to the knowledge that the faithful teaching of the Word of God can give. Do you not know? What we know then must drive how we live. Knowledge feeds faith, Knowledge plus faith transforms the heart, and out of that transformed heart must come an obedient life of good works. That's Christianity, and it all starts with the knowledge of the Word of God. You can't live what you don't know. So he starts there, "Do you not know this?" And he seems to be going back to his pattern of teaching when he was with them in Corinth in Acts 18, where his usual pattern was to settle into a city for a while, maybe a couple of years and teach them faithfully the Word of God, and he's just reminding them of the things that he had instructed them. The Corinthians when he arrived there, were enmeshed in patterns of pagan wickedness. And he was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling, and he resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified and he preached the gospel to them, and his preaching was a display of the power of God because God blessed his faithful preaching of the word with the planning of a church. People were converted, they were transformed.

Now those Corinthians had been visiting pagan temples and sacrificing to the pagan deities, by having sex with temple prostitutes both male and female. There's no doubt that Paul called them to repent from their lives of sin and to believe in Christ for the salvation of their souls. A culture of repentance is essential to the true preaching of the gospel. Jesus, in Mark 1:15 said, "The time is at hand and the Kingdom of God is near, repent, and believe the gospel." So they're coupled together in mark 1. And so also the Apostle Paul, everywhere he went, he preached repentance and faith in Christ. So in Acts 14:15, he says to pagans in that city. We are bringing you good news, the gospel, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God who made heaven and earth the sea and everything in them, turn from these wordless things to God. That's repentance.

What is the Kingdom of God?

And he says, "Do you not know the wicked will not inherit the Kingdom of God." Now, what does that mean? Or What is the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is the realm where God is the king. And he rules actively over people who are delighted to have Him as their king, that's what the Bible means by Kingdom of God, it's not referring to his bare providential control over rebels. He does that, but that's not the kingdom of God. People can enter the kingdom of God, tax collectors and prostitutes Jesus said, We're entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the Pharisees. So to enter it means to come under with delight the rule of God the King, that's what it means, the Kingdom of God. But here it has more of an end time or eternal meaning, an eternal meaning, when it uses the language of inherit to be an heir of the kingdom, so that speaks of the future world, Jesus said in the Beatitudes, "blessed with the meek for they will [in the future] inherit the Earth."

So this speaks of the future, it speaks of eternity. The new heaven and new earth. What Peter calls "the home of righteousness." The new Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven pure and beautiful like the bride for her husband. That new world that's coming, that's what he means here, when he says, inherit the Kingdom of God. That is a world with no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, and no more sin. We'll be set free forever from all of the sins that afflict us and trouble us. It's a world of Radiant Beauty. Where the glory of God and of Christ illuminates that world and makes it radiant and beautiful. It's a world so overwhelming with the brilliance of God that we could not handle it if we were not given resurrection bodies for flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. It's world filled with God, that's where we're going.

So to inherit the Kingdom of God, means to be welcomed into that place and in some sense to become owners of it, through Christ, co-heirs with Christ. To inherit the Kingdom of God, means to be qualified for Heaven. As it says in Revelation 22:14-15, "blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city." So to be washed and to be made pure and holy, so that you can enter that place. That's the exact teaching that Paul's giving here just in different language. Only if that happens to have your robes washed and made white will you enter heaven. And that happens when we truly believe in Jesus Christ, turning away from our good works, any works, just by simple faith in Christ, trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, by that way alone are we justified.

Now, if that happens, if we're transformed then by the Spirit and begin to live that new life. Then we have the right to enter the kingdom of God. As the next verse, in Revelation 22 makes plain; outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolater and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. Same teaching, outside they don't inherit the Kingdom of God. So when Paul says the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God, he means they will not go to heaven when they die. The wicked must be redeemed they must be transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit to be fit for Heaven. Now, the danger here, if a person does not repent from these soul killing sins, they will hear these terrifying words in Matthew 25:41, from Jesus the judge, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." There's only two destinations, there's only two outcomes. There's life and death, there's heaven and hell, that's all there is. And so if you do not inherit the kingdom of God, you'll be condemned to eternal conscious torment, that's the danger.

And the most compassionate thing that we Christians can do to the unredeemed sinners around them is to tell them the truth. To warn people to flee from the wrath to come. All sin is deadly poison, to see someone drinking in that deadly poison and say nothing or even somehow celebrate the poison they're drinking is to be a partner in their spiritual suicide. When it comes to homosexuality and I'll say this more next week. We are under intense pressure to not tell this truth. And those who would say this to us think they're taking the moral high ground. But how is it loving for us to believe this and not say anything. We have to tell the truth, even if it costs us.

And our demeanor, should be one of urgency and grief, as Paul says in Romans 9, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart." We must put aside what the world thinks of us and tell the truth. Just as Christians and Islamic countries do. To tell the truth to their unsaved brothers, fathers, mothers, cousins. To tell them the truth that Islam is a satanic lie, Christianity is the truth, Jesus is the only Savior, He died on the cross, He Himself died in our place, He was raised from the dead. And that if you believe in Him, all your sins will be forgiven not by works but by faith and by grace. What price do our brothers and sisters have to pay in Muslim countries to tell that truth to their unsaved neighbors, and government workers, brothers and sisters, they pay a very high price and they're courageous and they do it. So must we in America tell the truth. Only transformed sinners inherit the Kingdom of God.

Look at the representative sin list, and that's all it is, just representative. Sin has morphed and metastasized into so many different versions that this is not a complete list, Paul is not trying to make it a complete list, it's representative. Look what he says, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God, do not be deceived? Neither the... I'm going to re-translate all these words, well I'll just read the translation I've been using, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes. Nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindler will inherit the Kingdom of God."

So look at the list in detail, he begins with fornicators, pornoi in the Greek. Fornicators will not inherit the Kingdom of God. The way that this word has usually been understood, most commonly is unmarried people who have sexual relations with each other. It's so common in our culture today that people think of it as strange if a young man or a young woman speaks their pledge and their commitment to be virgins until marriage. It's mocked, mocked, seemed to be strange like a form of mental illness or something's wrong with you. But the Bible has a name for those that don't keep that commitment and the name is fornicators. And it doesn't really matter what the morality of the campus or the culture is, what matters is what will it look like on judgment day. What will Jesus say about it? That's what matters.

Bible standard for sexual activity is simple and clear: One man, one woman in covenant marriage for life. That's it. Everything else is sin. I remember years ago, Elizabeth Elliot was asked to write a book on sex and the single Christian. She said it's going to be the shortest book in history, I accept the book contract. Not much work to do there. Now, there's a lot of work to help single Christians be holy and we'll get into more of that in 1 Corinthians 7. But fornicators do not inherit the kingdom of God, do not be deceived.

Secondly, idolaters will not inherit the kingdom of God. Those who worship and served created things rather than the creator who's forever praised. Best definition of idolatry in the Bible, Romans chapter 1. We think Paul's first, meaning probably was of false religions, people who follow the pagan religions of Corinth, of Greece, of the Gentile world, and that's fair enough. And that would extend then to the false religions of our day, such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the cults, they worship false gods. And if they continue to do that, if they're not transformed out of that, they will not inherit the Kingdom of God. That's why we do missions. But in Colossians 3:5, Paul also says that Greed is idolatry. So in our day and age, the driven materialist, the Fortune 500 Executive who lives for money, or even the medical student who wants simply to be a doctor to make as much money as possible, or any kind of materialist who really truly is living for money and the things money can buy, is an idolater and if they're not transformed they will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Adulterers will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Adultery is when one or both of the partners, sexual partners is married to someone else. Most people in our culture, I would say, still acknowledge that adultery is sin even though it's prevalent. I don't see any similar effort made like to homosexuality to get us to think differently. What can be done for it? It devastates people. The sense of betrayal is beyond calculation what adultery has done in our culture. A common place portrayed in movies and in songs and in the media generally though.

The next word, and were going to talk more about the next two words much more next week. But the next word should be translated, the effeminate. The effeminate will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Robert Gagnon is a Bible scholar who's done excellent work on the topic of homosexuality, wrote a book called the Bible and homosexual practice, he spends a great deal of time on this verse and on the words here. And the word malacoi, the effeminate, he thinks should be translated effeminate males who play the sexual role of females. So the KJV has effeminate, and the KJV translators are really sharp and excellent at Greek. It's literally soft ones, that would be a home base for the word, so it would be males to dress like Women. Affect feminine behaviors, they were make-up long hair with jewelry like women to prepare themselves for the sexual role of a woman with another man.

In our culture, we have seen these kinds of people portrayed very positively in the media for decades. Usually are sympathetic figures. Hollywood has been boiling the frog on this for years, getting us to accept homosexuality by delighting and these kinds of effeminate men. So also we can see them in certain settings in society, there's certain jobs that it seems that attract effeminate men, and they carry themselves plainly people don't wonder what's going on and, this for a very clear reason, they're sending out signals to other people that they want to be seen.

Now the ultimate end of this approach is the massive confusion known as gender dysphoria, where people are actually challenging their birth gender, and think that gender is a matter of choice. Satan is laughing at the human race on this. The transgender movement. We'll talk more about these things next week. But the effeminate will not inherit the Kingdom of God. It's part of this list. The next one is Gagnon would translate it, males who take other males to bed. That's a simple kind of mechanical translation of malacoi.

It's a term that Paul seems to have invented. No one else uses it, it's not used in Koine Greek, it's just Paul's. He made it up. But it comes from I think the Septuagint reading of two key texts in the Levitical code. Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. Let me read 18:22. "Do not lie with a man, as one lies with a woman. That is detestable." The previous term had to do with the one who played the feminine role in a homosexual relationship. This term has to do with the masculine role in a homosexual relationship. How can we allow ourselves to be deceived in this issue? We have to just read the text and tell the truth, believe the truth, and tell the truth. To think that we're being unloving when we do that. You just have to throw that off and tell the truth. Many Christians have bought into this brainwashing by the secular media and the Hollywood elite that we are homophobic. We'll talk more about that term god willing next week, or unloving or vicious, or immoral even if we believe this doctrine. You have to cut through all that for the sake of key individuals, elect, unconverted-elect people who need to be rescued.

Thieves will not inherit the Kingdom of God. No one in our culture as far as I can tell, is advocating overturning laws on property. Thieves are criminals, thieves are sinners. It's in the 10 Commandments. You shall not steal. No one's questioning this. But what he's saying is, This is your lifestyle this is what you do, you will not inherit the Kingdom of God. The greedy will not inherit the kingdom of God, covered that earlier in idolater, but those who live for material possessions, those who live for money, if that's what you're all about, you'll not inherit the kingdom of God.

And here I must speak a clear warning about what's commonly known as the prosperity gospel in our day. The prosperity teachings that Jesus is a means to the end of health, wealth and success, defined as any pagan would. Jesus is a means to that end. And if you believe in Jesus so you can get money, then Jesus isn't your God, money is. Quoting Shai Linne. So that's it. Covetous people will not inherit the kingdom of God. Drunkards will not inherit the Kingdom of God, people who are addicted to wine. We could extend it to drugs. People who are addicted to substances. This word may come as a shock to some people, many have come to think of alcoholism as a disease, no different than cancer. Paul listed here is a voluntary habit pattern that must be broken by the power of the Spirit.

Revelers, blasphemers will not inherit the kingdom of God. These are people whose filthy mouths assault the ears of people around them. But specifically zeroing in on blasphemy, words spoken about the Father the Son and the Spirit. Jesus is without a doubt, the most blasphemed individual in history. And Jesus said all manner of sin and blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven. He is so gracious to do that, but that's what reveling is. And then, swindlers those who take advantage of other people through corrupt business practices. We've come full circle now on the whole list. I heard of a roofing company that was in one community, and got a widow's money, began the work on her roof by tearing her existing roof off, and then left town. With her house exposed to the elements, no trace in the community, all of the things led nowhere. They swindled her out of her money and probably others besides, people who live like that will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Now it's important for us to see the whole list. That's why I gave you the image of one opium den with different rooms. Satan doesn't really care which of these you die with, all of these sins can kill your soul. Now, I believe that there's a unique focus on homosexuality, and it has its own unique aspects. And we'll talk about how homosexuality is the same and different as other sins next week. But any of these sins can kill us and deprive us of the kingdom of God.

Now we come to the good news, the transforming power of Jesus and of the spirit. Look at verse 11 "and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God." Now here is the good news of the Gospel. Here is the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus, and by the Spirit, the Gospel has the power to transform the human heart. 2 Corinthian 5:17 says, "If anyone is in Christ he's a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come." When Christ comes to save you, He comes to save you completely, by the power of the Spirit, He can take out the heart of stone and give you the heart of flesh. You can see things differently, think about things differently, He can change your mind and make you a new person. Indeed this must happen, that's the point of the text or you will not inherit the Kingdom of God. This is not one of many routes to Heaven, this is it, This must happen to you, you must be born again or you will not inherit the Kingdom of God. So you can and must be, if any of these describe you, a former fornicator, a former idolater, a former Adulterer, formerly effeminate, formerly homosexual formerly a swindler or blasphemer or reveler. God has the power to change you. And you're going to spend eternity not that person.

Praise the Lord. An eternity. Because it says such were some of you, that's what you used to be. But now, you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. The name of the Lord Jesus is central to this work, Jesus, who was born of the Virgin Mary, who is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in the manger, grew up to be a holy man, who never sinned, who did amazing miracles, who fed the 5000, who walked on the water. Who could cure any disease and sickness among the people, raised Lazarus from the dead after 4 days. This Jesus came primarily to die on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sinners like you and me, His blood was shed under the wrath of God, He took all of this filth on Himself and died the just punishment that sinners deserved.

And the name of Jesus is everything here. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved. Where as Peter and John said, Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given to men, by which we must be saved, Acts 4:12. So then Name of the Lord Jesus, his reputation, his achievements, his story, trust in that Jesus and you will be forgiven of all your sins. So also He mentions the Spirit of God, and the power behind the saving work of God, you were washed sanctified justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. They have equal billing here. If it weren't for the spirit Jesus would mean nothing to you, you wouldn't even know His name, you would never have even heard of Him. And if you're a Christian today you owe your salvation as much to the Spirit's working in you as Jesus working on the cross for you? They are equally vital.

So you are washed. Isn't that a beautiful word? Cleansed from a guilty conscience, a brain that is washed now pure and free from dark wicked thought, washed our filthy mind, washed from dark thoughts, our body stained with sin, washed and made clean, even the garment stainless sin purified and made white by the blood of Christ, applied by the Spirit. We are sanctified. Set apart unto God as His holy possession, He owns you, He calls you His holy possession, and then progressively makes you more and more like Jesus, you were sanctified, you are being sanctified, you're going to be sanctified from now until the day you die or Jesus returns, He's going to be making you holy, if that's not going on. You weren't justified. You were washed, you were sanctified, and then He said you were justified. It's not the chronological order but all of these things happen to you. What that means is you are made righteous in God's sight. Declared righteous, you ex-fornicator, you ex-adulterer, you ex-idolater, you are justified, you are seen by God to be holy. And also practically you are forgiven for all of those sins, and reconciled to God.

Now next time we're going to talk more about the issues connected with homosexuality, and the best way we can minister in this present cult climate.

Let me close with just some quick applications. Central application is come to Christ, I pray this morning that God would bring some people here who are lost, and that you would hear the gospel. You've heard the gospel, you've heard it this morning, and you've been urged by me, begged even to come to Christ. But now I say to you who... You do that years ago, now you're like the Corinthians getting this letter, reading a letter from Paul. So I want to say be warned. Read the list and be warned. If these habit patterns are characterizing your life, don't deceive yourself that you're a Christian, that's the point of the text. Be warned.

Secondly, be amazed at Christ, be amazed that he would take this kind of sewage on himself on the cross, He who is holy, as holy as God the Father, He took this sewage on Himself, so you wouldn't have to bear it into eternity. So just be amazed at Jesus, and along with that be thankful to Him, thank Him for saving you. And be honest about yourself. Be honest, look at this list. No, it's not exhaustive, you say, you know, I may not have committed adultery, but Jesus said if I looked lustful at somebody I have committed adultery in my heart, my heart still is twisted it's still angled, I still sin in my heart, in my mind, so I just need to be honest. I am not there yet, I want to be holy, I want to be pure. Be honest and be humble toward unconverted sinners who have not yet found Christ. Don't think of yourself at all as morally superior to them. God is able out of the same lump of clay etcetera, to work. You're the same as them, you are made out of the same lump of clay. So be humble, and be compassionate to them, as they're still in their drunken stupor laying in that opium den, be compassionate, and then be bold and tell them the truth about Jesus. Close with me in prayer.