Sex & the Glory of God | Part 2

Speaker A: 00:00:03

Welcome to the fortifying your family podcast. It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong. And now here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

Speaker B: 00:00:25

I know I've said this statement many times. I'll make it again here tonight because I think it's a very, very important statement.

Maybe to keep in our minds is a good thing, can become a bad thing if it takes place of the best thing. There's a lot of good things. Now let me just stop and say this, a good thing. Sex is a good thing. Would you agree with that? God created sex.

It's not bad. God created it. It's a good thing. But it can come become a bad thing. That is sex outside of marriage.

If it replaces the best thing that is sex inside of marriage, what God created it to be, sex is a good thing in God's eyes. It only becomes evil when it's idolized, we might say such that self gratification displaces the lordship of Jesus Christ.

So Paul says, our christian liberty has limits, our love for others and the lordship of Jesus Christ. Now look with me at verse 13. Here's the next slogan. You might put parenthesis around this. This is what the Corinthians were saying.

This is how they were rationalizing. Again, meats for the belly and belly for meats. But God shall destroy both it and theme.

The Corinthians were rationalizing their sexual promiscuity with two arguments in this slogan. One of them is biological, the other one is eschatological. And so let's look at it for a minute. Look at the first one.

It's biological because they say meats for the belly and belly and the belly for meats. They're saying that just as food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, there's sex is for the body and the body is for sex.

That's what they're saying. That's their slogan. It's just a normal bodily function. They're saying to have sex, the body was created for sex.

It's just normal in the biological function in the way that God has made us.

Now, certainly evolutionaries, we might say, might say this, but we wouldn't expect christians to say that these corinthians were buying into a false theology of dualism that separated the body and the soul. That is, and it doesn't matter what you do with your body, they would say.

It doesn't matter what you do with your body, it will not affect your spirit. This is what they were saying. This is what they believed. And this is called gnostic thinking, or we might call it today, new age thinking.

So how does Paul answer that? Look at verse 13 again. Here's Paul's answer for meats for the belly, and belly for meats.

He says, now the body is not for fornication or sexual immorality or sexual sin, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. So here's his answer to the slogan that they had given to him.

Paul doesn't deny that God made a function of the body for sex, but adds, ultimately that God created our body for his glory. Sex is not to be enjoyed to fulfill our own lustful desires.

God designed sex to be enjoyed only within the boundaries of the Marriage Covenant between a man and a woman. And I must say that now, too, between a man and a woman. Then secondly, that's the biological answer.

But secondly, they were giving an Aesthetological Rationale. They said, but God shall destroy both it and them.

The explanation that the Corinthians were using is that the body will ultimately die, that God will destroy both the body, death and sex. In death, there's no future for the body in the age to come. Because they were gnostic, they believed in dualism.

The body didn't matter what they did with their body, and they said it was no future for the body to come. So why worry about the body? But how does Paul answer this? Is this true? How does Paul answer this?

Paul says in verse 14, and God hath both raised or resurrected up the Lord and will also raise up us by his own power. Paul says, just as our Lord's body, literally his body, was resurrected from the grave, the body of the saints will be resurrected, too. Amen.

The body will not be destroyed, but the body will be resurrected. A Christian is not waiting for God to destroy their body, but he is waiting. Hey, I'm waiting for God to resurrect, to have a glorified body.

s in one corinthians, chapter: 1542

It is sown. A natural body is raised, a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

So Paul continues in this discussion by asking two rhetorical questions, and he asks these two questions. In verse 15, he says, know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?

Don't you know, as a believer, as a Christian, that your body is the members of Christ? Then, he continues, he asks another rhetorical question. He said, shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?

With these two rhetorical questions, Paul suggests that a Christian's physical body comprises Christ's members and limbs. Wow, that's quite a statement. Amen. To think about and ponder that we're in unity in some way with Christ, is what he's saying here.

And certainly we are in unity with Christ. But he's even referring to the body and members of our body.

When a Christian engages their body in sexual immorality, they're involving Christ, his own members of his body, because we are part of the body of Christ. So in a way, we are engaging the body parts of Christ in this illicit sexual act also.

Now, that may ought to get you to stop and think how many of you would live differently tonight if you believed that Jesus was always hanging out with you? I think we, you know, if we really. How many of you believe that Jesus is always hanging out with you? God is omnipresent. Now, we believe that.

Do we practice that? You know, do we practice that? Would a young guy who's a christian young man say, hey, I'm going to go look at this porn magazine with Jesus?

Now, you say, preacher, that's pretty perverted. It is perverted. And I'm trying to get.

Trying to get people to think, you know, hey, I'm going to make out with my boyfriend and girlfriend with Jesus. If you're a christian young person and you're saved and you know, Christ, this is exactly what Paul is saying. He's hanging out with you all the time.

And when you take him into some act like that, you're taking Jesus with you. That ought to stop and make you think some husband and wife, hey, I'm gonna have an affair over here. I claim to be a christian man.

I claim to be a christian lady, but I'm gonna have an affair. I'll just take Jesus with me to that fair. Wow. Jesus sees everything we do. You say, preach, I turn the lights out. Well, he can see in the dark, too.

He knows everything. He's all present. He's everywhere in a real sense. And Jesus goes with his bride everywhere we go.

Paul is saying, if Jesus were sitting here, would I do this? If Jesus were sitting here, would we be doing this, young people? If not then don't do it. You don't do it because where's Jesus?

If you're a believer, he's right there with you. That's why we need to have a constant understanding that we are never alone, that we're not individuals. We're always with Jesus.

Hey, that's a good thing. That's a wonderful thing. Praise God that he's always with us.

It's a tragic and terrible thing when we run off into sexual sin, because in some real way, we might say we're implicating Jesus in our sin because he is always present with us. Now, certainly I'm not implying that Jesus sins with us. He doesn't. He's pure, he's holy, he's righteous. But we are part of the body of Christ.

We're in union with Christ, and it reflects on Christ when we commit sin and we're christian. So Paul answers in verse 15. At the end, he asks these two rhetorical questions, and he answers with two words. What does he say? What does he say?

God forbid. Paul uses this statement a lot, these two words, a lot. God forbid. And what that really literally means in the Greek, may it never be.

May it never, ever be that we would do that. Verse 16 begins with another rhetorical question, and Paul says this, what know you not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body?

Then he adds these words, for two, saith he shall be one flesh.

Paul directs our thoughts back to the passage in Genesis, chapter two, where God joins Adam and Eve in marriage using the words they became one flesh. Obviously, one flesh means something different to Paul than the mere sexual union, and certainly it does.

Paul is saying that becoming one flesh is to become like one person, is to unite yourself with someone in not just a physical, but in the emotional, the spiritual, the physical, and its whole body uniting is what Paul is saying. Tim Keller writes in his book the Meaning of Marriage. He says one flesh refers to the personal union of a man and woman at all levels of their lives.

Paul, then, is decrying the monstrosity of physical oneness without all the other kinds of oneness that every sexual act should marry.

In short, Paul is saying that sex with a prostitute or any other sexual act outside of heterosexual marriage is wrong because God designed sex and the sexual act to be a total uniting act.

Keller continues, and he says the Bible does not counsel sexual abstinence before marriage because it has such a low view of sex, but because it has such a lofty one. The biblical view implies that sex outside of marriage is not just morally wrong, but also personally harmful. And certainly it is.

If sex is designed to be a part of making a marriage covenant, and it is and experiencing that covenant's renewal, and it is, then we should think of sex as an emotional commitment apparatus. That is, every time that a christian husband and wife come together sexual, it's a reaffirmation of the covenant that they've entered into.

It's sacred. It's something very, very holy.

He further says, when you have sex outside of marriage, you're abusing, dishonoring and destroying this incredible person shaping commitment mechanism of deep soul nurture and personal transformation. Sex outside of marriage destroys this commitment apparatus. Look at verse 17, he adds, but he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

Paul adds, a christian union with Christ through the spirit makes sexual sin all even the more horrible. You might ask, well, what do I do? Paul answers it this way. In verse 18, he says, flee fornication. That is, run from it. Flee sexual sin.

Flee all these different sins, sexual sins that come before you. Paul says, run, run and run. Run from it.

Girls, when a guy comes up to you and says, if you really love me, you'll have sex with me, then you need to do what? Run. You need to run. And let me remind you young ladies here tonight, too, that you don't owe any guy anything.

It don't matter whether they buy you a dinner or what they do for you. You don't owe them any sexual favors. And guys, a girl comes on to you and makes sexual advances, what are you to do? You're to run.

That's what the Bible says. That's what Paul is saying here. If you're married and someone besides your husband or wife makes sexual advances towards you, what are you to do?

You're to run. A guy comes up to you and says, take a look at these porno pictures. What should you do? You should run.

Obviously, Paul is thinking back to what passage in the Old Testament when he says this, he's thinking back to Genesis and he's thinking of Joseph when he was Potiphar's wife, came to him and said, lie with me. And what did Joseph do? He ran. How can I do this wicked thing? He says, against God. Against God. Interesting. You know what he's saying there.

You know when David sinned? Let me just take a little rabbit trail for about two minutes. When David sinned in psalm 51, he said, against God and God only. What have I sinned?

You say, how in the world could David say that? How could David say, against God and God only. Have I sinned? Did he not sin against Bathsheba? Did he not sin against her husband? He killed him.

Were there other sins? Yeah, but David is sin ultimately the one I have sinned against. And if I see this right, the one I've sinned against is God.

Because I thought I had a better way from my life than God had. I have a better plan for how I should run my life, how I should control my sexuality than God does. And God has a plan.

I'm sharing this plan with you right here tonight. God has a plan for it. When we do it our way instead of God's way, then we're saying, God, I have a better idea than you do. And you're sinning.

Ultimately, you're sinning against God. You're taking the matter into your own hands. Wow. The only time you don't run is if you're married and you don't run from your husband or wife.

Paul continues in verse 18, every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. Now you need to understand in verse 18 here that I just read that the first part of that is a slogan too.

And if you don't understand this, this verse could be very hard to interpret. The slogan is, every sin that a man doeth is without the body. This was their argument. This was their rationalization.

And they're saying because the body, they believed in dualism. As I said a while ago, they were gnostic thinking because the body and spirit are separated.

They made this statement, every sin that a man doeth is without the body. And this was the argument that they were presenting. It's not a sin because it's only the body that's sinning. It's not the spirit. It's the body.

They were separating the body and the spirit. They were saying that the body could be used as an instrument of sin and it would be okay.

But look at Paul's answer to that slogan, to that rationale, Paul says, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. So Paul further states that they are wrong to think that their sin is outside their body, because it's not.

He says, those who commit sexual sin sin against their own body. Now we might ask how this is.

If you read commentators and read books on this, which I have, it's a lot of, we might say, a lot of different varying opinions about what this means here, and a lot of commentators don't have a clue what it means. And they don't even bring it up. But I'll give you my slant on this. Sexual sin defiles the body in a way that many other sins do not.

Certainly, we can contract sexually transmitted diseases through committing sexual sins, but also it produces emotional scars, and it produces something called sexual ties. Okay. And if you really study this, you become sexually tied with that other person in a way that nothing else ties you to them.

And that's why one of the practices of many pagan cultures was to allow children, or make children, have sexual relations with demonic people because they thought it would tie them to them. And certainly, in my experience, Debbie could bear witness to this, too.

We've dealt with many couples where this has definitely been a problem in their marriage, where they've had premarital sex. It has created sexual ties and caused a lot of problems in their marriage relationship that they're now having. So there's a lot to this statement.

When Paul says that he that commits fornication sins against his own body. In verse 19, Paul further explains why the body is morally relevant, we might say, in the present. He says, what?

Know you not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and you're not your own. Paul's argument is that the Holy Spirit resides within the believer's body. Now, in this present time, a Christian's body is not his own.

Your body is not yours. My body is not mine to do with as I please. We do not own our own body, is what he's saying. God does, and your body is a temple.

Holy Ghost, you say, what right does Paul have to say that? Well, he answers that in verse 20. Look at it, for you are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.

And when he says, glorify God in your body in the context of this chapter, he's talking about the use of the body concerning sex and in your spirit, which are God's. Paul reminds them, and I remind you tonight and myself tonight, that my body is not mine. It was purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.

I don't have a right to do with this body, just what I want to do with it. I was bought with a price. The price was the death of the son of God and the shedding and crucifixion of the Son of God.

The only way to glorify God with your sexuality, if you are single, is to remain sexually pure. And the only way to glorify God if you are married, is in the covenant of marriage.

The marriage relationship as a husband and as a wife, God created sex. Sex is beautiful. The song of Solomon has a lot to say about the beauty of it and that's another discussion for another time.

But we need to understand that we are to glorify God in our sexuality.

Paul goes on in chapter seven to talk about how husband and wife are free to take pleasure in each other sexually, but that's another message for another time with another group of people. And so I hope this has maybe been a little bit helpful tonight. May God help us to understand how that we are to glorify him in our sexuality.

Speaker A: 00:19:52

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Speaker B: 00:20:13

I.