Fleeing From Sexual Immorality

When we read Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, we see a church whose attitudes and actions are sometimes indistinguishable from the Roman culture around them. The church in Corinth is messy and divided, but it belongs to God. The letter of 1 Corinthians shows us a beautiful picture of how the gospel can bring transformation and renewal to every area of life. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The sermon text for today is from 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 12 through 20. You can find this passage in the Blue Pew Bible on page 1737. Please listen as I read God's word. I have the right to do anything, you say. But not everything is beneficial. I have the right to do anything, but I will not be mastered by anything. You say for the stomach, food for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both. The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality. But if you say food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both. The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his great power, God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 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 a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said the two will become one flesh. But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immortality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body. But whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples 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 God with your bodies. Here ends the readings.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Good morning, everyone. If I haven't had the chance to meet you yet this morning, my name is John. I get to serve as the lead pastor here at Elmwood. And especially if this is your first time here with us, however, you heard about us, uh, we're so grateful that you are here with us today on a Sunday morning. Before we get into the message today, I need to let you know that Robin Walker, a longtime member of Elmwood, went to be with Jesus this past Friday. Last year, Robin was diagnosed with cancer, and uh she pretty quickly became homebound after that. And about a week ago she took a very sharp turn for the worse, and her physical body finally gave out on Friday morning. Funeral service is going to be held uh right here at Elmwood on Monday, February 9th. So not tomorrow, Monday, but the Monday after that, a week from tomorrow. It's gonna be right here. There's going to be a visitation at 10 o'clock a.m. The service is going to be at 11, and uh luncheon is gonna be provided afterwards at noon. So we invite you to join us next Monday, February 9th, to remember Robin. With that, let me invite you to join me in a word of prayer as we come to these verses. How can a young person stay on the path of purity by living according to your word? I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider all your ways. I delight in your decrees, I will not neglect your word. God, we ask that you would not let us stray from your good, wise, and life-giving commands and your instruction. God, we do rejoice in your word that you have revealed yourself to us. And we ask, God, that as we look into these verses today, that you would give us clarity as to what's even here in the first place, and that you would help us to see uh how relevant this passage is for our own lives today. Ultimately we desire to see Jesus and to be changed by him. And so we look to you, Holy Spirit, to do that work inside of us now. We ask that in his name. Amen. We have been in a series of messages in the book of 1 Corinthians, and in this middle section of the book in chapters 5 through 7, 8-ish, uh, we're looking at some subjects that are, as we've been saying, not exactly rated G, okay? Uh not exactly rated PG 13, even. Some of the things that Paul addresses in this part of the letter are uh are difficult for us as modern readers to uh to think about and to deal with. And uh in these specific verses that we're looking at here today, what we see Paul addressing in this church is that some of the members of the Corinthian church are visiting prostitutes. So, culturally speaking, this was uh not that uncommon of a thing in the first century world. This was not nearly as scandalous as it is for us today. In fact, there was an ancient writer named uh Athenaeus who said it like this He said, We keep mistresses for pleasure, but wives in order to produce children. And that just shows you that sort of the way of thinking in the first century world was, yeah, you have sex with these people in order to produce a family and to carry on a family line, and you have sex with these people for pleasure. And so this was something that was a common place in the ancient world. Uh, various forms of prostitution, I won't name all those now, but various forms of prostitution were common in that culture and in that environment. But Paul, who's writing this letter to the church in Corinth, sees each one of those as completely incompatible with a life of following Jesus. So what we see him doing in these verses is he's going after two distorted beliefs that are leading to sexual immorality. So in verse 12 and 13, we see him quoting these two slogans that represent how the Corinthians, how some of those Corinthians are thinking. And what he tells them is that this way of thinking, these distorted beliefs, this is actually what is uh creating a permission structure for this kind of behavior for the church in Corinth to continue in lives that are characterized by sexual immorality. And so he uh addresses those two beliefs head-on. And so what we're gonna do today is we're going to spend some time looking at what are these two distorted beliefs that Paul addresses in them, and then we're gonna think about some takeaways for us in our modern context today, right? So the first distorted belief that Paul addresses here is this In Christ, I'm free to do whatever I want. Commentators uh generally agree that the slogan that Paul quotes here, I have the right to do anything, commentators generally agree that this slogan represents a misunderstanding of Paul's teaching on the subject of grace and freedom in Christ. So what Paul said was, you are free in Christ. But what some people in the church in Corinth heard him saying, or what they interpreted him as saying, is in Christ, you're free to live however in the world you want to live. And you can tell from what Paul writes here, and as you look to other places like the book of Romans, where you can see that this way of thinking for Paul is totally unfathomable. He says in Romans 6, he says, We have died to sin. How is it that you can continue to live in it any longer? How can you continue to live in your old way of life when you have died to it? So throughout his letters, all of them, Paul is very, very clear that the grace and the forgiveness of God does not free us to live any way we want. But rather it frees us to leave behind our old way of life and live in obedience to God instead. So it's it there's a transfer of ownership that's taken place, and we are not just freed from something, we're also freed for something, which is a life of obedience to God's good and wise instruction. But some of the people in the church in Corinth had a distorted view of freedom in Christ. And so Paul responds to this misapplication by quoting the slogan, I have the right to do anything, and then he adds his own words to it and responds to it by saying, But I will not be mastered by anything. And what he's getting at when he says, I will not be mastered by anything, is essentially what he's saying to them is, you think that you're free, but you're actually not. You're over here saying, we can do whatever we want, and we're free to live any way we want. And Paul says, You're not actually free. You're actually still enslaved. You're still mastered by this old way of life. You're still mastered by sexual desire and sexual immorality. You think that you're free, but you're not actually free. So look at how he he corrects this uh distorted belief. They say, I have the right to do anything. And then in verse 13, he says, he reminds them of what their bodies are actually made for. Verse 13, he says, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now there's a few things here that's in this passage that I think tell us what he means when he says that our bodies are meant for the Lord. Uh but I'll just highlight one of them for time's sake this morning. I think the ide one of the ideas behind this is the idea of ownership. When he says your body is meant for the Lord, he means that you belong to him. Listen to what he says in verse 19 and 20. He says, Do you not know that your bodies are temples 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. So he's reminding them here that because of what Jesus has done, they now belong to God. They have now come under his gracious and life-giving ownership. And this is the disconnect between some of these people in Corinth and what Paul had been saying is true of them. What he says is true about them is that they have come under God's mastery. But functionally, in the way they're living, they are proving that they're actually living under the mastery of sexual immorality. They think that they're free, but they're not actually free. And so he says, remember who it is that you belong to. You belong to him. Your body was not made for sexual immorality. Your body was made, is meant for the Lord. So this is the first false belief that he corrects here is this idea that in Christ I'm free to do whatever I want. But then the second false belief that he corrects here is this if I crave it, I should do it. If I crave it, I should do it. This uh we see this in verse 13, where he says, You say, food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both. So a little bit of context would uh make this uh, I think, more clear to us. Uh, in the Greek sort of Platonic thought that was uh very prevalent in the first century world, there was a strong distinction between the spiritual and the physical or the material. And in that way of thinking, the spiritual is really, really good and the material is bad. And so in Greek sort of Platonic influenced religion or spirituality, the goal was to escape the physical body. The goal was to escape life in this physical world and achieve a kind of uh existence on a higher spiritual plane, and ultimately the goal is that one day you can leave this world and leave this body behind to live in an immaterial, spiritual existence. And in this way of thinking, the body is then just a husk that temporarily houses the really important part of us, which is our soul, which is our spirit, that sort of immaterial, invisible part of us that it that is us. You know? Our bodies are just they're just a container. They're just a vehicle for housing our souls now, but one day we're gonna leave this world behind and enjoy life in a spiritual existence. And if that's the way that they're thinking, what we do with our bodies doesn't really matter that much at all. Because what's really important is the spiritual, and yeah, yeah, whatever you do with your body, whoever you sleep with, whatever you decide to do, it's just your body. It doesn't really matter. What's important is the spiritual things. And so you can hear this in their slogan when they say, food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both. What they're saying is that, you know, these are just physical bodies. This is just biological impulses. And, you know, our bodies are all gonna burn in the end, anyways. So what does it matter what we do with our bodies? If your body's hungry, you feed it. If your body craves sexual release, you have sex. It's just a biological impulse, pure and simple. There's nothing more to it. What this slogan reveals is that they have completely decoupled their spirituality from what happens in and with their bodies. They're living as if what they do with their bodies doesn't have any influence or any impact whatsoever on their lives spiritually or on their relationship with God. Spiritual's good, that's what I'm focusing on, and the body doesn't really matter that much. And so he corrects this false belief, this distorted belief about their bodies in verse 14 by saying this. He says, By his power, God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. So he points to the resurrection and he says, This body is not just some bag of meat that you're going to slough off one day as you escape this world. No, he says, just as Jesus has been raised from the dead bodily and is ascended bodily to the right hand of the Father, in the same way that he has been raised bodily from the dead, we too will experience resurrection life in a physical body. So, no, we will not leave this world. We will not escape this world and live as disembodied souls somewhere out there in heaven or whatever you want to call it. But God will restore and God will remake this world. This world will be made new, and we will share in the resurrection life of Jesus with physical bodies in a physical world. And what this means is that our bodies matter both now and then. Our bodies matter now precisely because our bodies matter so much then. So, no, we can't decouple what we do with our bodies and our spirituality. We can't treat our bodies, eh, it's just biological impulses. If you have an itch, you scratch it. We can't live that way. Because our bodies matter. So these are the two false beliefs that Paul is correcting and addressing here. Number one, in Christ, I'm free to do whatever I want. Number two, if I crave it, I should do it. And this, as we're thinking about this this morning, you may have picked up on the fact that these two beliefs didn't just exist in the ancient world. That both of these are as prevalent today as they were back then. So, broadly speaking, the sexual ethic in our modern world says, as long as it's consensual, there's nothing wrong with it. People are free to give their bodies to whoever they want, whenever they want. And what happens in the privacy of a person's bedroom is no one else's business. So, according to the sort of modern sexual ethic, you're free to give your body to whomever, whenever you want. And you ought to, if you want to. Additionally, broadly speaking, our modern culture says sex is just a biological impulse. It's the impulse that led to the survival of our species, and so if you crave it, it's hardwired into us, if you want it. Those desires are not bad things, and in that way they're right. You know, those sexual desires are built into us by God, our Creator, so it's not that the desires themselves are dirty or bad in any way. But we live in an environment that says, you know, if you crave it, you should do it. You should be totally free to engage sexually in any way you want with any person you want, as long as it's consensual. And so both of these ideas of we're free to do whatever we want with our bodies, and if you want to do it, you should do it. Both of those beliefs are alive and well in our modern context as well. And so, Paul, having named these beliefs and having uh spoken about this, ends this section with uh giving this main exhortation about sexual immorality. He says, flee from sexual immorality. Flee from it. You can hear the sense of urgency that he has in this. You can get the sense from reading what he says here that sexual immorality is not something to be messed with. It's not something to screw around with. And in fact, the person who asks, you know, how close can I get to the line of sexual immorality without actually crossing it? What can I do? How far can I go before it's really sin? I think Paul would say that person has no idea the danger that they're walking into. Not because sex is bad, not because sex is gross, but that person doesn't have any idea the danger that they're walking into. That person doesn't have any clue that as Paul has just talked about in the verses before this, the person who gives themselves over to sexual immorality is in danger of forfeiting their future inheritance in the kingdom of God. And for that reason, sexual immorality is nothing to be messed with, it's nothing to be toyed with. And his instruction is flee. Run from it, sprint as far and as fast as you can in the opposite direction of sexual immorality. And this is the point that I think is so important for us to see. Is he does not say, flee from prostitutes. Because if he did, if he's addressing the subject of, you know, these guys, some of these people were visiting prostitutes, and he's trying to, you know, correct that, he doesn't just say, stop doing that behavior. Because many of us would say, well, I don't feel particularly tempted to visit prostitutes, so therefore this passage doesn't have any application for my life today. He doesn't say flee from prostitutes. He says flee from sexual immorality. That's the broader, larger category into which things like visiting prostitutes, as well as many other forms of sexual immorality, they all fit into that larger bucket of sexual immorality. And he's telling us not to flee from that one particular expression, but from sexual immorality as a whole. Any sexual expression outside of God's design, we are to run and flee from it as far and as fast as we possibly can. What I want to do now is I want to name what I think is the expression of sexual immorality that for our modern context. Is the closest equivalent to visiting prostitutes. Before we do that, we have to just very briefly, we have to name what prostitution is. We just have to define it. Very simply put, prostitution is trading money for sex. That's what it is. But think about this on a deeper level. The Bible says that God's design for sex is that it is a gift to be enjoyed between one man and one woman in the context of a covenant marriage. In other words, we were never meant to give our bodies to someone sexually without first giving our entire life and our entire self to that person. And what prostitution does is it takes the beautiful gift of sex. It takes this beautiful gift that I've always appreciated the way Tim Keller talks about this. He talks about sex as an act of radical self-donation. It takes that beautiful, wonderful gift and it reduces it merely to a transaction. When visiting a prostitute, you take sexual pleasure and you take sexual gratification from another person without having to give anything of yourself to them. It's entirely transactional. It may cost you some money, yes, but it requires you to really give nothing of yourself to that person. There's no commitment, there's no investment. You get to receive only what you want to receive without having to do the hard work of building a life together. You get to receive all the benefits that you want sexually without having to do the hard work of navigating conflict, without walking both the highs and the lows, and having to practice patience and longsuffering and forgiveness and walking with a spouse through sorrow and disappointment and grief. You get to skip all of the other costly aspects of being in a covenant relationship that's committed for life, and you get to just take sexual pleasure and give nothing of yourself in return. That's what's at the core of prostitution. It dehumanizes and depersonalizes sex to be nothing more than merely a transaction. As I said earlier, prostitution, it was very common in the first century world. Prostitution in the same way is not as prevalent in our culture today, but pornography is. And so many aspects of it are identical to prostitution. Pornography demotes sex to an impersonal transaction during which you use another person for sexual release and gratification, but give nothing of yourself to them. In fact, you can't. It requires no commitment, no investment. It's just about doing what you want and what feels good in the moment. And even some of you may know this. Even researchers who are not followers of Jesus, not religious people, these are not Christians, even secular researchers today are sounding the alarm of the ravages that the use of pornography has on our brains and how it rewires the ways that we think and how it rewires the ways we approach relationships and how it's making every single one of our relationships worse. So, no, we may not be tempted to visit prostitutes. And if we're not careful, we'll look down on these Corinthians because, oh, how could your culture be so sick? How could your culture be so messed up that you let things like this happen and it's okay? We may not be tempted to visit prostitutes, but statistically, and I pray the statistics are wrong, statistically, most people in this room use pornography at least on a somewhat regular basis. So this is not just a thing that that culture down there at that time at that place dealt with. It's a thing that our culture today deals with as well. This command to flee from sexual immorality is for us today. With that being said, let me offer two action steps. These are action steps that are for all of us as we think about the subject of sexual immorality and sexual sin. But these are especially for those of you who find yourself here today, maybe caught in sexual sin of some kind. I don't know what that is. You know, God knows. But let me offer these two action steps. Number one, invite one person into your struggle. One of the things that happens when you bring hidden things out into the open is that they begin to lose their power. There's power in secret things no longer being secret. One additional benefit of being the kind of people who are willing to open ourselves up to another person to let them in to see the ugly parts of us, the things we struggle with and the sins that we uh are tempted with. One of the additional benefits of that is that you now have another person who can share that burden with you. You have another person who can pray for you. You have another person who can ask you how it's going. Not just in a like uh rigid accountability kind of way, but someone who can follow up with you and ask you how it's going and can offer encouragement and support and friendship and care for you in those burdens and in those struggles and temptations that you have. So if especially if you find yourself here today caught in some kind of sexual sin, whatever that is, uh let me ask you to do this one thing. Set aside a 15-minute period of time that's uninterrupted, undistracted, no phone, phones off, notifications off, all that stuff. Leave a 15-minute period of undistracted time and sit down in silence and ask, God, who do you want me to tell? And it may take five, it may take ten, it may take fifteen or more minutes. But I can tell you, God does not want you to live in secret. He does not want you to struggle alone in sexual sin, and there will be a person that he will bring to your mind who can love you and care for you and help you walk in sexual holiness. And so set aside that time. Ask God, who is it that you want me to tell? This is one of the ways that you can flee sexual immorality is to not let what happens in the shadows stay in the shadows. And I get it, this takes courage. If you're here today and you're struggling with sexual sin, I can promise you, I know that you're sitting there thinking, man, I don't want to do this. Anything but that. I'm gonna try harder, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do more, I'm gonna, you know, it takes courage to do that. Uh, but can I tell you that uh we've done uh we've we've done everything we can here at Elma to create a culture of grace where people are not gonna be surprised when you come to them and you say, hey, I'm struggling with this. In fact, uh you may think that people are gonna respond to you and look at you like you have, you know, insects crawling all over your face and look at you and just and just have this repulsive, like, ew, you struggle with that? Can I just tell you that what you're going to experience is you're, I can almost promise you that you're gonna find someone who's gonna say, Yeah, me too. I struggle with that same exact kind of thing. Maybe not that exact same thing, but I struggle in that same exact kind of way. So it does take courage. But invite one person into that struggle. Again, please don't hear me saying this is not a, you need to broadcast your sin publicly, you need to share this with a wide group of people. Have one person who knows what's going on in your heart so they can love you and help you walk in sexual holiness. Second action step is this. Remember there's grace for those who fail sexually. There's grace for those who fail sexually. In John chapter 8, you may be familiar with the story of the woman who's caught in sexual sin. She's caught in adultery, and she's standing there as a group of religious leaders are poised and ready to stone her to death because that was the Old Testament Hebrew Bible penalty for being caught in adultery. And as they're standing there getting ready to put this woman to death, Jesus stepped in between. Jesus stepped in between this woman and this group of religious leaders, and he said, Whichever one of you doesn't have any sin in your life, you can be the first one to throw a stone. At which point all of them, one by one, began to drop those rocks and walked away because none of them were without sin. Jesus interceded for her. And because Jesus interceded for her, her life was spared. What Jesus did for that woman in John chapter 8 is just a little microcosm of the bigger thing that Jesus did at the cross. The good news of the gospel is that he interceded for us. God himself took on human flesh, joined us in our humanity, experienced all the brokenness of our world. He suffered and he died and he rose again. And because he laid down his life, and because he rose from the dead, and because through faith we can be united to him, there is now no condemnation for our sin. There's no condemnation for our sexual sin that we've committed in the past, that we find ourselves currently trapped in, maybe right now. There's no condemnation for that if you are united to Christ. There's no condemnation for any other kind of sin in your life if you're united to Him. There's grace for those who fail sexually, which, by the way, is all of us. There's grace for those who fail sexually, and that grace will never lead us to take it less seriously. That grace will never lead us to say, well, I guess it's not that big of a deal. If it's forgiven, it's in the past. No, understanding the grace and the forgiveness of God leads us to take sexual sin even more seriously. See, Jesus didn't just stand in the way and intercede for this woman's life and save her life and then say, hey, have a nice day. He interceded for her, he spared her life, and then he said to her, Go and leave your life of sin. And that's the appropriate response. When Jesus intercedes for us and spares us from what we rightly deserve because of our sexual sin. When he does that, the only response is to go and to leave our life of sin. And this is exactly what Paul is saying here. He uses the command, he says it in different ways or different words, but his command is flee from sexual immorality. Go and leave your life of sin. But it's not just a negative command. He ends by saying, honor God with your bodies. You owe him everything. He gave his body for you. So give your life and give your body over to him. Flee from sexual immorality. Honor God with your bodies. There's grace for those who fail sexually. And that's what we get to remember as we come to the communion table. The good news we get to be reminded of is that because of what God has done for us in Jesus, there is no condemnation for anyone whose life has been joined to his. So would you take a few moments of silence for confession and reflection?