Lord Jesus, we praise You and thank You because Your wounds have paid our ransom.

We don’t think about that enough, about the eternal gift of Your love, of Your salvation that You did not have to give to us, that we are not worthy of. But Jesus, You and all Your love and Your perfection, You came and You made us Your own. You made us the Father’s own by Your sacrifice. So, Lord, we just want to be faithful people this morning. Nothing that we do merits or repays You, but we want to do everything because of what You have done for us, Lord. We want to be those who are spent on Your kingdom because, Lord, we are just so filled with the Spirit, Father, of Your Son Jesus and how He has made us new, brand new, Lord. So we just thank You for being called Your own, Lord. Let that be. Thank You so much to us.

Lord, I lift up different families who are still struggling with COVID or the flu or other things going around right now. Lord, we just pray healing on these families. We pray continued healing for Sue and just thank You for progress, Lord, still over her. And just ask, Lord, that You would, again, by Your grace and mercy, Lord, just safely return Lawton and Sue to us as well.

We just would ask, God, that You would have Your way in our hearts and minds this morning. Lord, in all things and all ways, You would be glorified. And we pray that in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.

Good morning. I’m going to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles if you have one with you to 1 Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 6, verses 12-20. 1 Corinthians 6, verses 12-20.

We’ve been out of Corinthians for about a month and a half now doing our Christmas series and a couple of other messages, but we’re going to jump back in here in chapter 6 and keep going.

In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 12, Paul writes and says, All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit, with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God

in your body.

Amen. If you’ve been in an airplane before and you finally reach 30,000 feet and you’re told you can take your seatbelt off and all that thing, you look out the window and when you look down, it’s almost funny because everything

below you, it almost looks like a toy. It looks like a model. You can’t quite make great detail out. You see squares and patches of land and cars almost look like toys going by. It kind of looks like that Mr. Rogers world scene when it opens and it’s this fake little world you’re going into. There’s not a lot of detail even though you can see so much, 30,000 feet. It’s a very different experience when you are in your city and you can see all the different detail on a bark of a tree or the leaves or the cracks in your own sidewalk. You know what the houses look like. You know just the culture and the features and the feel of places and you describe to people what it’s like to get around. You’ll see this building there and you’ll make a left and you’ll turn there. It’s a very detailed experience on the ground. And what Paul’s writing to the Corinthians about here in large, but he’s getting at in particular issues here, is God, Christ does not call us to have a 30,000 foot experience of the Christian life. He wants you not to see Jesus, to see the gospel pervade all of us, all of life, so that there’s not an aspect of life, there’s not a part of life in which I can’t talk about what that has to do with God, who I am and what my life has to do with Christ and do with God. So he’s writing over and over and over again on these very specific issues because it is not optional. It’s required if you’re a follower of Jesus.

Christ should be Lord of all of life. Christ should be Lord of all. Of life. And I think the best thing we can say about the Corinthian church up to this point is they’re wobbly. I think it’s the best compliment we could pay them. Remember what we’ve talked about. They’re like exuding this cult-like behavior. Like, I follow Paul and somebody else says, I follow Peter and somebody else says, you know, I follow Apollos. And Paul has to deconstruct the way they’re thinking about like tribalism inside the church. They’ll marginalize the poor. We already dealt with sexual issues. There’s the God, his stepmother, Paul had to address that. So divisions, Paul had to talk about the basics of the gospel and the foolishness of worldly wisdom versus godly wisdom. So all these things, Paul’s, he’s having to readdress and readdress and readdress and readdress because all these little things make up the whole of their life and they must all belong to God. They must all belong to God, all of life.

So he starts in verse 12 and what he does is he begins by utilizing what was most likely a popular slogan, they came up with based off of something he said. But what he said didn’t mean how they were using the slogan. They heard what they wanted to hear. Now you’ve got in Corinth a very wicked city. I think it’s very akin to maybe our Western moral society today. So you have this, I am autonomous. I’ll live my life the way I want to live my life. You know, my truth is my truth. You know, everything goes kind of, you know, aura in the culture at the exact same time. Paul is teaching them about freedoms in Christ, what it means to truly live under the grace of God and not the Old Testament law anymore. And Paul will get to this thing as we go deeper in Corinthians. But in what way is that true and good? All things are lawful for me. What it means is this, because Jesus came and he did not do away with the law, Jesus didn’t say he did away with the Old Testament law, he fulfilled it, okay? What it means is there are certain aspects of the law dietary restrictions, what you could or couldn’t eat, temple regulations, sacrifices you had to make at the temple, how you would worship, ways that God, you know, Israel is a theocracy, even without a king, the ways that God prescribed, you know, for example, if someone was sick, that person had to go outside the camp, all right? There were certain rules and laws God gave to them for the good of the society. A lot of that stuff just doesn’t apply anymore because it wasn’t bad, Christ fulfilled it and we don’t live as Old Testament people under the law because what was all that doing? It was pointing to the greater reality of Jesus. Think about when Peter in Acts, he goes up on the roof to pray

and God gives him a vision of this four-corner blanket coming down from heaven and this four-corner blanket comes down and what does Peter see on this blanket but all these unclean animals? He sees these things that he never in his life as a good Jewish person would have possibly dared to eat and here for the first, for the first time in his life, God is not discouraging, God is encouraging, saying, Peter, take eat and Peter says, I can’t eat this stuff, God, I’ve never eaten this stuff before and he says, Peter, don’t call anything that I have made unclean. I have made it so it’s a good thing. So God is radically, you know, changing the way that God’s people function under the law of grace, not the law of Moses.

But, that does not mean anything, anything, and everything goes.

Paul is using the slogan to correct the way that this group of perverted Christians want it to be used. I’m freeing Christ to do whatever I want, whenever I want, because you know, grace, grace covers everything.

And Paul says, hold on a second, that’s not what that means. The law spoke into every facet of life. Think about this, the law spoke into every facet of human life. Jesus fulfilled the law. Jesus is in me. Which means what? It means that in an even greater way now, I am more wiser and I’m more sensitive to right and wrong because I don’t have an external law to obey. The law of God has been internalized. Why? Because Christ is present in me and Christ fulfilled the law.

That’s the reaction when I come to have a law. How to live and not to live is to say, hold on, I have the fullness of Christ in me to obey or to do what’s right, to have wisdom, to exercise judgment. So Paul starts with things that are good. He says, not all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. In other words, because you can do a thing in life, because there are good things that you’re allowed to do, it doesn’t mean you can take that good thing and do it as much as you want, whenever you want, with no thought of anyone else. Not all things are helpful, is Paul’s supply to answer. Not everything that you could do in life that’s not technically sin, technically wrong, is necessarily helpful for you to do it uninhibited. Good things misused are harmful things to us. Right?

At the same time, Paul supplies a second answer. Just because there is something in life that’s not technically sinful or wrong anymore, according to the law, it can’t, if you don’t watch out, he says, it will end up dominating you. He said, I will not be controlled or mastered by anything. So if you approach life, not even just things that are obviously sinful or bad, but even good things in life, and you approach them not as someone who has the mind and heart of Christ, you approach them in the flesh, Paul says, very likely there’s a great number of things that are going to end up owning you and running your life. Be it money, be it food, be it the way you spend your time wrong, relationships. We can make this big long list of good things that aren’t wrong, but if we don’t approach them as Christians, we will in a wrong way use them and they will end up owning us. That’s his point. He says, I’m not dominated as one who is in Christ by anything because Jesus is my one Lord. And this anything goes lifestyle that they want to kind of have, Paul says it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. And here’s why. If Christ is Lord of all, that means Christ is Lord even of the small things in your life. Maybe what you and I consider common or everyday things.

I can eat whatever I want. I can drink whatever I want because their reasoning is it goes into the stomach, it passes out, and the stomach, it dies and goes on the earth anyways. So they say their argument here is my stomach’s hungry. What do I do? I give it food. And that’s irrelevant or immaterial from my spiritual life. It doesn’t matter. That’s their thinking. So their logic goes, if my body, if it has sexual desires, well, so what? I’ll give it what it wants because, you know, the body dies and goes in the ground. And Paul’s saying, whoa, that is totally not at all the way that you should be using that logic. You’re taking, what you want, you’re cherry picking and you’re not thinking about how Christ is Lord overall.

Starting with, here, the small things. Starting with the small things. And I want to kind of say here, this is why there’s a danger for you and I in the Christian life to have this very overly simplistic Christian faith. Like, I heard about Jesus and He was perfect and He died on a cross for me and He was raised from the grave and if I put my faith in Him, that means that I’m not going to hell someday. And that’s awesome. And that is awesome. But that says nothing about this present life. It says nothing about how Christ wants to be the Lord of your present life, not just the Savior of your soul. If Jesus is no more than someone who’s just going to keep me from hell when I die, He’s a mighty Savior, but He’s not much of a Lord. A Lord directs and governs my life, especially a good Lord. In a good way. If my human life and what I do in small everyday things, if it doesn’t matter to God, it is pretty pointless and petty. And Jesus in the Gospel really can’t speak into life today, what it means to be human on this side of life. But this is what Paul’s getting at. Jesus is a far more comprehensive Savior and Lord. Yes, praise God, He saved my soul, but Jesus wants to be human. He wants to be the Lord of my life so that right now He’s reshaping and reforming my heart, my mind, my desires, my decisions, even the small ones in a way that God the Father can look at my life and say, oh, He is taking care of even the small things in His life as my son Jesus would. He is being remade into the image of Christ because He has the Lordship of Christ over His life, even in, especially in, the small things. The small things. And I don’t think, I don’t, I don’t think we’re devious as these Corinthians are and like, how can I manipulate the gospel so I can do what I want to do? Right? That’s kind of what they’re doing here. I don’t know that we’re as sinister,

but just as much, friends, when we fail to consciously live that way, we’re just as guilty when we don’t consider what does it look like to give Jesus this aspect of my life? What does it look like for Jesus to be in control of this thing in my life? To start with Paul’s illustration of food. Food’s good. I really like food. Food is enjoyable. It’s a gift from God. But, guess what? People can have an extremely unhealthy relationship with food. You can eat way too much of it. You can, on the opposite side, eat way too little of it. You can eat the wrong things, unhealthy things. In other words, food is a good thing from God and no, we don’t have any dietary restrictions, but that doesn’t mean, woohoo, I can do whatever I want. Christ needs to be Lord of my relationship with food. Christ needs to be Lord of my relationship with money. Think about what Paul says to Timothy. He says to Timothy, the love of, not money, he says, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. People come into ruin and destruction through their pursuit of it and they hurt themselves with many pangs because they love money. Just one more dollar. One more dollar. Let me get one more dollar. One more dollar. And it does what? It masters you. It masters you. And again, we could be here all day talking about the different possessions or interests or hobbies or fascinations, but we’re foolish to think Jesus doesn’t demand to be Lord of every little thing in your life. So you can so spiritualize the Christian life, where the Christian life has no bearing on your life, which is ridiculous. I’m just twiddling my thumbs and I’m waiting for Jesus to come take me home. That’s what I’m doing. It’s like this really, really nice like oak bed frame. It’s beautiful. A headboard and a footboard. And there’s this horrible 50-year-old, you know, flat as a pancake, mattress in the middle and it does this big U because that’s your Christian life. I have no idea what this is supposed to be. I just know I got saved and I know I don’t want to go to hell. And I’m not thinking too much harder past that.

But Jesus and the Scriptures say have self-control in this life. The Scriptures say think deeply in this life about what it means to obey me. Think what it means to be sacrificial in this life. Think how to use your time well in this life. If we take Jesus serious, we’re convinced the small stuff matters. And more than the small stuff mattering, I think if we really want Jesus to be Lord of life, I don’t even want to get away with it. It’s like, I have to give Jesus obedience here. You know, I’d rather live for money. I’d rather live for this. I would rather just do what I want. What does Paul say in Romans 12.1? He says, I urge you, I beseech you, brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies, your bodies as living sacrifice. I’m a living sacrifice. I’m living for my Lord Jesus, not my flesh any longer. Yeah, I’m not out murdering people. I’m not out, you know, knocking gas stations over. No, but you’ve got credit card debt up to your eyeballs. You can’t be a blessing to other people. You can’t be used for the Lord’s work because you’ve enslaved yourself to the debtor.

So see how Christ wants to redeem all of us, not just some of us. This text requires you and I to be faithful. Thinking Christians. I haven’t used that phrase in a long time. I used to say it a lot. We need to be thinking Christians. It requires we love God, not just our hearts, but also our minds. Thinking deeply, thinking biblically, even about the small things. Even about the small things. Turns out they aren’t so small.

And I think if all this is like lost on you, like, you know what? I’ve been a Christian for X number of years on a scale of like one being a new convert, 10 being, like I’m almost home in glory. I just want to hang out around one or two. I’m not interested in getting past one or two. I just want my fire insurance. And you know, that’s good enough for me. Friend, that’s not a thing. Okay? We got to talk about the issue of salvation. If salvation means you just want to get out of hell. Being a Christian means I deeply desire to go deeper and understand more about Christ’s good and supreme reign over everything, over all of me, all the time. And you know, I think God’s really good to give us watershed moments where sometimes you whisper. It’s like, hey, I’m actually not Lord of your life in that area. You’re not actually autonomous for me. Or sometimes maybe He yells at us because, you know, He’s whispered. He’s like, hey, you are not Lord of your own life. You know? So we can’t do, we can’t do what these Corinthian Christians are wanting to do. We can’t fly the banner of Christian over our lives, but then Jesus not actually be Lord of it. Can’t do that. Paul’s saying, it’s beneficial. What’s beneficial really? What’s going to master you really? Are you thinking deeply about it? And hopefully that pushes you to an even deeper question on a deeper level. Do I want happiness or joy? Am I living for nothing more than the happiness I can get from the moment? Or am I living for the deeper joy that comes from knowing Christ and Christ, being Lord over everything? Over everything. I give you, I think, what’s a really good example of this. Chase and I were driving home from our elder meeting this past week and he said he overheard Darcy and Bella have this lamentable conversation. How come adults are always on their smartphones? And it was in reference to like when we’re supposed to be present with our children, like whatever we’re doing and they’re just, they’re talking about, we’re always looking at the screen.

Ah!

Watership. Are smartphones bad? No. No. Can they own you? Yeah. Are they very unbeneficial? Yeah.

Do you want Jesus to be Lord of that portion of your life?

So being a Christian then means being different from the world, not in big picture stuff, but even in the smallest of things. If we’re Jesus’ people, we’re otherworldly people in all things.

And here’s the thing also, when we talk about discipleship, you, me, we are discipling people in small things. Great. You’re not teaching someone about some heinous sin, but maybe they’re watching you obsess over your smartphone. Maybe you’re calling yourself a Christian and you constantly have a bad attitude. You’re constantly a bad influence at work. There’s this thing where you’re discipling people in your life and your family and your workplace and your neighborhood towards a thing in a way that’s other than the way that Jesus would really have you. You’re discipling people in all of life.

Enjoy the good gifts of this world, but friends, let’s not abuse them and misuse them. And I want to push this here not to New Year resolutions, okay? New Year’s resolutions are you like, all right, I’ve been terrible at this, and I’m going to try even harder to be better at it in the coming year, okay? What’s the Bible teach us? We’re really bad at doing good for ourselves. What I want to point you towards is not a New Year resolution, but repentance.

Repentance is me saying, Lord, I see by Your grace I’ve been wrong in this area, and what I need to do, Lord, by Your grace, is turn and believe that Your Spirit will give me power over this thing. See, that’s lasting change. That’s biblical change. Repentance. Don’t make a resolution. Repent. Repent. Repent.

But then secondly, we do get to the big things. Yes, Jesus is Lord of the small things, but Paul moves on to the big things. He is Lord of the transient, but also of the eternal. We’re moving from what is permissible to what’s flat wrong.

Back in verse 13,

he says, because food’s meant for the stomach, and stomach for food, God, will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two, will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Verse 18, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

So the permissible things Paul had to correct, but now he’s, he’s correcting him and saying, you definitely can’t take the gospel and grace to justify what’s sin. He blows a hole in it. Hunger and food is not the same thing as body and sexual desires. And I think Paul’s, I don’t know how Paul doesn’t like scream in writing, like just write out, ah, what are y’all doing? Because it’s that warp that they’re doing. So I think Paul very patiently, he kind of unravels this rat’s nest of warped sexual ethic. Very warped. Sexual ethic.

Yes, the body or the stomach needs food, but Paul says it doesn’t parallel. The body’s not made for, for sex or sexual immorality. He raises their eyes up. He says the body’s made for the Lord. That’s what your body’s for. Our bodies, if we’re truly in Christ Jesus, they are not subject to every passing desire that we have. They’re subject to, they’re subject to Jesus. Jesus and the gospel. That is the filter through which I have to run every desire, everything I want in life and say, is this something that honors God? Is this something that accords with Christ or not? And he gives us this really, really powerful, several very powerful reasons why, and they keep stacking. So we’ll start with 14.

14, we get this really powerful insight as to why the body is of such power, precious importance.

He says again in 14,

God raised the Lord up and will also raise us up by his power. So again, simply, when Jesus died on the cross, what did Jesus die for? And I think we immediately think our souls, again, Jesus died so, you know, because we’re spiritual decay, spiritual ruin. We don’t have spiritual desires for goodness, for righteousness, for holiness, that is true, but I want to ask you a question. When Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day and walked out, did he walk out in a physical body or did he float out in immaterial spirit? He walked out, which tells me the body is of great importance to God that Jesus would assume, which is crazy to think about. Jesus, before he became a baby in the manger, he was an eternity past, immaterial, and then once he assumed the human flesh, he kept it forever. God forever became a human as he never was in eternity past to redeem my body. That’s amazing. That ought to blow your mind. Jesus was raised up a resurrected body. This tells me that what I do with my body matters. It tells me that Jesus, when he comes back someday, he’s going to come back a physical body and I’m going to be in a perfect physical body and we’re going to live in a perfect physical place and I look forward to that and you should look forward to that. So being a human being with flesh is a great gift. I think the resurrection of Christ proves that. But it also, on the flip side, means when I do wrong with it, it has very serious eternal consequences. So Paul goes on. In 15, he continues to build up his argument.

He says, don’t you know that your bodies are members of Christ? So Paul gets beyond the I got my ticket to ride to the other side kind of theology. Paul gets really explicit. He says, don’t you know in some mysterious way that can’t be explained,

you are, your body and your soul, if you’ve truly repented and you’ve placed faith in Jesus, you are one with Christ.

Your body, your spirit has been joined to be one with Christ. So when you became a Christian, it’s not just about, oh, you do believe this or you don’t believe this. When you became a Christian, you were joined to Jesus and Jesus joined to you. In Ephesians chapter 5, verse 29, Paul writes there, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it. And it tells us, why does Christ love the church? Because as the church we’re what? We’re members of his body. How do we explain that? How do we explain that? That in some spiritual, mysterious way, you and I are really and truly one with the eternal Son of God.

Man, I don’t know how to do that. And I’m happy to join Calvin when he says, I am not ashamed to join Paul in acknowledging at once both my ignorance, but also my faith. But also my admiration.

I don’t know how we explain it other than to say, it’s a mystery, a wonderful mystery that you are really and truly intimately, eternally joined. You’re made one with Jesus when you’re saved. Jesus didn’t give you salvation. What Jesus gave you was himself. That’s your salvation. You were given Jesus.

If that’s true, if that’s true, this mysterious union, then, Paul says, think about with me if you would how heinous it would be to join your body, which is a member of Christ,

with the body of a prostitute. Because in joining your body to a prostitute’s body, you are profaning what is a member of the body of Christ. He says never. Paul has a really serious, serious attitude about this. He has a very serious attitude about what sexual union should and should not look like. And Paul, he draws it all the way back to Genesis. And he says, he quotes God when God says the two, they shall leave father and mother, they shall become what? One flesh together. So from the very beginning, Paul’s saying this, the Bible, God has one context for sexual union to be a good thing. And it’s a man and it’s a woman and it’s in the context of marriage. And that’s good. And it’s sacred and it’s intimate. In other words, you cannot go around and become one flesh with other people and think it’s a small thing or an inconsequential thing. If you are a Christian especially and you have the spirit of Christ within you and you are a member of Christ, would you do this thing and enter into a sexual union which is immoral and godless and so profane a member of Christ’s body?

See, it gets real serious. Things that culture takes as so unserious. What does this passage teach us? It teaches us there’s no such thing as casual sex. No such thing. It teaches us that Christ demands in all things utmost obedience and loyalty. And in Ephesians, Paul says, when a man and a woman come together in marriage and they hold fast, what it’s supposed to be is this beautiful picture of how Christ deeply loves the church and the church is committed to Christ. So when you and I have any kind of experiences sexually outside of that, we’re marring and scribbling all over the gospel picture. The man and the woman together that points to, Paul says, the gospel we’re getting our mark out and going, how about this instead? That’s what’s happening.

It’s much more than hurting let’s say one’s spouse. It’s much more than breaking your own understanding of the purposes of sexual union when we do it. We’re guilty, again, if we’re in Christ of doing what? Of profaning a member of Christ. Paul says, don’t do that. Paul says, run from it. And now I want to address this because I want us to understand what it does and doesn’t mean. When Paul says every other sin is outside the body except this one, I don’t want you to take that to mean well, this is a special sin and if I’ve ever made a mistake in this category here, man, I’ve sinned in a big way and that’s outside of God’s grace. That’s not at all what Paul’s saying, that there’s not grace for these failures. What Paul is saying is this, please keep in mind how important that union is when you’re a Christian because you are one with Christ and if you truly believe that and you’re living to be holy in Christ, sexual sin is unique in the staining that it leaves, different from every other sin. And it doesn’t mean you can’t be forgiven and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t renewal. It just means it’s very, very serious and God takes it very, very serious. And that’s what I believe Paul is teaching us there.

And lastly, again, Paul says, don’t you know your own body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Which is wild and crazy because it would make the Old Testament parallel. The temple was the place where God’s presence was and you better not think you could go in there lest you fall dead. It was a place where the utmost holiness,

profound holiness was found. Paul says, that’s you now. It’s not the temple, that’s you. What would you do a body that’s housing the Holy Spirit? Would you do things that so dishonor Christ? Very serious. It’s very serious. It’s very serious. And I know it’s serious, but boy, you and I, I think sometimes need like a spiritual two by four up against the head because we live in such a sexually perverted and warped and bent society where everything goes and we need to be brought back to this. We need to be brought back to this. Right before this passage in verse 9, Paul says, don’t you know that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God? That’s a serious statement. If we would be sexually immoral and not repent of it and not take it serious, Paul says, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. So it raises in all things the gravity, the seriousness. I want to say, I think to men first of all, but I’m not excluding anyone here, to lust.

Because when we choose to lust and we think, oh, that’s an innocent thought, it’s not. You’re planting seeds of a much greater and sinister sin in your own heart. You’re making way for something far worse. Recall what Jesus said in Matthew. If you look at a woman lustfully in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery. So don’t think it’s a small thing. When you’re a Christian, boy, you know, I have these desires. I’m going to kind of let them have their own kind of world secretly inside of me. They won’t stay secret long enough. They’ll change you. And they’ll end up being your Lord.

It means pornography. Pornography’s a really big deal. Pornography is not a victimless crime, either for the woman. She is being very much so abused and raped by you in her mind and God is holding you accountable for that. That’s what you’re doing to her. Not to mention, there’s fascinating studies about the permanent damage, but the permanent chemical change that happens in a man’s brain when he looks at pornography over and over again. He loses the capacity to say no to it. The more he does it. And sexual sin is such also, sexual sin is such, it’s not like, oh, I did it and I’m backing off. I did it and I can control it. Sexual sin has a way of digging its claws into you and holding on to you for a really long time before you can pull back out of it. Have you ever met anyone? I had adultery this one time and I came back out of it. No, you took baby steps towards it. You were in this secret relationship for a long time. Then it exploded and you ruined your life. So, sex is serious and it has a way of just turning your world upside down if you let it.

Entertainment. We live in an entertainment driven society. And that’s a fact. It’s not a good fact, but it’s a fact. What does this text say about the kinds of things you let yourself be entertained by? A whole lot. A whole lot. I don’t care how good a movie is. I don’t care how good a show is. You should not be watching people pretend to have sex together. You should not be seeing people without their clothes on who are not either your husband or your wife. It’s wrong. There’s no in-between on that. It’s wrong and you’re giving the devil ammunition to use against you in your own life at a future time.

In a culture with an ever mutating sexual ethic where simple adultery would seem conservative as to the kinds of things that are being taught today, you and I have got to keep our feet planted in the Word of God and what God says is right, what God says is holy, what God says is good. And I want you to see this word here. It’s not an accident. It’s not an accident at all. He says at the beginning of verse 18, does he say skip?

Drag your feet. No. He says flee. Flee. If you see any kind of sexual sin, run because it’s going to own and destroy your soul.

Destroy it. Think about Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. She’s trying to draw him in and she gets him in the bedroom and he, what’s he do? He runs away. He runs away. We must flee. We must flee.

Again, I want to say to you this morning that God has grace over all our sins. Grace that is greater than all of our sins. You know, we sing that old hymn. Is this true? And blessed be the name of Jesus for washing away every sin. But if we are truly one with Christ, we won’t desire to go on it any longer, will we? We’ll want Jesus to be Lord of all. Look at verse 19 and 20 here.

Here’s verse 20. Paul says at the end of 19, you are not your own. Okay? You are. You are not your own for you were bought with a price

so glorify God in your body. Glorify God in your body. If you become a Christian, guess what? You belong to God. Your body and your soul. Big things,

small things. Jesus is Lord of your life. He paid for you. He bought you with His own blood. He is your Lord and what we should do is discover more in the Spirit what joyful surrender and transformation looks like so that Christ is exalted in us. Because what happens when Jesus is exalted in our life? What is it when a person or a group of people can honestly say Jesus is the supreme ruler of our lives and He is in our conversation. He is in our hearts, our minds, our actions. What does that look like? Paul says God is glorified. God is glorified. So we desire to live for God’s glory and do things God’s way. Jesus will be Lord of the big things. Jesus will be Lord of the small things. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Lord, we

thank you and praise you that as far as we can seem to wander or roam or maybe even sometimes run from you, you are graciously working to draw us in. You are kind and you are good to remind us of who you have made us to be in Jesus. Your Spirit ever so gently prods us on towards holiness that we can be called still your children. Even though we sin, we can still be called your own and you don’t let go of us. So we just say thank you for that. Thank you for your blood washing away every sin that we have committed.

God, I pray at the same time as Christ rules and dwells in us supremely

Lord, that we would be found holy and righteous that we would live in the fear of you, to obey you, to desire you to love your rules, to love what it means to be your people and we know that you desire that for us so we’re asking for it in faith Lord clean us, give us a right mind, give us right thinking on so many different things Lord that we encounter in life, so many different situations we’ll get in about what’s the right decision to make here Lord, we just ask for wisdom in your Spirit and we know that you’ll give it God so we bless your name and we thank you for your grace and your love and we just want to commit ourselves to you in all things and it’s in Jesus name, Amen.