January 25, 2015 A.D., by Pastor Ben Willis

1 Corinthians 6:12-20 [NLTse]
ELDER: 12 You say,
PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything”—
ELDER: but not everything is good for you. And even though
PASTOR: “I am allowed to do anything,”
ELDER: I must not become a slave to anything. 13 You say,
PASTOR: “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.”
ELDER: (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 14 And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.
ELDER: 15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! 16 And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” 17 But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
ELDER: 18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

Sermon
Last week we talked about sex, and we’re going to talk about sex this week, as well. I am going to be talking about sex respectfully and appropriately for each and every age-level here in this Sanctuary. I am saying this ahead of time in case you, parents, want your children to hear about sex from you before hearing about it from me and want to take them out for the sermon. However, I hope you will let them stay, because your children are already hearing about sex at school or from friends, and on TV, and in the music they listen to, and from the movies they watch, …

Just the other day a group of Christian teens, after hearing a speaker talk about the blessings of abstinence and sexual purity, were heard saying that they had never heard anyone at church talk about sex or sexual immorality or God’s desire that we save ourselves for our wives or husbands. (Many of you adults, I know, may be thinking, “Good! Church isn’t the place to be talking about sex anyway.”) Except then those teens went on to talk about all the different sexual experiences they’d already had at their young age… We need to talk about sex in church. Sex is God’s idea! And it is a beautiful thing to talk about when talked about respectfully and appropriately, and when talked about in the context of husband and wife enjoying God’s gift of their sexuality together within the relationship of life-long marriage.

So, moms and dads or guardians or chaperones, take your kids out if you feel you must, but I hope you will let your kids stay…

As I’ve already said, sex was God’s idea: His sacred wedding-gift to husbands and wives when we get married. When people express their sexuality outside of marriage they abuse and misuse the gift. Premarital sex, pornography, affairs, homosexual relations are all outside these boundaries. They all abuse the gift…

Last week we talked about some of the arguments people use to rationalize their sexual activity outside of marriage: Saying things like, “It’s not wrong if we love each other;” or saying, “Times have changed, and what was wrong in biblical times is no longer considered sin;” “We’re married in God’s eyes,” you can sometimes hear people say; and, “Even if I am doing these things, I can still have a good relationship with God because He understands.” We showed how these are all just lies so that we can get our way and do what we want, and that living in such ways denies the cross and keeps us in slavery to sin.

This week is “Part 2” of that message. So what’s still to be said?

People often want to know how far they can go before something is truly considered “sex”. Even Christians who know that we live by grace and by the spirit of the Law often want to argue what the letter of the Law allows us to do or not to do. Which, of course, is exactly the problem: Since Adam and Eve in the very beginning, men and women have treated God like He’s an enemy, keeping us from fun, keeping us from thrills, His commandments keeping us from the abundant life that we hear about in music, read about in books, and see on the TV and hit movies around us.
[Move the sticky to myself.] But the truth is that God’s the good guy. He’s been the hero – the only true hero – since the very beginning.

Ever heard the term “casual sex”? Ever heard the term “recreational sex”? You can hear these expressions all over in American culture and across many modern societies. But there’s no such thing. There is no such thing as casual sex because the depth of intimacy involved in sexual activity makes the participants a part of each other. Genesis says, and the Lord Jesus affirms it in the Gospels, “The two are united into one.” (Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8)

There is something unique about the sexual expression of human beings that binds us to our partners: Binds us physically, binds us emotionally and mentally, and binds us spiritually, as well. So much so that Paul can write, “Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, ‘The two are united into one’?” (vv. 15-16) Do you see all the connections? How sex “joins us” to the other, and how sex makes us “a part” of the other and makes us “one body” with the other. And for Christians, it affects Christ because it is a physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual joining, as well.

As you can imagine, or perhaps you’ve already asked this question yourself, “Then how far can Christians go? Is it okay if Christian couples only touch each other sexually or only kiss each other in sexual ways?” (I’m using respectful and appropriate language here, please understand what I’m referring to.)

Let me use the example of a sticky note.
If we take a sticky note and attach it to something, it will adhere. If we remove it, it will leave behind a small amount of residue; the longer it remains, the more residue is left behind. If we take that note and stick it to several places repeatedly, it will leave residue everywhere we stick it, and it will eventually lose its ability to adhere to anything. This is much like what happens to people when they engage in “casual” sex, or when someone has several boyfriends or girlfriends that they have been sexual with. Each time we leave a sexual relationship, we leave a part of ourselves behind and take something from the one we’ve been with. The longer the relationship has gone on, the more we leave behind and the more we lose of ourselves. As we go from partner to partner, we continue to lose a tiny bit of ourselves each time, and we continue to take a tiny bit of them each time, and eventually we may lose our ability to form a lasting sexual relationship at all. The sexual act is so strong and so intimate that we cannot enter into it casually, no matter how easy it might seem.

So when we ask, “How far can we go?” I think we’re asking the wrong question. “How far can we go?” is asking, “How much of me is it okay to give another?” “How much of me is it okay to leave behind?” And, “How much of another – and of how many others – is it okay for me to bring into my future marriage?”

And when we look at it that way – that is, when we look at it God’s way, the One Who thought up sex and gave it to us in the first place – we can see that the more we abstain-from before marriage, the more we will have to share exclusively with our husband or our wife when – by God’s grace – we finally get married. And the more special and unique our relationship in that marriage can become.

My friends, keep it to holding hands; keep it to hugging; keep it to modest kissing before marriage. Complete abstinence is God’s only policy when it comes to sex before marriage. He’s our hero. He’s the good guy. And His ways and commandments are good.

So many married couples have so many troubles that are all because they stepped over this precious boundary that God has set around sex. It may seem difficult while you are unmarried. But once you are married you will be happy that you did.

Now, for those who have crossed over that line, for those who have already misused God’s beautiful gift of sex, don’t despair. Yes, there will be consequences for your actions. Perhaps there already have been. Sin has consequences that we need to be willing to accept and live with, even as God’s children. But there is no sin beyond the reach of the cross of Christ. No Christian needs to live under the condemnation and judgment of wicked things we’ve done or sinful acts we regret. “If we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness!” (1 John 1:9)

You may have noticed that in the paragraphs just before our morning’s reading Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that,” Paul wrote to them. “But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (6:9-11)
When we confess our sins, Jesus Christ is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all wickedness! Sin is gone. A new creation has come!

Even so, the Lord has much more for you and for me than even the majesty and glory of His forgiveness. God restores! The prophet Joel writes, “The Lord says, ‘I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts… Once again you will have all the food you want, and you will praise the Lord your God, Who does these miracles for you.  Never again will My people be disgraced. Then you will know that I am among My people Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other…

“‘Then, after doing all those things, I will pour out My Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. In those days I will pour out My Spirit even on servants—men and women alike… Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” (2:25-32)
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Sex outside of life-long marriage between a man and a woman is a locust that eats away at our sense of self, self-esteem, our trust and faith, and our ability to bind ourselves to another as we were created to do. But our hero – our Father – restores! And He renews us, He replenishes us, the Holy Spirit replaces what’s been lost of our souls as we walk with Jesus each day.