Corinthians, 6:9-20 Reprise: Sex, secular society & the Savior

Good morning. With a great many traveling, we're kind of spacey this morning. Hopefully I'm not, okay? Before we begin, I just want to make you aware we've got several, you know, handouts and supplements to catch up with from last week. So those are available. We also have an additional one. that I'll point out in a little bit for this week, as well as you've got, should have in your handout and bulletin this morning, a one-page supplement for each of you. And we will include that in our message here this morning. So I want to bring those to your attention. All right. Now, we're going to be shifting here.

And as you may have noticed from what Courtney read, from our study of Genesis, shifting to this passage here, 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 20. And you might ask, and appropriately so, why are we switching right here in the middle of Genesis? In our study of Genesis chapter 19, which we had last week, we saw some six sexual behaviors. One of the things we did is we titled last week's message, you know, a sickness, a sadness, and a sick, sad seduction. There were not just one, but actually several events there that were tragic.

In quick outline, the men of Sodom wanted to carry out a same-sex gang rape on two male strangers. That's basically the quick summary of the first part of chapter 19. These men, as they appeared to be, were in reality angels. After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by these two angels, and Lot's wife died by ignoring a warning, do not look back, Lot's own daughters cooked up a scheme.

They said, we have got to come up with a way for dad to have some offspring here. They even talked as the way the account is recorded as if we're the last ones on the planet. And they may have had some conception that way. Nonetheless, they cooked up the scheme. Each daughter would have a child by their father.

So what do these sins of the unbelievers in Sodom and Gomorrah, the sins of Lot, who the New Testament says he's a believer, along with his two daughters, I would have to say possibly believers but unknown, what does that have to do with us here in the body of Christ? That's what we want to take a look at here this morning. The general nature of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Lot and his daughters are brought up in several categories here in this passage in 1 Corinthians 6, 9-20. Plus a number more, more than is brought up in Genesis 19.

Along with, and we'll see this many times in the passage, God's amazing grace, richly presented This letter was written to the church at Corinth. Corinth was an infamous city, infamous for its immorality. In an empire where sexual immorality was widespread throughout the entire empire, Corinth was so famous for being even more immoral that there was a verb that was rooted on the name of Corinth. They were the ultimate, the apex of immorality, if you will. That's not quite the right term. Believers in Corinth, in other words, those who had come to believe in the gospel, who had grown up and lived in the city of Corinth, came out of this deeply pagan and immoral culture.

That was the background that they came out of. And Paul is addressing this letter. We have two of Paul's letters. We'll be looking at this passage out of the first one. He's addressing this letter to these believers who have been, at a maximum, maybe about five years out of this culture. Many of them less.

And these people had been born into and grown up in this pagan rank culture. So, should the believers in the body of Christ be any different than the ones around them? That's a question that's been brought up in our own society, and it's unfortunately the case that a number of the statistics for how do Christians do compared to the general culture, not so good. Not very different. various tests of things like divorce rates and things of that sort. Often Christians are caught up in things that are very similar to the culture.

When Nancy and I were down in Texas, we were glad to get out, glad to get back to Colorado. We felt the relief by the mile. One of the things that was difficult was not too far away from us. I mean, only a few miles away was the world's largest gay church. And so it was a rather stark contrast right there in our midst.

So, as we look at not just the city, but now the church, This first letter to the believers at Corinth, Paul gave these believers full assurance, I mean, at the very outset of his letter, of what God had done in their lives. He was indeed thankful for them, he said. Example, 1 Corinthians 1, 1-9. It starts off, even though he's got heavy issues to deal with with these believers, it starts off telling them, you have been sanctified, made holy, set apart for God's intended purpose. And God is faithful. He will do it.

In 1 Corinthians 1.30, you have been made to be in Christ by God's doing. He began by giving them assurance of who they were in Christ, he began by giving them assurance of God's character. The believers in Corinth were, however, generally speaking, spiritually immature and fleshly. By chapter 3, the first few verses, he's telling them flat out, you are fleshly. You are fleshly.

I would have expected greater maturity at this point in time, but that's not what I'm finding. They were up to about five years old in the Lord at this point, and I say up to because some of them were younger in the Lord, perhaps by the time this letter reached them, maybe even some that were brand new in the Lord. Paul had still hoped for greater maturity rather than what he saw.

Something else we're going to see in this passage and is true throughout the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul repeated certain principles. And why would he repeat them? I would suggest to you that one of the reasons why he continued to repeat principles in the passage we're going to look at and in this letter is because they needed to have the repetition. Some things weren't sinking in as well and as quickly as he would like to have seen. And you want to make sure that these principles sunk in, that they got into people's minds and thinking and understanding. Paul didn't, however, as he went through this, just simply repeat himself verbatim so that 1 Corinthians is just repetition after repetition. He would restate things and put things in a different way, okay? And he often stated these key principles as he restated them in different words or from a different perspective.

And we'll see that as we go through this passage and step through it. He used something that we pointed out previously as a Jewish way of emphasis, repetition, not by verbatim repetition all the time, but by restatement. We'll see that as we get there. You have this slide on your handout and on page one, and it takes the first couple of verses that Courtney read for us here and kind of puts them in a form that allows us to see some things. One is the phrase, inherit the kingdom of God is essentially repeated. line by line.

The other thing is what he first states as the unrighteous, he then goes to itemize. And so we see the itemized statements here of the unrighteous, and he lists ten items. We'll go through them in a bit more detail shortly. So these are examples of the unrighteous. It's not exhaustive. As a matter of fact, if he wanted to go through Corinth and have a whole lot longer list, he could have written another letter. So these are samples, these are examples.

Additionally, one of the patterns we'll see is that the first five relate to sexual sins and some might say, but wait a minute, idolaters, isn't that just about worshipping these wood, stone, clay idols, etc.? Yes, that is true, except for this. Idolaters had a sexual implication in Corinth and actually other places in the ancient world as well. The last five are non-sexual sins. They are other sins that don't generally have a sexual nature.

So he kind of breaks the list into halves there. So who are these unrighteous? Are the unrighteous believers who are slipping or are the unrighteous instead unbelievers, and that's his categorization. Well, he made it clear that these unrighteous are the unbelievers. And how does he do that?

Here in the first verse in the chapter, I've quoted it here so we don't have to bounce around too much, 1 Corinthians 6.1, does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints. He's making the contrast unrighteous and the saints as two different categories here. So he's given his definition earlier in the text and made that clear.

2 Peter 2.9 has a similar contrast where the unrighteous are compared and contrasted with the saints.

Similarly, this same chart now on page 2 These are all given as nouns in this entire list, which means that these people are defined by what they do. They have the noun by their action. That is their identity, what they do because they don't believe. They have that identity because they don't believe. Let's go through the list here. You have them beginning on page two in your handout.

The first one he lists there is fornicators, and that's a word that refers to any sexual intimacy of any kind outside of marriage. So certainly that fit, if we were to apply Genesis 19, with what the men of Sodom were wanting to do to the two visiting angels. They didn't recognize them as angels, but they were wanting a sexual intimacy that was outside of marriage. There is also the case of Lot. and his daughters. That would be another sexual intimacy outside of marriage.

Idolaters, certainly primarily about worship of idols, but it included temple prostitutes, male and female. Corinth, there was female temple prostitutes and the men would take advantage of that in the pagan culture. However, scripture has in the Old Testament, we have the passages here, they're not in your handout, in Deuteronomy 23, 17 and then four passages in 1st and 2nd Kings. What are translated sodomites or male cult prostitutes, And so these are the basically male prostitutes that were part of the Canaanite religion. So the idolaters included sexual immorality as well, whether male or female. Additionally, Paul used the word adulterers. Now we have to kind of give some clarification here.

And the reason is, in the Roman Empire, adultery was illegal. But at first you might think, well, then they were moral. Not so much. Okay? What it meant was it was illegal to have sexual intimacy with another man's wife. That was illegal. Any other sexual intimacy was permitted. Okay? So when he would say adulterers, their minds would typically tend to fall in the definition in the culture.

And that's one of the reasons why we'd have to use the other words of definition to include all of the category. Then he has a category that's particularly relevant to our Genesis 19 passage, and that is effeminate and homosexuals. Let me clarify here. You have it on page two of your handout. This word for effeminate is based on a word that means soft. And it was sometimes used even just for soft cloth and things of that sort. But it was a euphemism for one who took on a female role in a homosexual act or relationship.

And one of the things we note here on the slide, not noted on your handout, is homosexual relationships among soldiers, where we have the don't ask, don't tell policy in our military, There it was strongly encouraged among several ancient peoples. The Greeks were one of them, and there's evidence of some of it among the Romans as well. Now, homosexuals is listed, whereas in fact it has a particular leaning to. The word there means male plus bed. It's a compound word. And that likewise is a euphemism for one who took on a male role in a sexual relationship So you have two different aspects of that listed here. Now he proceeds on to the last half of the list, which is non-sexual, and that's thieves and the covetous.

The sin of thievery was certainly considered that among the Jews. In the Roman Empire, unless you did a capital theft, which was theft against the Roman Empire, A theft, now this is kind of hard for us to comprehend, a theft was purely a civil matter. You were responsible for protecting your own stuff and if you had something stolen, that's your fault. And you have to go resolve it with somebody in a lawsuit type action. And so that was the general thought. didn't get caught in a criminal act unless you took something that belonged to the Roman Empire.

And in addition to that, not here in Corinth, but in Ephesus and among a few other places, they actually had safety zones for thieves. Around Ephesus temple, the main temple of Artemis there, if you could get within a bow shot, if a thief could get within a bow shot of the temple of Artemis, Before they got caught, they were free. The theft was fine. And so anyway, there were places that were just rampant for thieves, because as long as you could get away from it without getting caught, no problem. It was not a criminal issue. Some pagans even prayed to steel with more skill. They, of course, prayed to their pagan god for that. But they actually looked to their pagan gods to help them to steal better. Right behind that, and this gets to motivation, is the covetous. There's not actually, in the Greek text, there's not actually this definite article, so he just says covetous, covetous ones.

This one is a sin that is in the heart and actually in the mind. I put the pictures here of a brain and a heart. It basically says, I want what you've got. It starts off with an I, me, my, mine. Coveting isn't initially expressed outwardly, but what are the things that it comes out as as an outward expression? It comes out as theft, perhaps adultery. It comes out as, we'll see shortly, swindling. There might be a few other things, but certainly those come out.

The Jews viewed coveting as sin. As a matter of fact, one of the Ten Commandments among them. But the Gentile pagans did not. They looked at it as perfectly acceptable for you to want what somebody else has. The next thing on his list here are drunkards, revilers, and swindlers. Certainly the Jews strongly discouraged drunkenness and looked down upon it.

Among the Gentile pagans, it was only a problem if it was a functional problem. But they actually would have major festivals in which large portions of the population, virtually all, would get substantially drunk. There was a worship of the Roman god Bacchus, or the Greek equivalent, Dionysus. And something else not mentioned here was there was also the use of basically herbals, drugs, mixed in with wine, and that's the pharmakia, where we get our word pharmacy, that is listed in Galatians and in Revelation. Now, I'm not sure why I put this graphic up here. It just caught my eye. Revilers. This word referred to someone using aggressively abusive speech.

This is what Paul warns the believers against in Ephesians. And the next one, swindlers. This was a thief who stole not by grabbing something, not by stealth, but rather pretended, faked, feigned a personal or business transaction and then took the other person in that faked transaction. So swindlers. And there were quite a few of them. And swindling was not illegal. Again, just like theft. Not illegal. You just had to protect yourself because there was no police going to help you with that. Nonetheless, Paul listed it as, this is one of the sins that's characteristic of those who are unrighteous.

Now one of the things that showed up, and you've likely noticed it in Courtney's reading, it also shows up in a couple of the slides that we've had there in front of us. Paul wrote this kind of message about not inheriting the kingdom of God, not only in this passage, but also in Galatians 5, when the works of the flesh are listed, and also in Ephesians 5, 3-5. So those passages bring out the same idea, not inheriting the kingdom of God.

Those who were or are unbelievers, who identity, remember because their identity is defined by what they do. That's who they are. Their identity is defined by what they do to have no part in the coming reign of Christ, in the coming kingdom of God. Even in our time now, that's still yet a future event. Conversely, we who believe will have a glorious part, in the coming reign of Christ. Those who are in Christ and not in their trespasses and sins can look forward to having a part in this coming reign of Christ. We will be at that time, as the church, the bride of Christ. Okay, now here's a key turning point.

Paul says, such were some of you. Here on page three of your handout. So what Paul was saying was that these believers in Corinth, and certainly as this was written, it would include us, included people who had been identified with and by these activities and lifestyles. These people, as unbelievers, were identified by these things, and we looked at a partial list of examples, by what they do. That's who they were. Now, what did he do?

He said, were some of you. Such were some of you. And he didn't say these specific ones were some of you. Such, meaning of this kind and character, were some of you. He's essentially giving a clue there. He has not given us a complete list. But he's saying such were some of you because maybe your particular issue as an unbeliever is not on the list.

This is of that kind. And such were, past tense. That's the key thing. These activities and lifestyles that defined and identified these people as the unrighteous, as unbelievers, are now shown as past tense. Such were some of you, he tells them. So how did this big change come about that he could say were? That he could put it in the past tense. He told them three verbs, and notice how he breaks it out.

He didn't say you were washed, sanctified, justified. He said you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. He identifies each one separately for emphasis. Paul wrote that these believers had been summarily washed, sanctified, and justified in those actions by God's doing. In other words, you were washed. You're the recipient of the washing. You were sanctified. You're the recipient of the sanctification. You were justified. You're the one who received that justification. God did it. What you did is believe. You're the one who receives these actions from God. Paul credits in this passage Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit for these actions upon the believers who had been so radically changed.

By Ephesians 1.3, we can also credit the Father. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. And he goes on to lay out all the things that have happened to those believers because they had come to a place of belief. Saints, he calls them.

The believers had first of all been washed. That is, they had been cleansed. When we have a baptism here, that's one of the things that's being pictured in the baptism. It doesn't accomplish the washing, except physically, but it indicates as a physical symbol the washing that has already taken place when that person believed.

Hebrews 10.22 is one that talks about washing as a completed past action, this cleansing as a completed past action for every person who believes. Next it says they've been sanctified. Now that's not a word we use a whole lot. Probably if you talk to people, you say, what's sanctified? Most people say, I don't know. But sanctified is set apart for God's purpose and made holy. That's what it is. That also is set as a completed past action. 1 Corinthians 1-2. It's laid out. That is a completed past action.

He told them that just after he got through saying, Hi, my name's Paul. You have been set apart and made holy for God's intended purpose. They've already been justified as well. He says that. Declared righteous. And that was by faith. Romans 5-1. That has already happened to them. They have been declared righteous by God. God is the one who does the declaring righteous. So we have it here as we saw in the introductory slide. You have been washed, sanctified, justified.

He lays this out. You as believers have had all these things done to you by God and all you did was believe. He lays that out. As a matter of fact, we've got an elective that's been going on for six months plus, where we're going through all the things, including these, all the things that happens when a person believes.

It's interesting, Christians are sort of born with instant amnesia. where Christians have all sorts of things that God has done and accomplished just because they believe but they know none of it yet. We're seeing an indication of what some of those things are here in this passage here this morning. One of the things to make clear here is God had brought about a radical, a radical spiritual change here.

These people from Corinth had been defined by the actions that they did. What they did habitually defined who they were. And so the unbeliever, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 3, was dead in his trespasses and sins. He's in them. He's in them.

Without Christ, they would have remained there. dead in their trespasses and sins, defined by those sins, in them positionally. Once these people believed, however, they were changed, washed, sanctified, and justified. The believer is in Christ's righteousness, no longer in the sins, no longer defined by what they once did. They were no longer in their trespasses and sins because they believed. They were positionally in Christ and in His righteousness.

God is the one who is credited, 1 Corinthians 1.30, with placing them and making them to be in Christ.

Now you have on page 3 of your handout this. You are dead in your trespasses and sins. You are in them. And among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh. Now, you might say, but wait a minute, how come you have dead and lived? This word lived is not talking about having spiritual life. It's a word that means interacted. You interacted from the position of the lusts of the flesh. They were in them positionally.

Colossians 2.13 has a similar message here.

Christ is talking to the unbelieving Jews and He says to them, therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, positionally in them. For unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins, positionally in them. What's the only way out of being positionally in those sins? He says it right here. He told them face to face. Believe. That's the way out. That's the way out.

The believer's position is in 2 Corinthians 5.21. He made Him, Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf. He was our replacement. So that we might become the righteousness of God. Where? In Him. In Him. We, when we believed, were placed in Christ, no longer defined by the sins that once called the shots, no longer defined by the actions that typified us.

So, what's the basic need? This is key. What's the basic need? The unbeliever's basic spiritual problem will not be resolved by changing the behavior or behaviors. Whether the sins are large or small in our eyes, they will still be in their sins. The unbeliever will be.

To make a comparison here, it would be like us saying, if I can just get him to stop chewing on the shoes, he won't be a dog anymore. Right? Making him stop chewing on the shoes doesn't keep him from being a dog, okay? Changing the behavior doesn't change the basic character of the animal.

Similarly, the unbeliever is not changed fundamentally by stopping or starting any behavior. Now, so the unbeliever does not have the basic need to be a nice unbeliever. That's not the basic need. The unbeliever does have a basic need to believe and so to be placed into Christ and no longer defined by their actions.

Now, comparing sins and righteousness, just to get the point across here, the unbeliever is defined as in trespasses and sins. The trespasses and sins define who they are. That is their position, that's their identity. For the believer, we are in Christ's righteousness. We have been placed into Christ and are therefore in His righteousness as well. Contrast to the sins, to the trespasses and sins. The difference between these positions is merely this, belief. Belief. That's it.

Now, in order to underscore a key point, we have here the presentation of the gospel summarized in 1 Corinthians 15, 1-11. I'd like to ask Gene to come up and help us with something, and I'd like you to pull out this special handout from your bulletin here. This is a one-page handout entitled, An Approach to Giving the Gospel, and I called Gene up here to help us because as we look at this, one of the things that we encounter, yeah, here's the gospel. It basically says Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again. Do you believe it? That's salvation. It's that simple.

But, how do you talk to people about that? Is it something that if you maybe get some weight lifting behind you, you can kind of force the issue? Maybe a little bit of martial arts? Well, what do you think, Gene? You think I've had martial arts. Oh, okay. Well, I was hoping you could help us. Help us here. All right. We live in a concerned new day, a dead place. There's souls out there. There's a fight ready to be picked. Others have been sowing. We need to not only sow, but also to see that this fruit can be picked. The fields are ripe unto harvest.

It's still a day of grace, folks. We're waiting on the rapture, but it's not here yet. And let me say, you know, our pastors, they say, glorify God in your body. But how can we glorify Him? Well, one way, certainly, is to bear fruit. He says, herein is a Father glorified that you bear much fruit. Now, we know the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, and so on. But there is the fruit of Solon. And the Lord, I think, wants us to all be souls. We may not all be evangelists, but we can sow the word. And there is a crown for the soul in his crown. And to be honoring the Lord Jesus, not us. But there's no set approach, as those of you who have been soul winning, you know. There is no one way. But we need to learn how to break up the foul ground. We need to learn that if we don't sow anything, we're not going to get it. We have a wonderful tomato plant at home. And man, it's got fruit coming, and it's such a joy to see that. And let me tell you, sowing is a joy. And it gives us an inner joy.

And so the Lord Jesus said, no man can come to me except the Father drawn in. We have to realize it's not us, but Him working through us. And so we need to be in communion with Him and fellowship with Him, and then prayer. And we're not going to talk about this today, but Abraham's servant is a great example of one going after the bride.

And us, we can use that example for reaching others. Now notice that getting started is what we're talking about a little bit here. The hardest part about evangelism is getting started and then the closure. And so today we're going to talk about getting started. And so I have come up with this word coal. Somebody, one time I heard these four words and I thought, I've got to remember them. How am I going to remember it? So I turned it around to coal. I don't know how it was originally. So anyhow, there is no particular order to this. And so, as you'll see, like with Abraham's servants, he did not do the compliment.

But you see the other three characteristics in his approach to Rebecca. It's a tremendous story. We'll be getting into that. I can't wait. And so, compliment. You know, find something, if you can, an honest compliment. You know, Maya, that's a beautiful cross you have on today. You know, if it is beautiful, most, most crosses look pretty beautiful or gold or whatever. And then just see something to compliment. I was going door to door one day and I noticed this lady had beautiful flowers. I mean, they're just gorgeous.

And of course, I went up to the door, knocked, and she came to the door. I said, you know, you have the most beautiful yard and the flowers. She stepped right out of the door, came out, and boy, she was talking like crazy. You know, the definition of a boar is somebody that talks when, you know, they talk about themselves. When you want to talk about yourself, I let her talk. And then it gave me a chance to get into the gospel.

And then, so, observe things. Be observant. That's what we're going to see in Abraham's servant, his servant, and just see what's going on. Ask questions and learn to listen. You know, we talk too much sometimes. We need to learn to listen to people. My wife's a great listener and she keeps telling me I need to listen more to her. So anyhow, but slow to speak and quick and swift to hear and slow to speak.

All right. So once this person starts talking about something, for instance, yesterday, we are having our arbor put in over our back deck. And so we have this young man, 35 years old, single man, and I found out a lot of things about him by asking questions.

I did compliment him on the fact that his work was looking really, really good. And then I observed, one day he said, the first day he said something like, hell no, about something. The next day, yesterday, Bev and I were out on the porch, or on the deck talking with him, And she said to him, well, do you, she said, do you pay your workers when they work on Saturday? Do you pay them extra, overtime, in other words? And he said, God, no. But he didn't say it quite with that term the way I did.

He took God's name, you know. I said to Bev, you know, this man, young man, must be, he must be spiritual. So I said, do you go to church anywhere? And what Catholic church? And then I've been to the vineyard, he said, but, you know, he didn't care too much for that or something to that effect. And so I said, well, you know, do you think there's a heaven or hell?

He said, you know, I've thought about that. I'm working this construction work. I'm a little fearful, you know. I mean, he says, somebody says I've got the cat of nine lives because I've, you know, I've had some accidents. And Aaron would know about that, right? All this construction, you climb these ladders. So anyhow, I'm trying to get this short, two hours worth, right? I'm short. Okay. Anyhow.

It's a great story. This young man, I said, why would you go to heaven? And this is part of the questions we have. Why do you think God would let you into heaven? He said, well, my good works will outweigh my bad works. I said, and so you don't want to answer anything right there, you know, usually. And so you let them do all the talking. You see, these are diagnostic questions we have down here, these spiritual questions. They're diagnostic. The first ones, you might say, the coal is secular. And then the next is spiritual. And so you don't maybe use all of those things.

In this case, I jumped right into about heaven because, you know, he had brought up spiritual things. And so then I said, well, if there's anything about what you believe about how to get to heaven, would you want to know? And he was very positive. I mean, he was fruit ready to be ripe. I mean, ripe ready to be picked. And it was just so thrilling just to see the Lord working. My hair started raising up. And I thought, this man is ready to be pulled. You know, it's red, red tomato. And so, he was very positive. I went on and gave him the gospel. That it's not by works of righteousness, which we do, it's not our good works, but it's what Christ has done. And I gave him several passages, you know, to help him.

He already realized, I said, you know, Romans 3.23 and so on. And we'll be getting into that later, I think. But the point is, he was ready to be picked. And, you know, You just got to show interest in people. You know, some of us, you know, all seek their own and not the things of Christ Jesus.

Well, let me get something straight here. What you're suggesting is that you're actually asking people to give permission. Yes, there is no argument to this approach. There is no argument. You know, if you see a negative feature when you say that first question even, are you interested in spiritual things? and you see that most people have some kind of spiritual interest. Or sometimes I say, do you have any church home? And you know, there's no argument.

I don't think, the only problem I ever ran into was one time I asked a Jehovah Witness, if what you believe is not the right way to go to heaven, or to go to not heaven, because I don't think they're the ones who believe in heaven. They think only the 144,000 are going to heaven. It's too late for that. So anyhow, when I said, if what you believe is not true, would you want to know?

He said, no. So that was the end of that one. He didn't want to know the truth. But the idea with this approach is you're essentially wanting people to give you permission to give the gospel. That's it. That's it. And so you're never being pushed. It's not so scary, you know, because, you know, our fear is that people are going to reject us. And that's a hard set. But with these questions, I find it's very easy to talk to people without any problems. Good. Well, we'll go on more about this. Thank you ever so much. Yes. OK. Lord be magnified. OK.

We're going to continue on here and you have on page four of your handout, 1 Corinthians 6.12. This is a principle personalized. That's the way we see it here in this passage. Everything is permissible for me. And I've quoted here from the NIV for the reason that it doesn't say, you know, everything is lawful, but it says everything is permissible, which is closer to what the original intent was.

Paul puts everything in 1 Corinthians 6.12 regarding himself. He personalizes the truth. There he says, not everything is beneficial and I will not be mastered by anything.

Farther on in 1 Corinthians 10.23, he says there, and here's where he generalizes the principle, everything is permissible. He doesn't say for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive. I hope they're treating those kids okay.

1 Corinthians 6.13. This is where Paul lays out this truth.

See, the Greeks, they thought, you know, food's for the stomach, and stomach for food, and they used that same equivalent to talk about their passions and appetites, sexually speaking. And he says, look, that whole perspective does not have the Lord in it, okay? And so what Paul does is he takes what the Greeks had used as sort of a proverb among themselves, and he says, this needs to have God's perspective in it. Additionally here, they had also created a separation in their thinking. The Greeks thought that, well, there's the spiritual realm and the physical realm, and whatever you do in the physical realm doesn't really connect to the spiritual realm. And Paul says, not so fast. The Greeks created the separation, but what he does is tie them together. He says each of these things, food and the passions and appetites of the body, those are to be spiritually considered. What's the spiritual context? What does God think? So he took it the opposite direction of the rest of the culture.

Next in verse 14, as Christ was raised, so we shall be raised. Believers have been made to be in Christ. That's what we picture here, in Christ and with Christ, in this drawing. And that, having been baptized into Christ, is what accounts for the radical change placed into him. As Christ was raised, physically, so we, having been identified with him, We're raised with him. We can walk in newness of life now and one day have a physical body like his.

In verses 15 through 18, what he says in here is, who you are is now all about Christ. The believer is all about Christ having been joined to Christ. The believer, that is the one who has been joined to Christ and is in Christ, Now he makes a comparison.

To take the believer who is now joined to Christ and then connect yourself up with a prostitute, because remember in Corinth they had a problem with prostitution right there in the pagan temples. He says that creates a spiritual monstrosity. When the believer who is connected to Christ connects himself with a prostitute, this monstrosity is Christ is joined to the prostitute. The spiritual monstrosity is what he illustrates here. The key point, Christ is a co-participant in everything we do. That's key. Christ is the co-participant in everything we do as believers.

Finally, the last two verses here, we have as the title there, you are a temple, who paid for it? You're a temple, who paid for it? Or do you not know that your body is a temple? In chapter three he said you as a church body are a temple. Here he says your individual body is a temple. The Holy Spirit dwells in you. Then he comes to this truth. You are not your own for you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. The very next chapter he's going to underscore that truth.

And what we have here in the song that we sang right at the outset is this idea that we are a living sanctuary. The song prays about preparing us. In fact, in our position in Christ, we are already a sanctuary. We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. This talks about helping us to grow and live out. that position that we have as God's sanctuary.

In 1 Corinthians 7.23, you are bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men. Again, here's the repetition principle that we alluded to earlier. Another reason for each believer to carefully consider what's done in the body. We are not our own. We have been bought with a price. I don't have my own say. First Corinthians 6, 9 through 20, we've been joined, indwelt, and bought.

That's the message that comes out here in these verses. All believers have been joined to Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, and bought with the price of Christ's life, all by the Father's intent and direction. The entire Trinity is involved. in who you are as a believer.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage here, we do give thanks for what you have done, the radical change. We've seen brief allusion to a couple of trios. of things that you have done and accomplished in our lives. And we ask that you bring these truths to heart and make them at home, Lord, as we live things out. We entrust you with these truths in our very lives and hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.