My Body is About Him

1 Cor 6:18-20

How many of you have ever house sat for someone, or had someone house sit for you? I have done it a few times for different people. For a couple of Christmas breaks during college I house sat for my aunt and uncle while they took an extended vacation. Imagine what their surprise would have been if they came home and I had decided to make the place reflect “me” a little more. You know, getting rid of the furniture and bringing in milk crates, painting the walls to fit what I like. Taking down the art work and putting up posters of …. Disney characters and rock groups. Insane right. No one would have the right to do that to someone else’s house just because they were house sitting.

What if I was staying at their house and just trashed it. Never did a dish, left all the laundry lying around the house, broke the furniture, do you think they would be a little upset?

When you house sit for someone, you have an understanding that it isn’t your house and you have a responsibility to take care of it for them. We all understand that. So why do we forget that we are house sitting our bodies for God? “…you are not your own; you were bought at a high price. Therefore honor God with your body”

PRAYER

I. My Body, My Temple

A. Human Billboards

1. I’m not really against tattoos. I don’t get it, but I don’t think tattoos in themselves are wrong.

2. What I do have a problem with is what tattoos people put on their bodies.

3. What seems so cool in your teens or early 20’s is hugely embossing later in life.

a) In college one of my best friends lived close to the school and so I got to know his parents some. His dad always wore long sleeve shirts even in the summer. I didn’t think too much of it as he was a respected businessman and an elder in the church. When my friend got married up in Valpo, we stayed at a hotel there that had a pool. For the first time, I saw his dad without a shirt at the pool and had a hard time keeping my chin from hitting the ground as I saw the tattoos that he usually covered up. He had spent several years in the Marines when he was younger and had tattoos that reflected a man who wasn’t exactly Godly in his youth.

b) He had to live with what he did to his body as a youth, and it didn’t represent the faith that he had later in his life.

4. On the other side of that coin was a family I worked with as a youth minister. The dad was an elder in the church and had a very interesting view of this passage. He was so determined that his kids not abuse this passage that his girls couldn’t get their ears pierced, paint their nails or even let someone write on their skin because that would be desecrating the temple of God.

5. Then you have the whole healthy lifestyle controversy. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen very overweight preachers preaching against the sin of smoking!

6. So what is Paul getting at with this passage?

7. What does it mean that our bodies are the temple of God?

B. Human Temples

1. The instant image that would come to mind of any pagan or Jew when temple was mentioned was the dwelling place or worship place of their god.

2. It was a building that was treated with great respect by the adherents of that faith.

3. Paul reminds us that our bodies are a dwelling place and worship place dedicated to God.

4. My body, then, is about God.

5. How I use it is about God.

6. How I MISuse it is also about God.

7. READ Rom 6:12-13

II. Honor God With Your Body

A. Temples of Sin?

1. One of today’s mantras is “It’s my body”

a) It’s my body and I can do with it whatever I want.

b) If I want to sleep with all kinds of people, that’s my choice.

c) If I want to have sex with prostitutes it’s nobody’s business but mine.

d) God’s response is “no it’s not, it’s mine”

2. We aren’t too different from the Corinthian Christians that you find in the Bible.

a) In 1 Cor 6:12 – Paul quotes one of their sayings “everything is permissible”

b) They lived in a very sexually permissive society. If you could think of it, you could do it.

c) Sounds a lot like America today doesn’t it?

d) That thinking had even invaded the church.

e) Somewhere along the line these early Christians came up with the theology that their physical body was different than their spiritual body, so whatever they did to their bodies had no affect on their spirituality.

f) So they could be as sexually immoral as they wanted and not sin.

3. Paul ends that theology very quickly.

4. Your body is a part of Christ.

5. When you sin sexually, you are taking a part of Christ with you.

6. You flee sexual immorality so you can use your body to honor God.

B. Sex and Christianity

1. God intended sex to be a wonderful thing that builds intimacy and permanency in marriage.

a) In 1999 a study that claimed to be the most comprehensive study of sex in American culture was release and it contained a very surprising fact. Religious women had significantly higher levels of sexual satisfaction than non-religious women!

b) God created sex.

c) He authored Song of Solomon

d) He made it a wonderful experience in the right setting.

2. God is not anti-sex

3. God is anti casual sex.

4. Did you know that research has found that almost every empire that has fallen did so because of moral decay from the inside?

5. Enemies beat them because they were so wrapped up in themselves that they didn’t do what was best as a nation.

6. Most of that selfishness was based around sexual decadence.

C. Our bodies are God’s tools

1. Our bodies were given to us to honor God.

2. We are his tools.

3. Lucado says “ Your body is God’s instrument, intended for his work and his glory.”

4. So does that mean we need to be as physically fit as possible to be God’s tools?

5. Not necessarily, Paul tells us in 1 Tim 4:8 that being physically disciplined is fine, but it’s more important to be spiritually disciplined.