Glorify God In Your Body! Series

Sermon Brief

Date Written: May 28, 2014

Date Preached: June 01, 2014

Where Preached: OPBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Series Title: A Series in 1 Corinthians

Sermon Title: Glorify God in Your Body!

Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 [ESV]

TEXT:

Essence of the Text: Paul challenged believers in Corinth to bring glory to God thru living spiritually disciplined lives.

Essence of the Sermon: We are challenged to glorify God thru living spiritually disciplined lives.

Main Question(s) of the Sermon: What does it mean to have freedom ‘in Christ’? Does it mean I can do anything?

Applicable Objective of the Sermon: The hearers will know:

Freedom in Christ must be fettered with disciplined spiritual living

The 3 spiritual realities for spiritually disciplined living!

The boundaries Paul sets forth for living a spiritually disciplined life!

Introduction:

Turn with me to 1 Cor 6:12-20… I will be reading from that passage in the ESV in just a few moments…

This week as I was reading and studying this letter from Paul I thought, WOW! Paul’s heart expressed thru this letter to the Corinthians just keeps inspiring me!

Paul loved these believers SO very much that he held NOTHING back when it came to their spiritual condition! Many believe he was too harsh with them… BUT I disagree.

What many may believe to be ‘harsh words’ on Paul’s part were actually the truth spoken in love to help them see the error of their ways & follow Christ as Paul had instructed them & as Paul had been an example for them!

Have you ever come across a situation where you believd you should try to stop or caution about something. You knew what was being done was not illegal but you could see that it was NOT going to lead to anything good? Well anyone with children can attest to that – am I right parents? However, I am speaking more on a brother to brother level here…

When you tried to step in and give your advice, did you hear something like: “Hey man you can’t stop me, this is a free country!” To which you really had no answer other than, well ok if you want to be disappointed/stupid/get hurt…then GO FOR IT!

This is exactly the situation Paul was dealing with in this particular part of this letter to the Corinthian church. A situation where the believers were headed down a road that would lead to nothing good… and Paul did not want them to travel down that road!

What Paul was dealing with was a very pointed and brutally honest subject! And quite frankly it is a subject the church has always shy’d away from & that is the area of sexual sin!

There! I said it… I said SEX in church! Lightening did not strike and the walls did not crumble! You see SEX is NOT an ugly word, because it is something God created FOR His creation.

It is something God created beautiful and our sinful nature and this evil world has taken it, perverted and twisted it to become what we see portray today! This issue is that the church today seems to view sex thru the lens of the world & THAT is why MOST Christians AND churches choose to avoid this subject!

I am here to tell you that Sex is NOT what the world wants you to believe it to be! Sex was NOT created by God as a casual thing that held no meaning… it was created as a sacred event that carries deep spiritual meaning along with the obvious physical intimacy! So, when we pervert God’s original plan… we only damage ourselves and those around us!

Now we need to understand that even though Paul is directing most of this section toward sexual sin, I believe there is a deeper truth to what we can take away from this passage. I believe Paul uses the issue of sexual sin as a spiritual object lesson or vivid illustration of our sinful hearts.

You see, like BACK in Paul’s day, today we live in a world where they believe EVERYTHING is permissable & everything should be allowed, no matter how awful it sounds or unnatural it is…

For example, in our world today, for the most part, homosexuality is viewed as just another ‘normal’ in society… like the single parent household. Both are considered to be the ‘new’ normal and for the most part, neither are viewed as abnormal or against nature.

Society is trying to make us believe that a person is born homosexual (that is in their genetic code) and that they have NO choice in the matter.

But this attitude does not stop with just homosexuality, but extends to just about any part of life! This type of outlook seeks to remove all responsibility from the human soul…