Moral Purity

Sermon

Moral Purity

I Corinthians 6:9-11

Why would Paul assault the Corinthians with a catalog of sins that would keep them out of heaven. His words do not dance around their sinful behavior, but make it crystal clear that those living immoral lives were destined for hell.

He had to be direct with his language to the Corinthian church. He was not attempting to win a popularity contest by telling them what they wanted to hear. He told them what they needed to hear.

The Corinthian believers had lived morally bankrupt lives in a society conditioned to believe that illicit sex was an act of worship. Their temple to the love goddess Aphrodite housed 1,000 male and female prostitutes. A Friday night for them meant dinner at a local restaurant and consorting with a prostitute in the evening hours—all in the celebration of love.

Just as our society continues to sink into the immoral abyss of fornication, adultery and homosexuality, the Corinthians had already sunk. The cancer of homosexuality riddled the ancient world. This unnatural love was practiced by so great a man as the philosopher Socrates. Shockingly, fourteen out of fifteen of the Roman emperors were homosexuals. Emperor Nero had taken a boy called Sporus as his wife. Later, Nero’s perverted sexual appetite led him to marry a man named Pythagorus who he claimed as his husband. How confused and perverted could one man be !

Making a case for moral purity among the Corinthians Christians had to be part of Paul’s message in such a morally twisted world. They lived in a society that had taken sex—a God-created act meant for pro-creation and the expression of love within marriage and turned it into a debased form of recreation.

As we turn the pages of history to modern America, we have the same ignorance and outright hostility to the Bible’s commandments for moral purity. The self-made gods of our day call the Scriptures old fashioned, outmoded, and out of date.

We’ve evolved; we’re smarter, wiser than the God of the Bible. That’s foolishness! We’ve devolved; we’ve learned nothing from history. We see our young people sucked down into sewers of sin; our homes coming apart at the seams; children without mothers or fathers in the same home; and venereal disease and AIDS killing thousands.

Illicit sex and out-of-wedlock births has always created social, psychological, economic, and emotional problems. Our liberal brothers prefer to preach birth control over abstinence believing that will diminish out-of-wedlock births. Free condoms and other means of birth control under Obama-care will do no good for a teenage audience who don’t even consider making their beds or picking up after themselves, let alone taking time in the middle of their passionate embracing to think about birth control. Birth control has been available through planned parenthood’s public health clinics for more than 25 years, yet the pre-marital pregnancy rate has skyrocketed. Honestly, is the way to solve a problem giving in to it or preaching against it? Besides, there is no birth control that can prevent STD’s, which can be transmitted any day of the month.

Statistics show astronomical growth in sexual permissiveness and its attendant social problems in America since the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.

Couples Living Together:

YEAR TOTAL

2000 5,500,000

1997 4,000,000

1995 3,700,000

1990 2,856,000

1980 1,589,000

1970 523,000

1960 439,000•

(1 ) Sex before marriage, a rate increase of 25,000% since 1960

(2) In 1960’s, one in 50 teens had a STD. Now over 1 in 4 do. That's an

increase of more than 1250% of infected teens.

(3) Sexually active girls are 2 times more likely to commit suicide than abstinent

girls

(4) Sexually active boys are 7 times more likely to commit suicide than abstinent

boys

A. What are the causes of such an increase in immorality in the last 50 years?

(1) Attitude of Parents—Many parents can’t wait for their children to grow up to make their own choices. We see babies and toddlers with pierced ears and tattoos.

• Parents take kids on dates at age 10; they end up going steady at 13; some

are married before 17; and they are divorced before they’re old enough to

vote.

• Parents can push kids or allow kids into situations that they’re not

emotionally or mentally capable of handling

• Parents need to straighten up with some good old-fashioned discipline and

teaching in the home.

(2) Failure of Liberal Clergy—Some preachers are fearful people will leave the

church if they say, “The Bible says.” Dismissing Biblical commandments

on moral purity, removes the ultimate authority over man’s behavior—God

Himself

• One preacher speaking at a girl’s college in the chapel said, “Sex is good;

sex is fun. Premarital intercourse is not bad or dirty; it can be beautiful.”

• Can you imagine a virgin girl taught to wait for marriage hearing that kind of