God and Your Body: Why This Series

My name's Mike Barry. I'm one of the staff pastors here at Cornerstone, and it's my great privilege to bring the word of God this morning. I printed up some extra kids' notes. The sermon insert that you have is blank, so the adults actually have to work.

but I think there's 30 extra. Kids' notes. So if you want to be a kid this morning, we'll let 30 extra people be kids and they could slip over there and grab the kids' notes. They have more like fill-ins.

also, our discussion group leaders for care groups, there are discussion questions down here in the front row. won't have any problem at all if you walk up here and grab one of these right here in front of Brian. that'll help you with discussion later this afternoon. You guys, I'm sure many have had this experience, the, the culture of high schools has been around, since the early part of the 20th century.

And particularly since around the 1960s or so, you've seen this phenomena of different cultures that reside on high school campuses, right? If you grew up in the 1960s, you'd walk around and you'd probably see the jocks hanging out over here and the hippies over there. I was going to high school in the 80s and so when I walked on to my high school campus, everybody kinda had their little area that they hung out in. Right?

We had the the metal heads over here, right next to the stoners. And sometimes they intermixed. You had like the band geeks. I was like a band geek.

And they, they hung out normally in the band room. And even within the band, there was different cultures, right? I was part of the low brass section, which you don't want to be part of the low brass. It's, it's just a bad, bad culture.

And then there's the drummers, I think low brass is the, is the worst of the band geeks. I don't know why that is. It seems to be true in every band., and then you've got, those are part of student council. You've got the jocks, and everybody knows where the down and outers, the total geeks and rejects hang out.

And then there are people that just, move between cultures, right? but what is it if you are a brand new, if you're a new kid to a high school campus and you walk on that campus fresh, what is it that helps you identify right away, who the different cultures are? Yeah, it's largely how they look. It's largely what they choose to do with their body.

How is, what's their hairstyle? what clothing, clothing are they wearing? What, what are they putting on their clothes? How are they walking?

it's interesting, I saw this as a public school teacher, you would see, kids come up 7th, 8th grade, and you could kinda, you could tell when they had joined a certain group because all of a sudden their walk would change sometimes and even like the types of words and the way they would speak would change. I had, I didn't know. I, I grew up in Orange County in Anaheim and, went to the beach a lot, especially in the summer, and I had no idea that I had a distinctive way of speaking, being from Orange County until I got out to the Inland Empire and the Inland Empire people out here, even though we're very close, they just didn't speak the way we did in Anaheim.

There were certain terms that I used in ways.

and when I was a little kid, I was, 5 years old, I've just been raised, by my mom, Who's from West Virginia. I had no idea until I started going to public school that I had a little bit of a West Virginia accent. And so I show up at public school and I'm. Hey, did you eat yet?

You can get something to eat? It just came out, that's just the way my mom talked and so that's the way I talked. So there, there's something about culture and I want to suggest this morning, we're gonna be beginning a series. And one of the things that I want to suggest right out the gate is that what we do with our bodies reflects our culture.

And our deepest held beliefs and attitudes. In fact, our cultural expressions may give the best indication of what we really value and believe. we can say that we intellectually assent to certain concepts, but if you really want to know what somebody believes in their heart, what do they really value, it's normally gonna come out in various cultural expressions. It's gonna come out with what they do with their body, what music do they listen to, how does that particular culture build its buildings, what art do they have?

those, the things that come out visually in a culture are largely the true reflections of what is really believed. And so I wanna, I wanna ask you guys a couple leading questions. what do you believe about your body? do you like your body?

Does God like your body? Why do you wear clothes? At all. Why are you wearing the particular clothes that you're wearing right now?

why did you bring your body to church today? There's all kinds of different places you could have taken your body. Why did you bring your body here? Why didn't you bring your body to San Manuel Casino?

That's an option, but you're here. Why do you come and worship? Why do you lift your hands in worship? Why do you choose not to lift your hands in worship?

Why do you speak the way that you do? Why do you choose certain terms? Why do you avoid certain words? I know that when I first became a Christian, one of the first things that I, I couldn't do anymore, at least without a clear conscience.

I just couldn't use a lot of language I used to use. I got saved at 14 and I remember the first time a bad word flipped, came out of my mouth when I was a new Christian and I was convicted right away. Before then, I could say all kinds of things, didn't bother me at all unless my dad was around, right? But why do we choose to avoid certain terms?

Why do we use certain terms? Why do you eat what you eat? Why do you not eat certain things? Why do you drink what you drink?

Why do you avoid drinking certain things? Why do you smoke what you smoke? Why do you avoid smoking certain things? These all have to do with things we do with our body.

They have to do with our culture. you've probably heard various phrases that you'll hear people use out in the culture, you hear some, people go and they're trying on some clothes and somebody will say, hey, if you got it, flaunt it. Is that an attitude that, that you have or that we should reflect? In our culture You hear people say, hey, it's my body.

I can do what I want with it. Is that, is that what the Bible says? Is that the way that we should carry ourselves?, Pastor Milton has been taking us through a series in Genesis, and then we've, had a springboard into marriage out of the Genesis series. Pastor Carlos has started a series on the Book of Ruth, and this morning I'm starting a series, on the body, a theology of the body.

If you guys were here for the last time I preached, I talked about. how we can do theology on purpose. And basically what we're gonna do over this series is we're gonna try to do theology on purpose in respect to the body. We're basically this morning, we're gonna be trying to answer 4 questions as an overview of this topic theologically.

And then as we hit each successive series topic, we're gonna try to apply that theology to practical questions concerning the body. And so since I preach about once every 2 months or so, this series will probably take about 5 years. No, it'll probably be about a year or so. let me just give a caveat before we jump into things is I am, I'm fully aware that some of the topics that we're gonna be talking about in this series, are going to hit sensitive areas.

There's no way that you can speak to 500 people. About some of the topics that we're gonna cover and not hit some sensitivities and not hit some things that you're gonna disagree with. But my big hope for this series is to give us a paradigm on how to think through these issues, not necessarily to tell you what you must do on every single issue, but to encourage every one of us to think biblically and theologically about what we do or don't do with our bodies. and so if you disagree with me on a certain point, That's, that's, that's fine.

I'm not saying that everything we're gonna talk about, you're gonna agree with, but I'm gonna do my best, and then you can hold me accountable on this. I'm gonna do my best to tell you when I think this is what God's word clearly says, and these are what I think are some implications from the text. And I'll even tell you when I think this is what the berries do, but this is not what I think everybody should do. I think it's important for us when we hit certain topics in scriptures, especially when we hit the, the quote unquote gray areas that we allow for categories where there's clearly theological truth and overarching truth, but there's also applications that may fit into this category where it's what the berries do because I'm the head of my household and I'm responsible for God to lead my home in the way that I think is the wisest.

But I also need to teach my children that just because the berries do it this way, doesn't mean that everybody in the church has to do it this way because this is an area that is somewhat removed from the immediate text. Does that make sense? And so if I'm not careful to do that with my children, then our family can go out and start judging other people based on thoughts that we have that are removed from the text. Maybe in my mind are the wisest for us, but they may not be derived immediately from the text.

And so I want my, I want my family hopefully to, to walk away. With those types of application. And, and if you're your parents, the parents in this room, how that works. You say certain things, you try to give the qualification, what do your kids do?

They go out and they chop everybody's heads off with what you just said, right? That's just what younger Christians do with certain theological truths. You try to just help them grow in wisdom. So here's basically what we're calling this series is God in your body.

In your bulletin, it says a little something different. I was reading the text and I had to change the title. God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 will be talking a lot from this particular passage today and also from the series, but Paul says in part of this text, you are not your own.

For you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. That's gonna be a key text for us during this series. This morning, we're gonna try to answer 4 introductory questions and the kids can just fill this stuff in as we go. The adults, you guys actually have to Write it all out.

It's gonna be really tough. so here's, we're gonna ask the question, why, how, what, and where? Who, what, when, why, how, where? No, why, how, what?

And where, and so let's get to the why. Which is basically just why I study this topic. We've hit it a little bit in the introduction. But I want to suggest a couple of things as to why I believe we should stay this topic.

Number one, Cause I'm interested in it. Right? I've been studying this for a while and, I've been locked and loaded for a while and I'm ready to preach it. and so it's always fun to preach something that you are excited about.

but more than that, the, that's just a joke, you don't have to write that down. The, the Bible just says a lot about the body. If you just survey the scriptures, just go on one of your Bible programs, type in the word body, and just see how many times this body comes up. And just think through, your mind, if the Bible very well, it's the body comes up all over the place.

So we're gonna talk about it here in just a little bit. And so the body is something that God cares about, and so we should care about it. And what we do with our bodies is something that it has a huge impact on us as Christians, where we fit in the culture, where we fit in this church, and so it's something that we need to talk about. secondly, back to the introduction, there's a theologian, philosopher, Henry Van Till, apologist.

has this, quote, he says, Culture is religion externalized. Culture is religion externalized. And so we need to talk about the body and we need to have a theology of the body because what we do with our body is reflective of our culture. And our culture is really giving us the true sense and direction of our religion.

again, we can say, Lord, Lord, have I not done, but really, it's what we do in this body that determines the true intents and direction of our heart, right? Jesus says it's out of, out of the mouth, the heart speaks out of the abundance, the, the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. If somebody's eye is clear, his whole body is clear. If you're having trouble with lust, Jesus refers to the body.

there's just, the body is what reflects our culture. So culture is religion externalized. If you really want to know what somebody believes in their religion, Look at what they do with their body. it's, it's why, Christian missionaries, as, as, as Christianity developed.

In the Middle East and then began to spread. into the West and into Europe and into the British Isles, you saw a real Conflict of cultures. unlike what some people will, will argue these days, Christianity is not the white man's religion. Christianity originated in North Africa and in the Middle East.

And as people came to know Christ, it affected their culture and it affected decisions that they made about their bodies. And then as they began to spread out with the gospel and they came to white Europe, what was white Europe doing at that time? They were a bunch of pagans that were running around naked in the forest, worshiping Thor, cutting up their bodies, mutilating their bodies, living in sexual immorality, having babies out of wedlock, killing their babies. Just, just paganism.

And as Christianity began to move through Western Europe, things changed. People began to put on clothes. People began to stop killing their babies. People began to think about the importance of being faithful to their wife and to their husband.

And so Christianity had an immediate effect upon what Europeans were doing with their bodies and it's been true wherever the gospel has spread. It's also been true as the gospel has declined in cultures. We're living in the West now, what many people call basically a decline or a post-Christian era, and you see it reflected in how people treat their bodies today. You see clothing coming off, you see various practices, sexual immorality is at an all-time high, in, the United States.

Just the way, just, this last week in New York, there was a demonstration, an art demonstration of, of hundreds or I think 100 people out publicly naked being painted to express the beauty of their body and to express art. That's nothing more than a reflection of the pagan Romans and Greeks. Why do we have all these naked statues that we look at from the, from the Roman Greco Greco period? It's because the Greco-Romans did not have a value for clothing, did not have a theology of clothing, they valued the body in a certain way in their culture, and for them to have, for lack of a better word, statue pornography was perfectly acceptable, perfectly acceptable in the Greco-Roman world.

And we see a return. Back to those concepts and cultures that are largely rejecting Christianity. So culture is religion externalized. Francis Schaeffer has famously remarked, we mentioned this in the last sermon, that one gets a worldview like he catches the measles.

People don't just, most people in culture, we don't just sit down and think about, OK, what do I want my worldview to be? What do I really want my thought process to be about clothes? What do I, what do I want my thought process to be about food? What do I want my thought process to be about music and movies and things like that?

People just catch what the culture pumps out. That's the average person out there. And, I, I can just think back to myself, my own reflections, even as a Christian. in my band geek days, I dressed like a band geek.

But once my, once I got my first girlfriend, guess what changed? My clothing choices changed. And she liked long hair and so I grew my hair. My hair got down to about right here.

And you, you'd be amazed. It's like Ronald McDonald on steroids just kinda just flowing down. All of a sudden, I started wearing, and I know this may be shocking to you and I hate to put this image in your mind, all of a sudden I'm wearing tighter jeans. All of a sudden, I'm wearing rocker boots like Bono.

I've got this belt that was really long, hanging out, just hanging down my pants, wearing a shirt. I don't even remember what they call them anymore, but it was a popular shirt at that time where the shirt came down to just Just where it barely touches the belt line. So if you yawn a little bit. when you're younger, when you're in your early twenties and you do that little yawn, your girlfriend likes that, but, you get a little older and you make sure that you're wearing stuff like that.

Right. So, the culture cha, I, I, I, I didn't sit down and say, OK, I've got a girlfriend now. What, how should my theology of clothing change? No, it's just, it was a new environment, new culture.

Just before I knew it, I looked like a completely different person. I remember one of my leaders at Campster Save for Christ walking up to me. I had no idea what he meant at the time. Walked up to me after a meeting and he says, Mike, I know this is not the real you and the real you will come back someday.

I was like, what are you talking about? Just cause I'm trying to look like Bono? what's, what's wrong? but, we go through stuff like that, but it, it's all to make the point that we catch culture a lot of times like we catch the measles.

We're not real thoughtful about it. as an early 20 year old, I wasn't very thoughtful about what is my theology, how should this, how should I think about this? How should I, try to apply God's word. There's an author named Kevin Swanson says this, in many ways, culture is the best way to correctly identify a worldview.

People are not always truthful in their confessions. Thus, it's better to examine a man's culture than his stated beliefs. It's better to examine a man's culture than his stated beliefs. That's just so true.

And so that's, that's why I think we should study this topic. God's word talks about it all over the place. And, And, and our religion, everybody's religion gets visualized. It is externalized in our culture, in our choices and what we do with our body.

And as Christians, we just frankly need to be ready to take everything and subject it to Christ, right? the Bible is very clear that we want to capture every thought and subject it to the Lord Jesus Christ and say, Jesus, is this the way you want me to think? And is this the way you want me to act in this particular situation? And so it's just a wise thing to study something that the Bible talks about a whole lot.

And the Bible has a lot of opinions on. So let's talk about how And this is gonna set up a paradigm for the whole series. How should we study the topic? How should we study any topic, how should we study this particular topic on the theology of the Bible?

And I, there's a big idea I want you to write down and then I just want you to listen to everything else because if you try to write it all down, you're gonna come up to me afterwards and say, you talk too fast. I couldn't get it all down. Just write this down and then I just want you to listen. Right?

And then you can go back and you wanna go listen to it online later, you can. So how should we, how should we study the topic? Here's the big idea. In humble reliance upon God's authoritative, sufficient word.

I'm gonna say that a few times. In humble reliance upon God's authoritative sufficient word. In humble reliance. Upon God's authoritative, sufficient word.

That's how we should stay this topic. Let's crack that open. Don't worry about writing all this stuff down. So we wanna be humble.

We want to have a humble admission. That our knowledge and ability to perceive reality. Is marred A humble admission that our ability to perceive reality around us is marred. You and I are not in a place where we should have absolute trust in our own knowledge and our own ability to perceive reality.

And there's several reasons for that. One is because of our affinitude. We are finite. Isaiah 55:8 says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, says the Lord.

For as high as the heavens are higher than yours, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Why is that? Because God is infinite. And we are finite.

And so therefore, he knows all things, and we just frankly, don't. And so just to have a humble admission that he's the Creator and we're creatures. And so therefore, we can't possibly know all things. That right there should humble us and say, God, I want to know what you have to say.

By the way, that's not gonna change when you get to heaven, sin will be removed, but you'll still be finite. We'll all be finite. And so we'll still be learning from God for all of eternity. But we want to have humble reliance upon God's authoritative word, not just because of our affinitude, but also because of the fall.

That something has happened that we only know from the Bible since creation, and that's called the fall. And the fall had a profound effect upon our ability to perceive reality and also upon our moral nature and character. We even see this long after the fall, right before the flood in Genesis 6, Pastor Milton covered this. God makes this assessment, not just of a few human beings, but of the whole human race.

Genesis 6:5. Then the Lord saw That the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent. of the thoughts of his heart was only evil. Continually That's the Bible's assessment of mankind, not very positive.

But truth The earth also was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupt their way on the earth. And so what God determined to do, he decided to flood the entire earth and to save Noah and his family. Just imagine how wicked and evil and violent.

The earth had become. Obviously, man had that nature from the very beginning, from the fall, I should say from the fall, and by the time you get to this pre-flood era, it's just chaos. Think of all the, it's real popular to have these post-apocalyptic movies these days, right? Things are just an absolute chaos.

Just imagine that times 100, you're getting close to what it was like probably before the flood. And all because there was just evil was being expressed, people are living so much longer, no restraint, just crazy stuff. And so, so you have that with the fall, but even after the flood, here's God's assessment of Noah and his family and their progeny. God says in 8:21, the Lord smelled a soothing aroma, so he, he smells the sacrifice.

And so he's pleased. But then the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. So I'm gonna set aside this. A curse and punishment.

Although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. There's only 8 people alive on the planet at that point, right? So it's not like he's looking over at Idi Amin. he's, this is Noah and his kids.

their wives, his wife, and God's assessment is the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. That's just the effect of the fall. Jeremiah 17:9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know it?

What's the answer to that question? Who can know it? Only God, no one else, right? And so the Bible indicates that as we, as we come to a topic like this, we want to come in humble reliance upon God's authoritative word because we're finite.

And we've been affected by the fall, and we can't even know our own hearts. it's amazing to me, and I get, I'm not begging on you guys because I do this too, but it's somewhat amazing how that we can have such infinite trust in our own ability to perceive reality. It's amazing. I've been on, on this side, I'm, sometimes I'm, I'm sitting down with some friends that are trying to help me out with the conflict maybe I'm having and And I'm, I'm just absolutely convinced I'm right.

until the Holy Spirit starts to remind me, wait a second. You're still marred by sin. I've, I've sat down with just godly, godly people that I respect, that were involved in some situation. I, I, I love both of them.

I know they're godly people and they're absolutely convinced that they're right. How does that happen? Because we The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Not only that, there's a devil who's running around trying to seek whom he may devour.

And the devil is involved in deceiving and even Christians can be deceived. But we want to also have a humble reliance upon God's authoritative word, not just because humankind is finite, not just because humankind is affected by the fall, but also Christians have indwelling sin. as Christians, we could say, yeah, we know that human beings are wicked and we know that, human beings are affected by the fall. But I've been saved and I've been sealed and I've been filled with the Spirit.

Therefore, I don't have to worry about those sin perception issues that other people have to worry about. Well, the Bible would indicate differently. Romans 3. When Paul is setting up the idea that everybody is sinful, he starts talking about the Gentiles first, but then he refers to himself and all of the Jews who are believers in God, he says, are we better than they?

And what's his response? No. He says, what then? Are we better than they?

Not at all. And then listen to what he says there in Romans 3:9 and following, for we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There's none who seeks after God.

On our own, there is nobody who understands. Now, we can, we'll, we'll deal with like the addition to that later, that we have the Holy Spirit, we've been given his word and how does God illuminate us and so on and so forth. But even Paul is the apostle in Romans 7:21 and Pastor Milton's done a great job exposing that for our men and, he says this in 7:21, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. And so even as Christians, we have every reason to have a healthy, now listen to me, what, what I'm saying here, a healthy sense of self-doubt.

That doesn't mean we walk around, we're just always like, I just don't know. I have no idea and we're just gnostics. I'm sorry, agnostics, not gnostics, agnostics. We just don't think we can know any truth.

But there does need to be a healthy sense of self-doubt that I still have sin in dwelling me, dwelling inside of me that can hamper me. And there still is a devil that is seeking to deceive me, and he is seeking to devour Christians. And so we have to have a healthy sense of self-doubt and a sense of reliance upon God's word and a reliance upon understanding God's word in the community of God's people. There needs to be a humble appreciation also that God has revealed Himself.

So we have a, we want to be humbly reliant upon God's authoritative sufficient word. If God didn't reveal Himself, folks, we would be lost. But Deuteronomy 29:29 tells us that while the secret things belong to God, there's things that we just don't know about. The things revealed belong to us and our children, that we may obey them.

And so God has told us that he has revealed Himself. He's revealed Himself in his word, and he has also given us the ability to know what His word says so that we can obey it, us and our children. And so there's a humble appreciation that we bring saying, God, thank you for revealing yourself in your word, and I, I want to know what your word says. And we want to have a humble submission to God's word as authoritative, that because I'm finite, because I'm sinful, because sin still indwells me, God has revealed Himself.

And I look at his word and I say, God, your word is authoritative. Let God be true and every man a liar. If your word says it, if we can determine that your word says it. The Bible is just as authoritative as Jesus Christ was standing right here on the platform speaking, uttering from his lips.

He has, he has revealed himself in his written word. And so we come in humble reliance saying if God says it, we're going to apply it and believe it. And, and we want to study this topic with a humble recognition that not only is God's word authoritative, it's sufficient. what happens a lot of times is people will say, yeah, the Bible is, the Bible's great and all that, but the Bible doesn't talk about that issue.

So it really has nothing to say. You see this in the realm of psychology all the time. the Bible really doesn't talk about that particular psychological problem. And so the Bible has nothing to say about psychology.

Or, the Bible never mentions the word marijuana, so the Bible doesn't have anything to say about marijuana. The Bible never says talks about dinosaurs, so we can't really say anything about dinosaurs. The Bible doesn't really tell us exactly, what type of clothing to put on, so we really can't talk about clothing. You, you can just go on and on and on and trying to undercut.

In fact, it's, it's, in my opinion, it's one of the main things that you see people doing when they're trying to get to the position that they want to arrive at is they try to argue that the Bible just doesn't talk about that. Now, I'll admit to you when we talk about the Sophitzia scripture, here's what not not what we're talking about. We're not saying that the Bible speaks on absolutely every single topic in the universe and therefore it's sufficient to talk about every single topic.

the Bible says nothing about algebra.

So you don't need to go to the Bible to learn about algebra. Right? But I would go to the Bible to learn about why we have this thing called math and why there are absolutes. There is a theological background for math, but it's not gonna teach you about algebra.

The Bible's not gonna teach you how to fix your, fuel injection system. But the Bible is gonna help you understand the certain principles of, of driving and following the law and, and being a good Samaritan. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3:16 that that God's word is breathed out, it's inspired and it is, and it is profitable. That means the idea here is it's sufficient for all the different ways, all the ways that it's all everything that it touches upon.

There's a hymn that we sing, how firm a foundation you saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you he has said to you who for refuge that Jesus have fled. The reformers had this idea when they, when the reformers talked about the sufficiency of Scripture, part of what they understood and meant is that if the Bible talks about that particular topic, Then if you just study what the Bible says and try to practice it, you don't have to feel guilty about not trying to do something that's not in the Bible.

And you don't have to have your conscience marred by somebody that's trying to force something on you that's not in the Bible.

And yet, if it's in the Bible, we have the freedom to try to, to practice it and then call upon the Lord in repentance when we don't. That's part of what we mean by the Sophia scripture. It's a beautiful thing, really., I don't have to try to study every religion and every philosophy and just If, if, if that were the way that we had to live our lives, that we had to come into contact with every single writer on a particular subject, then only the rich who could travel all over the world, only the, the rich who could study all the different languages to read all of the different things in different languages could possibly hope to arrive at a position where they could confidently say, this is the way I should go.

But because God's word is sufficient, he's given us what we need in a book called the Bible.

And so we can study our theology of, of the body and we can limit ourselves to the Bible and we can say if, the Bible clearly talks about the body. And so if the Bible tells us certain things in here about how to eat, what we should eat, what we should drink, what we should not drink, how we should wear our clothes, how should we carry ourselves in our bodies, what we should do sexually and so on, what we should do with our bodies after they die. If the Bible talks about these things, we don't need to feel a legalistic obligation to practice or believe anything else outside of the Bible.

We can just say this is what God's word says.

I'm gonna limit myself to this. And if somebody else in the church or outside of the church says, hey, you really should do this with your body. And it's not in the Bible. You can say, God bless you.

I'm glad that works for you, but I'm, the Bible is sufficient. I don't have to feel obligated to do something that's not in the Bible. That's how the sufficiency of God works. And then as we approach this topic, we want to make sure and we're gonna be doing this throughout the series that we try to apply good hermeneutics.

Herman who? Hermeneutics, proper interpretive rules on how we come to the Bible. And if you guys have been part of our theology or part of the Sunday school class, Answers in Genesis, you guys have been introduced, all the kids are being introduced to good hermeneutics. How it is that we interpret.

The Bible. We're gonna be talking about the analogy of the faith that we can use other, some scriptures to help us understand other scriptures. We're gonna talk about concepts of didactic passages versus narrative passages. if something is mentioned in the narrative passage, does that obligate everybody to like Daniel to only eat vegetables?

When there's other didactic passages that seem to affirm other types of eating is OK. Didactic versus narrative passages. We need to determine who's the original audience that's good hermeneutics. Was this passage written to Israel only?

Was it written to Israel with the intention that it would get to all God's people? Was it written to Israel with the intention that it would be, it would be placed upon all of humanity? Was it written just to the church? Was it written just to the apostles?

Was it written to pastors? We need to consider the original audience as we're interpreting the text. And, and that will help us navigate through the scriptures. There's so many times where people will take a passage, lay it on people, and lay it on their consciences when it was never really intended for the audience of the church today.

Does that make sense? And we're gonna have to be careful as we apply those hermeneutics. And then finally, and perhaps most importantly, is are we willing to come to the Bible humbly in submission to, to God, realizing that we are finite. We're affected by the fall and dwelling sin.

God, your word is authoritative, it's efficient. Are we willing to come and say, God, I'm willing to change. I'm willing to obey. If we're willing to come and just allow ourselves to be changed and molded, then there you go.

You can't ask for much more than that. You say, Lord, here I am, change me. And so I wanna challenge us all as we move through this series. There, there's nobody in this room, myself included, who probably doesn't have to grow or change in some way in respect to your theology of the body.

And I, I'm not excluding myself. And so are we, are we willing to come and say, Lord, I, I want, I want you to teach me and I wanna, I want my attitudes, I want my practices to come more in alignment with what your word says. Does that make sense? You guys commit yourself to that.

In your own heart, you can say to the Lord, Lord, yes, I want to do what your word says. Please reveal your word to us as it is taught, as is preached, as it is studied. All right, so that's the That's the The why and the how. Let's talk about the what these next, if you're gonna go a lot faster.

The what? What is the, the big idea? If we were to look at all of the Bible. And try to summarize just one big idea on the theology of the body.

What, what would it be? I want to suggest that would be this, what you see on the top there. Your body is God's. On loan to you.

I think that's the big idea. We're just gonna summarize it in one little statement and we're gonna try to see if that's true, as throughout the series. Is your body's god's. And it's on loan to you.

Now, I was gonna say your body is God's and it's not yours. The problem is, is the Bible says your body. And so God created it. He ultimately owns it, but it is yours.

You have a responsibility to use the body that God has given you, as a steward of the body that God has given you. And by the way, we're gonna talk about the fact that since God is the Lord of your body, he can also delegate certain other responsibilities or authorities over you and, and if you're married in this room, guess what? Wives, your husband has a level of authority over your body. And vice versa, you're men, yeah.

my wife has authority over my body. We're gonna talk about that. What does that mean? so even though God is the Lord of all of our bodies, God, and he gives me a certain stewardship over my body.

There's a certain sense in which my wife has an authority over my body that is higher than my authority at times, right? And we'll talk about what that means in the marriage relationship. And so let's just do it, we're gonna do a little drive by theology here. That your, your body's God's, it's on loan to you.

It was created by God. We've seen that in the Genesis series, Genesis one, God creates Adam. His body, his whole person, it is very good, right? The body's not evil, as the Greeks and Romans argued, the Bible's not evil as it in Gnostic philosophy that crept into the early church.

Early church began to believe that the body is evil, something to be escaped. No, the body is very good. In Genesis 2, we see that God formed Adam's body out of the dust, then he takes a rib and he forms Eve's body. And, and Adam has excellent theology when he says, you are a bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

And so, you have this bone and this flesh thing and reflecting the goodness of the body and pre-fall, they are naked and they are unashamed. There's no sin, there's no lust. Biblically speaking, we're gonna develop this in the series. There is a reason why there are no, there's no clothes before the fall, and there is a reason why there are clothes after the fall.

I see that everybody in this room is dressed. And there is a theological reason for it. And we're gonna, we're gonna develop that. So, so, your body is created by God.

Open up the 1 Corinthians 6 and we'll hit some of these other points from this text. your bodies will be or has been, if you're a believer, redeemed by God. Your body has been redeemed by God. There in verse 19 and 20, Paul says, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price.

Therefore, glorify God in your body. You want to focus on that phrase or sentence, you have been bought with a price. That's the idea of redemption. This implies that something went wrong, right?

That we needed to be bought. This implies the fall, that while we were created, and it was very good that there was the fall, and, and so our bodies and our whole persons were marred by the fall, but God had already planned for Jesus Christ to come in the flesh and to die for us. And, and so we were bought with a price. And so our bodies have been redeemed, bought back, by God, according to this particular text.

And even, even though our bodies have been bought and redeemed, we still are in this body that is subject to death. Paul, Paul will speak of this body of death. We'll develop that more a little bit later. But thirdly, we've been joined to God.

Look back at verse 15 of the same chapter. We've been joined to God. Paul says, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? That our bodies in God's mind are actually joined, metaphysically to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we've been created by God, we've been, our bodies have been redeemed by God, and we are joined to Christ, the Son of God, who is the second person of the Trinity, therefore, God. And as a subset of that, God who has authority over our bodies is also, as we said, delegated a certain authority to our spouse, if you are married. And then, in dwelt by God, our bodies are in dwelt by God. Back at verse 19.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own? And so the Holy Spirit, if you're a believer this morning, the Holy Spirit, we don't understand how this works metaphysically. There's, you couldn't perform any scientific experiment to find the Holy Spirit inside of you. No, it's not that little cross that you see in the Adams or, that they show on the internet.

But the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. We know this by faith because the Bible says it. And, and so we are not our own. And then lastly, we will be raised by God.

If you look back at verse 13, Paul says, now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body and God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. So right there in, in a nutshell, you get a drive-by theology of the body. really from Genesis, to the end. God created your body, we fell, but he's redeemed your body.

As Christians, you've been joined to Christ with your body metaphysically, you're also in dwelt by the Spirit in your body, metaphysically, those truths and realities are meant to affect the way that we carry ourselves, particularly sexually in context, and, and also we are going to be raised. So it's not this idea that I used to have, people used to ask me, I remember, just thinking about what I was gonna do with my body after I died. And I was just like, what, I don't want people spending all kinds of money on a funeral.

This is just a tent, just burn me and throw me in the ocean.

You just dump me out in the ocean, these, these ashes. Well, we're gonna talk about this later. My, my theology has changed on that because God cares about the resurrection of the body. He values this body.

He redeemed it, right? He joined it to Christ. It's dwelt by the Spirit, and he's gonna raise it up. And so that should affect even the way I believe we think about the body.

After death. So, the bottom line from this main scripture passage is you are not your own. think about this, look at, look at your guy, take a look at your hands. Your forearms, look, you can't really look at your face, but you can look at the face, the person next to you.

This, this isn't just mine. It's not, hey, my this is my body, I can do what I want with it. This is God's body. And so whatever I'm gonna do with this body that he's entrusted to me, my thought process needs to start with, what does God want me to do with his body, because this is his.

And so that needs to be our starting point. OK, what does God want me to do with this body? What does he want me to do with it sexually? What does he want me to do with it with worship, when it comes to work, when it comes to clothing, when it comes to anything I put on my body, when it comes to what I put in my body, it's his.

It's not primarily mine, it's on loan to me. And we'll talk a little bit later that we have to be careful about trying to say that I'm not my body and, it's the spirit inside of me is the only true me. there's, the Bible speaks of our body and material self being joined, and that is our full true self. We'll develop that later.

But let's finish with this. And that is where we're going from here. So we've talked about why this series, we've talked about how we're gonna try to study. And we've talked about the what, a big overview of the what.

Now, let's talk about where we're gonna go from here and then hopefully you guys can have a lot of fun. Debating stuff in a spirit-filled way in your care groups and family worship. So here's where we're gonna go from here. Basically, there's gonna be 5 different parts that actually might break down into little subparts depending on whether you want it to be a 1 year or 5-year series.

so God cares what, first of all, here's what we hope will be the next message is God cares what you do with his body. So we're now we're gonna try to take our theology and work a practical theology. How can we subject everything that we think about to Christ and develop our practical theology of the body. So, I'm, I'm gonna argue that, and I don't know why I have that question mark up there, but God cares what you do with his body?

No, it's, God cares what you do with his body. worship versus idolatry. We're gonna talk about worship. We talk about why the body is involved in worship, what idolatry is.

We're gonna talk about marital felicity versus sexual immorality. The Bible has a ton to say about sexual immorality. we hope to talk a little bit about work, rest, exercise, and use of gifts. Second part of the series, God cares what you put on his body.

In that particular part of the series where I'm hoping to talk about clothing and the what's the theological purpose for clothing. And how we can talk about clothing, from a biblical standpoint that applies cross-culturally. we're also gonna talk about tattoos and piercings. The reason we're gonna talk about that is, is one, you guys are asking about it all the time.

there's a statistic out recently that says, I think it's 38% of people 25 years and younger are tattooed now in the United States, whereas if you look at people that are 60 and older, it was like less than 5%. and so there's been a change in the culture and, and this affects the church and people are always asking the question, man, should I get a tattoo? Should I not get a tattoo? What, what do I say to my kids when they say they wanna get a tattoo or they wanna do this or that?

Does the Bible have anything to say about the subject whatsoever? And, so I, I think there are some principles as we try to subject all things to Christ. we're gonna lay out what we think are some principles and we're gonna ask you guys to apply it. in the direction of the spirit.

Then in the third part of the series, God cares what you put in his body. We're gonna spend some time talking about food, drink, alcohol, smoking, marijuana, drugs, immunizations, medications. We're gonna do that all in 50 minutes. Can you believe it?

Yeah, right. So this is a huge topic, even in the church, you have a big, lots of different viewpoints on food and drink and, with the medical marijuana stuff that's been passed and then also just what's looking at like it's gonna be in California, it's probably only a matter of time before we pass a full-on release of marijuana throughout our state. it's important for Christians to be thinking through issues like that. thirdly, or fourthly, sorry, God cares where you take his body.

you're here at church. How do we conduct our body in the world, in the world, not of the world? Jesus was willing to take his body into certain environments for the sake of the gospel. but should we be taking our body into other environments just to participate in worldly activities that could be questionable?

We're gonna try to tackle some of those areas. And then lastly, God cares where your body goes after death. So we're gonna talk about what the Bible says about the grave, what it says about the resurrection, try to touch on the burial, cremation debate. talk a little bit about why in the world is, is, is the archangel Michael wrestling with the body of Moses in the desert with the devil.

Why does, why does Michael even care about Moses's body? Why does the devil care about Moses's body? And why are they having some wrestling match over his body in the desert? This is a weird passage, but it says something about, what God thinks about the body.

After death., When you look at what the whole Bible says about our bodies, you see, really just a, an outline of the gospel, don't you? That God created our bodies good. But we fell into sin. And our bodies were marked by death after sin.

And now we're sitting around waiting to die. Right? Unless the Lord comes back. Guess what?

In about 100 years, every one of us are dead. Because we are in a body. Of death And that's because sin is a terrible thing. But Jesus Christ came in the, in the flesh, and he lived a perfect life.

Is there anybody that shouldn't have died, is there anybody that should not have had to die was Jesus Christ because he never sinned. But Jesus Christ went and he did die in our place, so that ultimately we could escape eternal death. So if we believe in Him, regardless of the ways in which we've mis mistreated our bodies, Even if we're like the woman at the well who was in multiple, marriages. The prostitute that came to Christ who had abused her body.

The various abuses that we see throughout Scripture, Paul, who had gone and underneath the authorities of his age, went and killed people. We can come and cry out for mercy and God is willing to redeem us, not just redeem our immaterial self, to redeem our whole self, redeem our bodies, raise us up in that last day, so that we may worship Him in a resurrected body for all of eternity. If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, you can right where you're seated, you can call upon Him.

maybe you've, maybe you've done some serious damage to yourself and to your body.

in a, in an auditorium this size, it would not be surprising at all if we've got young people in this room that are cutting themselves. It wouldn't be surprising at all if we have people in this room who are thinking about suicide and doing damage, ultimate damage to their self and their body. There are probably people in this room that are depressed and they're drinking alcohol in excess or people abusing medica medication. There may be children in this room that are being abused.

But you can call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Regardless of what you have done in your life, Jesus Christ is a friend of sinners, and he has come to rescue us from sin. And the ultimate death. Call upon him today, and you may be saved.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this opportunity to just begin to align our thoughts with your thoughts. I know that everyone of us in this room are in different places and how aligned we are. None of us are perfectly aligned with your will, but we thank you so much for your grace that you're so patient.

you do not demand that we get everything right all at once. In fact, we live, however many years we're gonna live on this earth and we will die not having everything right, and yet you will. Open all things, to our awareness when we're apart from sin and heaven. We pray on this earth, Lord, that You would help us to escape the deceit of our own flesh, help us to escape the devil.

Help us to escape the world, help us to be illumined by your spirit, guided by your word, trusting in its authority, its efficiency, humbly acknowledging our inability to rightly perceive all things on our own. But as we come to you as a community, we can be guided. Mercifully by you, we cry out to you today who are our Lord who is so much higher than us. In Christ's name, we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.