What Is the Body and What Is It For?

Good morning. My name is Mike Berry. One of the pastors here at Cornerstone, it's my privilege to bring the word this morning. This is gonna be part two of a series that we are calling God.

And your body, you have a sermon insert. Many of the kids have outlines, and the front part of your insert is intact. the back part of your insert, is gonna be a little different. So, if you're looking for little fill-ins and wondering why I'm not giving the fill-ins is cause it's, we're on the 2.0, it's been updated.

our family, we go through these little kicks. Right now we're on a Twilight Zone kick. You can watch most of the episodes for free on Amazon Prime. And so we've been watching some of those and one of the episodes I found very intriguing, it's called Number 12 Looks Just Like You.

And it's a story of a, a post apocalyptic world where everybody once they turn a certain age, they're expected to go through the transformation, which means that they can pick out a body. There's only a few models you pick out a body so that you can look beautiful. And, and look like everybody else in society. And the main character is a girl who is average looking, but she just decides she doesn't wanna go through the transformation.

She doesn't see why she has to become beautiful like everybody else. And as the story unfolds, everybody's trying to pressure her into choosing one of these beautiful models and I won't let out the cat, but you can watch for yourself and see how this ends. There was a book that seems to have been inspired by this Twilight Zone that was written by a guy named Scott Westerfield called Uglies, where he comes up with the same basic type of concept. And it seems that we're living interestingly in a day where people can do very much what is seen in that twilight zone.

If they decide that they're not happy with their particular body. they can transform their body. People magazine last year in November, put out an article that they, where they talked about the dash effect, the dash effect, which is basically this increase in plastic surgery where more and more people are coming in saying they wanna look like the Kardashian sisters. a UK cosmetic surgery group reported a 73% increase in inquiries from patients citing Kardashian family members as the inspiration.

And, particularly when Kylie Jenner admitted that she had her lips filled or she had lip fillers, they received a 700% rise in inquiries about that procedure overnight. Not just in the UK and the United States, plastic surgeons have seen a similar surge in requests. to look, like the famous sisters. Beverly Hills, plastic surgeon, Doctor Mark Manny says that girls all over the world look up to them for how they should look.

He says that women come in all the time requesting to be transformed into Kourtney, Kim, or Kylie, specifically asking for Kylie Jenner's lips in Kim Kardashian's derriere. So that's something that we're seeing today. It's a phenomenon that seems to be pretty well noted. What's interesting in the history of the church is when something becomes a phenomenon in the world, it doesn't take too long before there's a Christian version of it.

we've seen this with the diet movement, we've seen it with the exercise phase, we've seen it when our culture went into sexual immorality, or the sexual revolution. Christianity has its own sexual revolution. And what we're seeing with the dash movement seems to have also crept into the church. There is an article in Christianity Today by a lady named Sharon Miller that talks about the concern in the church, and she has an article that came out in 2014 called Why Pastors Should Preach about Body Image.

Posted it on Facebook last night if you guys wanna take a look at it. And she gives some interesting statistics. She says that 80-90% of women According to lots of research, are dissatisfied with their bodies. And although, a small number of, a small percentage of women have eating disorders, anywhere between 5 and 4%, roughly 3 out of 4 women engage in some form of disordered eating, according to the research.

In 2013, women had more than 10, 10.3 million surgical or cosmetic procedures, signifying a 471% increase since 1997. Let me say it again, 471 increase since 1997. The top procedures were breast augmentation, li liposuction, tummy tuck, breast lift, eyelid surgery. But it's not just the women.

Also, 43% of men report in this research of body dissatisfaction. Among adolescent boys, nearly 18% are highly concerned about their weight and physique, physique. Men also had more than 1 million cosmetic procedures in 2013. What's interesting about this article from Sharon Miller is her assessment.

And so I want to quote, quote her in this article. I, I, I find this very interesting and helpful. She says, these statistics are alarming for two reasons. First is health related.

Many women and even some men are starving themselves and mutilating their bodies to conform to a particular standard of beauty. The second cause for alarm is spiritual. When Christians are preoccupied with their bodies, it inhibits their worship. Let me say that again.

When Christians are preoccupied with their bodies, it inhibits their worship. Timothy Keller gives an analogy in his book, The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness when he compares spiritual sickness to a broken limb. if I'm, if I'm running around using my arms or, fingers or my body and, and they're healthy, I don't really think about them, but I can remember, getting a basketball injury. This, I don't know if you can see that, but That pinky right there, I hurt playing basketball and I remember when I did that.

And when I hurt that pinky, I, I was just constantly giving attention to this part of my body. And so I would try to pick things up with my left hand, even when I went with my right hand, I would be very careful about the pinky and because of the injury, because of, of the sickness, you give undue attention to that area of your body. Keller, Keller says this, in the case of self-image, a broken view of the body results in a preoccupation with the body. Rather than live a life oriented towards God, many women and men are oriented toward their appearance.

And until the view of the body is healed, they will forever struggle to focus on anything else. That's the importance of the series that we're engaged in. What do you believe about your body? Do you like your body?

What does God think about your body? Are you dissatisfied with your nose? As I have been in the past. Are you dissatisfied with your eyes?

Your skin color, your skin tone. Now some dissatisfaction is understandable, right? in this world since the fall, we have things like disabilities. We have Brian here is in a wheelchair and he's dissatisfied, right?

He's thankful that the Lord put him in a wheelchair so he'd be saved, but he's looking forward to the day of resurrection, right? one of the groups we support or missionaries we support, we support the Greens and also we pray for the ransoms in the Philippines, and the ransoms have had an opportunity to help a little boy who had a cle was born with a cleft palate, a deformity that's obviously a part of the post fall, and, they were able to pay $100 to help this boy get his cleft palate fixed.

Which just has radically changed his life. And so we're not saying that all dissatisfaction with the body is inappropriate because since the fall, we, we do have things that would involve either deformities, disease.

We have people in this church that are currently dying and so they're dissatisfied with the current state of their body, but they're looking forward to being with Christ and to the day of resurrection. And so we want to think, we want to learn to think about our bodies properly. And so let's, let's do a little bit of review from our last message. Again, the series is called God in Your Body.

Last time we basically gave four introductory questions. And we talked about why this topic. And we suggested a few reasons. First of all, God cares about the body because he's the one that created it.

And if God didn't care about the body when it died, he would just forget about it, but he's actually going to raise it. And so God cares about the body. But we also said that God talks about the body all over the Bible. He talks about it a lot and we're gonna be looking at a lot of different verses again today to demonstrate that God talks a lot about the body.

But also this, we want to do this series because the body reveals belief. When people feel like they must become like the Kardashians, it reveals deeply held beliefs. And we suggested in our last message that what we do with our bodies reflects our culture and 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 value certain things. But what we do culturally, and what I'm suggesting is particularly with our body, reveals a lot more of our true beliefs. We said in the last message that Francis Schaeffer famously remarked that one gets a worldview like it gets the measles. We just catch it.

We don't like, we don't very often think through our worldview. It just happens to us. And so how many people are running around thinking very thoughtfully and philosophically and theologically about having lips like the Kardashians, like Kylie or Kylie Jenny, Jenner. No, this is just something that just happens to us.

And, and so we have to, as Christians, we want to be thinking through why we're making certain decisions. an author named Matthew, Adderson in his book Earthen Vessels says this. He says, if we do not cultivate a strong and thoughtful evangelical understanding of the body, Enact and enact practices that integrate this understanding in every part of our lives, then we will end up incorporating ideas and beliefs into our systems that are contrary to what we would consciously affirm.

In other words, if we're not proactive in thinking theologically and applying the gospel to how we think about the body, then we're going to be conformed to this world and not even think about it.

And so that's why we need to do a study like this. then we also said how should we study this topic and we suggested last time that we need to study this topic in humble reliance upon God's authoritative, sufficient word. is authoritative sufficient word, which means let's talk about some things that are insufficient in how we should study such a topic. It is not sufficient for us just to take our own will.

And to take the age of the day that says basically I can do whatever I want to do and just apply that to this topic. So, our own just personal volition apart from the Bible is not a sufficient way to study this topic. Neither can we merely depend upon our own conscience like Jiminy Cricket says, just let your conscience be your guide. That's an insufficient way to study this topic because many times we have uninformed consciences and we can think that we're doing something and we don't feel bothered by it.

I don't feel bothered by this particular procedure, this particular view, this particular address and you see people all the time that aren't bothered by things and yet they should be. Neither can we be guided merely by our own experiences because our experiences may not necessarily comport with, a reality that is marked by God. And so the main way that we come to this or any other topic is we want to be humble. And realize, what, I don't know it all.

I'm finite like we talked about. I've been impacted by the fall and so I can be deceived and so I need to be informed by God's authoritative, what he has to say on this subject has authority and sufficient word. We talk about sufficiency, we talked about the Bible, has a lot to say about various things. It's not gonna tell you how to fix a carburetor, but the Bible does say a lot about the Bible or about the body.

And so, we can study what the Bible has to say about the body and say God's word is sufficient for us and let's believe what the Bible says and not feel compelled to believe what the Bible doesn't touch upon. We also tried to answer the question, what? What is the big idea? And this is really like what's the thesis of the whole series and we suggested this, that your body is God's on loan.

To you. Your body is God's on loan. To you. Yes, it is your body, but it's something that God created and you are a steward of your body and he has loaned it to you.

Matthew Anderson in the same book I quoted earlier says this, the iron law of our age is that our bodies are our own and we can choose to do with them as we please on the single condition that no one is harmed. That's the ethic of our culture. That's the worldview that's out there, even if people don't articulate it. What's in the back of their minds is I own my body.

I can do with it whatever I wish as long as I don't hurt you. That's the, that's the ethic that we breathe. And what I want to suggest is that ethic is insufficient as we bring it to the Bible. Anderson goes on to say, the impulse that we own our own bodies and can do with them as we please runs deep.

It is one of our tacit world shaping beliefs that few of us ever bring to the surface, but nearly everyone affirms. Just try to talk to somebody about choices that they're making with their body and see what reaction that you get. Walk up to somebody and, and ask them questions about why they're wearing certain clothing. And almost immediately, the, the type of response you will get is, who are you?

It's my body. I can wear what I want. And virtually any other question that has to do with the body, unless you find someone who has tried to bring a Christian worldview to bear upon their theology of the body, the, the thing that just we drink in in in our culture is I can do what I want as long as I don't think it harms you. And that's what we want to, to try to challenge.

Your body is God's. It is on loan to you. God is the one that created it, so he has the copyright. He has, redeemed it for those who are Christians.

we saw this in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and so to redeem something implies that there was something wrong with it, so, i.e. the fall, we talked about the fall last time. And God has joined it to Himself. We saw this again in 1 Corinthians 6.

This is for Christians. it is in dwelt by God, so we, our body is actually the temple of the Holy Spirit, and it will one day be raised by God. And so your body from beginning to end. While you're a steward of it, it's really all about God and His ownership.

So, and then, the Let me see where's the wee here. there we go. and then we, we, the final question that we tried to answer last time was where to from here? And so this is what we're proposing to be the overview of the series as far as trying to put our theology into practice.

Today we're gonna be hitting the idea God cares what you do with your body. And then next sermon of the sermon after that, we'll talk about God cares what you put on your body, God cares what you put in your body, God cares where you take your body, and then God cares where your body goes after death. So let's, with that introduction, let's get into today. God cares what you do.

With your body And we're gonna try to establish that basic thesis by answering some more questions. And the first question is gonna be, what is the body? If we're gonna say that God cares about it, we need to know what it is. So we're gonna spend some time defining what the body actually is, which is a lot more challenging than you might realize.

And then we're gonna ask the question, what is the body for? That gets more directly at our question was God, God cares what, what we do with our body. So what is it for in the first place? What does the Bible say the body's for?

And we're gonna try to answer the so what question? what, so what? So we have all these nice little truths in our minds. how does that impact us?

So turn in your Bible to John chapter 1, verse 14. What is the body? John 1:14. We're gonna start here and then we're gonna try to unpack and develop a definition.

Of the body John Ward 14. Says, and the word became flesh. And dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The word.

Became flesh. It's one of the most radical concepts in the history of mankind. Especially in the context in which Christ came down to the earth. Because the way the body was viewed was was not the way that we would tend to think of the body from a biblical perspective.

The body was not viewed as a very positive thing, and yet you have the word, you have God Himself coming down and dwelling in flesh, which implies something about flesh. About the body And that is the body, if God came in and inhabited a body, then the body cannot be evil in and of itself. Is that, is that true? if God who who is too pure to look upon anything evil comes and dwells in a body, then a body is not necessarily evil.

So starting with that. let's try to, let's try to define the body biblically. First of all, in Trying to figure out what it isn't. And this is the way a lot of Christian doctrine works is it's a lot easier to try to define what something isn't than what it is.

We talk about the Trinity, a lot of times we spend a whole lot of time talking about what the Trinity isn't. We talk about the deity of Christ, we spent a whole lot of time talking about what, what it isn't inerrancy, just pick a doctrine and it's a lot easier to identify the isn'ts than the is. And so we'll do that here too. and you can write this.

This is on the back of your notes. Forget your other fill-ins. Just write this stuff in. What it isn't.

First of all, the body is not a prison. The body is not. A prison And that concept of the body is, many times blamed on Plato. It's debatable whether he really believed that the body was a prison, but for, sake of argument, we'll say that, it's platonic.

Definitely, we have this idea of Gnosticism that rises up in the early church and really comes down to us to this day that argues that the body is this prison, that the body is basically evil, and it had an effect on Christians in the early church and it's actually had an effect on Christians to this very day. that we can sometimes think of the body as a casing for the true self, a casing for the true self. And I want to suggest that the Bible does not say that. The Bible doesn't indicate that this is merely just a casing for the real you.

Therefore, we need not worry about the casing. And so it's not a prison, it's not a casing. So this is to be distinguished from like the Buddhist and the Hindu idea of the body, right? If you guys have done any inter-religion studies and some of your high school or college classes or whatnot, in Buddhism as well as in Hinduism, life in a, a body is viewed negatively as the source of all suffering.

Hence, the goal is to be released. in Buddhism, this means abandoning the false sense of self so that the bundle of memories and impulses disintegrates, leaving nothing to reincarnate and hence nothing to experience pain. And so in both Buddhism and Hinduism, the body is really a bad thing. We've been restricted to this body and we, we, we keep being reincarnated back into a body until we're able to get the final release.

Unlike Western treatments of reincarnation which tend to make the idea of coming back into the body to seem exotic or sometimes you'll see movies where there's some romantic theme of being reincarnated back so you can go find your true love. in Hinduism and Buddhism, other, Asian religions, they portray, reincarnation as a very, very unhappy process. Life in this world means suffering and so to get reincarnated back into this world means you didn't make it. And so your ultimate hope is that eventually you're not going to have to be reincarnated back into a body, but you can, you can basically be disintegrated from the delusion of your individuality and be brought into the whole or into the nirvana.

Many different ways it's described, but your individuality is actually an illusion and the body is evil. it's very interesting why Eastern religion is making such a comeback in the West. It's largely because it's not, it's not the real Eastern religion. It's a Westernized Eastern religion that people get rid of all the stuff they don't like.

And come up with a new Western version, but the, the Eastern version basically says you as an individual do not exist and you're trying to get out of this evil body to get back to the hole where you will no longer be an individual. So the body, we would argue is not a prison, it's not just a casing for the true self. Secondly, the body is not a machine as Descartes argued. It is not a machine.

Descartes is the one that popularized the idea of the ghost in the machine. Have you guys heard of that? ghost in the machine? So the idea is, is, is we don't really, there's this soul stuff that's probably in some gland in your brain and the soul stuff is moving the machine.

I don't know if any of you guys have ever seen Mega Minds. I watch way too much TV and movies and stuff, but Mega Mind, Mega Minds inside this huge like robotic machine controlling the whole thing. That's Descartes's idea. is that your soul is up there in the head, just controlling the gears and moving this body around, which is just merely, is just basically a machine.

more modern explanations would be, a composite of chemical reactions, interesting collection of chemicals and electronic impulses. that thing. So those would be two ways in which we would say, we would say that's not what the body is. And so let's turn to Let's turn to Genesis chapter 2.

We could look at a ton of verses, but we're just gonna look at a few to, to really get at the biblical definition of the body. And let's look at Genesis 2, verse 7. 2 verse 7. Now, in chapter one, this is very typical of Hebrew writing.

Chapter one, you get this big idea of creation and God creates man in his image according to his likeness and then as is very typical of Hebrew literature, now we get this special focus and there's a special focus on Adam. And, and how Adam is created and how Eve is created and so on. In verse 7, it says this, and the Lord God, Yahweh God formed man. of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

So from this one passage, we see how human beings came to have into being and how they came to have a body. You have God who comes along and he takes dust and he forms the dust. Now, it's not just that he forms the dust. God could have sat there and formed clay, and it could just be, it could end up just being pottery, right?

but he doesn't just create pottery, he creates something and then animates it. He breathes life into this creation and then it is described as a living being. And it's not merely that God has direct, his direct hands on Adam and Eve, but he also has had an impact on you and I, as we see in Jeremiah 1:5, God's speaking to Jeremiah and he says, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you.

So God takes direct responsibility for the forming of Jeremiah and by implication, we would say that God wasn't just forming Jeremiah, but this says something about God forming every human being. That God is directly involved in the formation of every human being, just as directly as he was involved in forming Adam. And then forming Eve. And so from this we can, we can derive a couple of ideas about what the body is.

And so I'm gonna say this definition a few different times, but just, just listen first and then I'll go back and repeat it and then we're gonna explain it. The human body is an organized. Animated, self-directed creation. Distinct from any other creature in the universe.

Being virtually indistinguishable from man himself, who is the image of God. That's a, that's a mouthful and so we're gonna go back and I'm gonna repeat it and then we're gonna explain it. So first of all, the human body is an organized, animated, self-directed creation. Organized, animated, self-directed creation.

So first of all, it's organized. Dirt, dust doesn't just organize itself. I've never gone into the backyard and just observed dirt that just started spinning and suddenly formed a big mud castle. It's never happened, right?

I've never gone to the beach and saw a wave come up on the sand and then go back and lo and behold, there's a sand castle right there. No, God comes along. He takes pre-existing stuff, and he organizes it. So, the human body has been organized by an organizer, right?

And that organizer is God. So, the human body is organized, but secondly, it's not just organized, it's animated. Theoretically, God could have formed a nice little sand castle that looked like a human being or looked like anything else, but if he doesn't animate, if he doesn't breathe into it, then it's just stuff. He could, he could have like piled up a bunch of rocks and left it there.

God could have formed a, a nice clay pot and left it there. But no, he forms. dust, organizes it and then breathes into it. He animates this dust so that it becomes a living being.

So the human body is organized and it's animated. What is it? Organized and animated. That means organized means that God did something.

It just didn't just evolve by accident and it's animated. It's not just, it's not just material. This is living, living stuff. So it's organized, it's animated.

But it's not just animated like a robot, it's self-directed. God animated the body in such a way to where Adam awakens and is able to interact with his God. And so he's able to self-direct. This is, this is an amazing thing.

God organizes, he animates, and then, and then suddenly Adam is self-directing himself. And it's a creation. The human body is an organized, animated, self-directed creation. It's not just something that evolved or happened by accident.

It happened on purpose from the Creator. Now, let's add some qualifiers distinct from any other creation in the universe. There are other, there are other beings that have been formed by God and animated, but the human body is distinct from the other animals. The human body is distinct from any other thing in the universe.

Why is the human body distinct from any other creature in the universe? Because God indicates in chapter one that we were made in His image according to His likeness. And so the human body is distinct. Being made in the image of God.

And the final thing we want to attack on here, let me read the definition again. The human body is organized, animated, self-directed creation, distinct from any other creation in the universe, being virtually indistinguishable from man himself. Being virtually indistinguishable from man himself. What do we mean by that?

If you were to walk upon Adam right after he was created, could you distinguish him from his soul? Could you look at him and say, OK, let me look in your eyes. Let's crack open your brain. There's your soul, and there's your body.

Would you be able to do that? No. So the human body from the very beginning is virtually and we have to add the word virtually because we know in later Revelation there is a distinguished, we can distinguish the two, but as you just look upon Adam and Eve after they're created, they're virtually indistinguishable from man himself. In other words, you are your body and your body is you.

And so let's, let's, let's flesh this out, just a, just a little bit. Let me give you guys a, a quote from another author. as human persons, we live, communicate, and move in the flesh and bones that we in dwell. Our bodies are not instruments for us to operate as though we were driving them like captains of a ship.

So it's not like we're just mega mind or, they are not tools for us to communicate with others or pieces of property to dispose of as we wish. What our bodies do, we do. And what we do to other animated bodies, we do to other persons. And so you can see it's not super easy to define the body, but what I do to you, I'm, I'm to your body, I'm doing to you.

When you speak to me, you're not just speaking to my body, you're speaking to me. And so my body is me, and yet we have to add this qualifier because there's several passes in scripture that do distinguish between our material and immaterial self. For instance, Matthew 10:28, you can write this down. Matthew 10:28, Jesus says, do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to both destroy the soul and body in hell.

What does that indicate? It's just one passage that indicates that there is to be a dis we can distinguish between the body and the soul after death in some way. And we're gonna flesh that out a little more as the series moves on. some people have used, so we, we would call this theologically, conditional unity.

You can write that down, conditional unity, conditional unity. Some people have used the analogy of salt, sodium chloride. Can sodium exist by itself? Can chloride exist by itself?

And you bring those together in a chemical reaction, you have sodium chloride, you have salt. So salt, if you just look at salt, I spilled some salt this morning, or no it was last night at 2 in the morning at IHOP. So I spilled some salt. My, the lady who was serving me said I needed to throw salt over my shoulder so I didn't have bad luck.

So if this sermon goes badly, it's because I did throw salt over my shoulder. but the sodium, so I spilled some salt and it just looks like one entity and I'm, if I were to pick it up and look under a microscope, I, I can't really distinguish between the sodium and the chloride. It's just like one thing, right? It's indistinguishable.

But I don't know how to do the chemistry, but if we, if we, I think, you can do certain things and you guys can all come up and tell me afterwards what I need to do to divide the sodium and the chloride, right? And so, and so that, that's been used by philosophers and theologians to help us understand how that we are unified in body and soul and yet there can also be a separation as we'll look at later we see evidence of that in the scriptures. And so all this to say That what is the body?

The body is something that has been formed by God Himself.

He comes and organizes dust. He doesn't just organize dust, he animates the dust. He doesn't just animate it, but he gives us the ability to self-direct ourselves in this body and the body that we have as human beings is distinct from every other creation in the universe because we've been made in the image of God, which is pretty significant as we're gonna see. And yet, as we look at one another, while biblically, we know there is some distinguishing between our soul and our body, when we just look at each other face to face, it's almost impossible to distinguish that.

our body is indistinguishable from ourselves, and that's why God can say before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. He doesn't say, before I formed your body, he says, before I formed you. And so there is a sense biblically in which we can say you are your body. Is that fun?

You guys are like, what in the world is this guy doing? Where did this guy come from? OK, we're going somewhere. What is the body?

Let's talk about #2. What is the body for? Actually, does that show up the way for you guys? So let me say that again.

What is the body for? Smaller font. What is the body for? No, let's first of all talk about what it isn't for.

OK, we do the isn't and we're gonna do this. So, so we've talked about what the body is. So based on what the body is. What is it for?

And what, let's start in answering that question, what it isn't for. Let's say this, that the body is not merely for the purpose of consumption. The body does not exist merely for the purpose of consumption. Write down Matthew 6:25.

Matthew 6:25, where Jesus in His sermon on the Mount says, therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? So whatever the body is for, my body doesn't exist just so that I can go out and eat. My body doesn't exist just so that I can have some nice clothes to put on.

And so that's not the ultimate purpose of the body and yet in our culture, you would think at times that that's basically what the body's for. Secondly, our body is not just to pass on genetic material to propagate the species. The body is not just to pass on genetic material to propagate the species. Where does that line of reasoning come from?

Anyone know? Yeah, it's Darwinian evolution. Basically, if you start with materialism, you end up with where Darwin ends up, that basically the only reason for our bodies, the only real rational reason for our existence is we must pass on our genetic material so that the species can survive. and that's the way many people live their lives.

thirdly, the body is not just for experience. Which is, this, this is a big part of our worldview today. again, worldview, we catch our worldview like we catch the what? Measles.

You don't see people sitting around scratching their chin thinking, my body is for experience. But they live their lives as if their the sole purpose of their body is to experience things. To have the next Experience So turn, write down 1 Corinthians 6:13. 1 Corinthians 6:13, where Paul says, food's for the stomach, stomach for the foods, but God will destroy both it and them.

So, a lot of people would say that Paul's quoting a famous quote at it at that time, and then he's making fun of it. Hey, food's for the stomach, stomach's for food, we just have these experiences we consume, but God's gonna destroy both it and them, Paul says. But then he has this very straightforward statement. He says, now the body is not for what?

sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. The body is not for sexual immorality. we'll talk, we're gonna talk more about just sex next time, but part of what we can see that Paul's saying is the body is not just for the experience. It's not just for the experience of sex.

That's, that's what we drink in in our culture is the sexual experience is the ultimate experience, so my body is for that experience. And Paul says that's not true. Your body is not for sexual immorality, no matter what the world is trying to tell you that the ultimate experience is sexual. is to have sex, particularly sex outside of the normal bounds.

but your body is for. The Lord. Consider 1 Thessalonians 4:3 and following. You can write that down.

1 Thessalonians 4:3. For the, for this is the will of God. Everybody says, hey, what, what's the will of God for me? This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and in honor, possess his own body and sanctification, honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.

and so what is the will of God? It's that our, that we'd be able to know how to possess and control our own vessel and not give it over to sexual immorality. We'll talk about the ways in which God, desires that we give our bodies over to sex within marriage, marital felicity. We'll talk more about that next time.

But here for our purposes now, the the body is not just for experience, whatever that experience is. It's not to say that experiences are bad. We experience things all day, right? Every day.

But your body does not exist merely for the next experience, for the next sexual expression, for the next like, high that you get from some dangerous thing that you do. That's not why your body exists. So let's talk about why, what is our body for? And why don't you open up, we're gonna look at a number of different passages.

but let's look at Romans 12. Romans 12. What is my body ultimately for then? I, God's animated this, He's organized my body.

He's animated it. He's given me self-direction, so I can choose to operate according to the purpose or I could choose not to operate according to its original purpose. God puts value on my body at being. Something that's radically different from anything else in the created universe.

Romans 12 after Paul has Written all this material on the gospel. And in verse 36, he says, for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. So Paul just ends this whole, this big section and just worshiping the Lord that everything is ultimately for His glory.

And then he goes on and says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God, which is your reasonable, logical, some translations say, spiritual form of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will. Of God. So according to Paul here, what As we, as we, as we come out of this doxology, this glory of God passage, Paul turns to his audience and he says, in light of God's glory, I want you to take your body and offer it up.

As a living sacrifice. Now when Paul says living sacrifice, he's not writing this in a vacuum, right? We're talking about sacrifices that come from the Old Testament. We're talking about the Old Testament form of worship, right?

In the Old Testament, if you want to worship the Lord, how did you worship the Lord? You would go to, it depends on what era you were living in, whether you would go to the temple or the tabernacle, or if it was pre-tabernacle period, whether you would go somewhere and build up a pile of rocks, but ultimately, you would take an animal, sometimes various grains, you would kill an animal and you would offer that animal as a sacrifice to the Lord. And so if, if you were in the Old Testament said, hey, let's go worship the Lord, what didn't come to your mind was, hey, let's, let's go down to Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church and let's raise our hands as we sing.

That's what, that's not what would come into your mind first.

You would say, hey, let's go down to the temple, let's slaughter an animal, and let's offer it up as worship to the Lord. And so in the New Testament context, Paul is telling us in light of the glory of God, We should take our bodies, and rather than being slain like the animal, we should offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice to the Lord. When he says living, part of what that means is, is that we are animated and self-directed, right? So, so we are coming and we are using our will to worship the Lord with our bodies.

And so the ultimate purpose according to this passage, and we'll look at other passages for our bodies is to worship God. So your body exists, my body exists for worship. Primarily. And then he says in verse two, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God, that you may demonstrate what God wants, that you might be an image and reflect back to the world, God, his character and his word.

In other words, we, we bear the image mark of God on our bodies. And as we live our bodies, and we worship God in our bodies throughout our lives, Then we are proving who God is by how we live in this body. So you and I have the privilege. What is the ultimate purpose of our body is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

We want to glorify God in this body, we want to worship Him in this body, and we want to put on display the glories of God before the world through our body. Consider Philippians 1:20, where Paul says, so now, also Christ will be magnified in my body. Paul wants God to be magnified in his body. Whether by life or by death, for me to live as Christ and to die as gain.

Same basic idea. Notice Paul's, he doesn't, he could have said a lot of different things. He could have said I want Christ to be magnified. Through my spirit.

I want Christ to be magnified in my soul. There's lots of things he could have said. He could have just talked about focused on the immaterial self. But no, he says, I want Christ to be magnified.

I want him to be lifted up. I want him to a big deal to be made about God in my body. Whether I'm, whether I'm alive and I'm using my body to worship and glorify him as alive or whether I go to death, whether it's a martyr's death or I die of old age, I want him to be lifted up in my body. Paul says elsewhere, 1 Corinthians 10:31, you can write this down.

Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do. Do all to the glory of the Lord. When he says eat or drink, how do we eat or drink? With our bodies, whether you eat or drink.

Whatever you do, which we do with our bodies. We want to do it all to the glory of the Lord. That's, that's really the controlling factor of, of what we should do with our bodies. Our bodies have been organized by God, animated by God.

He's given us self-direction, so we have choices that we can make. Our bodies are completely unique of any other creation in the universe. And And the Lord has created us as individuals to where our body is virtually indistinguishable from our soul. It's just, that's who you are.

Here's who I am. And, and God has made it clear what we're to do in this body. The primary thing that he's calling upon us to do is to worship him. To glorify Him, to magnify Him.

And if we're going to worship Him, then we need to, we need to understand what we mean by worship. And we're gonna have to, we're gonna bring this. Hopefully quickly to a close here, which is a meaningless statement. We want to worship, we want to know what worship means.

And in, in our, climate, a lot of times you hear people say, hey, you wanna, you wanna come on over, for a Bible study? We're gonna study the word and we're gonna worship. And what do we mean when we use that, the word that way? We're gonna play guitar and we're gonna sing.

And that's not necessarily bad as long as we realize that's just a little tiny cherry on the worship Sunday, right? when Jonathan and the team led us in beautiful worship this morning, this was part of our worship, right? when we hear the word preach, that's part of our worship. When we give, that's part of our worship.

But in the biggest sense, in the biggest biblical sense, worship is really everything that we do. When you change the baby's diapers, that can be worshiped. When you go to work at a job that you don't really enjoy, but that you need to put bread on the table, that's worship. when you get up and make breakfast for your family.

That's worship, everything we do. is categorized as worship. We love God, we love people. When we take joy in the things that God gives us, when we work, when we serve, and we'll talk later, when we as, as married persons, as we enter into marital felicity and what's been called previously the marital act, and when we procreate, that's worship.

These are all aspects. Of worship. And so, so when we ask the big question, OK, what is my body for? If you can fit your activity underneath the basic category of worship, then that's something that you can say, hey, I'm, I'm within the will of God and I, and I want to grow in my worship.

but we have to have a big idea of what we mean by worship. if it cannot fit or clearly does not fit within the category of worship, now you need to begin to Bring this to Christ, right? We want to take captive all thoughts, bring it to Christ and say, is this something, Lord, that, that I can do in a sense that brings you glory and, and, and brings me pleasure for your glory. and so that's, that's the big idea.

God owns us. He owns our bodies. we've looked at what the body is, what's it for? Let's finish by the so what question.

So what? What's the big deal about knowing what our body really is? And what it is for turn to Psalm 139. Look at a couple of final passages.

Psalm 139:13. David says, for you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skilfully wrought on the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book, they were all written, the days fashioned for me. When as yet there was none of them.

David has an appropriate view here of the body. Recognizing that God formed his body, and that he can turn back to God and praise God for his body. Praise God for the way that he formed his hands, his limbs. Praise God for the eye color, praise God for his nose, his shape.

Praise God that he was born, a Jew. Praise God that he was born at the particular time that he was born in. As we even consider God's decree and sovereignty in a post-fall world, God asked the question, am I not the one who makes the blind? Am I not the one who makes the deaf and the lame?

We know that the fall has led to sin and that sin causes disease and destruction, and yet God's sovereignty behind it all. He says, I'm the one who formed you. And so one of the takeaways, one of the big so what's is that we worship God with the body that he has given us. We look at our body, whatever our state is in.

This side of the fall, and we say, God, I want to magnify you. I want to glorify you with the body you have given me. However old I am right now, however young I am right now, whether I'm male, whether I'm female, whether I'm African American, whether I'm Hispanic. I self-identify as, as Hispanic.

I probably told you that. Almost done Ben. But I've had to learn to be satisfied with Just being Caucasian. But can we, can we worship God with the body that God has given us?

So we worship, but not just that, we worship and we wait. Turn to Philippians 3:21. We, we worship, but we also recognize on this side of the fall, there are things about us and about our bodies. that are dysfunctional.

my wife had, cancer in her thyroid. She had her thyroid removed. And so when her thyroid was removed, she lost an organ. She did not lose any part of her soul or any part of her person.

She lost an organ, but she is different and experiences life differently now without a thyroid. And so she can worship God with the body that she currently has, but she can also wait for what Paul speaks of in Philippians 3:21. Speaking of Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body. That it may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able to subdue all things to himself.

So, the full scriptural picture is, yes, we worship the Lord in this current body, but we're also waiting for our bodies to be conformed to Christ's body. In other words, we're gonna have a new body. That will not have the disease and the suffering of this world. We're not waiting for reincarnation.

We're not waiting for our individuality to be splintered into nirvana. We're waiting for the resurrection of our bodies to be conformed to Christ. As Romans 8:23, we're waiting for the full redemption. Of our bodies.

the, the lady that That wrote the article about. The dash effect and about. All of the, the plastic surgery. That we're seeing today.

That reminds us of that Twilight Zone. She also wrote another article called Jesus in the Post-Bby Body. And I encourage you to take a look at it. I posted on Facebook, on my Facebook account.

Jesus and the Post-baby body. It's very interesting concept. She was just noting the fact that, herself and virtually any gal who's had a baby. After she had her baby, first baby, she was in trying on some clothes at a particular clothing place and the types of comments that were said to her by the lady that was helping her trying on clothes were very offensive.

you're never gonna be able to fit back into the clothes that you had before you your baby and so on and so forth. And there's this pressure that comes upon our gals. That, you must get back to that pre-pregnancy body. You must lose all of that weight and you must look the way that you looked when you were 16 years old and these unrealistic expectations.

But she began to meditate and think upon Christ and in his resurrected body. What is Jesus Christ glory and what's, what's one of the features that you see of Jesus Christ in his post-resurrected body? His scars. He, he, he draws attention to the scars in his hands and his feet and his side.

And, and Jesus Christ glories in his scars, even in a post-resurrection state. And this author began to take comfort in that, that if Christ can glory in his post-resurrection scars in a glorified body, I can glory in the body that I'm left with after bringing lives into this world, eternal souls. And she began to actually speak to her other children as they grew up, as if, these were like badges of courage, the stretch marks. The various, things on her body that reflect that she has brought life onto this planet.

And I just, I just thought, man, that is, that's such a beautiful illustration. As we go throughout this life, there's things that you're gonna experience that are going to change your body. As we, as we try to minister and as we try to work, as we just get older. I, I can remember like when I was younger, sometimes seeing some of my favorite Major League Baseball players, they would retire and then about two years later, you see an interview with them and you're like, what in the world happened to them?

You're like, They just got older, right? They just got older like we're all getting. one of my buddies up here on the platform, I won't mention his name, but he's a Viking. And He came over to my house one day and he looked at my wedding picture and he said, Katie, I didn't know you were previously married.

It's like I've, I've changed. But we can glorify God in the body that we're in, we can look forward to and wait for the body that's coming. And take joy and worship God. And so we're gonna flesh more of this out in the next message.

In the next message, we're gonna take these concepts and try to apply it specifically to the question of sex and sexuality. so I hope you're able to come back for that. but if you, if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ today, You, you can call upon him right now. You might be someone whose, whose body is decaying.

Maybe, maybe you have a sickness that has you at death's door. Maybe you feel like you're fine, but maybe you're comparing yourself to other people. Maybe you're looking around and you just feel that dissatisfaction in your heart. You can come to the Lord today and just give all that up and say, Lord, you have made me who I am.

You have formed me and please come into my life and forgive me of my sins and my self-focus. Let me change my gaze to be upon you. Lord Jesus Christ died for sinners. He died.

He was raised from the dead. So if we would just believe in him, we also can be raised from the dead and enter into eternal life. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much, for the goodness of your word that we do not need to be bound.

By concepts that say our bodies are just prisons. Or we are just chemical reactions or we're just trying to pass on our genetic code. We know from your word that we're not just here to consume and eat and experience things and die. But we have been specially created by you, formed by you with a purpose for your glory.

And we pray that you would continue to teach us what more about that purpose, that we would have a big idea of what worship is. Lord, that we would be able to worship you in, in all of the details of our lives. We know that you are such a good God. You could have, come and you could have made strawberries taste like dirt.

You could have made no music. You could have, given us all kinds of just clinical things to do on the earth, but you have made this life a, a beautiful, joyous life. and so help us to, to worship you in it. And yet at the same time to wait for the redemption and the resurrection of our bodies, help us to reflect your image back to this world and as we wait, in Christ's name we pray, God's people said, Amen.