Sexual Sin in the Church

Mark Hoover

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Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church

INTRODUCTION

We live in a culture dominated by Darwinian explanations of biology and psychology. So we easily absorb certain natural assumptions in regards to our sex drive and impulses. We are reminded of the remnants of our primordial, bestial ancestors, and therefore we deal with them with cages and external personal and social restraints.

This line of thinking is problematic simply because it views us as both victims and monsters. One the one hand, we are victims of our ancient past, and on the other hand, we are sexual monsters if we express our primal impulses in ways not sanctioned by the level of social tolerance.

The degree of sexual depravity, and destruction are of such a nature that nearly everyone thinks things and many do things that we have no other word for than evil.

The thing is that sex is not the problem. It’s shocking how little our primal inner evil impulses have to do with our genetic intent which is procreation. In fact our culture cannot keep up with the expanding sexual definitions. But since Darwin denies assigning any basis for assigning moral value to anything, we can’t term something a “perversion”, because this word has moral connotations. So this is what we are doing, we are trying to solve the problem by eliminating the concept of sexual perversion. This leaves us with a scale that embraces all sexual expressions without destroying people within our society.

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The church at Corinth was not only a divided church, but it was also a disgraced church. There was sin in the assembly and, sad to say, everybody knew about it. But the church was slow to do anything about it.

Since some of the members at Corinth did not want to face the situation and change it, Paul presented to the church three important considerations.

Consider the Church

Consider Lost Sinners

Consider your Lord

In such a context it would have been very tempting to compromise the Christian position, either by judgmental expressions of horror at sexual deviation or by easygoing tolerance.

The Problem: (5:1-2a)

The case of the member engaging in incest. Appearance of tolerating the sinBeing arrogant instead of humbled and patient and exercising church discipline.

2 Cases involving sexual sin and Church discipline. The first situation the individual genuinely mourned over his sin and got up in front of the congregation on Sunday morning and sought repentance and healing. The second individual slid out the back door never to be heard from again.

Sexual Immorality (porneia) refers to any form of sexual sin.

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I. Consider the Church

5:1-13

What will this sin do to the church? is certainly an important consideration. Christians are “called to be saints” this means holy living to the glory of God. If a Christian loves the church, he will not stand by and permit sin to weaken it and perhaps ruin its testimony.

ROOT OF ALL SIN

What the Bible diagnoses as the root of human sexual perversion should be brokenness or mourning?

v.2 Should you not rather mourn?

To Mortify Sin: How do you find deep sorrow and regret over the sins in your life.

Let’s look at

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;1

“Dishonorable passions refers to sexual sin in all its perverted way’s whether heterosexual or homosexual, it’s all a manifestation of a deeper problem.

BIG IDEA: When we unhinge ourselves from our creator we begin to prefer something else to satisfy lives.

1.When we become unhinged from our Creator human pride takes over.

Pride is a black hole of consuming selfishness that is at the core of our fallen human nature.

*Prides nature is to consume us.

Pride see’s people, all of creation, and God himself as things to use in service to the self’s desire. We all know this by experience. The more we feed any expression of pride, whether through sex or anger or covetousness or whatever, pride’s appetite grows and urges us to consume more and more.

SEXUAL SIN: is unhinged human pride rejecting the Creator in order to sexually consume others for the benefit of ourselves.

2b-13 There is a need for spiritual discipline.

No church is perfect, but human imperfection must never be an excuse for sin. Just as parents must discipline their children in love, so local churches must exercise discipline over the members of the assembly. Church discipline is not a group of “pious policemen” out to catch a criminal. Rather, it is a group of brokenhearted brothers and sisters seeking to restore an erring member of the family.

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ILLUSTRATION

In such a context it would have been very tempting to compromise the Christian position, either by judgmental expressions of horror at sexual deviation or by easygoing tolerance.

Very similar positions are taken up today, for example, in the sexual climate of California, where immorality of all kinds has permeated the professing church. This has led one pastor to comment: ‘I do not think a week goes by but we hear of Christian leaders who have forsaken their wives, run off with the secretary, fallen into homosexuality, or are facing some kind of moral crisis in their churches.’ He goes on to refer to these two letters as ‘1 and 2 Californians’, such is the relevance of Paul’s teaching.

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What does it mean to be SAVED? It means that your heart and soul has come to Jesus as Satisfaction for the thirst and hunger that only He can fill.

What makes something EVIL? It’s when you have tasted God and prefer something else to satisfy you. Loving other things more than you love GOD.

12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this;

be shocked, be utterly desolate,

declares the Lord,

13 for my people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.

2 Evils

1) They have forsaken me (unhinged themselves from God)

2) Made cisterns for themselves that could not hold water. (preferring something else to satisfy that can never take the place of God it’s like a broken cistern)

*Prides nature is to excuse sin.

3 Harsh instructions from Paul

1) Let him be removed from you. v.2

2) Do not associate with anyone who bears the name brother and is engaged in sexual immorality. (NOTE: Paul makes a clear distinction about we are to judge and not judge. Clear command that we are in no way to recognize wicked people as Christians.)

3) Purge the evil person away from you.

NOTE: Paul makes if very clear about how the church should respond to sexual immorality among believers.

*We are to judge the believ’n not the heathen. (the moral responsibility of the church in regards to sexual sin)

6:18 “Every other sin is outside the body but sexual sin corrupts the inside of a person.”

Purpose: Clean out the old leaven that a new lump will will appear.

CHRIST AS THE PASSOVER LAMB

We are the body of Christ and as His body we cannot allow even just a little bit of sexual immorality to remain in the body. It is like desecrating Christ’s body with your sin.

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II. Consider Lost Sinners

2.When we become unhinged from our creator ordained limits in our lives are removed.

This is why especially dealing with sexual sin that the more we dive deeper down the hole of sexual immorality the deeper and wider the hole gets.

NOTE: remember in Paul tells us that God gave them over to their dishonorable passions. The more we become unhinged from God’s ordained plan for his creation, the once restraints on our lives keeping us attached to God’s design are removed.

EXAMPLE: The first time someone dives into a sexual sin there may be some guilt and regret associated with that sin. But the more we engage in this kind of behavior the less guilt or remorse we feel.

Law before the Heathen

Do you not know: Six times Paul asks this question.

Christians are destined to judge the world and even angels, then why can they not settle even the smallest disagreements among themselves.

vs.7 “It would be better to submit to injustice.”

According to Paul this is a disgraceful spectacle of Christian suing another Christian before unbelieving courts.

The saints. The people of God are called saints because they are separated from the world and consecrated to his service. Therefore, those who are of the world and devoted to its pursuits are not saints.

*We will judge angels: Since according to scripture on the last day the only angels that will be judged are the fallen angels it must be restricted to them here.

Paul addresses 2 Concerns:

1) Concern for His people.

2) Concern for His honor.

*When God ordained limits are removed Tolerance reigns.

SELF CONTROL: The most disliked human virtue is probably self-control.

Purpose of Self-Control

1) Godliness or Holiness

2) Transformation or Fruit

“Discipline yourselves for the purpose of Holiness.”

“God wants you to be Holy so stay away from sexual sin. He wants each of to learn to control your own bodies in a way that is honorable to the Lord.

vs. 11 you were WASHED you were SANCTIFIED, you were JUSTIFIED in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

III. Consider the Lord

ILLUSTRATION

Popular Website Facilitates Extramarital Affairs

Have you heard about the personals website designed to facilitate extramarital affairs? Log on and you have immediate access to thousands of men and women willing to kick their vows to the curb for a no-strings-attached sexual tryst. And should you want to use the site to have an affair, the designers behind the site have worked hard so that no one will ever know about your misdeeds. For example, they just released cell phone versions so you won't leave a trail of virtual evidence behind on your home or work computers.

So far the site has been a through-the-roof success. In June of 2009—just one month—679,000 men and women used the site to have an affair, and since 2008, site membership has doubled to 4 million people. It sees its largest traffic just after Father's Day (when men feel most unappreciated) and Valentine's Day (when women feel most unappreciated). According to the personal profiles of those who use the site, 92 percent of the males and 60 percent of the females are, in fact, married.

The CEO of the site, Noel Biderman, shrugs off any criticism, saying, "We're just a platform. No website or 30-second ad is going to convince anyone to cheat. People cheat because their lives aren't working for them." He went on to insist "humans aren't meant to be monogamous." But when asked how he would respond if his own wife were to use the site? "I would be devastated."

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3.When we become unhinged from our creator we forget whose we are?

The most powerful weapon we have to fight against sexual impurity is not some kind of cage to hem us in to our depraved impulses, or just too become more tolerant of sexual sin, but a profound sense of humility.

HUMILITY: is the deep realization and embrace of the truth that we are not our own.

Whose are we: We are not our own we are members of Christ’s body.

Christians are not to live their lives according to the acceptable principles of the world. vv.12-13

CULTURAL NOTE: “All things are lawful for me” is in quotation marks because it seems to have been a popular saying among the Corinthians, pointing to the true freedom the Lord Jesus gives to us. In the 1960’s it was ‘Sex makes free’. it sounds very similar to a strong western trend which has infiltrated the church since the beginning of the 1970s: ‘Do what you feel like doing, and if you don’t feel like doing it, don’t do it.’

Paul is not satisfied with the lowest common denominator approach to daily behavior. Paul wants everything that we do to have a positive result on our own lives and on the lives of the people we run into on a daily basis.

The Greeks and Romans generally regarded sexual immorality as not immoral in themselves.

TRUTH: The Christian life should not be hedged in by laws and legalistic restrictions but, at the same time, it is to be lived according to God’s guiding principles. It is not a license to Sin. - “Are we to continue to sin that grace may about, by no means.”

The body’s God-given sexual appetites are to be satisfied only in marriage. God wants every aspect of a believer’s life to be pleasing to him.

v.12b “But I will not be mastered by anything.”

‘All things are allowed for me, but I will not allow anything to control me.”

(The genuinely free man has nothing to prove. True freedom is deliberately choosing to restrain from freedom for the sake of the Gospel.)

ILLUSTRATION

I was reading an article the other day about how the fires in Australia are pushing the funnel web spiders into more populated areas out of their natural habitat. Now if you lived in Australia, and saw a bunch of funnel web spiders hanging out in your back yard would you tell you children to go out and enjoy playing with one of the potentially most dangerous spiders in the world? Why not? It would be permissible to do such a thing.

But what would be the benefit as apposed to the dangerous consequences. This is what Paul is talking about when he say’s all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.

* Humility helps us to opt for what is beneficial.

Beneficial for What? Spiritual growth, bearing fruit, our witness to the world, take your pic of beneficial things from not engaging in sexual immorality.

NOTE: Food and the stomach are a natural life sustaining part of our bodies however we cannot draw the same conclusion from sexual immorality because the body is not designed for that end.

The body is...for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. The one stands in intimate relationship to the other.

Destiny of the Body: It is not meant to perish, but is to share in the resurrection of Christ. The relationship between Christ and our bodies is eternal, permanent. This is the purpose for which you were created.

CULTURAL NOTE: Is something evil only if it harms others? Go back to the definition of evil, it’s when you have tasted God and have prefer something else to satisfy you over God. This is not about us and it is all about God and displaying His glory.

*Humility helps us to understand what True Freedom looks like.

True freedom in Christ: is the humble reality of knowing that we are not our own!

v.15-16

Our Body is a member of Christ’s body simply because they belong to him, and are included in the redemption effected by his blood, and also because they are united to him we share in his life. When we become unhinged from our creator we forget whose we are and what we were created for.

Example: If Jesus came to Killeen tonight we would not hook him up with an escort service or taking Him out Whoring for the night looking for a prostitute would we?

“The two become one flesh” “Then this is at last bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh...... 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

CHRISTIANS ARE TO RECOGNIZE the serious spiritual consequence of immorality (vv. 15–17).

If each individual believer’s body are actual limbs of Christ, it is inconceivable for him to abuse that body by resorting to such sexual immorality. This is the strongest case and reason why Christians should not marry unbelievers. The physical limbs of a Christ are members of Christ; those of the non-Christian are not. If a Christian chooses to have sex with an unbeliever, he or she becomes one body with that person.

This one implication and fundamental truth: This is the ideal judge for all other sexual relationships as a Christian as described in scripture. Why is adultery wrong? why is homosexuality wrong? Why is pre-marital sex wrong? Simply because there is not oneness and therefore there should be no one-flesh union either.

VIRGINITY: has become a negative word in our culture today!

But the true problem was that there was intimacy without intention, and there was communion without commitment.’ It should be positively affirmed that virginity is one of the most creative, releasing, purifying and beautiful gifts which can be brought to Christian marriage. If either partner is unable to bring such a contribution, his/her whole personhood is impaired—not irretrievably, because the redemptive power of Christ himself is able to make all things new.

ILLUSTRATION

Teens who take public pledges to remain virgins wait about 18 months longer to have sex than those who don't, says a new study published in the American Journal of Sociology. "Adolescents who pledge are much less likely to have intercourse than adolescents who do not pledge," wrote Peter S. Bearman of Columbia University and Hannah Bruckner of Yale University, the authors of the study. "The delay effect is substantial and robust. Pledging delays intercourse for a long time. In this sense, the pledge works."

It works, they say, because taking a public stand for virginity helps to give teens a sense of identity and community. Unfortunately, if a school's students accept the pledge as a fashionable stance (with more than 30 percent pledging), the effect diminishes dramatically. The results come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which surveyed about 90,000 American teens and found that by 1995 about 10 percent of teen boys and 16 percent of teen girls had taken virginity pledges—that's about 2.5 million teens.

The University of North Carolina's J. Richard Udry, who helped design the survey, told Canada's National Post, "We were cynical about the likelihood that the pledge would produce [significant results]. But we were wrong."

(Bad illustration of passing the rose around)

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4.When we are unhinged from our Creator we forget what we are?

v.17-18

Sexual immorality is and always will be incompatible with the relationship of the bodies of believers to Christ, because it arises out of the nature of sin.

We have one spirit with Christ. The Holy Spirit is given to us by Christ, and from him he communicates to all his people who are brought into a new life with Him.

What we are?

1) We are God’s Temple

2) We are purchased

CHRISTIANS ARE TO LIVE IN THE LIGHT of the knowledge that, bought at a price (v. 20), their bodies have become temples of the Holy Spirit (v. 19). In practice, that knowledge means fleeing from immorality (v. 18) and honouring God with our bodies (v. 20). Doing all we can to avoid putting ourselves into a place of temptation is not cowardice but wisdom (cf. ).

Flee Sexual Immorality: Why? Other sin is outside the Body, sexual sin involves the whole body, heart, mind, body, and soul.

1) We are God’s Temple

Two things characterize a temple.

First, it is sacred as a place where God lives, and therefore it cannot be desecrated.

Second, the temple is not owned by man but by God. This body is just on loan from God. Because the Holy Spirit has taken up residence and lives in your body it belongs to God. It is not at your own disposal to do with what you please.

It can only be used for the purposes for which God intended it to be used.

Illustration

I try to drive carefully. But when I happen to borrow a friend's car, I drive very carefully. I don't want to damage the property of a friend and return it to him all banged up. Even so, our bodies are the personal property of someone else. The only way we could say, "Who does he think he is, telling me what to do with my body?" is by not belonging to him at all. Did he shed his blood to cover our sins? Has he given his Spirit to make us new? If so, then we should glorify him even in our physicality, especially our sexuality.

2) We are purchased

Note Cultural Connection: We have bought into the Darwinian way of thinking hook line and sinker, that as long as it does not hurt anyone else it is ok?

Paul clearly defines a major problem with this way of thinking.

You have been purchased back from the valley of death, the price was extremely high, the death of Christ. This is not primarily just about you having sex....it’s about Bringing God Glory.

God’s ownership of our lives does not come out of creation or preservation, but from redemption. You are not your own you were bought with a price.

Therefore: that is, because we are redeemed, and redeemed at such a price.

Honor God: That is, act so as to cause him to be honored by others.

With your Body: as a temple consecrated to his worship and used only in his service.

Glorify God in your Body: Let God have the final say so on this call to purity: ‘Display positively in the use of our body the glory and especially the holiness of the heavenly master who has taken possession of our person.

CONCLUSION

Rose Illustration: (Bad illustration used with youth.

Perhaps you are here today and you have failed miserably when it comes to Sexual relationships. (The rose represents you, and God’s intention for you His Creation)

JESUS ISN’T JUST OUR SAVIOR HE’S OUR LORD

13 For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

It’s like in the beginning of the film The Princess Bride. When Princess Buttercup would ask Wesley to do something, all Wesley would say was, “As you wish.” And soon Buttercup realized that what Wesley was really saying was, “I love you.” His joyful obedience to her commands flowed out of his great love for her.

It’s the same way with Jesus. The more you love him, the more you want to obey him. The more you will say, “As you wish.”

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

Remember the problem is not about sex but about replacing our hunger and thirst for God something else.

What is the sexual sin that you are primarily struggling with today?

In what way’s are you actively fighting this sin? What steps can you take today to continue to fight?

3. Have you confessed to a trusted friend this sin pattern in your life? if not why not?

my soul knows it very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

4. Make a list of the consequences of Sexual immorality for you and your family.

Be in PRAYER

Be in the WORD

Be in COMMUNITY

Be with your Cornerman/woman

when I was being made in secret,

Remember freedom is the humble belief that we are not our own, and therefore not enslaved to this sex obsessed and corrupted world anymore but free to truly be what God created us to be.

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

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