Not My Body

Hello, everybody. Welcome. Another fun morning at Salt Church. Man, I miss you guys. So glad that you've tuned in with us today for part three of our series, A New Normal.

Hey, I just wanted to share one thing real quick with you. Some exciting news about our next steps as a church. As many of you know, we were moving into a new facility right before everything happened. Easter, we were supposed to launch at the Museum of Contemporary Art, but everything was at halt, and right now, museums are still closed, and other churches are starting to get back together, and some of you are asking, what's our next step? As you know, I've sent out some phases to let you know kind of the four phases we're moving into to start meeting together, but one of those phases was when we were able to meet in a physical facility once again.

And I got to meet with MOCA this week, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the great news is they're going to, even though their museum is not going to open until July, they are going to extend it to us in June. So that means we will, we don't have any specific dates of when our family gathering is going to happen yet, because we got to get some things ready for our new space. It's a big move for us, but we do expect to have one of our, our second phase, our second phase in June. So we're excited about that. We'll let you know in the next week what that looks like.

I'm predicting Father's Day will be our first family gathering. It'll look a little different, but that's kind of our aim, so that we can prepare, order things, get things ready, and get, and be, and practice caution and safety and sanitation and things like that that we need to do before we get together. Because there's a lot of new stuff right now. It's kind of a different type of church for at least the short and foreseeable future, so we want to make sure we have everything together so that you guys feel safe. Let me say this, when we do begin to meet again, if you do not feel comfortable meeting, we do encourage you to continue to watch at home.

We're going to have streaming in our services from here on out, so we're going to have that opportunity for you in the home. So don't feel like you have to rush back, and for those of you who are ready to come back, we are, we'll have everything ready for you. We'll be looking out for you as we move back in. So I just wanted to share that with you before we get started with our message here. We are in week three of New Normal, and as we've shared every week, this idea of a new normal is kind of the trigger phrase for everything that's going on.

We're in a new normal, it seems like. We're looking at going into something different in the future. The world might look a little different, at least for a while, and some of that seems oppressive to some of you. For others of you, it might be a source of encouragement wherever you stand, but I'm talking about a different new normal. I'm not talking about a new normal that oppresses us or a new normal in this world that we're looking at.

I'm talking about a spiritual new normal that is encouraging. I want you to have a new normal in your spiritual life. We want to see you grow in Jesus and take steps forward. A good new normal, a new normal that walks in new ways and new heights, and you're closer to Christ, you're growing in Him, you're becoming more like Him, you're inspired. It's a life-giving new normal.

So after the crisis passes, what new normal will rise from the ashes? What will come out of the ashes for you? And that's what we want to encourage you with. And the theme verse, as we share every week, is from 1 Thessalonians 5.23.

It says, So we talk about wanting to be sanctified, be holy, be set apart for God and His coming. And we do that, our whole spirit, our whole soul, and our whole body. So we broke that up and we talked about that the last few weeks. First week, we talked about your spiritual life. You have to have the spiritual right before you can have anything else, your connection to God.

You've got to know God. You can't get the other parts right until you know God. You can go back and listen to that message when you get a chance and find out more about that. Last week, we talked about an emotional health that we are perhaps missing and building a house, a framework on the rock, something that stands when the storms of life come along. And if you want to go back and listen to that, that will catch you up to where we are today, which we are going to talk about our body, the physical, our health, our physical health, and what we're doing in our bodies and how we're living out a whole life through our bodies.

Because it starts with our spirits, but if what we're doing on the outside doesn't reflect what's going on in the inside, then we know that something's wrong, right? So I think it's important for us to look at our bodies. Now, I'm going to break this up in two different weeks because there's so much information here that I want to share with you. Next week, I'm going to offer you about nine practical ways, nine practical ways you can have a healthy lifestyle, healthy body. And it's going to be super practical for you, the way you think, the way you walk with Christ, the way you should live.

So it's going to be more application next week. And I'll have some application today, but I want to kind of build a framework first of what it means to have a sanctified body. And Paul, who was one of the most righteous people in the Bible, I mean, he wrote a third of the New Testament. There's probably not a bad bone in Paul's body, as people would in that day would say. But he wrote this in Romans 7, beginning with verse 22.

He says, For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war. He says, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members, talking about his body parts. What a wretched man that I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? So he talks about a body of death.

What does he mean by a body of death? Well, in Christianity, we understand that as we are sinful by nature. We were born in this world sinful. We were not born innocent, just try to take a toy and candy from a kid, and you'll learn really quick that that kid is going to react because he is of a sinful nature. You know, he's selfish by nature, or she's selfish by nature.

So we know we were born in sin, and we live in a body of sin. We have to really work. It's at war. The spirit's at war with what's going on with our body. And he's talking about, I'm sinning, and I wish I wouldn't.

I love God because, you know, my inner being, I delight in God, but I struggle often. And now, the funny thing is, and I want to state this before I go into the message, a lot of people stop there, and they say, well, old wretched man that I am, and they use it as a way to get by with their sin. Like, oh, yeah, I just, old wretched, you know, Paul said, what can I do, you know, because my body's like this, and we use that. But that's not what Paul's getting at here because if you read the context, you understand that all of that passage and all that part of Romans talks about the spirit winning over, the spirit of God winning over sin. He gives us very, he's very practical about that, that we need to wage war, that we need to beat the things that keep us from being who we're supposed to be in Christ in our sin nature.

So, we don't want to be trapped in sin. We just don't. God doesn't want us to be trapped in sin. What a horrible place to be. And Paul writes Romans and other letters to help us understand how to overcome sin.

So, To kind of build a framework here, I want to give you three areas that the Bible kind of positions sin. There's multiple areas, but there's three areas I want to hit on today that I think a lot of us struggle with sin and in sin. So, one of those areas is, number one, is addiction. A lot of us struggle with addiction. Now, you might be thinking, well, I'm not a drug addict or I'm not an alcoholic, so, you know, therefore I don't have an addiction.

But it doesn't just stop there. Those are addictions, but there's much more to it. In fact, the definition for, or my definition for addictions is anything you continue to do and you can't stop doing. Anything you continue to do and you cannot stop doing. I mean, if you can't stop lying, if you can't stop cheating, if you can't stop gambling, if you can't stop manipulating people, if you can't stop spending, those are things that can be addictions.

Look what Romans 6, beginning with verse 12 says, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments, get that, instruments of wickedness. But rather offer yourself to God for sin shall not be your master. So, my question is, what masters you? What masters you?

Is there somewhere in your life that masters you? It may even be work. It might be a hobby. I know lots of people that have hobbies that masters them and they've neglected their children, they've neglected their wife, and they've lost everything because of that. Or work.

Maybe you're a workaholic. You know, that's an addiction, right? So, here's what you need to ask yourself, right? Four questions you need to ask yourself. First of all, whatever that thing is, can you go one week without it?

Can you go one week without it? The second thing is, is it leading you to even greater isolation? Do you feel more alone when you're entering into that? Or, number three, do you arrange your schedule around it? I mean, do you move things around just so that you can get that fixed, whatever it is?

Or, number four, are you trying to keep it a secret? Are you working around lying and being deceptive to try to keep it from everybody else? You might have a problem with addiction. Addiction, that's just a big thing that a lot of people struggle with. The second thing is, debauchery.

Debauchery, some of you understand that word. It's used in the Bible quite a bit when they talk about debauchery. They talk about an extreme indulgence in sensuality. It's a corruption of sensuality, if you want to see it that way, or intemperance. So, it can be something that is actually not inherently wrong, but when you indulge in it too much, it becomes debauchery and it becomes sin.

So, a non-sin basically becomes a sin. It's something along those lines. It could be eating. Eating is not inherently wrong, right? We love and enjoy eating.

I'm glad God made food good, you know? We need it for our bodies and things like that. But, when we do it too much, when it's all we think about, when it's all we do, and we consume ourselves with eating all the time in unhealthy ways, guess what? We enter into debauchery. Maybe it's watching TV.

Maybe it's watching Netflix, binge watching, social media, whatever it is. If you do it obsessively too much, whatever it is, it enters into that. Look what Ephesians 5, 18 says. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. See?

It leads to that. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Do not be drunk with wine. Do not be drunk with the things that you are putting yourself in, that you're over consuming yourself with. But be filled with the Spirit.

And, honestly, I'd rather be sober in the Spirit rather than completely off somewhere, involved in whatever it is I'm involved in. For instance, you know, wine. It's okay to have a glass of wine. But if you drink too much of it, if you indulge in it and over consume, what does it do? It makes you stupid.

It makes you foolish, right? So, I'd rather be filled with the Spirit than filled with wine, you know? All I need is the Spirit, to be honest with you. I just want the Spirit. So, that's what debauchery is.

And then the third thing is, a lot of people suffer with this, is sexual immorality. Sexual immorality. We deal with sexual immorality on a common basis. And what that is, is anything outside of the marriage of a man and a woman. Anything outside the marriage of a man and a woman.

It's a sin that's not easily seen. And that's why it's so devastating. The Bible talks a lot about sexual immorality. It talks about this a lot because it really is a hidden sin that's very devastating and soul-wrenching. And studies shows us that fornication and pornography and all those things are on the rise during this crisis because people's emotions are messed up, so therefore their bodies react, right?

Because they're not hanging on to what they need to be hanging on to. And I was reading something in here. In fact, you know, the actual translation, the word that translates sexual immorality is porneia. And we understand that word porn, right? That's a very common term today.

And the heart of immorality is what we are feeding our eyes. You know, that's where it kind of starts, right? What we're feeding ourselves, feeding our eyes. We're looking at it. And the problem is the porn industry is huge and so many people are addicted and they fall into that.

So all these other categories, debauchery and addiction, fall into these categories. And get this, even right now during the crisis, certain places in Europe are actually offering their premium content for free because they know it's an addiction. They know that when they can get people into that, they cannot get out of it. They want their money. It's a big money industry.

And it's everywhere. It's very, very dangerous because it feeds our soul. It feeds our hearts. In fact, I'm worried about our kids. You know the average age of kids who first experience some type of photo or video or something along the pornography lines are 11 years old.

11 years old. The average age. That's so young. And I'm really worried about our kids. So it's really important that we keep ourselves sexually pure so that we can have a whole life.

God invented sex. He wants us to do it the right way. And when we feed our eyes and our thoughts with things that aren't of God, it's just not good for us. 1 Corinthians 6, 15 and 18 says this, and this is Paul writing to the church because people in that day, they were sleeping with prostitutes. Even church people were sleeping with prostitutes.

Some of the temple priestesses and serving other gods in the process. And he says, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? That your bodies are members of Christ himself? That you're Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them to a prostitute?

And this is interesting. Never do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her body. So he talks about them being one. That it does something there. It's not just somebody you sleep with.

It's not just an action. There's something soul-wrenching about it. It ties you to that person. He's very serious about that. There's something spiritual about it.

For it is said, the two will become one flesh. We use that in weddings all the time. The two will become one flesh. And what happens, it destroys the effects of sexual immorality. It destroys families.

It hurts lives. It's unhealthy for us on so many fronts. And no one says, I want to grow up and be like that. They just don't. They don't say, I'm going to be an addict.

I'm going to practice debauchery. And I'm going to be sexually immoral. They just don't do that. People don't say that and I'm just going to hurt all the people I know around me and that's what sin does and that's why it's so important for us to recognize sin. In fact, sin always starts off innocent.

It starts off as a desire because our bodies desire things, right? We have desires. It's our guts, it's our loins. They are reaching for something on their own, right? And here's what James says about it.

He says, temptation comes from our own desires, and this is James 1.14, which entices us and drags us away. So it entices us, right? So you see it, the eyes, it entices you and then these desires give birth to sinful actions. So they give birth to sinful actions.

So when we act upon those desires, it births it into sinful actions. And when the sin is allowed to grow, it is birthed to death. So it becomes death. So you see it's like an organic thing. So it doesn't start off as this big sin.

It's birthed through just a desire. And our excuse is, well, God made me this way, you know? I can't help it. My loins are made like this. And we often blame God or the devil made me do it, you know?

And we're quick to blame everything else. But the truth is, we are going to have desires. We just are. This is who we are. We're made in a sinful body.

We brought it on ourselves. God didn't make it that way. We brought it on ourselves. We disobeyed God. We brought sin into this world.

We are innately sinful. But we can live above that. Here's what James says. We don't blame God for our problems. Here's what James says about that.

James 1.13 says, and remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, God is tempting me. Because that's what we say. Well, God made me this way, right? God is never tempted to do wrong.

And he never tempts anyone else. So we don't blame God for it. We recognize that we've got a body that we've got to work on, right? We've got a body that we need to make right with God. It's not just spirit and soul.

It's the body. Because the spirit get the spirit right, get the soul right. It's work on the body, right? So let's talk about that. And I want to give you some information today to kind of help you and encourage you.

And the first thing is, you aren't your own. You are God's. If you're a believer today, you need to understand three things. And I'm going to give you a scripture here, and we're going to pull out those three things, and then we'll end. 1 Corinthians 6.

19 and 20, it says, do you not know that your body is a temple? You need to underline that. Temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own. Underline that.

You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God. Underline that. Honor God with your bodies.

So I want to talk about that first underline, the temple of God. Number one, here's the first point. My body is God's dwelling place. My body is God's dwelling place. When I come into a relationship with God, the Holy Spirit comes in, and I am a sacred body.

I am a temple. When you think of a temple, what do you think of? You think of a place where God dwells. When you think of a church building, we talk about keeping the church building sacred. Well, guess what?

The church building is just a building. This is the church. Our body needs to be whole and healthy because the presence of the Almighty God lives inside of us. Look what Matthew 6.22 and 23, going back to the eyes, which are the way in which things come into our bodies.

It says this, the eye is a lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body is full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body is full of darkness, meaning what you see, as we talked about earlier, becomes what you are. It's important that we keep ourselves pure in what we're viewing, what we're participating in, and what we're seeing. Okay?

What are you putting into your bodies with your eyes? I think about just an example. I was online or on social media or something like that, and somebody mentioned a TV series on Netflix. And I was like, and they were, you know, pretty good Christian. So I thought, you know, they're good people.

They're probably a good, clean, wholesome series that I can watch. And so I go in to Netflix and say, hey, I recommend you watch this. It was really cool. It had this, this, this, this, this. Within the first ten minutes, I mean, pornography pretty much.

I mean, just things happening all over the place. And I had to cut it off immediately. As soon as that started happening, I like skipped through it. Maybe it's just that part. Oh, it's happening again.

I just can't watch this. I can't watch this. How can we live pure lives if we're putting that in our mind? And so many of us are making excuses. Oh, it's just TV.

It's just art. It's just these things, you know, that we make excuses for. But really, we're putting things into our bodies through our eyes. And we need to really keep the language, the sex, all those things out that are causing us to lust or go places. It's doing things psychologically to you that you don't even know is happening, and it affects your body.

So let me look at Romans 8, 5 here in the New Living Translation. Those who are dominated by the sin nature think about sinful things. See, you're allowing the sin nature to take over when you do things like this. But those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So if we're filled with the Spirit, which we as believers are filled with the Spirit, we think about things that are the Spirit.

When we're filled with the flesh, which is another word for sin, and our bodies, these bodies of death, we react that way. So we need to be filling ourselves with the Holy Spirit, allowing the Holy Spirit to take control. If you go on down to verse 8, and let me just go back. Remember that first verse I mentioned about, oh, wretched man that I am? This is just a chapter later.

So Paul's really laying it down. He says, if the Spirit of man who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Son. So he's capable of getting, Paul, he is the one who raised Jesus himself from the dead. Think about that. The very Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead has the power to transform your life.

You've got to realize that. Your body is a temple. It is a holy place. Allow God to thrive and bless you and produce in you. So here's the application.

You need to detox your body. You need to detox your body. Spiritual detox. I'm not talking about physical detox. You can do that too.

That's good. It's healthy to detox your body. But you need a spiritual detox of your body. You need to, if you're drinking too much, you need to stop drinking. You need to lay down drinking.

I tell you, give it a week. If you're like, man, I've had way too many beers. I'm drinking every night of the week. You might be having too much, you know, and you feel like you can't get away from it. Or maybe you notice that you're binge watching Netflix and you're wasting a lot of time.

Maybe that's something you need to give up. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it is a hobby that you feel like has become an addiction in your life. And maybe even gone other places with it, you know.

So maybe you need to give up some of that stuff. So you will feel physically and spiritually and emotionally better if you do this. And fast something this week. I challenge you to fast something this week that you feel that's really been keeping you away from what God has for you. Number two, he talks about the body being God's property that we are owned by God.

Wow. We are owned by God. If I belong to God, I have to ask him permission to do what I want to do with my body. Some of you are like, oh, I do what I want to do with my body. It's my body.

But if you're a believer, it's God's. It's God's body. It's not your body. God created your body for something. So it's his body.

Look at what Romans 12 says. Verse 1. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy. Oh, just circle that mercy part. To offer your bodies as living sacrifices.

It's holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper service. So he says, what is mercy? Mercy is simply He's just been giving you chance after chance after chance. Any time you've fallen, He's given you chance after chance.

And so in view of that mercy, this is what you need to do. You need to break some of those things He's been giving you a chance and a chance and a chance and another chance over. You need to break those things and you need to offer your body in worship and you need to tell God, I'm giving you my body. Here's what I do. Every morning, and you need to do this, every morning you need to present yourself to God as a living sacrifice.

This is not my body. This is your body, Lord. I give it to you today. Everything I do is for you and for your glory, Lord Jesus. This is what you need to do.

My body is made to glorify you. That is my worship. So we worship. We worship God. That's the application.

You need to worship God. Now, we think about worship as raising hands and jumping up and down or something. Singing or singing or whatever your background is in worship. We think of it. But really what that's about, what reason we sing, the reason we raise our hands is because we're submitting to God.

That's our act. It's an act of worship. So whether you do that physically or in your life, the point he's making here is that we're presenting ourselves every day, at every moment, in our jobs, in our families, wherever we are, in our play. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

We're presenting ourselves as living sacrifices, living sacrifice, one that walks around. In the Old Testament, bulls and lambs, but in the New Testament, we are living sacrifices. Amen? We are like Christ. We are living sacrifices, giving ourselves to him.

He has our body. Which leads me to the third point. Our bodies are made to honor God. So he ends that with saying that our bodies are to be used to honor God. It pleases God.

Romans 6.13 says, Do not let any part of your body become instruments or an instrument of evil to serve sin. Because that's what the devil wants, right? Instead, give yourselves completely to God. You've got to give yourself completely to God.

Don't allow it to be used for sin. Here's the application. We exist for a purpose. The reason we exist. And I went into this last week, and I'm going back to this again.

Your body was designed to glorify God. To honor God. To live for God. To share God with others. That's our purpose in life.

And if we're not living in our purpose, then we're empty, we're incomplete, and we eventually fall into that sinful nature. And when we're distracted, and that's what Satan wants, with everything else besides God, what ends up happening? We fall. We fail. But if we are focused on the reason we exist, what's my purpose in life?

To glorify God in whatever you do, whatever you work, your play, your reason for living, is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, following Him in any area of your life, living with Him in the center of your life. That's your purpose in life. And you need to figure out your spiritual gifts, your personality type, whatever it is, all those things that you can pull together, and you can live for Him. You can live for Him. Right now, you are living for Him.

Don't think about what's coming. Think about the now and how you're living for Him. Because if you're distracted, here's what happens. Y'all know David. David, King David, a man after God's own heart.

He loved the Lord. But here's what happened in 2 Samuel 11.1. It says, David was in the spring at the time when kings go off the war. So David would go off the war.

What does David do? David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. But David remained in Jerusalem. And the story unfolds. He sees a lady named Bathsheba.

And eventually, he commits sexual immorality, has her husband killed in war, and sin after sin after sin invades his life. You have something you are called to be. David was called to be the king that represented God's kingdom, the lineage of Jesus Christ. Yet, he took his eyes off of his purpose and he focused on himself, his body, his flesh, and it took him off course. But God is so gracious and used David's sin and pulled him out by his mercy and used even the child that was birthed from Bathsheba to take the throne and carry it on.

Now, it's not to excuse sin because Paul is very adamant here. We've got to do this. But God is very merciful. And some of you have lost focus on your purpose and have allowed sin to enter in. But here's what you can do.

You can confess right now. If you're there, you can confess to God. And we need to confess. I need to confess. You need to confess.

We need to confess to God that we have lost focus. And we also need to confess to others. Share with others. I have people that I confess my sins to. Close friends, pastors, leaders that are in my life that I confess.

I've done this wrong and I need to confess. You need people to confess. You need to confess your sin to God because he is gracious and just to forgive you. And you need to confess your sin to others so you can get through this. You cannot keep your sin a secret because God has a purpose for you and he wants to carry you through and he wants to do it with the people that are around you.

Confess your sins to God. He is faithful and just. And it's important that you find someone that you trust to confess your sins to and help you and pray with you. That's why we're a church. That's why we do what we do.

That's why we form soft groups so that you can connect with people and confess your sins to each other and help each other through it. And it's not just a meeting during the week. It's what goes around the meeting every day. The people and the relationships you make because you need believers around you. You need believers around you to help you through that.

So if you are here and you feel like you are far from God, let me just say this. It's probably because you need God. And I'm just telling you, come home. Come to God. Maybe you feel like you're far from Him.

He's here. We're a family ready to receive you. God's ready to receive you. He wants you to come. He wants to come into your life.

Maybe you've backslidden. You've gone far from Him and come back to Him. God loves you. And the sin that you were participating in, it can be history. The things that led you away from God, it can be history.

He just wants you. He wants you to come home. He wants to give you a fresh start. Do you want a fresh start? Do you want a fresh start today?

Well, today could be your day. Why don't you just pray this with me? Just right where you are, just submit yourself to God and just tell God, God, I thank you for the cross. I thank you for the cross of Jesus. I thank you that you died for my sins and that you've forgiven my sins.

So, Lord, I'm coming back home to you. I'm coming home to you. I never knew I had a home outside of you, but I'm coming home to you. I give my life to you. I admit that I'm a sinner.

I know that you died on the cross. I confess my sin to You. I give You myself today. Deliver me, Lord Jesus, from where I was, and I'm ready to take steps forward in You. I belong to You.

I belong to You. Can you just say that with me? I belong to You. If you've given your life to Christ, say, I belong to You. If you're a believer, make that confession.

I belong to You. God wants to do amazing things in your life, and it starts now. Thank you guys so much for being with us today. And if you gave your life to Christ, please, please connect with us. You can check in on our app, send a message to us, our Church Center app.

You can go on our IM right here, backdoor us with a private message. You're welcome to do that. You can go to our website, saltchurch.org, and connect with us there. There's some info.

There's a way to connect with us there. Any way you can get to us, connect with us. If you're not in this area, we challenge you to get connected to a local church to help yourself grow so that God can grow you and the people around you can help you grow in Jesus Christ. Love you guys. Thank you so much for being with us today.

I'll see you next week for part two as we share some practical things. And also stay tuned to social media and your emails so that we can start giving you dates of when we're getting back together. God bless you. Have a great day. God bless you.

God bless you. God bless you.