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Well, good morning.
Glad that you guys are here with us today on this holiday weekend.
If you've got your Bibles, go ahead and open them up to 1 Corinthians chapter 6.
This is where we're going to be this morning, as we continue to work through this letter
together.
Now, we're going to kind of look at chapter 6 in a little bit different format.
We're going to kind of take some highlight of some different verses and kind of see how
they all fit together here just in one second.
I do want to emphasize our marriage conference that we're going to be doing here at Willow
Ridge Church on March 25th and 26th.
I want to encourage you to be a part of that.
We're excited to be able to do this here.
We're going to be using some resources from Right Now Media, so we'll have some guest speakers
that will be with us on screen.
At the same time, building in some small group discussions that can happen around tables.
And just a wonderful, wonderful couple times together of couples working on their marriages
together to see how God is going to use that.
I know Aaron and I have had the opportunity to do marriage retreats, and those have been
real huge blessings in our life.
But what I know that we feel in our life, which is what a lot of you as couples feel as well,
which is we're busy.
You know, and so to think, to pick up and to go somewhere is a little bit difficult.
So that's why we're trying to bring the elements of a marriage retreat to you here in Lexington
for our marriage conference.
So I would love for you, we'll be selling tickets back here to my left after the service
is over with.
And so please, please, please stop by and get those.
Also, I want to remind you, encourage you to be praying for our student ministry that are
up in West Virginia skiing right now.
I just got a picture from my wife.
So yesterday and Friday, it did not get above freezing.
Today, it's supposed to hit 55 degrees.
And so right now, she already sent me a picture that people are shredding, losing gloves, losing
sweatshirts, right, because it's getting so hot.
And somehow, Brent Hawkins has become the recipient of all of those.
And so kids are tying them around his waist, around his neck, and he's having to deal with
it, right?
But pray for them as they're skiing today and as they're traveling back tomorrow.
Now, I did a kind of moment of confession.
I had several of y'all maybe saw my Facebook post, I was able to go up with Aaron and the
kids.
We went up early on Thursday and skied Friday, and then I skied yesterday and then drove back
so I could be here with you guys this morning.
Now, here's what I learned, all right?
Now, I'm a seasoned youth pastor.
I grew up in student ministry.
I was in college ministry.
I interned.
And so I've done, my daughter asked me how many ski trips I've been on.
And I calculated, I've been on somewhere close to 25 different ski trips in the course of
my ministry career.
And only one of those trips I thought about this morning was not related to student ministry.
So 25 ski trips.
But I haven't been in 10 years.
So getting there on Friday was a little nervous how I was going to hold up.
And I just want to tell you, my ability had not lessened, all right?
I impressed myself, all right?
But while my ability stayed the same, the recovery, however, not so much, all right?
So yesterday, I had to leave.
I left about 3.30.
And I had to drive back from West Virginia to our home here in Lexington.
And it was by myself.
And I was like, man, I just need company for the ride.
So company was podcast and Taco Bell, right?
I hit the first Taco Bell, loaded up a sack of tacos, and just headed on with some Mountain
Dew.
And I got to South Carolina.
And I was like, I need to pull over, stop here at a gas station to get some gas.
And I hadn't moved in three and a half hours.
And I opened that door.
And I just want to tell you, like, the noises that came out of that car were not good.
I said, I was telling Shane, I set my alarm for 5.45 this morning, and I got out of bed promptly
at 6.30.
All right.
So here we go.
I might not move as much this morning.
All right.
Quick little recap of where we are to kind of pull us up to speed for chapter six.
So Paul was writing this letter to the church at Corinth.
And he's gotten such a not great report about what is going on in the conditions of the church.
And so what Paul was doing throughout this letter is he is addressing the matters at hand.
He spent the first couple of chapters doing some encouragement, some reminder.
But largely what we see in 1 Corinthians is a reminder, if not a firm letter of discipline.
And a couple of areas that he's already kind of worked through with the church that are going
to continue to overlap in all that we see is he talks about the lack of unity that's within
the church, that the church is divided amongst itself, that the church is working against
itself, and that in that, they're not functioning as the body, as the bride of Christ, as one
family.
And we're going to see this.
And think about all of these.
When we talk about the family, think about your family.
Think what happens when there becomes division amongst family.
It's hard.
It's complicated.
It's messy.
And the family can't be what the family wants to, or needs to be, or is even designed to
be because of the division.
And while that happens in our earthly families, amongst husbands and wives and kids and aunts
and uncles and cousins, even more so with the church.
And so Paul calls them to unity.
He points out what we looked at last week is the church with a lack of church discipline
and a lack of accountability within the church.
And he talks about this dynamic where there's this blatant sin that's in the church.
And he says, hey, you've got to deal with this.
Every church has sinners.
Like, we got them.
I mess up, fall short all the time.
But when there becomes this blatant, unrepentant sin within the church, that the church cannot
just look blindly at it because it will begin to spread.
He uses the illustration of how yeast will spread through dough.
I like to think of cancer, right?
How cancer gets in the body and you've got to remove it before it spreads all through and
brings decay and destruction and death.
So you've got to deal with it.
But then also kind of at the tail end of chapter five last week, and this is going to be really
important for what we look at today as Paul's letters work in a wonderful way, moving from
sentence to sentence as he writes, is that the standard that we're called to hold one another
to is different than the standard that we're going to hold outside lost people to.
Those of us that identify in the body of Christ as followers of Jesus, we are different than
those who do not.
And so for us, Jesus is our standard, not society, not culture.
Jesus is our standard.
And so in that, Jesus determines for us our ethic.
And I would argue that this ethic has never changed, right?
God doesn't change.
God's word doesn't change.
God's standard doesn't change.
And so you and I, we understand that and that's what we apply to our life.
But for those outside, right?
If Jesus is irrelevant to them in their beliefs and in their thoughts, then his standard should
be irrelevant to them also, right?
That's how this works.
We understand who he is, the Savior and Messiah, and we submit and surrender to him.
But a lot of people haven't, right?
And so Paul says we understand that's why we hold ourself to a standard that what we see
is different.
But what we see happening in the church at Corinth, right?
And what we'll continue to see happen is that society and culture will oftentimes determine
the behavior and the actions in those outside of the church and unfortunately those inside
of the church as well.
And that's what we see happening and taking place at the church at Corinth.
And as we look through this, now remember, because it's going to be easy for us, last week
was one of those to say, no, we don't suffer with that.
And so it's going to be easy for those of us in here to look at the problems at the church
at Corinth and say, well, no, no, no.
Those aren't what we struggle with either.
But what we find is a lot of those same behaviors manifest themselves in different situations
in our lives.
Maybe not necessarily identical to Corinth, but the same heart issues, the same struggles
are there.
And so in chapter six, kind of the first half, chapter six, we're going to look at kind of
in two separate halves, even though they relate together.
In the first half, Paul's going to speak against one of these, and it's about lawsuits between
those in the church.
And so look down at verse seven and eight.
He says this, he says, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for
you.
Why not rather suffer wrong?
Why not rather be defrauded?
But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own bodies.
And so a couple of things I just want to kind of draw out of this, of what we're going to
see is what Paul's pouring into is this greater concept of unity amongst the body, God's standard
amongst the body, and the body being separate from the standards of the church.
And so lawsuits amongst believers, what was happening is a member of Corinthian church A and member
of Corinthian church B have a dispute.
And what we can kind of draw from these passages of scripture is that they're both probably ripping
each other off.
They're both probably in sin.
And so instead of dealing with it amongst each other, they're taking it out into the courts
and into the community.
It's not that laws have been broken and so a crime must be reported, right?
What we have here to take everybody back.
Let me try to find middle ground here, okay?
So we might not go, Wapner, let's land on Judge Judy, all right?
And this is what we see happening in the Corinthian church.
Let's take it before the courts, which were public.
And what people see are brothers and sisters in Christ fighting in the display of what's there.
And so Paul, at his core, lawsuits amongst believers show a break in community and family, right?
And when we understand, like think about it this way, all right?
Let's say maybe this randomly happens from time to time.
Maybe my daughter doesn't clean up her room, all right?
And all of a sudden, you head down to the court there, and you see Emma and I standing in court
line waiting to be heard.
And you're like, what's going on?
And they're like, I'm suing somebody for destruction of property.
And you're like, oh, what happened?
Oh, Emma didn't clean her room, right?
And if you've had a teenager's, you know that's destruction of property, right?
Like, that's what it can get to, right?
You're like, that's foolish.
Why would you do that?
It's your daughter.
And it's the same thing for Paul.
We're the family.
We're an eternal family.
We're the family that reflects the gospel.
And the same thing that's there.
Lawsuits amongst believers show the break in community.
But also, what it does is, instead of dealing with the dispute amongst the family, the church
are turning to those outside of the family to not just determine what needs to be done,
but in essence is saying, help us understand what's right.
And so in that, God's word isn't the standard, but the outside is.
So it'd be like, again, the situation with me and Emma, right?
And I go to someone that's not from the faith.
I go to someone that's broken from, that doesn't want to submit to the Lord and say, hey, help
solve this conflict of sin that rages amongst us with the standard that you deem is right.
And I'll be honest with you guys.
Like, Corinthian culture, right, is a broken, backwards, hedonistic, pagan culture beyond what a lot of our places can even begin to fathom.
And that's what they're saying, though.
Y'all help us work through these things.
Instead of believers sitting down with the leaders in the church,
instead of believers sitting down amongst one another and saying, hey, let's work through this.
They're saying, no, no, no, no.
Bring what is pagan, bring what is lost, and let's set that in the standard amongst us.
Also in here, and I think this is important.
Paul says, if you feel like you've been wronged, I'm just telling you like this, get your shin guards on because this is what got me.
Paul says, if you feel like you've been wronged, it's better for you to suffer wrong and be defrauded than let this spill out.
Count your losses.
That's better for the gospel.
Now, that takes a depth of maturity.
That takes a depth of setting pride to the side.
But Paul's like, no, no, no, no.
Be wronged.
Because it's better for the name of the Lord.
I've shared this story a thousand times again.
I picked on my daughter just then because, and she keeps her room great, but I'll use this.
This is a true story about Emma, right?
I'm not suing her.
Not at all.
But here's the true story about Emma.
Years ago, she was young, elementary school age, I think like third grade, and we were headed to her dance class and we had to get off the interstate, right?
And the area that we had to get off the interstate to go to her dance class, it is known for men and women who are homeless there to stand and hold up one of their signs.
And I don't know about you, but that's one of the most uncomfortable feelings that I have, right?
Like I turn into the seventh grade students that doesn't want to be called on by the teacher and just, if I don't look at them, they will not see me, right?
It's just stare down, just stare down, just stare down.
And we pull up beside and there's a homeless person and we're right there and there's sitting in my truck is a whole, the ashtray that they used to put in there, right?
I had my F-150 and I had that there and it's filled with quarters and change, other change.
And they're standing there and we drove off and Emma said to me, why didn't you give them any money?
And I said, well, sweetie, you don't know what they would have done with it.
And she said, you're right, you don't.
My heart went negative, her heart went positive.
What if they wronged me?
That's okay, that's okay, that's okay.
And the generosity of the Lord, right?
Paul says it's better to suffer wrong and be defrauded than let it spill out.
But then another thing is he says, like, it's a matter of the heart.
Like, look back at verse eight.
But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers, right?
Sin is just rampant.
Sin is rampant in the church and it's not being dealt with in the way that brings glory to the Lord.
It's not being addressed what we saw from last week.
It's being brought in by fights.
There's not church leadership that's stepping in.
There's not those that are rising above all of this, right?
And Paul says, you should be freed from this.
You should be different from this.
And Paul gives them a list of behaviors and sins in chapter six.
And then he says this.
Look down at verse 11.
And he says, and such were some of you.
But you were washed and you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Paul says, you were the people who did these things, but you're not them anymore.
You're not them anymore.
And he says, here's who you are.
I had a pastor one time preach a message and I'll never forget the title of his message.
The title of his message was, but God.
It was, but God.
And he says, here's who you were.
And then the greatest line in your testimony is, but God.
And in that, he stepped in and he saved me and he changed me.
And what Paul does here is he steps in and begins to say, this is what God did.
He says, you were washed.
God washed you.
Spiritually speaking, we have been cleansed by God, covered by the blood of Christ.
What was old, what was dirty, what was filthy has been made new by the blood of the Lamb.
Paul says, you were washed.
Paul says, you were sanctified, all right?
And then the sanctified, it's this essence of being set apart.
So important, as marked as different, when we go all the way back to the Old Testament,
when we think about what God did with the Jewish people.
What did he do?
He chose for himself a people to set them apart so that the world would know that they were his
and they would be a living example within there.
And that we in the new covenant in Christ, what Christ has done is it's not about an ethnic group,
but it's about a savior.
And we've been set apart in this.
We've been marked as different.
And then Paul says, you've been justified, which is a legal term.
A legal term that was used in the courts, but takes on a theological meaning that legally declared righteous,
declared innocent.
And here's what's beautiful about it.
We weren't innocent.
We did it all.
Every commandment shattered and broken, guilty.
And what was imparted to us was not just the death of Christ on the cross,
but the life that Jesus lived, who broke none of them, not even one,
and his perfection imparted to us so that God, the righteous judge, says this is who we are.
And so Paul says, if this is who you are, if you've been washed, if you've been sanctified,
if you've been justified, then be different.
You've been washed by the blood of the Lamb, sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit,
and declared justified and innocent, not by an earthly judge, but by God, the righteous judge,
who knows all wrong and still imparts that to us.
So now this is who we're to go and to be.
This is what we are to go and reflect, right?
And then there's going to be a little change as we see the second half of chapter 6.
Look at verses 12 and 13.
Paul writes,
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.
And God will destroy both one and the other.
The body is not meant for sexual morality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
Now, this last week, I've poured hard over these two verses.
In an effort to understand what Paul is saying, so that it can be taught,
but I think even more importantly, so that it can be applied to my life.
Now, I've heard this passage taught on often.
In this passage, when it says things like,
all things are lawful for me, and Paul says it twice here,
that there's this teaching that those of us who were in Christ have been set free from the law.
Now, let me say this really quick.
That is true.
For a different time and a different lesson.
Because I don't think that's what Paul's trying to get to here.
I don't think that's what Paul's trying to point out.
Okay?
And so, just bear with me, and I want us to follow the quotes.
Because in these two verses, there are three quotes, and I want us to look at them.
And Paul's going to give a quote, and then Paul's going to give a rebuttal.
Give a standard.
So, let's look at them.
Two of them are in verse 12.
The first one, all things are lawful.
And then Paul follows it with, but not all things are helpful.
Then a little bit later, he says, all things are lawful, again, but I will not be dominated by anything.
And then verse 13.
Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food.
And God will destroy both one and the other.
And here's what I think Paul is doing as he speaks his largely Gentile audience who's trying to embrace Jesus in the world.
He's attacking an area of the culture of the Corinthian church, of what they're doing as the Corinthian body, the Corinthian people, the Corinthian culture, would say that the body is morally irrelevant.
So that the body, it doesn't matter, because the body in and of itself is morally neutral.
And so, the only thing that matters is what I know, and the only thing that matters is what I believe.
So, when we look back, and when we see the listings of sins and the things that Paul says, he says, these are the things that affect the body.
There's the sexually immoral.
There's the idolaters.
There's the adulterers.
There's the men who practice homosexuality.
There's the thieves.
There's the greedies.
The greedy.
There's the drunkards.
There's the revilers.
There's the swindlers.
They won't inherit the kingdom of God.
And it's not just solely based in their actions.
It's because it's who they, it's because whose they are.
But in the Corinthian church, in the Corinthian culture, you could have a break, and they would say, no, no, no, the body is morally irrelevant.
It doesn't matter what I do.
It only matters what I know, and it only matters what I believe.
And in this, their belief and their action is completely separated.
In church, all too often, this is where we find the brokenness in so much of the American church.
So much of the American church.
Let me give you some examples.
You talk to someone whose life is a wreck, addicted to many different behaviors, drunk all the time, living in sexual sin, practicing shady business dealings.
And you share the gospel with them, and their response is, oh, well, I believe in Jesus.
Well, do you?
Do you believe?
Because what you're listing out is all the feelings of all of the things that are there.
Do you believe that there's this more of what it cuts down to at the heart of this?
What it cuts down to is the heart of what's going on here, and what we see happening in the church at Corinth, and what we see happening in the church in the United States so many times,
is we say we believe in Jesus, but does our life reflect what we say we believe?
A couple of things studied for this is to be able to see.
One of those that we would call this is called practical atheism.
Practical atheism.
Atheism is the belief, and it's the lack of belief, I'm sorry, in the existence of God, that God doesn't exist.
And practical atheism says, while I believe in God, I choose to live my life in such a manner that he doesn't exist.
So it's not that I don't believe in God.
I'll tell you I believe in God.
But when it comes to what I do, when it comes to who I am, there's a break in that.
And Paul says, that's not faith at all.
The second is called practical hedonism, right?
Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, and oftentimes mostly sexual, but not always, above all other pursuits in life.
And practical hedonism says, while I believe in God, I choose to live my life by what makes me feel good,
even if this goes against God's standard for my life.
And these are the behaviors that Paul's addressing.
You can't claim belief in God and then live sexually immoral.
You can't claim belief in God and then be the drunkard.
You can't claim belief in God.
These two aren't separated from themselves.
And when we live our lives in these manners, that's what we do.
Is it lawful in Corinth to indulge in sexual morality?
Yes, it's lawful.
Paul says, is it godly?
Is it lawful in the Corinthian culture to indulge in the desires of the flesh?
Yes, but is it godly?
Is it lawful in Corinthian culture to partake in sketchy business practices and stretch the lines?
Is it lawful?
Yes, but is it godly?
Is it lawful to partake in gossip?
Yes, but is it godly?
Paul says we've got to stop letting the culture determine who we are.
We've got to stop letting the culture determine what we do.
And we see this in so many ways infiltrating into the church then and into the church today.
Over and over and over again.
God taught me this lesson and reminded me of this lesson yesterday.
So I was out skiing.
And I don't know if you've ever been skiing or been to Winter Place specifically,
which is where we were.
But when you ski down to the lodge, there's kind of this code.
There's this ethic that's there, right?
And it's before you go in, you have an area where you lay your ski poles and you lay your skis
and then you go inside to eat.
And that way people aren't tripping over ski poles.
They're not tripping over skis.
They're all out there.
And then in the 25 times that I've been there, right, until yesterday, that was fun.
And then my family and I, we go walking out after going inside to eat lunch.
We walk outside.
We go to grab our stuff.
And my son comes up to me and he's like, Dad, my ski poles are gone.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, my ski poles are gone.
I set them right here, right beside my skis.
And I came back out here to get them.
And they're gone.
And so let's look around.
Maybe they fell.
Maybe they're somewhere else.
And so I don't know.
Like those times where you're not looking for something and then when you begin to look for
something, that's all you see, you know.
And so as we're looking, it felt like there was way more ski poles out there than there
was skis.
You know, kind of those things.
And walking around and we're looking and we're looking and we're looking.
But we can't find yours.
So we head down to the place for the rentals.
And they told us, if you lose anything, if something happens, just come let us know.
And so we go down there and we walk in and they're there and we say, hey, here's what's
kind of happened.
Somebody's taking the ski poles.
We can't find the ski poles.
And so we wanted to just kind of get him another pair of ski poles.
And the guy just looked at me and he said, well, what's happening this weekend is a lot
of people were taking ski poles that aren't theirs and we're out of them.
So that's just kind of your problem.
Okay.
I've got a choice to make.
Do I believe in God?
And is he going to dictate who I am in those moments?
Could I have gone out and justified to myself an action and found another set of ski poles
and said to my son, well, there's probably an extra set here.
So why don't you just take those?
Could I have done that?
Yeah, I could have.
Could I have done that and no one would have noticed?
Yeah.
But God and my belief in him and I know that he's ever present and that he's with me.
I can't live my life as a practical atheist.
Whether I'm searching on Google or doing taxes or standing there at the ski slope,
I am not alone.
I am not alone and God is with me.
Number two, practical hedonism.
When that guy said that to me,
I wanted to respond.
I didn't want to get physical, but I wanted to let him have it.
And I acknowledge in that moment, it would have satisfied one thing in me, my flesh.
My flesh.
Satan would have been glorified.
The flesh would have been satisfied.
And I'd have chosen in that moment a pursuit that wasn't the Lord.
Right?
And so I said, I understand.
Put a smile on my face and walked out.
And my family and I, we came up with a situation that in our life taught us some lessons,
made much of the Lord to help us rise above this.
Right?
Paul says, when we're facing these things, when we're facing these choices,
when this is what it is, the question that we have.
Right?
The battle that we face, Paul presses on two things.
He says, make sure you're choosing the things that are helpful
and make sure you're choosing the things that won't dominate you.
Right?
So what does he mean by what is helpful?
What is helpful?
Is it in this particular choice or action?
Is it helping you grow in your faith?
Is it helping you grow in loving God?
Is it helping you grow in loving others well?
Is it helping you grow in glorifying him?
Is it helping you grow in making his name known?
Is it helping you in these things?
Or is it retracting from these things?
The question isn't, can I?
What comes from this?
The question is, should I?
Does it glorify the Lord?
Is it in the leading of his spirit?
It's not if the world will allow it.
The world will allow anything.
We can find anything that will have us there.
But the problem is, is we as believers,
we fall into a pattern of justifying actions
instead of evaluating hearts.
Psalm 139, 23 and 24 says,
Search me, O God, and know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts.
And see if there be any grievous way in me
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Is what the psalmist says.
Right?
Search my heart.
Find who I am.
And if there is anything.
Because this is who I was.
This is what I did.
This is what we were a part of.
But we've been washed.
We've been sanctified.
And we've been justified.
Right?
But Paul also follows it with,
What will dominate you?
We serve one master, Jesus.
And this is what he says.
These are Jesus' words in Matthew 6, 24.
No one can serve two masters.
For either he will hate the one and love the other.
Or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and money.
And in the context of what Jesus is talking about there.
He's not talking about money that is evil.
It's the love of money.
The pursuit of money.
As the ultimate what's there.
And we can't let anything dominate us.
We cannot serve two masters.
And we're to be drawn.
We're to be brought in.
We're to be guided.
Not by the world.
Not by the standard.
But by the Holy Spirit.
Not by the flesh.
Right?
And so Paul, in verse 18,
he says, flee from sexual immorality.
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body.
But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
And this is so big because in this context,
what Paul is talking about is that the body is the temple of God.
And that God dwells within us.
And this is what we're, who to be and who we're to model within this.
And so in the context of the sexually immoral person with what they're doing,
it's the infection within the body.
And so Paul says, in these moments,
in these moments, what we do,
in these moments where we go,
in these moments when this begins to rare its ugly head up in our life,
is what do we do?
We flee.
I find that oftentimes with us in the church,
we try to be cautious optimists about sin.
That's not that bad.
No, it is.
Oh, I can handle it.
No, you can't.
Oh, it's not going to take over.
Oh, but it is.
And Paul says, what we're to do is to flee.
We're to flee.
We're to flee from it.
Right?
I heard a story someone was telling me this morning about a news report or picture.
I forget exactly what it was,
but we were talking about skiing and just gotten back from skiing,
and they said that there was a person who was skiing down a mountain,
and there's people on the chairlifts where we're watching him ski.
And I don't know if you've ever been skiing,
but it's fun to watch people ski when you're on the chairlift, right?
There's nothing else that you can really do
other than hope that you don't plunge down to your death or something right there, right?
And as they're watching, what they notice is that a bear has come out.
And as the person is skiing, the bear is coming at them.
Now, the person got away.
I don't know if the person ever turned around and saw,
but what if the person saw the bear, right?
Oh, it's not a big deal.
Let me slow down a little bit.
Good time for a selfie, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
You flee.
Church, can we be people that stop being comfortable with the sin?
To stop being comfortable with the ways of the world.
To stop being comfortable with who we were and understand who we are.
And to set the standard of holiness in our life.
Would you pray with me?
God, I come to you this morning.
And thank you, Lord, for the call that you've placed on our life.
To be different.
To shine a light.
To not reflect who we were, but to reflect who we are.
To be different as men and women who are slaves to righteousness, not slaves to sin.
God, in these areas of our life, I pray that you would just capture our hearts.
Lord, bring us before your throne of grace, may the sins of society, may the sins of society, the things that are sexually immoral, the idolatry of this world, the adultery that is rampant.
Lord, the attack on your union of marriage between a husband and a wife.
Lord, the desire to take what is not ours.
The desire to consume without care for others.
The desire to be controlled by anything other than your spirit.
Lord, we understand that the people who are this, they don't inherit the kingdom of God.
We've been washed.
We've been sanctified.
We've been justified.
We've been made new.
And that's now, Lord, who we are in you.
Lord, show us in our own life, specific areas in our life where we're allowing culture to dictate our belief and our actions.
Lord, show us the areas of our life where while we believe in you, there's a sense of practical atheism in our life.
Lord, while we believe in you, there's an area of practical hedonism.
Lord, we're making other choices other than you and other than your will.
Lord, we fight against the flesh and pursue you.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
We've got prayer encouragers on the inside of our auditorium.
Maybe this morning it's an opportunity for you to come before and to pray.
Maybe we'll talk to someone about a relationship with Christ.
They'd love to talk with you.
They'd love to pray with you.
Just ask that you respond and how God's leading you this morning.
Just stay in peace.
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