My Body Is A Temple?

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. But we are on the last week of Miss Quoted, and this one actually, my wife Lisa, who's a dietitian with Lee Health, she's heard this many times, and she goes, why don't you do this one? And I think this one's very appropriate. Have you ever heard anybody say, my body is a temple? Right? Yeah, what do they mean by that? It's a half quote from the Bible, by the way. Do they mean what Andy Richter said? Do you know Andy Richter? He's a comedian. He said this, my body is a temple, but it's one of those temples in Thailand where they let monkeys poop all over the place. OK, or I know Joan Rivers, the late great Joan Rivers, she said, my body is a temple and my temple needs redecorating. Sounds like her, right? So a lot of people say that, but what do they mean by that? And by the way, if it's a temple, who's being worshipped in that temple? That's probably the real question. OK, that's probably the real question. So where in the Bible does this come from? By the way, you can follow along with all of this through that QR code. There will take you right to all the notes for this message, including any quotes that I use from biblical scholars or whatever. OK, today and whoops. Whoa. All right. My temple is a little off balance. So we are going to start where this comes up, this phrase in First Corinthians, chapter six. So we're turning to chapter six, verses 12 through 20. 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 immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who has joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Now, over the summer we've gone through three different points to a sermon. You've hardly ever had a sermon from me with less than three points, right? Sometimes four, but almost always three. And we went through these three points in most of these sermons, and we're doing it today. What the Bible does not say. So we're going to look at what people mean by your body is a temple, and how that's not the same as what this text is saying. Then what the Bible does say, and why it is so much better if we go with what the Bible is saying. So what the Bible does not say. Your body is a temple. There's a famous guru and yoga teacher who has passed away. His name is BKS Iyengar, and he put it this way. Your body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in it. Did you get that? Now, if you had world religions with me, you might understand this is coming from a totally different kind of theological, ontological, anthropological perspective. But it's not just somebody who's a yoga instructor who says this. A lot of people think this. And in fact, well, this is not a political endorsement, but Marianne Williamson, do you know who she is? She, I think, is running for president again. OK, probably. I don't know if she's. Anyways, she has in the past. She's an author, a political activist, and she is the spiritual leader, as she says, of the Church of Today in Warren, Michigan. Any Michiganders know of the Church of Today? I've never heard of it. But anyways, this is what she says. When you realize that you are a spirit and that this body is a temple, then you want to treat it well. OK, it sounds good, but what's going on here is that both of these individuals, and a lot of people think, who you really are is the soul or spirit within you, and your body may be your temple, that is, a temporary dwelling place for who you really are. As someone put it crassly, it's your meat suit that you are wearing these days. And that one day you will finally become the divine person that you actually are inside and be released, kind of like unzipping the suit, and then escape. This actually is a philosophy, a theology, an ontology, an anthropology, you can use all those words, that is very different. In fact, Paul is confronting that here in this text. The Corinthians kind of believed that because they were from this Greco-Roman understanding. If you ever remember, I know people don't ...