Scripture reading this afternoon is taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians first Corinthians 6 and the verses 12 through 20 first Corinthians 6 and the verses 12 through 20 a Passage of God's Word that we will read in light of what it is that we confess concerning the seventh commandment You shall not commit adultery And the summary of that commandment, as it's found in the Catechism in Lord's Day 41, a faithful summary of God's teaching in His Word, that will be our focus this afternoon. But first, we'll begin by hearing from God's Word in 1 Corinthians 6 and the verses 12 through 20. Hear the Word of God. Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me. But I will not be mastered by anything. Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food. But God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By His power, God raised the Lord from the dead, and He will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never. Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, the two will become one flesh. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body. But he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. That's for the reading of God's holy word. Then to Lord's Day 41. Lord's Day 41 in the back of our Psalter hymnals, page 54 and the 7th commandment. Here we find two questions and answers dealing with this commandment. The first in question and answer 108 is as follows. What is God's will for us in the seventh commandment? God condemns all unchastity. We therefore or we should therefore thoroughly detest it and married or single live decent and chaste lives. And the second question and answer is as follows. Does God in this commandment forbid only such scandalous sins as adultery? The answer comes, we are temples of the Holy Spirit, body and soul. And God wants both to be kept clean and holy. That is why he forbids everything which incites unchastity, whether it be actions, looks, talk, thoughts, or desire. This the church does believe. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have before us this afternoon. A rather delicate topic. One that is not often discussed in polite company. And one that has been a challenge to discuss to have open conversations about the fall into sin. We are hesitant to discuss this area of life, this, shall we say, physical element of life, this physicality. Maybe we can use that word to adequately describe and to accurately describe the topic before us in the seventh commandment, our physicality. And we do not like discussing this because it's embarrassing. Indeed it has been embarrassing since the fall into sin. For you will remember that after man and woman ate of the fruit and after they had been cursed by God in Genesis 3, then we are told that they were embarrassed. Or rather it was before they were cursed by God. After they had eaten the fruit and God had had not yet come into the garden, they were embarrassed because they were naked, we're told. And so they sewed these garments to try to hide their shame. And that's telling because it shows us that there was a direct connection between their internal purity and their external purity. That is, that having been created good by God, righteous in all their ways, Man in his heart lived a godly life before the Lord, and he felt no shame. Not in his being naked in the least. He was entirely okay with that. That's how God had made him. And he was thankful to the Lord for it. But after his heart was turned to sin, and after he became a sinner, then he was embarrassed about his nakedness, his physicality. We've been embarrassed about it ever since. And to a large degree, rightly so, for it is the embarrassment of sin. And we ought to be ashamed of it. And we ought to hide it. But we may not hide it inappropriately. We may not hide it in a way that contributes to its problem. Man hid himself behind his fig leaves. And that was not a sufficient covering. It was not until after the curse that man was covered properly by God. For God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. The Lord can cover our shame. The Lord can cover our sin. Not only spiritually, also in terms of our physicality. And can also make this blessed. You see, therein lies the danger that we have as church. as people of God is that we only ever speak negatively of physicality, whether it is in terms of ourselves or in terms of our marriages. The temptation is to take what God has given as a blessing and make it a curse, which is our fault, not God's fault. God who sent his son, Jesus Christ, has addressed our sin and our shame. And we ought to find in Jesus Christ, in faith in Jesus Christ, joy and blessing in the gift of God. And therefore, we must think of our physicality now in light of our faith, in light of Jesus Christ. Yes, there is a way to see it in the light of sin. We'll talk about that, too. And that is a terrible, shameful way to look at it. There's also a way to look at it as a Christian, and that's a good and blessed way, a way that we can rejoice in. We're going to see how that's true in light of Lord's Day 41. Under this theme, the Lord demands the entire purity of his people, seeing two points, the principle in purity and in the second place, the power for purity. The Lord demands the entire purity of his people. First of all, the principle. Second of all, the power. So then the principle in purity and the Catechism's summary of this commandment, which shows us that the Seventh Commandment is really a commandment about purity. It's not just about adultery in its specific or narrow sense, it's about purity in the broader sense. For the Catechism rightly explains the Seventh Commandment in this way, that God condemns all unchastity. We should therefore thoroughly detest it, and married or single, lived decent and chaste lives. Chaste, pure lives. Indeed, the Catechism goes on to say that we ought to be so pure that we have nothing to do with that which incites unchastity or impurity, whether it be actions, looks, talk, thoughts, or desire. The Catechism says we ought to be thoroughly pure in the way that we interact with each other. The Scripture deals with this dynamic in a very similar way. The Catechism is faithfully echoing God's Word. God's Word that addresses certainly the question of adultery specifically. You'll keep in mind that Hebrews 13 and the verses 3 through 4 teach us that marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. The scripture clearly teaches us throughout that adultery, the breaking of the marriage vow is condemned in no uncertain terms by God, that God, as it says in His word, hates divorce and all that is involved in that, and therefore we ought to as well. But the scripture also condemns the broader question of our physicality when it says, for instance, in Ephesians 5, verses 3-4, that among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity or of greed because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking which are out of place. The scripture says not only should you not commit adultery, you should have nothing to do with any of this impurity. Neither in your thoughts, your words, your actions, anything. Now think of that. That means that you must be pure throughout your being. You must be pure in your thoughts. What do you allow your mind to think of when you see somebody else, when you imagine somebody else? What are the images in your mind? Are they consistent with purity or do you allow your mind to revel in sin? How about your words? What kind of words do you use when talking about others, when talking about the fairer sex, when joking or when speaking with your friend? How do you talk to each other as boy and as girl? What words do you use? Do you use words that incite impurity? Do you do you act inappropriately if you're a married man? Do you act inappropriately to someone to some other woman in the way that you speak to them? How about the clothes you wear, your dress? How do you deal with the way that you present yourself? What is your goal in dressing up? Whether it is about coming to church, whether it's about going to school, whether it's about simply being with your friends, what principle governs the way that you present yourself in your dress? Or what actions do you participate in What do you do when you're on the Internet? What images or what expressions do you use on Facebook and the like? Are they images? Are they words that are pure and holy? Or are they words that are sinful and depraved? Really, the question is this of the catechism. What is your attitude towards physicality? Towards sexuality? What is your approach to the question? And the seventh commandment teaches us what our approach ought to be. For the seventh commandment says you shall not commit adultery. Now, adultery is a very specific act possible only by those who are married. The five biblical languages, you understand, have a number of words that can describe the way that we deal with our bodies in relation with each other. There are words for pornography. There are words for fornication. There are words also for adultery. So God could have used a very big word. He could have said, you shall not have any sexual immorality at all. But he chose a specific word, adultery, for the seventh commandment. And we must ask ourselves, why? Why is it that adultery is specifically condemned? And in order to understand that, we need to enter into the question of marriage. We need to enter into the institution of marriage, the covenant between husband and wife, between God's will for marriage and God's purpose for marriage as he instituted it at the beginning of time. For you'll remember that marriage is not a human institution. We didn't make it up. God established it when he brought the woman to the man in the very beginning. And God, therefore, has a purpose and a plan for marriage. A union and communion between husband and wife, so that they may live together in service before Him. God gave to man a help that was exactly right for him. And He gave to woman a man that was fit for her. God said, the two of you now, as one, serve me in my kingdom and in my paradise. God gave to men the blessing of marriage for the purpose of serving the Lord. And adultery, therefore, is a rejecting of that purpose of God's. Remember that the fifth commandment is at the top of this table, this second table of the law. We saw that how that impacted the sixth commandment last week, how the law forbids murder, not killing. Because murder is killing somebody outside of the law. I put myself as judge over my brother. Well, adultery is taking my physicality and using it, pursuing it, outside of the bonds that God has established for it. God says in his word, here is the limit for this. And we say, no. I will decide where the limit is. I will decide what I may do with my eyes, with my words, with my body. We rebel against God's will for our flesh when we break the seventh commandment. You see, that's the issue. The husband who commits adultery is saying, in effect, not to his wife, I don't love you. That may be true, but that's not what he's saying. What he's saying to God is, I reject you. You understand then why God so vehemently condemns adultery. But you also ought to understand, therefore, why God condemns all expressions of self-will with respect to your body. This is the issue of the seventh commandment. Who is master of your body? On the one hand, we have our world. the world of sin and rebellion, that rejects God, and that tells us all the time that we are masters of our physical bodies. The world, in fact, is rather passionate about this. Oddly so, we might even say. Look at how much our world pumps into our environment this filth. Think about how much of the internet is devoted to the breaking of this commandment. Think about those ads that were recently in the news from Ashley Madison. Think about how much money the pornography industry makes each year. Think about the homosexual agenda, where 10% we're told of our society dominate 100% by their program and by their will. The world is passionately committed. to perversion with respect to physicality. And the reason for this is rooted in a philosophical system that separates body and soul. The world sees our bodies as just a container for the vastly more important soul, which goes on to eternity when we die. And because this is just a container, it really doesn't matter what you do with it. It's like Tupperware. You can throw it away. It doesn't matter how you treat your body. Legally, this is expressed in terms of libertarianism, which is a growing, if not dominant philosophy or political philosophy in our day. A attitude that says, or a philosophy that advances this principle, if I'm not hurting anyone, then the law should not tell me what to do. That's where you get that phrase consenting adults from. Listen, if the two of us are in agreement, then what does the law care about what I do? Indeed, isn't Pierre Trudeau right when he says the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation? The libertarian says, look, what I do with my body is my business, not yours. Because it is under my control. But in the end, spiritually, all of this is rooted in our world's rebellion against its creator. and our world's refusal to acknowledge that God is their master. That's why they so tenaciously hold to evolution. And that's why they so tenaciously want to insist that we're just animals. So that they can justify their animal-like behavior. That they can then say, you know what, it doesn't matter. They do so contrary to all logic and reason. Think about the logic of Proposition 8 in California. Maybe you don't know, Proposition 8, it was an advancing of the homosexual agenda. Gays could get married in California, they were told. The populace voted, and they said no. Do you think then the homosexuals said, well, the majority don't want it, so we should give up? No, of course not. They continue to pursue the matter because it's not about popular opinion. It's about enforcing their will. It's not about logic or reason. Think about bountiful B.C. in Canada, something closer to home, where that sect, that break-off group from the Mormons, live with all of their polygamists and all of their multiple wives. Why doesn't the government ever arrest these people? Why don't they ever charge them for polygamy? Because the government knows they can't possibly win that argument. After all, if the government can allow the gays to marry, Then how is it that the government can say no to these people? If you can redefine marriage once, you can redefine it over and over and over again. And so the government says we refuse. Think about no fault divorce brought into our society because it was easier and so much better for people if they could just separate amicably. Has that worked out for our society? Has that advanced the program of our world? It was a television program on some time ago dealing with elephants in Africa. I may have mentioned this before to you because it is so compelling about these elephants in Africa that were going crazy, were killing people, were destroying homes. And in Africa, it's illegal to shoot an elephant. You can't kill them. The villagers would try to scare them away with loud noises, banging of pots, shootings of guns. Nothing could get rid of these elephants. Nothing could stop them from trampling people to death. Until one day somebody said, you know what, maybe we should return to the herd, those big bull males that we took out. And they went to the zoos where they had sent these bulls and they brought them back and they put them in the herd. And wouldn't you know it, the bulls kept the little boys in line. And it stopped overnight. And all of these biologists, and all of these pundits said, you see, these young males, they needed bulls to keep them in line. They needed their fathers to show them the way. They can see it when it comes to elephants. But when they shoot each other on the streets of Toronto, they can't imagine why no-fault divorce is the problem. They can't see why breaking the seventh commandment has led to this consequence. Because they know that to accept this would require accepting God. They understand that there is more at stake here than physicality. It is the question of authority. Who may govern my life? And I would rather the young men of Toronto shoot and kill each other save the world. And I can do what I want with my body. than that I submit myself to God's will and bring blessing into this world. So committed to ungodliness is our world that they beat the drums of physicality desperately. That we are not of the world. We are of the Lord. And we revel in it. We rejoice in it. The God who created us living souls. We don't have bodies separated from soul. We are one body and soul. After all, we experience this life in body and soul. We have five senses, do we not? Is a sunset a physical or a spiritual experience? Is the beauty of creation a physical or a spiritual experience? Is holding a child in your arms A physical or a spiritual experience? You say, well, they're both. And rightly so, because we are one in God's plan. In God who called us from the very beginning to live for Him in body and soul. Remember what the test for man was in the beginning. God's test was truly, Adam, will you believe me? Will you trust me? Will you love me? But in what form did that spiritual test take? In a very physical form, it was a question of eating a fruit. That's a very physical reality. And God gave the test because body and soul are one. And what we do with our flesh is a reflection of our hearts. And therefore, we confess a great comfort in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You see, here the joy of our faith is rich. He who came in the flesh, we confess. He who suffered in the flesh. He who rose in the flesh. He who sits at God's right hand in the flesh. He who will come again in the flesh. Who will raise our bodies in the flesh. We profess a physical Messiah. A Messiah who values our bodies. For He has purchased them by His blood. And He has claimed them for His own. So to reject Jesus Christ's claim, to reject the seventh commandment, is to reject The world doesn't want us to hear that. The world wants us to hear about this issue in terms of personal pleasure. Who are we hurting anyway? Ah, but the scripture says, this is about your relationship with God. This is about your faith in Jesus Christ. Do you accept that He is Lord of your body and your soul? We may need to repent at this point. Hearing this testimony, we may need to acknowledge in our hearts that the truth is we have exercised far too much control over our bodies in our lives. But let us then answer the call of faith as the glory of Jesus Christ is held before us, and we are reminded that we're not of the world, we're of the Lord. then let us answer this revelation by surrendering to the Lord even and especially in the context of our physical bodies and with what we do to them. Saying this body belongs to Him and therefore I will not do with it what satisfies me. No, I will do with it what He commands. For in such faith, there is power. There is power for purity, our second point. Now, understand that the challenge in answering this call, the challenge in devoting our bodies to the Lord as well as our souls. Is that we are sinners. Sinners under the dominion. Of sin. When it comes to the spiritual consequences of that, we're fairly clear. We know personally, we know in our own spirits that it is only because of God's saving power that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. We only know Jesus and we only love Jesus because God, by his grace, has opened our eyes. We know that not only personally, we know that in our interactions with the world. We meet every day, every week, those who don't know the Lord, those who don't love the Lord. And maybe we try to communicate the truth of God's gospel to them. And we try to do it in as clear and concise a manner as possible. But if you've ever ministered to someone who doesn't know the Lord, you understand that no amount of arguing, no amount of logic, no amount of reason can bring them to faith in Jesus Christ. It is only when God in his infinite mercy and power changes their hearts that they love the Lord. And therefore, We would never say to a sinner, we would never say to someone who is seeking the Lord, do your best and He'll save you. Of course we would never say that. We know that we can't do anything, that we're in chains and we're enslaved and we're in prison of sin. No, we call upon God to act. We direct their gaze to the Lord. And we say He, He alone can break the chains of sin that are around you. Now we know that spiritually, but it's no less true physically. Our physical existence is no less under the dominion of sin and must be no less delivered by Jesus Christ. We've already noted that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, that He might deliver us body and soul. We have also to note that throughout scripture, the body or flesh is a synonym for sin. Just think as one, we could use all sorts of examples. Just remember in your mind, Romans seven, verse five, Paul saying the good that I don't want to do that or the good that I want to do, I don't do in the good that I don't want to do that. I do. You remember that passage and you remember that in verse five, Paul says this for when we were controlled by the sinful nature. The sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, in our flesh, so that we bore fruit for death. Our bodies are enslaved to sin, and so we should never imagine saying to a sinner, Same to somebody who's wrestling with the dominion of sin in their flesh, with the perversions of this life, the immorality of this body. We should never say to such a sinner, try harder and you'll overcome it. You can't do it in faith. You can't do it in your flesh. Rather, we should take them to the end of Romans chapter 7, where Paul comes and says, what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. How do we deal with the problems of sin in the physicality of life, whether that's personally, whether we're struggling with it, whether that is in terms of our children, in terms of our friends and family? The answer is not follow this program and you'll overcome. The answer is come to the Lord on your knees in prayer and cry out to Him for mercy that by His grace you may be delivered. The scripture teaches us. The scripture reminds us that for this too Jesus Christ came to deliver us from our bodies of death. that we may be a royal priesthood, a holy nation, that we may be a people who declare the praises of our Lord and Savior, a royal priesthood, a nation who praise the Lord. In the Old Testament, that ministry was accomplished by only one twelfth of the people of God. The Levites were the only ones who were devoted to the Lord, to praising Him, to worshipping Him. They were the only priests. And they, you understand, even they needed to be purified by God. They were anointed with oil for the service of the ministry. They were covered in blood to cleanse them from their sins. They were made To be those who could serve in God's presence. For the Lord does not abide sinners. The Lord does not receive those who live in sin, and he does not bless those who are covered in their filth. We have a greater blessing. What belonged only to the Levites and what was only theirs is now all of ours. For we have a great High Priest, Jesus Christ, by whose blood, not the blood of bulls and goats, but the blood of the Lamb of God, the blood of Christ, that purifies us from all our sins. And we are anointed, not by oil, but by the Spirit of God, who directs our bodies in the way of obedience. And therefore, we are made in Jesus Christ, Priests to serve in His temple. His temple that is not in Jerusalem, oh no. His temple that is us, the Church. We are the temple of the Lord, says Paul in Ephesians 2, and Peter in 1 Peter 2. And God has sent His Spirit to dwell in us so that we might be living stones, says Peter. This temple is not built with rocks. It's built with people, people who are fitted to Jesus Christ for the praise of his God and father. Indeed, that is why we have received the spirit that we might offer right sacrifices to the Lord. So that we may worship him, not just in church, not just one day a week, not just with our heart, But with our mouths, with our hands, with our bodies, we have been redeemed to devote ourselves, to be devoted to God. Indeed, does not Paul say after that glorious revelation of God's saving work in Romans, after Paul has displayed for us the majesty of God's grace, does he not then say, therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, To offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. We have been redeemed by Jesus Christ to be priests within his temple. That priestly service involves our bodies. And we must devote them to the Lord. We must devote them in gratitude for salvation, the seed. Our flesh desires to be sinful, to live in rebellion to God, to follow its own pleasures, and it has never produced blessing in our lives. But Jesus Christ has come, people of God, and He has put His Spirit in us. And by that Spirit, we are no longer slaves to sin, but priests to the living God. We can, we may, Live for the Lord also in our physicality that requires a surrender on our part. Make no mistake. The call of God here is so very contrary to what we hear every day. And it takes a great challenge. It is hard for us to devote ourselves in this way to the Lord. We face temptations daily. And indeed, we must ourselves come before the Lord and acknowledge our weakness. If we are struggling with an addiction to this, an addiction that can grip our lives, that can wreck our relationships, that can ruin our lives, we must then come to the Lord and to the blood of Jesus Christ and cry out for cleansing, assured, confident that Christ will cleanse us. He will forgive us all our sins. But we must also cry out for His Spirit. That that Spirit may give us power to overcome this sin. There is hope for those who struggle with this addiction. There is life in Jesus Christ. But it requires a surrender. A surrender from us all. We must say, my body belongs to the Lord. Married or single. I must use this body, even as I use my spirit, to the Lord. But we may make that surrender, both in the power of Jesus Christ, but also in this, in the promise of His blessing. Understand that it's a spiritual battle we face. For the world says, do this and you'll be happy. It'll make you feel better. It's a lie. It doesn't. But the world says it. The world has never fulfilled its promises to us. Now comes the Lord in his word to us this afternoon. And he shows us in the person of Jesus Christ that he is the Lord, he is the master of our bodies too. And says, now give me your flesh in service to me. And he promises blessing to all who answer the call of faith. And He always keeps His word. Is it challenging? For sure. Does it demand much of us? It will demand everything. But we give it to Jesus Christ, our Savior. And He promises blessing. So let us trust Him. Let us answer His call, confident. That in this too, He will show Himself to be a faithful Savior. And that we will experience blessing and joy. Yes, we can speak of that too. That in Jesus Christ, He will open up for us the blessing of this life. And will give us the joy that comes from being living souls. We experience it in our hearts, but we may experience it in our bodies too. He will bless us. If we follow him. Amen. Gracious God and Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have dealt with this cause of so much shame in our lives. When we fell into sin, Lord, we exposed our impurity. And we were embarrassed. But you have covered us in the blood of Jesus Christ. And you have given us clothes to wear, that our sins may be hidden from your sight. And Lord, may we go forth in that strength. And may we go forth, Lord, eager to devote ourselves, body and soul, to Jesus Christ. To confess that comfort in both body and soul. That we belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, we especially think and pray for the young people of our congregation who are so often targeted by the world and by its call to pleasure. Lord, may they have heard the call today and may they answer it in faith. But not just our young people, Lord, for we know that the devil is tirelessly at work. In all. And we know, Heavenly Father, that especially especially through the Internet, it is so easy for us to falter and fail. So we pray, Lord, for all your people here, and we pray that you would protect and preserve their bodies as well as their souls. That they may indeed, O Heavenly Father, be freed from the chains of sin and be alive in Jesus Christ. For we pray it in his name. Amen.