So tonight on the news, a man goes into one of our local churches and vandilizes it. As I was watching the news I wanted to pose this question to you:
What do you think of this person that came into this beautiful church building and started turning over tables, pulling down chandeliers, tearing up church furniture, just flat out messed this fellowship hall up?
Is this type of activity ok to you? Would you view this kind of destruction of the house of God as being “good and acceptable”? I don’t know if this man knows God or not, but would you encourage other people whether a believer or not to destroy or vandilize the church building? I hope you said No!… you would never dream of destroying a church building like that, or would even want someone else to do it would you?
Well if you wouldn’t want anybody to come into the church to tear it up, then I have a question… why do we tear up our own church. We do know that the church that Jesus is coming back for is not a building but a people. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3:16 – 17 “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
We are God’s temple. Contrary to popular belief your body is not your’s, it BELONGS to God. The truth of the matter is you can’t just do what you want to, when you want to, how you want to in God’s body and think you are going to get away with it. Remember your body belongs to God.
Your body is designed to bring God GLORY! So whatever we do in this body, we should always be thinking “Is what I am about to do, Is what I am about to say, Is where I am about to go… going to bring God some GLORY?”
1 Corinthians 6:19 – 20 says “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit which ARE GOD’S.”
So if you said earlier that it was not ok for that man to go into that church and vandalize it, then with that same thought, we should never be ok with vandalizing, tearing up, bringing down our bodies for the pleasure of flesh.
So we can’t keep allowing ourselves to “DO ME”. Doing me is bringing down God’s body. That smoking, drinking, having sex outside of marriage, clubbing, over eaten, lying, gossiping, etc. is bringing down our bodies and is displeasing to God. Some of us are like, man I am going to do what I want to, because if I wasn’t suppose to then it wouldn’t be here for me to do and if God wanted me not to do it, then He would stop me and it before it went down.
Paul said it like this in 1 Corinthians 6:12 -13 – “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will NOT be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both of it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the the Lord for the body.”
So just because you can, don’t mean you should. As you can see “Getting it in” is not what God wants you to do in His body until you get married.
Keep this in mind: Romans 14:12 – 13 says – “So then every one of us SHALL GIVE ACCOUNT of himself to God. Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occassion to fall in his brother’s way.”
All this is saying is that ALL of us will give an account to what we have done in this body that God allowed us to occupy. Every deed and every word, we will have to give and account. But also we have to give an account on how we lived in front of others. In essence don’t let your “doing you” cause other people to fall because you don’t feel the need to be accountable to others. What if Jesus would have said “Don’t follow Me, follow God”? We should live a life so like Jesus… that as people follow us, they will be following God. We have got to stop being stumblingblocks to people by saying one thing, but living something totally contrary to what we are speaking. (We can’t be telling our friends, enemies and loved ones to try Jesus and we are living a life like we haven’t tried Him ourselves.)
Last scripture I want to share to help persuade us to believe that this body is not ours but God’s.
2 Corinthians 5:10-11 says “For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. KNOWNG THEREFORE THE TERROR OF THE LORD, WE PERSUADE MEN; but we are made manifest in your conscience.”
We have got yo work on our SELF-CONTROL! Just because we can, doesn’t mean we have to. For those of us who have been freed from us, then how about walking with a brother or sister until they get freed from themselves.
I think 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 allows me to remember to help those who have not quite made it yet.
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. AND SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU: BUT YE ARE WASHED, BUT YE ARE SANCTIFIED, BUT YE ARE JUSTIFIED IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS, AND BY THE SPIRIT OF OUR GOD.
So for those of us who were like that above list, and are now washed, sanctified and justified, it now becomes are obligation to help our brothers and sisters to get free also. So don’t ask them how the club was, and how that one night stand was, and all that other nonsense we conversate about, because the truth is we are helping them stay in bondage.
I hope this long note helped JUST ONE person.
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