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The title of this sermon is Every Body Belongs To God
 This sermon is provided by James Moore
Sermon Topic: Other
Sermon Synopsis: Everything--including my body--belongs to God. I am, therefore, responsible to Him for the care and use of the physical as well as the spiritual. So how does this translate to real, everyday life?
Sermon Text:     EVERY BODY BELONGS TO GOD

(Read aloud Psalm 139:13-14)

That my body works so well most of the time, without any conscious intention or direction on my part, is one of the most fascinating wonders I can think of. If I were put in charge of my HYPOTHALAMUS tomorrow, I would panic immediately. I have no idea how I would communicate with it, much less what I would tell it to do. I don't even know what it looks like!
I would rather be put in charge of a Discovery Space Shuttle in orbit and told it was my responsibility to fly it home.
I must face the fact that the tiniest and most humble cell in my body is much more intelligent than I am.
I've been doing some reading and research and I have come to realize in a whole new way that the human brain is simply amazing! It is so complex! It has at least 100 billion cells, and each cell may have as many as 1000 connections with other cells. That equals 100 TRILLION connections!
Therefore, a single human brain has more connections than all the computers now operating in the world COMBINED! In fact, a normal human brain has enough capacity to know EVERYTHING that is known in the entire world! The only problem is that there is not enough time to learn it all. One hundred years would only give us enough time to begin.

You know, it's a wonder that we exist at all!
We began our earthly journey as a one-celled organism within our mother's body which, when united with a cell from our father, combined to create a brand new cell, similar to and yet unlike any other person who has ever lived. It was so small it was invisible to the naked eye, and yet its 23 pairs of chromosomes, with their 100,000 genes and three-and-one-half billion points of contact, contained all the instructions necessary to build a complete human being with the capability of lifting holy hands toward heaven in praise to God.
Then almost immediately after conception that primal cell began to replicate itself. After a few days of rapid and seemingly chaotic multiplication, these identical looking cells suddenly ---- as if a switch had been thrown ---- began to transform themselves into specific kinds of cells:
bone, blood, nerve, muscle, sinew, tissue.
Now, not only is each cell a small universe in itself--with specific tasks and precise functions coordinated down to a thousandth of a second--but each interconnects perfectly with 100 trillion cells that constitute a human being.
If you are a person of average size, every 24 hours your heart beats 103,680 times. You breathe 23,040 times. You inhale 438 cubic feet of air. You eat about three-and-one-half pounds of food, and drink almost 3 pints of liquid every day. You generate 450 tons of energy. You use seven million brain cells. In the course of your daily routine, you walk about five miles. On average, if you are a man you speak 12,000 words per day; if a woman, 23,000 words.
All 5 billion of us are so much like other humans that each of us has a normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees whether we live on the Equator or above the Arctic Circle, and yet we are so diverse that no two of us have the same fingerprints.

BUT WHAT IS THE BODY ULTIMATELY FOR?
Eating and drinking? Pampering with a luxurious lifestyle? Is it to be used as a tempting bait to attract the opposite sex?

Let's get the answer from Scripture: 1 COR 6:19-20. VERSE 19 points out two truths about our relationship with God:

1) HE OCCUPIES OUR BODIES -
The Apostle Paul asks the Corinthian believers, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?"
He is surprised that some of his fellow- Christians do not realize their bodies are the temples of God's Spirit. In the same way today, many Christians have not understood this truth. But the fact is that whether you realize it or not, the Holy Spirit moves into your heart and sets up His temple in your body when you accept Jesus as your personal Savior.
The Old Testament temple was the earthly dwelling place of God. In the Old Testament God had a temple for his people, but in the New Testament God has His people for a temple.
JUST THINK OF THAT! If you are a Christian,
your physical body is the Holy of Holies……the temple of God Himself!

A boy was sitting on the front row in his church listening to his pastor preach. He was also chewing gum quite loudly, much to the disgust of an elderly woman in the next row. After the service she complained to the pastor, "I was shocked at the smacking of that boy's lips. Did you notice that he was chewing gum in the house of God?"
To which the pastor replied, "Madam, you have that turned around. The house of God was chewing the gum."
YES! We are God's house, His temple. Do you live as though it’s true? The Old Testament temple was WHOLLY dedicated to God's use.
Whether you live and work in a factory, an office, on a farm, at a school, or in a department store, the Heavenly Father wants you to be totally committed to serving Christ there in a holy way.

You know what? We need to take stock of the contaminants we put into this flesh-and-blood temple.
Last year Americans spent more than $20 billion on cigarettes! Former Surgeon General Everett Koop reported that smoking causes more than one in every six deaths in the U.S. The director of internal medicine at Georgia Baptist Hospital testifies that "every cigarette smoked by a person takes eleven minutes off of his life."
Have you ever built a fire in the fireplace and forgot to open the flue? What happens? Smoke backs up into the house. And if smoke backs up into your house, you will probably have ugly stains on your walls. Right?
Well, have you ever thought about the Holy Spirit being forced to live in a polluted house?
And yet there are many believers who dump all kinds of filth down the chimney of his temple.
INCLUDING ALCOHOL.
The United States uses enough grain (5.2 million tons) in the production of alcoholic beverages every year to feed 26 MILLION starving people.
So, if the Old Testament Jews scrupulously
prevented unclean things from entering their temple, how much more should we New Testament believers do the same? Since God occupies our bodies, shouldn’t we try to keep them holy?

2) HE OWNS OUR BODIES -
Some of the believers in Corinth didn't know that. They failed to realize that they had no right to do whatever they wanted with their bodies. And today many people are still ignorant of this fact.
Isn't one of the major arguments for ABORTION that "a woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body?" BUT IT'S NOT HER OWN BODY, is it? It belongs to God.
How would you feel if someone took a sledge-hammer to your car and smashed it? You'd have every right to be angry because it's your car, not his. In the same way, every body belongs to God. We are not our own. Therefore we have no right to damage the Lord's property by drunkenness, smoking, gluttony, drugs, or any other "sledgehammer."
YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN! This applies to every area of life. Your MONEY is not your own. God supplies your income and has the right to tell you what to do with it.
• Your ABILITIES are not your own. The Holy Spirit has gifted you in a specific way and expects you to use your talents in service to Christ.
• Your TIME is not your own. Death proves that.
• Your POSSESSIONS are not your own. The Heavenly Father holds title to your house, business, car, clothes, television sets, and swimming pool.
• Your HEART is not your own. That's why Scripture forbids you to give it to a non-Christian marriage.

This principle holds for unbelievers too. Sometimes I hear Bible teachers say that non-Christians are free to reject Christ if they want to.
BUT THAT CAN’T BE TRUE!
If we have a right to refuse Christ, how can God punish us for doing it? The fact that He condemns people to eternal hell for saying “NO” to His Son proves that we have no such right.
So if you are hearing me right now and you have no Savior in your heart, invite Jesus in now. You are obligated to do this, for you are not your own. And if you refuse, you will suffer the consequences.
So that is the second thing Scripture tells us about our relationship with God: we are not our own. Look at VERSE 20: "You were bought at a price." And that price is Christ's blood shed on Calvary's cross.
In 1 PETER 1 we read, "FOR YOU KNOW IT WAS NOT WITH PERISHABLE THINGS SUCH AS SILVER OR GOLD THAT YOU WERE REDEEMED........BUT WITH THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF CHRIST..."
Can you say, "Praise the Lord"?

SO…..one thing we have determined today is that our bodies are wonderfully made up of an unbelievable number of cells, none of which individually resembles each other.
I believe these cells in my body can teach me about larger organisms like a community of people that is likened to a "BODY" more than 30 times in the New Testament. I'm speaking about the Body of Christ --- that network of people scattered across the planet who have little in common other than their membership in the group that follows Jesus Christ. They’re an unlikely assortment of humans, for we are decidedly unlike one another, and unlike the One we follow.

NOVELIST FREDERICK BUECHNER described the
crew God selected in Bible times this way: "Who could have predicted that God would choose not Esau, the honest and reliable, but Jacob, the trickster and heel; that he would put the finger on Noah, who hit the bottle, or on Moses, who was trying to beat the rap in Midian for braining a man in Egypt and said if it weren't for the honor of the thing he'd just as soon let Aaron go back and face the music; or on the prophets, who were a ragged lot, mad as hatters most of them....?
"And of course there is the comedy of the election itself. Of all the peoples he could have chosen to be his holy people, he chose the Jews, who as somebody has said are just like everybody else only more so --- more religious than anybody when they were religious and when they were secular, being secular as if they had invented it.
And the comedy of the covenant--God saying 'I will be your God and you shall be my people' to a people who before the words had stopped ringing in their ears were dancing around the golden calf like aborigines and carrying on with every agricultural deity and fertility god that came down the pike."

It is pretty incredible when you think about it, isn't it? It seems that the exception turns out to be the rule. For example, the first humans God created went out and did the only thing God asked them not to do.
• The man he chose to head a new nation known as "God's people" tried to pawn off his wife on an unsuspecting Pharaoh. And the wife herself, when told at the ripe old age of 91 that God was ready to deliver the son he promised her, broke into laughter in the face of God!
• Rahab, a prostitute, became revered for her great faith.
• And Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, went out of his way to break every proverb he so brilliantly composed.
Even after Jesus came, the pattern continued:
• The two disciples who did the most to spread the word after He ascended, John and Peter, were the two He had rebuked most often for petty squabbling and hard headedness.
• And the Apostle Paul, who wrote more books than any other Bible writer, was selected for the task while going from town to town sniffing out Christians to torture.

Jesus had some nerve, didn't He, entrusting the ideals of love, unity and fellowship to this group! No wonder cynics have looked at the church and said, "If that group of people is supposed to represent God, I think I'll vote against Him."
Or as Nietzsche expressed it, "HIS DISCIPLES WILL HAVE TO LOOK MORE SAVED IF I AM TO BELIEVE IN THEIR SAVIOR."
Yet our study of the Body of Christ must allow for this impossible dream, for all we are is a collection of people as diverse as the cells in the human body.
I mean, is there another institution in town with such an assortment of unlikes as the Church?
• Young radicals in blue jeans sit in the same row as Republican bankers in 3-piece suits.
• Bored teenagers tune out the sermon even as their eager grandparents turn up their hearing aids.
• Some members gather as regularly and methodically as a school of fish, but then quickly break apart to return to their homes and jobs.
• Other members want close communities and meet together to come to church and then go out to eat afterwards.
IT'S BEYOND IMAGINATION TO THINK HOW ANY ORGANISM WITH SUCH DIVERSITY COULD ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING THAT EVEN RESEMBLED UNITY.
But at the same time that I am expressing these doubts, I hear the Lord saying, "YOU HAVE NOT CHOSEN ME. I HAVE CHOSEN YOU." Then I'm reminded that the word CHURCH means "the called out ones." And if anything is to be believed about the collection of people that follow Christ, it is that He called us.

Let me give you something to write down:
In Christ’s body, the basis for our unity begins NOT with our similarity, but with our DIVERSITY.

Just as a color on a canvas can be beautiful in itself, when the artist positions that color between contrasting or complementary colors, the original color appears richer and deeper. Amen?

Let's conclude by looking once more at 1 CORINTHIANS 6:20 - "Therefore honor (glorify) God with your body."
So how can we glorify God in our bodies? Let me give you a few suggestions.
The main way mentioned in the context of this command is by avoiding sexual sin. The city of Corinth was famous for its sexual sin. And as you know, fornication, adultery, and homosexuality are running rampant today.
• Are you faithful to your husband or wife? When you are, you not only keep yourself clean and make your spouse happy, you also glorify God.
• If you are single, are you saving yourself for your future marriage partner?
Maybe you think, "What if I never marry anyone? Then there is no spouse to save myself for." Okay, but you can save yourself for Christ, and that will glorify Him in your body.
• You can also glorify God in your body by means of regular exercise, sufficient sleep, and good & moderate eating habits. You can bring glory to your Lord in a physical way by refusing to indulge your human temple in smoking, drinking, and other habit-forming drugs.
• You can take your body to church, bend it in prayer, and use your eyes to read His Word. You can use your mouth to witness to people who don't know Christ.

So you don't have to be a pastor to glorify God with your body. Paul adds in 1 COR 10:31 - "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." Did you catch that? No matter WHAT you do, it should bring glory to God.

And in ROMANS 12 he says, "Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – which is your spiritual worship.”

An old hymn writer sang,
"Not my own -- my life, my body,
Freely all to Christ I bring;
To be used in joyful service
For the glory of my King."

And it all makes perfect sense when you remember that every BODY belongs to God -----
YOUR BODY……. MY BODY……THE BODY OF CHRIST.

LET’S PRAY.
”LORD, we are truly overwhelmed with Your greatness demonstrated in the creation of the human body. We can say with the Psalmist that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” At the same time, Lord, we are ashamed of not always offering our bodies as living sacrifices --- for failing to use the bodies You’ve given us to bring attention and honor and glory to You. I pray You will receive our sincere prayer of rededication.
Help us re-prioritize our lives with YOU at the head…….. number One……..in the center. And if we selfishly continue to use our bodies for ourselves, we know that You have every right to take them from us. For EVERY BODY belongs to You. AMEN.”
Scripture reference: 1 Corinthians 10, 1 Corinthians 6, Psalms 139, Romans 12
Sermon length: 30 minutes or less (16155 characters
Intended audience: General Congregation Style: Analytical


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