Your Body Is God's Temple — What 1 Corinthians 3 Really Means

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, good day everybody back, and we're just going to pick right up where we left off in our last lesson. That'll be in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and we left off at about verse 15 rather quickly, but we'll rehearse it. And again, for those of you that have been with us on television, you probably noticed in our last program we have these things on the board, and I guess with me in the center you can't see it all, so I'm going to step aside so that any of you from wherever you are in the country, if you happen to be coming through Oklahoma going on a winter vacation or summer vacation or whatever, we can possibly invite you to a local class, we'd love to have you. We've had quite a few people already visit from Minnesota, Indiana, and various other areas. So I'll just go over them briefly. We have 5 classes a week, Monday night we're in Wilberton, which is about 30 miles south of where we live, and then on Monday night we're at Tahlequah, and Tuesday night we're at Wilberton, Wednesday night we're up here at Tulsa, Thursday night at McAllister, and then Saturday night we're at Muskogee, and then someone wanted us to put on there that we don't take collections. We're not having these classes to pick up a collection every week. We are fortunate enough that our people always give us enough to take care of our gas money, but we just love to teach the Word, and 5 nights a week, and we just trust that the Lord is using it for His glory. Let's go right back without any further announcements now to I Corinthians chapter 3, and pick up where we left off on this whole idea of reward. We all have to repeat, and repeat, and repeat that we do not work for salvation, that is totally a gift of God, for the wages of sin is death, but salvation is a gift of God. Never lose sight of that, but we're not just to sit down now and get lazy because we have our salvation secure, but now we are to work to further God's work amongst the human race, as well as to gain reward. Then we looked at verse 15 in closing. I Corinthians 3. If any man's work shall be burned, and as someone brought up during our break time over a cup of coffee, I suppose we could look at it this way. The gold, the silver, and the precious stones are the things that are rightly motivated, in other words we're doing it in our subconscious as well as our conscious, our whole motivation is for God to receive the glory. Not for me, or not for you. That's the gold, silver, and the precious stone. Now we are all involved in so many things that enhance the ego, and that will probably end up as nothing more than wood, hay, and stubble. So we always have to remember that God looks at the motivation. Why are we doing what we do? That boils down into every corner of our life. Why do you do it? Are you doing it to be pleasing in God's eyes? Are you doing it to bring glory to Him? Yes, then I think it's going to be reckoned as gold, silver, and precious stones, and those things do not come easy when we do it for the Lord's glory. I've used the illustration in my classes lately more than once. The Christian life is like paddling a canoe up a roaring river. It's pretty near impossible, at least it would be for me. But the Christian life is never easy. It is a constant battle, because we're up against all the forces of Satan, we're up against all the designs of the world around us, but God has promised that we can do it. So our whole idea of Christian experience then is to gain reward when we come before the Bema Seat as we talked about in our last program. Then of course He makes it sure that even these carnal Corinthians, and I have to keep coming back to that, because these are not spiritual giants He's dealing with, these are carnal believers. They're still on the milk bottle, and they aren't even able to eat strong meat. But He is still admonishing them that reward is out there even for them. And never give up and say, Oh well I can never attain any of this anyway. And then He maintains that even these people who have nothing that will sustain them for eternity as reward, they're going to be there. They are going to be there. I remember an old pastor friend of mine, he used to put it with a very common everyday expression, that they'll get there by the skin of their teeth. They'll be there, but they'll have nothing to go along with it. Now then he comes right into verse 16 which is tied to our lifestyle that's going to merit reward or lack of it, by bringing up a completely new doctrine in Scripture. You don't find this in the Old Testament, you don't find Jesus teaching it, Peter doesn't teach it, only Paul. What is it? That God Himself is dwelling in this body. Now that's a concept that we have to take by faith, because if you didn't feel Him move in, you don't feel Him moving around in you. But He's there because the Book says He is. Now remember even these Corinthians were temples of the living God. Every believer the moment he believes, the Spirit comes and indwells. Now usually when I teach young people, and that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to older folks, but I usually tell young people, that when you go to some ungodly place, you're not going to check God at the door. You take Him wherever you go. You cannot check Him wherever you think it isn't fit for Him to be, so you better be careful of where you go, because this body is the temple of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and He comes the moment we believe. Now let's go on. Ephesians 1. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? Now that's plain language. You don't have to be a theologian to understand that. The third person of the Trinity as we refer to Him, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity comes and indwells the believer. Now that's why God can know every thought, and that's scary isn't it? God knows our thoughts. God knows every place we go. He knows everything we do, because He's here. Now in your mind's eye, go all the way back to when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, which was going to be the dwelling place of God. When the temple was complete, and they dedicated it, what happened? Well the presence of God in the Shekinah glory came right down into that temple there at Jerusalem, and the presence of God dwelt in that dwelling place which was the temple. Now that was just a fore view of this age of grace, where when God saves an individual, He immediately becomes a temple, a dwelling place, and just like the Shekinah glory came into Solomon's temple in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit comes into us. Now not as visibly, and it isn't manifested in much the same way, but according to the book this is what happened. And if the book says it, we have to believe it, that He is dwelling within us. Now the questions come up, and I think I answered in my last newsletter if I'm not mistaken. Well now at the rapture, and all the believers are taken out, does that mean the Holy Spirit is gone too? And here is another example, shortly after I had sent my newsletter out with my answer, I was reading a well known theologian, and bless his heart or mine, if he didn't answer it just exactly the same way, and that is that just because the Holy Spirit goes out and finishes His role as indwelling the individual believer, doesn't remove Him from the earth. Because the Holy Spirit has always been the omnipresent of God on the planet. You go all the way back to Genesis chapter 1, and after the deluge of verse 2 I think, when everything is under water, what moved upon the face of the deep? The Spirit! And so all through the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was evident, otherwise nobody could ever have a knowledge of God. But He did not indwell the Old Testament believers like He does today. And the same way in the tribulation, yes as the indwelling person of the Godhead, that's going to end. But He's going to remain on the earth as the omnipresent Spirit of God, else no one would be able to be saved during the tribulation, and we know they will be. So every believer now then in this age of grace of which Paul is dealing, is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Now verse 17, now here comes some doctrinal side benefits, or not so benefit, and that is that if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, and that's the temple that you are. Now we have to be careful. When it says here that if we defile the temple, what it's referring to is defiling our physical body, that God will destroy it. Now remember, the soul and spirit is pretty hard to separate, but the body, the third part of us, is not that hard to separate from the soul and the spirit. So when God speaks of destroying the body, the temple, He's not going to touch the soul and spirit. Let me give you a good example. We'll be looking at it somewheres down the road in the next chapter, I guess, no, chapter five. Just turn to chapter five in 1 Corinthians, and verse five. Now I'll have to jump in on just one or two verse here, because I don't want to take the whole lesson, because that'll be coming in a later date. But here in chapter five, the church of Corinth had a terrible immoral situation, and Paul tells them they have to deal with it. All right, how is he going to deal with it? Verse four, is that in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, in other words, when the local church has come together, I guess most of us would refer to it today as a business meeting. When the church has come together, and my spirit, in other words, Paul would be there in spirit, even though he was across the Aegean Sea over in Ephesus at the time, and with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver, now watch it carefully, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, not the soul and spirit, but the flesh. Now we had this in our class last night, didn't we? All right, let's go back to Job. Now dear old Job, he had been so blessed, and he was so prosperous, and nothing bad ever happened to him, and Satan just couldn't stand it. Now you all know the account, and Satan came into the presence of God, and he said, Now wait a minute God, how about your servant Job? He's obedient because you never let me touch him. No wonder he's so good, all you do is bless him. Let me have at him. Now what did God say? All right, but you can only go so far. You can take this, and you can take that, but no more. Well then after he'd taken that, Satan would like to have even touched the heart and life of Job, but could he? No. That's where God drew the line. Now in the same way here, when Paul says to deal with this gross sin in the Corinthian church, he makes it very plain that to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of flesh would not touch the man's spiritual relationship with Christ. He was still a believer, as much as we find that hard to believe. But by destroying the flesh, what would be taken from him? His physical life. And then Paul speaks of it again in 1 Corinthians 11, when they were abusing the communion table, the Lord's Supper, and what did he tell them? He said, Many are sickly among you, and many sleep. They've already died. Why? Because of their excesses physically. And so God took their physical life, but not their spirit. Now that's exactly what we have here, that the person that defiles his body, he may suffer physical harm. You know I've alluded to this in more ways than one. I don't care how you do it, but when you in excess abuse your physical body, sooner or later you're going to suffer the consequences. Look at the drug addicts. Boy, they may think they can handle their drug problem, but unless they're fortunate enough to be drawn out of it and be broken of it, what's it going to do to their physical health? Utterly destroy it. The alcoholic, unless he's fortunate enough to somewhere along the line come away from it, sooner or later it's going to destroy his liver, it's going to destroy his whole physical well -being. Well we've come to the place now where medical science has proven that cigarettes do much the same thing. I never get on a podium on these things, but here we go. If you're going to harm the physical body with things that you know are harmful, it's going to suffer the consequences. And we're seeing it all around. I'll never forget quite a few years ago now, probably six or seven years ago, I watched a little more television than I do now, but Good Morning America was interviewing I think at the time the president of the American Hospital Association, and it was about the time that medical costs were just really starting to escalate. And I think Joan Lunden was doing the interviewing, and she said, "...Doctor, what in the world can the American people do to lower our skyrocketing medical costs?" And I'll never forget the good doctor's answer. He said, "...All the American people would have to do is stop doing the things that harm their body." And then he gave something like a statistic of, I don't remember exactly, but in general terms something like 70% or so of all our hospital beds are occupied by people who are there because of drinking, smoking, or drugs, or venereal diseases I think he also added. But see there it is. Our hospital beds are filled with people who have been abusing their physical body with things that we know now are harmful. Well that's all the Bible is telling us. Two thousand years ago Paul could write that if you do something that's harmful to the body it's going to suffer the result. That's all it is. Now let's come back to the text. If any man defiled the temple, in other words do something harmful to your physical body which is now the temple, the dwelling place of God, God will destroy it. In other words He will permit these ravages to destroy our physical health, for the temple of God is holy, it has been set apart for God's purposes, and that's what you are. So as soon as a person becomes a believer he becomes responsible for taking care of this physical body. Paul teaches it. Let me take you over to Ephesians. Paul teaches it, that we are responsible for taking care of our physical body. That would have to be in chapter 5 I think. Yeah, Ephesians 5, my this is all so practical. Written clear back in about 62, 63, 64 AD, way, way ahead of the times. But it's still a basic truth. Ephesians 5, verse 28, "...so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh." You'd almost have to doubt that sometime wouldn't you, when you see him abuse it. But way down in the subconscious, no man doesn't hate himself, no man ever hated his own flesh, but what is the normal thing for a person to do? To nourish and cherish it, even as the Lord cherishes the church. So here is a basic fundamental premise, that if you are normal and you have the right attitude toward life, you're going to take care of your physical body. And then the spiritual admonition coming back to I Corinthians 3 is, that it's not just your physical body, it's the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. It's the temple of God on this earth, and we're to treat it accordingly, we're to take care of it, we're to feed it right, we're to rest it right, and we're not to abuse it. Now then verse 18, "...let no man deceive himself." Boy, now that's a strong statement in our day and time isn't it? Because we're being galleged with all kinds of deception. Madison Avenue, the advertisers, they're masters at it. See, they can make anything look like a great deal, and it may be the worst thing you could ever do. But that's good advertising. All right, but Paul is warning us, don't deceive yourselves. "...if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise." Now here I think Paul for the first time is digressing a little bit, and he's addressing an unbeliever, and he's addressing the unbeliever that if he thinks he's wise in the things of this world, hey, if he wants real wisdom, he better change his approach to life. And what is that going to be? Come back to 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18. Now look what the verse says again before you turn back. "...if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, so that he can really become a wise man." That sounds like double talk doesn't it? But it isn't. All right, how does the unsaved person become a fool to become wise? Well, back to 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18, "...for the preaching of the cross, that Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead." That preaching is to them that perish, or to lost people, the one Paul is referring back now in chapter 3. To that lost person, that preaching is what? Foolishness! Foolishness! But unto us who are saved is the power of God. In other words, the unbeliever has to recognize he better go into what he thinks is foolishness, and out of that foolishness that he thinks is foolishness, he can get the wisdom of God. It's that simple. And that's exactly what Paul keeps driving at. That's why he's using this term wisdom, wisdom, wisdom throughout these early chapters of Corinthians. And how do we gain wisdom? By going to what we think is lost people, foolishness, the gospel. And then the power of God is poured out on us as His wisdom is as well. Now then verse 19, "...for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." Isn't that something? The wisdom of this world, in other words all the great philosophy, and all the great literature, and all the great works of art. When it's all shaken up and sorted out, what is it? Foolishness so far as God is concerned. It amounts to nothing. Now verse 20, "...for it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness." Now that I think comes back out of the book of Job. And then verse 20, "...again the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise..." That is the wise of this world, "...that they are vain." Let's go back and see what David said about it in Psalms 94 verse 11. Psalms 94 verse 11, because I'd like to show you see that even though I'm an adherent of Paul's epistles as the meat and potatoes for us today, that doesn't mean you cancel the rest of Scripture. No way. It all fits together. Psalms 94 verse 11, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of man. Remember what I said I think in the last program? That God even knows our thoughts. He knows everything we think. And so the Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, and they are what? Vanity. In the final analysis they'll go up in a puff of smoke. They amount to nothing. Now you see for a believer, to believe or have a great education and to be able to have a brilliant mind, hey that's fine. Oh that's Christ honoring, of course it is. But you see what God is talking about is when the unbeliever places all of his faith in his so-called wisdom of this world, it's nothing. Now for the believer to have this kind of education and knowledge, that's great. Then it's Christ honoring like I said. But this is what Paul is driving at. And remember I made the analogy, come back to 1 Corinthians now if you will, remember I made the analogy, oh maybe in the last taping, three or four programs, that when Paul came to Mars Hill, and he came up against all those Athenian philosophers, and he began to preach to them his foolish gospel, and he began to tell them about the resurrection life and so forth, what did they call him? Remember, the babbler. See to them it was just a bunch of babble. But in reality it was the other way around. Oh Paul had kernels of truth. The philosophers had nothing but babble. See how the world has got it all upside down. Now then just a couple of verses and we can finish the chapter and be ready for chapter four in our next program. Verse 21, therefore since all of man's wisdom amounts to nothing without God's wisdom, therefore let no man glory in men, for all things are yours, that is in Christ again. This is Paul's whole premise, that when we're in Christ, then it makes all the difference in the world. Now verse 22-23. So Paul comes all the way back to his first controversy with the Corinthian believers, and that was their divisions. And so now what does he say? All right, let's bring it to a head. Whether you are of me, Paul, or whether you are a so called follower of Apollos, or if you are hanging tough with Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come. He said they are all yours. Now see that's the great glory of being in Christ. It's an unfathomable well of wisdom and knowledge. Now someday if the Lord cherishes we're going to get to the book of Ephesians in this series, and there Paul actually makes a prayer for the believer that we might be filled with the wisdom of God, and that we might know the height, and depth, and width, and length. I always ask my classes, how many dimensions is that? Well that's four, but we live in three. So what does that tell you? Hey, there's another dimension out there that we don't even know physically, but spiritually we're already there. We're living in four dimensions. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time, for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.