The 4Fs - Fitness (1 Corinthians 6:12-20)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

I'm Pastor Matt. We are in week three of our four

FS series. This is maybe kind of the one

that seems like it's not like the others fitness this week we

had to keep with the FS and the pattern and the alliteration

because God made our minds to like patterns and things.

So when I say fitness though, that probably immediately makes

you think of a physical body. So it might seem a little weird

that you're showing up to church for a talk on that.

That's going to be part of what we talk about.

But our fitness is more in the context, at least as it works in

this series. It's more of the context of what

we kind of just sang about. Lord, let my life be an altar

for the Christian. And this is kind of the

prerequisite that we're entering into this series with that that

you have the understanding of being a Sinner in need of God's

grace, in need of Jesus pouring on his life on the cross for you

as a perfect sacrifice in resurrecting from the dead.

That you would have the hope of eternal life taking all those

things as being within your understanding and in and in your

faith. Fitness this week is is then how

we live how we live as as our lives being an altar of praise

of glory, of knowing Jesus and making him known to others.

So we're going to examine fitness, sure, in a, in a

physical aspect this morning, but also in, in, in a mental and

emotional way as as the Bible talks about that in, in a, in a

feelings and and also spiritual sort of way.

Because the, the the Bible keeps coming back to this idea that

for the believer, we're going to read this a little, a little

later, but your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is that promised seal of your salvation that

lives and abides in a believer. So if your body, your whole

being is a temple, well, that the fitness of that body should

probably be something we address.

That the sound mind and soul and heart of that body are also

things that we should care about and prioritize, not in any way

to be worthy of or earn or keep the salvation that has already

been won by Jesus, but as a response to that victory

already. This is then how the Bible

prescribes that we live lives as followers of Jesus.

I was at I was at the Packers Bears game last week.

I was at Soldier Field to see the massive collapse from

Thanks, Chris, in the first service, I thanked you for your

gracious handling of that victory last week.

But you've ruined that for this room.

So I can't say that anymore. You were, you were very gracious

and I'll, I'll just, I'll let you, I'll let you know It was I,

I am, I am pulling for you Bears fans.

I really am, because Bears fans are hurting you guys.

If you don't know a Bears fan, they they are miserable.

They, they are, they are. It's tough.

They get more joy out of out of the Packers losing, I think,

than they do out of the Bears winning.

And to me, that's just not fandom.

I don't I don't, I don't get that.

I don't understand that. But anyway, my brother and his

girlfriend gifted us tickets to come to the game with them last

week. So Emily and I, Emma and I went

and we had we had a great day. We got Lou Malnati's pizza

beforehand and I'm we're getting ready for the game to start and

I just me and my brother and I'm like, all right, man.

Just just so you know, like, I know everyone's probably like

hoping this is a really good game and really fun.

I just want to see a good game of football.

Not me. I hope the Packers are up 30 to

nothing at halftime and it's a complete blowout.

That's that's the game I want to see.

It started that way. It did not end that way, but

think about our fitness in that way.

Jesus has already won the victory.

We're up 50 to nothing at halftime and the game is over.

A life of of fitness in response to what he's done.

We're running up the score. We are shouting his glory and

pray. We are knowing him and making

him known while we have breath. That's what this fitness that

we're talking about today is. A life rightly ordered body,

heart, soul, mind in pursuit of the glory of Christ, knowing

Jesus and making him known, running up the score.

So we are going to be in a lot of different passages this

morning. We're mostly focusing on that

mental emotional fitness, physical fitness and then like

spiritual faith fitness. I have 2 pages double sided

worth of study notes that are at the connection center out there.

I didn't want to have them in front of you because they're

going to be really hard to follow.

I'm not following all of this right now, I'm just giving you

snippets of it. But if you want to dive deeper,

have more of this material, please stop out of the

connection center and grab one of those.

If you're an electronic person, come get me and I can send you

the PDF. If you're in small groups, life

groups, your leader has the PDF of these things.

You can get a copy from them. But anyway, I need to set the

stage a little bit more. Just why should we yearn after

fitness? Why should we be a good example

continuing with the sports? Because it was what was on on my

mind as I was looking at the sidelines last week and I've

noticed it before. But I what was impressed upon me

as I'm thinking about this message too, was the the variety

in the coaches that are on the sideline too, and how that goes

about like modeling them, practicing what they preach

those this is a cliche of like those who cannot do teach.

And that's not exactly perfect for football.

There's guys who's definitely a football experience who are

definitely also coaches. But it got me thinking just

about the variety of of sizes really of coaches and who I

would want to coach me up And Chiefs fans, you'll recognize

this guy. Some of the rest of you will no

slight to Andy Reid at all. Great coach.

He's a brilliant mind, but I was just thinking like as as it

relates to like maybe a physical weight training fitness program

for football players. He's not exactly the picture of

the guy that I maybe want to show me, Hey, this is how we're

going to lift him. This is what you're going to get

like, right? That's it's not an awesome

example of that, right? My mind went to this is this is

the Panthers coach, which some of you maybe not don't know, but

he was on some magazine spread as like the sexiest NFL coach of

the year or whatever. And it's all like, I mean, this

is the guy that I want to see a business plan from, right?

Like what you see is what if you do this, you get this, right?

Like more so than I don't know, in thinking about the example of

our fitness for Christ or our pursuit of Christ, what are we

modeling as Christians with our mental and emotional health,

with our spiritual health, with our physical health?

If we are holding to these truths, are we living them out

well? Are we living a life that says

this is the richness and fullness of God and his grace

lived out? That's what we're talking about

this morning as it relates to our fitness in Christ.

We're going to start Matthew 22. Jesus got asked, teacher, what

is the great, the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all

your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the greatest and 1st commandment.

I'm not sure why the S is off of this slide, but greatest,

greatest commandment, greatest and 1st commandment.

So those things were right there to love God with these aspects,

which are seemingly different but yet intertwined.

They're all affected by each other and they need to be

unified in our pursuit, in our love of God, right?

There's there's fitness that can be worked on in all of these

areas. This is the first and greatest

thing. We started a few weeks ago with

the 4S saying that our faith, our relationship with God,

numero Uno, right? That's the first thing.

So that's where we're starting, but it relates to our heart,

soul, mind, and as we're about to see in a moment, our, our our

bodies, our strength as well. This little, this vision placard

that we have as we know Jesus and make him known through these

things for the sake of reaching the one more First Corinthians

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6. All things are lawful for me,

but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me,

but I will not be dominated. I will not be ruled over by just

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.

God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his powers.

You not know that your bodies are members of Christ.

Shall I then take the members of Christ and make the members of a

prostitute parents? Sorry, it's gonna be a fun vocab

word for some of you to talk about later, but look at the

imagery in this verse, verse 15. Shall I then take the members of

Christ, the members of a body, and make them members of a

prostitute? Are we prostituting out our

lives to sin as he goes on? Do you not know that he was

joined to a prostitute, becomes one body with her, for as it is

written, the two will become one flesh.

What are the things, the traits of sin that now have become one

in the same in our lives? Paul is warning strongly to to

run from that association. He offers relief, he offers an

answer, but he was joined to the Lord, becomes one in 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.

I see there's some wide eyed looks on some of your faces.

We just took a turn. We're not landing here.

This is not the main point of the message today.

This these two verses are a sermon all on its own, but I do

want to highlight the elevated importance of how the Bible

talks about sexual sin, especially.

It makes a big deal out of it, both for the evil that it is and

the destruction that it can cause, and also for the good

that it is fulfilled between man and woman in the confines of

marriage, in God's design for marriage.

There's another important distinction in these verses.

There's lots of other passages that charge us to stand firm, to

fight sin, to hate sin. When it comes to sexual sin, the

word is flee. Get out of there, get away from

it. It is an evil that keeps coming

back that stands strong. Flee, remove it.

That's all I'm going to say on that for today, but I didn't

want to skip over that passage without stating that before we

get to what we're really talking about our our theme sort of

passage for today about how our body is a temple.

Verse 19 and 1st Corinthians 6. 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 for you

were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

So these two passages love the Lord your God with all your

heart, soul and mind. Do you not know that your body

is a temple of the Holy Spirit and you were bought with a

price? There is significance then to

how we act body, mind and soul to glorify God in our lives.

These things are intertwined, they affect each other.

I'm sure it's not a stretch for you to understand that if your

physical body isn't well, that can affect your mind, that can

affect your emotions. Likewise, if your mind is not

OK, your body is probably struggling.

Your emotions are probably struggling.

They are related to each other. So we must attack each and every

one of these areas in the way that God designed for us to be

trained up and built up in them. So for physical fitness, we'll

start there. First Timothy chapter 4, train

1 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

yourself for godliness. He too starts with faith.

Godliness, your spiritual fitness, your spiritual health,

that's still number one. That's the first and most

important thing. For what bodily training is of

some value. Godliness is a value in every

way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the

life to come. But physical exercise has its

benefits. Spiritual training takes

priority. Yet both contribute to a

well-rounded being. They are related to each other

and the way we treat our physical bodies should then flow

out from our understanding, our grasp, our love for the gift

that God has poured out for us, treating our physical bodies

well. And this can look different for

all of you. I'm not, I'm not up here saying

that physical fitness looks the same for me at 35 as it does for

my kids at 5:00, as it does for some of you in in the 70s and,

and upper decades of your lives. You have to use some wisdom and

discernment to, to figure out what that looks like for you in

your life stage. I could go about training for,

for A5 KA 10K and, and pursue that relatively reasonably for

my life and that and that would be within the realm of what

physical fitness might look like for me.

Karen, I'm not going to pick on you, but I would say I'm not

sure if 5K would be of benefit for you to put your body through

at this point like that, that that might not be of benefit to

your physical fitness. I, I picked on Marlin in the

first service. So just saying we can still

pursue fitness and it looks differently for each of us.

I'm not up here saying I've got 1 blueprint plan for all of you

to follow and you're going to turn out perfect.

I'm also up here. I am not perfect at any of these

things in any of these areas. This is our blueprint.

This is the plan we follow. I'm trying to teach it physical

fitness still a value. Your body is a temple of God.

It keeps you present. It keeps you as a good example

for a family that you have to care for.

It keeps you in discipline for the faith which you profess.

So whatever that looks like for you, if that's, if that's a

healthier diet, if that's just get getting up and going out for

a walk, whatever that means for you.

How do you pursue physical fitness in a way that honors and

glorifies God in the temple that you are?

Our mental emotional fitness Second Timothy God gave us a

spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

There's a lot of fear out there. There's a lot of anxiety and

worry. None of those things are from

God. God gives the spirit of power

and love and self-control. The worry and anxiety in people

is at levels never measured before.

And we're also of people that seek out counseling therapy in a

way that has never been accounted for in human history.

We are the most counseled and the most anxious people somehow

at the same time, a word of caution for there.

I'm not, I'm not saying therapy is bad or counseling is harmful

or anything. It's there's definitely some of

you in this room that is it has helped has been beneficial for

but use discernment and where that person that you're going to

for guidance. Where is their truth rooted

because God's word still wins. God's word is still the guiding

truth for that and it Trump's what any person with their

wisdom could impart on you. And in fact, it's powerful

enough to bring you healing and clarity and wisdom on its own.

So definitely don't elevate a person above what's in here.

If their advice conflicts with what God's word would have you

do, I would urge you to reconsider that relationship.

But therapy can be helpful. It can be useful to work through

some of these anxieties of these worries.

What's interesting to me though, and I'm a fairly blunt person, I

just, I just kind of say it. Paul, when he's talking about

anxiety and worry here in Philippians 4, he simply says do

not be anxious about anything. Are you anxious?

Don't just don't be is that helpful for any of you.

Pastor Chris is going to be in Matthew 6 next week at a

different part of the passage that he's preaching on.

Jesus is talking about how the lilies of the field, they do not

worry about why what they will be clothed with the sparrows,

they do not worry about what they will eat.

And he uses the same phrase, do not worry about tomorrow, for

tomorrow has enough worry of its own.

I know it's not that easy to just flip a switch and not

worry, but Jesus and Paul both speak that strongly.

Are you worrying? Don't just don't.

How do we actually go about it? By everything in prayer and

supplication with Thanksgiving. Choose gratitude over worry.

Choose God's wisdom. Choose laying your request to

God in prayer over worry and what's the response to the peace

of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your

hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

You might say, Matt, I don't understand how that works.

I don't know. Will will that actually happen?

I don't understand how that plays out.

It says it right here. We're not going to understand

it, that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will

guard your hearts and minds. Look at that.

It's going to guard the things we're pursuing to be fit in a

life response, in a life of response to who God is.

So choose to bring these things to our great God.

And this peace that we don't understand, that we doubt will

be able to wash over us will guard your hearts and minds in

Christ Jesus. This is how we pursue a mental

emotional fitness that honors God because these these fruits

of the Spirit in Galatians 5, these are fruitful emotions.

These, these are God's designs, outward emotions that are the

fruit of one who is a temple for the Spirit.

Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things, there is no law.

These are the outward signs of someone who is after God's own

heart, of someone who is rightly honoring their body, mind and

soul as a temple of the Spirit. If these aren't on your list of

most readily available emotions or feelings probably need to be

spending more time familiar with his Word here, asking Him to

soften your heart towards Lovejoy peace because why verse

24, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh

with its passions and desires. Those things that I talked about

before that maybe have us wrapped up in sin, in struggle.

Jesus already took care of him. We're not trying to win the

game. He already won it.

We're just running out the score.

So we pursue these things and we glorify Him.

Why? Spiritual fitness.

This is the first word. We're ending there.

This is the most important part of it, The writer of Hebrews in

chapter 12. For the moment, all discipline

seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields

the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have

been trained by it. I know a lot of what I'm saying.

This morning probably sounds like a list.

It's very law heavy. It's things for you to do,

things that you're maybe not very good at, and maybe things

you don't like doing. All of those things are

discipline. Discipline really acted out is

doing the things that are best for us even when we don't feel

like it, even when it's hard. We talked about faith a couple

weeks ago. Belief can change, right?

Belief can change my feelings. Faith is rooted in truth.

If I woke up today and didn't feel like going to the gym, that

doesn't change the truth that it's probably best for my

physical body to go work out. Even if I don't feel like it, I

should pursue that discipline to do what is best for me.

It's the same in our spiritual fitness.

That peace that surpasses all understanding the ways that God

makes that we don't fully understand.

We don't see each and every footstep along the way.

The discipline of being in His word, of being in prayer, of

worshipping through it even when we don't feel like it, yields

the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those that have

been trained by it. You don't see the results of

discipline. I don't.

It's not like I'm going to lose 20 lbs and then decide to start

working out. I don't get those fruits before,

before I act in discipline. That's what this fitness is in

these areas, a heart of discipline.

So what do we do with this To Do List?

Matt, seems like you're beating me up.

You're giving me a lot of small chance of success for all these

things to come out right and well.

Well, I have good news. As we've talked about in past

sermons and series, David, Moses, Abraham, Noah, God gave

them a task, a command, and they weren't tasked to do it alone.

He went with them. 1st Thessalonians 5 reads Now the

May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may

your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in all these things.

And again, this is just this is just a general comprehensive

overview. I can't give each of you a

specific tailored plan for how to best honor all these things

in your life today. You get to be good theologians

and and and discern his wisdom and guidance from from his word

for your life specifically. But God's going to go with you

in this work as you pursue your fitness in these areas for him.

May he go with you and sanctify you completely and make your

spirit, soul and body to be kept blameless at the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ in all these ways.

He goes with you and preserves you because you were bought with

a price. You are his.

So we should honor him in these ways still.

How still the question of how what does this look like?

I'm going to read to you from Second Kings.

If you have the Bible in front of you, it's on page three O 9

in the in the seats. I don't know the verses up on

the screen, but if you just want to listen to the quick 7 verses,

that's OK too. Second Kings chapter 4 starting

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

at verse one. Now the wife of one of the sons

of the prophets cried to Elijah, Your servant, my husband is

dead. You know that your servant

feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two children

to be his slaves. Elijah said to her, What shall I

do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the

house? And she said, Your servant has

nothing in the house except a jar of oil.

And he said, Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors,

empty vessels and not too few. Go in and shut the door behind

yourself and your sons, and you pour into all these vessels.

When one is full, set it aside. So she went from him and shut

the door behind herself and her sons, and as she poured they

brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she

said to her son, Bring me another vessel.

He said to her, There is not another.

Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of

God, and he said, Go and sell the oil and pay all your debts.

You and your sons can live on the rest.

That story starts out the woman at her worst, mourning the loss

of her husband and creditors coming to her with debts that

are due. Some of these areas, these

things that we talked about this morning, are kind of feel like

debts in your life. That Ledger is scary and thick

with what you owe. What is she tasked to do?

Elijah says. Go, Go to all these.

Go to your neighbors, go to these different areas of your

life. Bring me these broken.

Miss Shapen cast out mismatched vessels.

The jar of oil, the flask of oil that she have is probably just

something used just ornamentally.

It was probably only this big. It definitely wasn't big enough

to fill all of the jars that she brought to her.

He tasked her with having messy conversations.

These these would have been people probably wouldn't have

just been readily having extra of these things around if they

if they had vessels, it's because they had things to store

and if they had things to put in.

So her going invulnerability to her neighbors and saying, Hey, I

do you have an extra vessel? I could I have a shortcoming.

I I need some help with this. Those would have been vulnerable

conversations. They probably would have been

prying. Well, what do you need this for?

What's wrong? Why?

Why do you, why do you need this?

She brings all these areas of of her life, all these empty

vessels back to this small flask.

And a miraculous outpouring of this oil fills each and every

one of them. And if you look at verse 6, the

blessing pouring out, the oil pouring out only stops when she

stops bringing vessels to it. Each and every area of her life

has been filled and purified to the point where that debt is

wiped clean. So are you church in earnest,

bringing these areas of your life before God, asking Him to

move in His power to make your heart a heart after his heart,

body, soul and mind to be one that's lived in response as a

worker, approved as as as one who lives worthy of the gospel

of Jesus Christ. A shining example of how He's

works in your life, how He's brought hope, and how each and

everyone you should meet should want to know Jesus the way that

you know him. His blessings not going to run

out. His saving grace is not going to

run out. But we have to bring these areas

of our life to Him so that He can fill and purify them with

His goodness. I'll invite the team back up.

We're going to sing one more song because there's still,

there's still 2 parts to this. We have to make room.

We have to repent. We have to turn from the sins

that entangle that, that have distorted our lives.

We have, we have to get rid of those and, and make room for the

empty vessels to be filled by God's goodness because they're

going to be filled by something. The last couple songs we're

going to sing is in humility, laying a life down, making room

for God to work in the way that only He can.

But where we're going to fill it with his Jesus.

We want to pursue the things of Jesus, not of the world.

So would you stand and ready your hearts to sing in response

with us, our great God? May we be a people in pursuit of

your heart. May we know each and every

waking day that You are what's best for us, even when we don't

feel like it, even when we don't believe it.

May we cast aside the weights and sins.

Pursue your goodness You bought us with a price.

May be honor and glorify you. Amen.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

To support the work God is doing an Emmaus Rd. church, visit

emmausrdonline.org/giving.