Join Sharon Knotts as she examines the biblical teachings on the human body’s sanctity and the vital need for self-control. This episode confronts the real-world impact of sin on our spiritual lives and encourages listeners to avoid sin by understanding the repercussions. Delve into the roots of bitterness and forgiveness, learning how these aspects can defile the soul, and discover how embracing holiness can bring healing and divine favor.
Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to our program. I’m Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I’m excited to share this message with you. Render, give it back. You know, I absolutely love the way Jesus spoke with such authority and power and grace, but also how cleverly He was able to make His antagonist The Pharisees and the Sadducees and others put their feet in their own mouths every time they conspired to trap him in his words. And one particular day was unusually amusing, especially when money and paying taxes was the subject in Render, Give It Back. Let’s turn to 1 Corinthians, the third chapter.
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Verse 16. “‘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 you are. We saw that when Jesus went and saw how they had defiled the temple, his father’s house. He began to cleanse it. And now we are the temple of God. And his inscription and image is in us. And those who defile the temple, if you defile your body, if you allow your soul and spirit to be defiled, that God shall destroy you. Amen? Flip over to the sixth chapter. Start at verse 12. And 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, under the authority of all things. Amen? Meats for the belly and the belly for the meats. But God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I take then the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? Or a prostitute? God forbid. What know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two saith he shall be one flesh. Now we’re talking about the sexual union. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication, unlawful sex. Every sin that a man doth is without the body, but he that committeth fornication sinneth against God. His own body. 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? So he’s making a lot of remarks here that we need to look at. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you. And really, if you read it in the Greek, it’s another sense. He’s assuming that he’s in you. If it really be true, in other words, he put it this way, if it’s so that you have the Holy Ghost, then realize your body is his temple. Amen? Because obviously he’s not in you if you have joined yourself to sin. But he’s saying if you claim to have the Holy Ghost, then know your body is his temple. Amen? So you better not defile it. Because what? I love verse 20. For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit. which are God’s. So in other words, give back to God what is God’s. Give back to God your spirit, your soul, and your body to be holy unto him. And don’t defile yourself in any way in any of these areas because when you defile yourself, you are defiling the temple of God. And if you defile the temple of God, we see what Jesus did. He went in there and cleaned house. And he didn’t tiptoe around anything. And if you defile your body, that’s what the Holy Ghost is going to do because he wants to save you and not let you be destroyed. Amen? And so we must keep our bodies cleansed. I love the seventh chapter. 2 Corinthians, it says, Therefore, wherefore, beloved, having these promises, let us also cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that we may perfect holiness in the fear of God. Why would I be afraid of God? I have no reason to be afraid of God for any other thing than if I defile my body. with sin. I never need to be afraid of God. I run up there, I jump on his lap and I say, I’m a father with no condemnation, no guilt, no shame. I don’t think twice about it. I just run up there and say, dear daddy, I’m here today. But when I have sin in my life, when I know there’s sin in my life, I don’t do that. I have the fear of God upon me. And I know that before I can run back up and say, I’m a father, I’ve got to get this sin out. I’ve got to get cleansed. And I’m not going to go into a whole category and get out the catalog because we’d be here too long. But in the context of where we are, in what we just read, there are two major sins that defile the body. How many saw them? Gluttony, overeating, and fornication. Overeating and unsanctified sex, because that’s what fornication means. Only sanctified sex there is is between a husband and wife. All the rest is unsanctified. Here’s the thing about these sins. These are why these are so problematic. Both of them were dealing with normal God-given appetites. Amen? God designed us with these appetites. I mean, we cannot deny them altogether. There’s no way we can get up and say, thou shalt not eat. We can’t get up here and say, thou shalt never have sex. Because the human race would be eradicated very soon. If you don’t eat, you’re going to die. And if we don’t procreate within at least 100 years, there’ll be no more human race. So we cannot say abstain totally from these things. You know, if a person has trouble with alcohol or drugs or other things that they can get delivered from it, they can abstain from it totally. Don’t go near it. Don’t go around it. Don’t go where it is. And therefore, you really greatly reduce any temptation. But you’ve got to eat. And we’ve got to be fruitful and multiply according to God’s plan. Amen? And so that’s why we must have self-control. Why we must have the spirit. Because when either one of these areas is abused… and goes beyond what God ordained, we run into major problems that affect us spiritually, that affect us emotionally, soulishly, and affect us physically. We all know the consequences of gluttony. We see the epidemics in America. We are the richest, richest country in the world, and we have the richest food in the world, and plenty of it. And we have the fattest people in the world. And not only fat, but we now have what is a new phenomenon, the morbidly obese. There’s a new show on TLC, My 600-lb Life. The only people that get to be in this show is they weigh 600 pounds. And they got plenty of people. When a person gets to that point, they can’t even walk. They can’t walk anymore, which really kills me because that means they can’t go to the store and get their food. Somebody’s enabling them. They can’t function. They can do no bodily functions, they can’t wash themselves, they can’t do nothing. The only thing that still works is the elbow. They get plenty of elbow exercise, those muscles work, the rest are gone. Because even if they get the weight off, they have to learn how to walk again. And so gluttony is a sin. And we see even just being a little bit overweight causes sugar diabetes and high blood pressure that puts you at risk for strokes and heart conditions and all sorts of things. And we know if we just lose 10 pounds, 10 pounds can bring all those factors into the normal zone for most people, for the most people. Not if you weigh 600 pounds, but for most people. So we know that, truth be told, many people die prematurely. Because of a problem with food. Amen? And he said, flee fornication. Run as fast as you can the other way. Because every sin that you sin, of all the sins you do, this sin is against your own body. You will pay the repercussions in your body. And don’t forget why. Why? Because when you join yourself to a harlot, you join your body unlawfully in sexual union, you’re taking the temple of God with his image on it and his subscription on it. You are the body of Christ. You are the body of Jesus. You are my temple, and you are joining it with sin. And the only reaction God can have is destroy that. And how does it happen? Does he let a thunderbolt come out of heaven and knock you down? No, maybe it would help if he did that to a few people. Maybe the rest would all wake up and say, I ain’t doing that no more. I’m not doing that. You heard what happened to him? But see, God doesn’t do that. It’s very subtle. It’s very subtle, but the work is starting in the body. The work of destruction. Some people will come down with sexually transmitted diseases. And some of them will be the bad kind for which there’s no cure. Amen? And some will possibly become infertile. And when they do get their life together and do want to have a family, they can’t. Some will have unwanted pregnancies that may force them to make another sin, a worse sin, abortion. Or if they got the fear of God and don’t go there, but it hamstrings their life and the plan of their life and the road and the map that God would have done for their life. They may go so far as to go ahead and get married and two wrongs don’t necessarily make a right. Or they may have already been married and have had an affair outside of the marriage. And now an unwanted pregnancy comes in and brings horrible ramifications. That’s why he said, run the other way. You can’t even begin to know the destruction that’s going to come against you. It’s not worth it. The pleasure of sin is a moment. It is literally sometimes a moment. And the ramifications are a lifetime. These sins defile the body. Amen? Gluttony and unlawful sex. So we need to walk in the spirit, and then we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. How many know that you went on that 21-day fast? In the beginning, it was hard. It was hard. You tell me I got to go three weeks without meat? I will die. But we didn’t die. We lost weight. We felt better. Our blood pressure came down. We felt healthier. And we found out that you don’t have to eat meat every single day. Like we believe here in America, Americans don’t eat meat every day. They can’t afford it. But the thing of it is, is it’s not necessary to have it if you know how to eat properly. We found out how wonderful beans are. I never knew there were so many things you could do with beans. I didn’t know there was that many kinds of beans. But I learned some, some I’ll never have that again. But I learned how to make tofu lettuce wraps, healthy ones, like that you get at P.F. Chang’s that are like 2,000 calories. So you see, we can have self-control. I’m making light because I realize that the matter we’re speaking of is very serious. So we know that these are two sins that defile the body. But there’s something else that defiles the body. And I want you to turn to Hebrews 12, 15 and read a verse there. Hebrews 12, 15. Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God. lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. Now see, most of us, we can get our Bible out. We can thump on this Bible. Flee fornication. Stop being a hog. We can all preach that message. You’re defiling the body, the temple of God. Stop it. Look what happened to David. Look what happened to Esau. He sold his birthright. If we would keep reading the scriptures, we find out he’s called a profane person. And God hated him because he took lightly the things of God and sold it out for a pot of beans. He couldn’t bring his flesh under. He thought more of his flesh than he did the things of God and sold his birthright. What have it all started with Adam and Eve? Food. So we can preach them sermons, but oh, when we get on the root of bitterness, we don’t want to go there. We don’t like those sermons. Amen? But a root of bitterness will destroy you, and it will destroy you spirit, soul, and body. Amen? Yes, it will. And he says it springs up. It’s a quick grower. Sometimes it comes out of the blue. You’re blindsided. You didn’t expect it. How does it get started? Every root has to first start with the seed. He’s calling it a root. But a root comes from a seed. So back up. What’s the seed? The seed is an offense. Someone wounded you. Someone betrayed you. Someone hurt you. Someone did you wrong. And if you don’t deal with that in a godly fashion when it’s a seed, it quickly becomes a root. And you always know what a root is by the fruit. Because the root will bring forth the fruit, and the fruit will come out. And the fruit will come out as unforgiveness. Amen? And that unforgiveness, all of these things, and it’s like a vicious cycle because bitterness brings unforgiveness, and unforgiveness brings bitterness, and it goes on and on and on. You’re stuck. You can’t get out. And it gets worse and worse. Amen? And we have to get bitterness out of our hearts. And it’s not easy. Nobody is saying that it’s easy. but it’s not impossible. That’s the thing. It’s not impossible. Because Jesus taught us to pray, and he said that when we’re praying, as we are praying, forgive those who have trespassed against us, who have offended us, who have wounded us, who have betrayed us. Forgive me, Father, even as I forgive so-and-so. Forgive me, Father, as I forgive this. It’s an even as principle. Even as. Even as I want to be forgiven, I know that I cannot be forgiven unless I forgive. And that is one way I think that helps more people than anything to get started on the road of healing is just to think that. I can’t be forgiven if I don’t forgive. If you get stuck on what this person did and you just keep going down that road and you think in some way by forgiving them that you are justifying them, there’s nothing in there about they’re going to stand before God. They’re going to reap what they sow. They will have their time. They open up the door to stuff to come in their life. But God is their judge. But when we realize I can’t be forgiven, and the last time I checked, I didn’t have a halo up here. Does that look like a halo? I didn’t think so. So the last time I checked, I needed to be forgiven. Amen. Amen? And in order for me to be forgiven, I have to forgive. And some things are hard. They are so hard. You say, but I can’t. I feel this inside of me. I can’t. And you know, all you can do is go to God and say, God, I know your word requires me to forgive, but I don’t know how and I don’t see how I can. Help me. Help me to forgive them through you. And when you’re sincere, God will help you. He will help you. He can orchestrate things that put you in a place where all of a sudden you can feel. the holy forgiveness of God himself. Forgiving that person, and you’re forgiving them through Jesus. Amen? But if you don’t, that root of bitterness will destroy you. Have you ever met a person that has been taken over by a root of bitterness? You don’t even want to be around that person, do you? It’s like they can’t say anything positive or nice or good. After a while, they can’t see good in good. They not only see bad in everything, they can’t see good. They can only see the negative and the bad. It takes them over. It’s very pitiful. Especially if you meet someone when they’re nearing the end of their life. And they have nursed this bitterness for years and years and years. And it’s become a part of their personality. And you’re thinking, my God, you’re ready to step over on the other side. And the condition you’re in is scary to me. You don’t want to go there. You just don’t want to go there. It’s not worth it. Amen? And if you feel like you have a problem with that, that you need the Holy Ghost to help you, I recommend highly my message, cast the sycamine tree into the sea. That is a revelation that the Lord really gave me to show me. And we think of all it’s about faith, but it’s not. It’s not about faith. It’s about getting rid of offenses. So we can actually defile our body through bitterness. Amen? Let’s go back to 2 Corinthians, and we will complete the trilogy of the temple of God scriptures. I call it the trilogy. 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Corinthians 6, and then 2 Corinthians 6. They all dovetail, and I’m almost finished. Let’s look at verse 14. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Another form of a word for Satan. Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel, an unbeliever? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and I will be a father unto you and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. And the chapter should have never been broken here. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, that God will receive us and wash us and cleanse us and make us his sons and daughters. Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. So we see that our temple bears the image of God. We cannot take this temple of God and unite it with the temple of idols. That means do not marry an unbeliever. Don’t marry an unsaved person thinking some fallacy that after you get married, you’re going to get them saved. You have already started on disobeying God’s word. You’ve already started on a broken law. And it’s not going to happen. If they won’t get saved before you get married when they’re trying to win you, when they’ve got you, why should they bother then? And if somewhere down the road they do get saved because you just hang in there and pray and believe and fast and pray, you are going to suffer a lot of heartache and abuse. that you wouldn’t have had to suffer if you would not have broken the law of God. Amen? So don’t be unequally yoked. We got a letter this week that I had to answer from a lady. God bless her. She’s going to some church, and she’s telling me all the things that the pastor says and does in the pulpit. He comes out there and tells the people, you all are a bunch of devils. You all are of Satan, you know, and calls them all kinds of names and says these things and preaches false doctrine. And I’m thinking, hello. Why are you writing us? Just don’t go back there. And she said, but this man says he speaks, he speaks for four hours at a time in tongues. But we know that there are imitating spirits. Not everything that talks in tongues is God. Amen. Amen? And so you’re going to take that and take all that abuse? And then she asked me to explain something in the book of Revelations about the prophecies there and the symbolism and who does this mean. And I wrote her back. I didn’t even answer who it means or not means. I said, you know, that’s beside the point. It really doesn’t matter if you believe that this is this, A, B, or C, because that is not integral to your salvation if you get that wrong. You’re not going to mess up if you misunderstand one of the symbols in the book of Revelation. Nobody has the full, total understanding. I’m sorry. We all have different, this school says this, and this school says that, and the other school says this. But if you sit under a false prophet spewing out demonic words, doctrines of devils, you may get yourself under that influence and become deceived. I wrote her back. I said, you don’t need to go back to that church. Why would you go and subject yourself to such abuse? Don’t be unequally out. What concord, what agreement does the temple of God have with Belial, the sons of Satan? Amen? So we are to come out and touch not the unclean thing because we are a threefold person, spirit, soul, and body. And here’s how I tell God all the time. Lord God, my body is your temple. My soul and spirit are your altar. And I want to be clean because I want my praises and my worship to come up as a sweet-smelling savor. I want it to be like the frankincense upon the meal cakes at the evening sacrifice, so let the lifting of my hands be, David said. And in closing, not only must I keep myself clean because I’m in the image of God, not only because I am made in his likeness and image, but you know I told you about that subscription, that written thing that was on the coins? He said that he was the divine son of God. Well, I tell you what, I have a subscription on my temple. It says Sharon Ann Hardy Knotts, daughter of Jehovah God. Amen. supreme creator and ruler of the world. And in him do I trust. He is my father, the only true and living God. And I bear his image in my body. And because I bear his image in my body and I won’t defile it with sin, I expect him to keep this body healthy. Amen. I expect him to heal this body when it gets sick. I expect him to make this body strong when it’s weak. And you know, because I expect that, God does it. Hallelujah. I just turn the tables back on God. I tell him, yeah, I’m your responsibility. You made me. You created me. And I obeyed your word. I give it back. I gladly give it back. I give you every part of my body. Now make it whole. Make it healthy. Make it strong. That I may glorify you. Amen. I don’t have any problems with giving it back to God. And I remind the devil when he comes, no trespassing. This is the property of Almighty God. And you have nothing in me. Amen. So if you’re here this morning and you’ve been battling with sickness and the devil tries to put sickness on you and God touches you and heals you, sometimes that dirty devil tries to bring it back. But you know what? You give it back to the devil. Amen. Sickness doesn’t come from God. Anybody tells you that God made you sick because he’s teaching you a lesson is messing up with the word of God. Do you think God gives out sickness? He gives out every good and perfect gift. So when the devil tries to bring sickness, give it back. Give it back. Give it back.
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Amen. I hope you’re enjoying this message. Render, give it back. You know, the day Jesus spoke these words had to be one of the most intense and yet amusing days of his ministry. I’ll call it the boomerang day because on this one day he was confronted by the Pharisees and their spies, the Sadducees, the Herodians, the lawyers, asking questions they thought would trap him in his words. The chief priests were furious because Jesus had cleansed the temple, throwing out the money changers, declaring, my father’s house is a house of prayer, and you have made it a den of thieves. This had to stop. He was exerting too much authority. The funny thing is, the Pharisees and Sadducees were usually arguing with one another, much like our Democrats and Republicans today. But in a joint effort, they conspired to challenge Jesus on whether or not to pay taxes to Caesar and if he said yes the people would rise up because they hated paying taxes to rome and god never intended israel to be enslaved to another nation if he said no they could seize him and take him to pilate for rebellion against caesar but jesus took the crafty in his craftiness “‘Show me the money,’ he said. The Roman denarius bore the image of Caesar and the inscription that he was divine, and there is no way one of those coins would have been given in the temple, and so the need for money changers. When Jesus said, “‘Render to Caesar and render to God,’ the term means to give back someone’s property. Roman coins belong to Rome, and that which bears the image of God on earth belongs to God.'” If you’re a Christian, that is you. Give back to God your body, which is his temple on earth. This message, Render, Give It Back, is full of nuggets you don’t want to miss. So why not order the CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry? Request offer SK164. Mail to Archie Hardy Ministries, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. or go online to ArchieHardy.org. Again, send a minimum love gift of $10 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, and request offer SK164 for Render, Give It Back. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.
