Scripture reference: 1 Corinthians 3:16-20 (AMPC); 1 Timothy 4:7-8 (NKJV)
Hello everybody. This is live from Sun City. You’ve been watching some clips and some pre-recorded materials on our preparation and some of the racing that we’ve been doing. Praise the Lord that we could do this live from Sun City. Thank you for joining us on this digital broadcast.
You will see me talking about exercise profits little, but godliness is eternal. That’s a good thing that we can exercise ourselves in godliness because this is what life is made of, but also events where you are, there’s team spirit, there’s fellowship, and there is a very good opportunity for your body to be conditioned. The Lord is so good to us that He gives us strength, and He gives us health, and He gives us an ability to do what we have to do.
So, I want to just leave you with a few things. I want to say to the young people, to the athletes, everybody that’s involved in the event, well done! To all the parents and all the people watching, thank you for accommodating us to be able to close the service today and for you to watch something completely different, completely new, that we’ve never done before. We are live, so if there are other noises that come in, we can’t really do much about that, but thank you for joining us.
In a few minutes, I’ll be leaving Sun City and going straight to the airport and going to be with Brother Jerry. I believe that God has got something extraordinary for our church, for our ministry. Just as extraordinary as this coming together, the cycling is 160 kilometres. Some people have never done 80 kilometres of cycling. Some have never done 160. Some have never had a swim event. Some have never done any cycling of any sort or running, and they are participating.
It is what I truly believe God has designed us to do, is to keep moving, to keep growing, to keep increasing and as we are obedient to the Word of God, our capacity and our ability to see things and experience things and to have and attract the spiritual things of God in our lives. It increases because as you trust God step by step, as you go forward, and you do what His Word says. So, that scripture and you will hear me talk more about it, that scripture says, bodily exercise profits little.
In the context of eternity, it is a little time. In the context of our time on earth, we have to have these bodies to be able to do what God wants us to do. So, this is a very special thing; we are all growing spiritually, we are all digging deep in our hearts and in our ability to connect with God and, in our own capacity, find stuff, capabilities, skills, and things that we didn’t know we had before. Abilities that we didn’t know before, and as you do new things and you get through them, God just does amazing things and lifting us up to the next level, and His favour rests there.
I believe that the favour of God is upon you, the favour of God is upon everybody that has been participating in the event, and the favour of God is on Heritage of Faith Ministries for sure. God is doing amazing, wonderful, wonderful things. I am going to be with Brother Jerry for some time. I will see you soon. I pray that the Lord bless you and increase you. I pray that you are a person who prospers in spirit, soul and body in every single way. The Bible says I pray that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers, which means; the Word of God is in your soul, and so your body and everything else around you will prosper too.
I pray that as I am going that our Spirits are connected by the Holy Spirit. That God is going to bring great favour on you and great blessing on you, great peace upon you, and God is going to cause ways of increasing you that you have not yet seen before. It was the prophetic word from Brother Jerry, and we are going Big and Bold version 2 in ‘22, and certainly what we did today, and we are doing this weekend, is certainly Big and Bold. Something we have never done before.
Once again, I say thank you and I say bless you. May the God of peace be resting upon you, and may all good things come to you as you worship the Lord and give Him thanks. Right now, in the living room, in your lounge, on your device, wherever you’re watching, give Him thanks.
Say, “Thank You, Lord, for blessing us, thank You for good health, thank You for all the prosperity and the good things You have for us”. If you’re not in that space where you are capable of doing these things; let this be a testimony to you that you can ask the Lord and say, “Lord, increase; I am believing for good health and all the good things that You need to be able to do this.”
Anyway, I don’t want to preach for too long; going live here, I’ve got to go catch an aeroplane and I’ve pretty much got to leave now otherwise I’m not going to get there on time, so thank you for listening, God bless you, and I’ll see you soon. In the meantime, Pastor Sharon, Pastor Christi, Pastor Garth; all the other people are there to minister to you. So, thank you, God bless you, and I’ll see you soon.
[Recorded message]
Thank you for joining us in digital church on this Sunday morning, in May. We always enjoy fellowshipping together and enjoy coming to church on any given day, but especially Sundays. We like to come and enjoy praise and worship, sound and song, together. We enjoy to worship the Lord, and we enjoy to hear the Word and to fellowship together. It’s just a marvellous thing when we do come together. We have this life force that it’s like an energy field that is created by Christians that come together and serve and worship God.
On this particular day, we’re doing something different. We’re actually fulfilling one of the goals that we achieved, or one of the measures, the milestones that we wanted to do when we started conditioning as a church group of people together.
We set some milestones that we wanted to achieve, and so as it all turns out, it all came down to this weekend. Just because of COVID and some races that were changed and cancelled and various different things happened; that should’ve happened last year, are now happening this year. So, it all comes down to this day.
So, we thank you, truly, for being patient with us and enjoying a very, very different kind of service. As you can see, I’m ministering to you from an outdoor environment because we’re going to be showing you lots of clips and various shots of the people that you know, the faces that you know, the people that you share your life with, share the life of God with, doing physical conditioning. Then it is my trust, my hope and my desire and my prayer, that their pursuit of wanting to achieve something and achieve a milestone will inspire you to do something with your body.
I’m going to read a scripture to you that you can use for your benefit in the way that you manage your body. Let’s be just sure about our foundation here. We are spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body. In our life, we feed our spirit man to become stronger and stronger, and dominate our soul, and work with our soul, so that our soul is receiving instruction from our spirit man, that is receiving instruction from the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that is alive in your most inner man.
That is the focus of our lives, it is to let the spirit life flow into your soul, and then your soul and your spirit man in agreement, tell your body what to do. So, on that basis, you know, one says, well, why you focusing on your body? Well, I’m going to tell you why now. I’m going to read to you from Timothy chapter four, verse seven, and I’m going to read to you from the book of Corinthians. Timothy chapter four, verse seven says, 7 But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness. (1 Timothy 4:7 NKJV)
Now you say, “Well, Pastor John, what does that got to do with physical conditioning?” I’m going to show you by the end of this message today. The next verse says, 8 For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. (1 Timothy 4:8 NKJV).
So, your spirit man, godliness is profitable, eternally. So, you say, “Well, why focus on something that the Bible says for bodily exercise profits a little?” Well, if you take eternity, and we don’t have a clue about how long eternity is. Eternity is just a word to us because there’s no way that we can have a concept of eternity. If you take eternity, your spirit and soul are going to live eternally. Then the time that you have on this earth in your body is a little time. So, whatever profit you get from your body in exercise, it’s a very little time in the whole of eternity. So, it does profit little, and it does profit for a little time.
Praise God, the better we look after our body on the earth, in the little that we do, in the little time that we have, the more we actually look after our bodies, and we keep them healthy, we eat the right things and exercise, the better our spirit man can be released, and our soul can function. It’s certainly something that I’ve noticed about my life. If I just don’t exercise at all, I eat whatever I want. I just, you know, what people call, do couch potato living.
In other words, I’m not really interested in really doing much about my body. I just want to live the way I want to live, eat what I want to eat, and do what I want to do. There’s a direct connection, in having that kind of attitude about your body, and your spirit life because your spirit man wants to control what your body does and the desires and appetites of your body, so that it lives strong and healthy and that it lives in a way that promotes your ability to live in the fullness of God.
I’m not, there’s no judgement here, and I’m certainly not. This message is not to make you feel bad or make you or anybody in the church that has anything that lives in a particular way, but the truth is still the truth. Bodily exercise does profit a little, and it profits a little while, while your body is on the earth eternally. It’s interesting, though, that without your body, you have no spirit life on the earth, or soul on the earth. You have none of that if you have no body, and so your body is important to keep you alive on the earth.
Young people take a lot for granted and when you get a bit older, you begin to realise much more about your mortality and you begin to realise, wow, you know, I want to keep my body strong and whole and healthy for a bit longer because I can extend my life on the earth another ten years because that little time has an impact on your relationship with God eternally. We were designed to be born into an environment of the earth, where our bodies could release the power and the glory of God as a being that God created. A creature that God created—for us to live in this space.
So, I really want you to enjoy the clips and I want you to really, and I hope you have enjoyed some of the clips that you may have seen already. I really want you to enjoy seeing the people that have exercised themselves in bodily exercise that does profit a little.
I want to just finish off my message to you today by reading from first Corinthians chapter 3 verse 16, from the Amplified Bible, and it goes like this, 16 Do you not discern and understand that you [the whole church at Corinth] are God’s temple, (His sanctuary), you the whole church, at Corinth. So, you, the whole church at Heritage of Faith, you the whole church, wherever you may be, you are God’s temple, and you are His sanctuary.
You are, you individually and collectively. Watch what the Amplified says, And that’s God’s Spirit, and that God’s Spirit has His permanent dwelling in you. He is talking to live human being people. In other words, He is dwelling in your temple, your body. 16 To be at home in you. This is what the Amplified Bible says. So, God’s Spirit has His permanent dwelling in you [to be at home in you, collectively, as a church and also individually]? So, both individually and collectively, we are the temple. You are the house, you are the body of where the Holy Spirit lives. Verse 17, says, 17 If anyone does hurt to God’s temple, or corrupts it, so if anybody hurts or corrupt your own body [with false doctrines] or destroys it, God will do hurt to him and bring him to the corruption of death and destroy him. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17 AMPC)
I’m wanting you to just connect this with the book that I read to you in Timothy, where it said, do not give yourself, I want to read it to you. 7 But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself towards godliness. (1 Timothy 4:7 NKJV) Here is the connection between the two scriptures. 17 If anyone does hurt to God’s temple or corrupts it [with false doctrines], which is fables, [false doctrines] or destroys it, God will do hurt to him and bring him to the corruption of death, and destroy him. (1 Corinthians 3:17 AMPC)
Now, this sounds like God’s out to get you and destroy you, but actually, God has to cut and prune both you as an individual and the people in the church collectively, so that you can bear fruit. Whatever He cuts off, will be thrown into the fire, 17 For the temple of God is holy and (sacred to Him), and that [temple] you [the believing church, and its individual believers] are. (1 Corinthians 3:17 AMPC) You are the temple of God.
So, whether we like it or not, while we’re on the earth, we are a creature. You’re a human being creature. He’s given us an environment that we creatures must live in, and the bodies that He’s given us to live in, we must look after it. You just have to go into the wild for a little bit, go and watch an impala, go and watch some antelope, go and watch some animals as they go about living. They’re always grooming themselves, they are looking for the best food, always going to drink water. They’re always jumping around and frolicking and playing when they have time, but they’re always alert to danger, they’re always keeping themselves in peak condition so that when danger comes, they can run away from danger, and they can survive.
I mean, I’m using animals in its very most basic form, but we as human beings have a temple, it’s a body that we can’t exist eternally without our bodies. So, best, we look after it. Whatever we can; exercise, eat well, and do a few things that can actually help us live in a better condition. There’s a definite connection between the condition of how you treat your body and the release of spirit life. It’s a connection between the discipline of your body and the discipline of your prayer life. It is definitely a connection between the discipline of the words that come out of your mouth, the discipline of your prayer life, and the way you treat your body.
You can see that, you have a lot more capacity, that if you’re speaking good things about your body, about exercise, and you’re speaking good things about the way you treat your body and food—that you are looking after it. You are managing it, you taking care of it, and you make those confessions. You will find that just speaking like that automatically releases spirit life out of you. It helps you in the way that you manage your body and it helps you in the way that you can be spiritual.
Just in this matter of the human body, I’m going to just read the next two verses in Corinthians so that we just get the final context on this. So he’s talking about your body, he’s talking about people who corrupt the body, they corrupt the corporate body, they corrupt themselves. Then verse 18 says, 18 Let no person deceive himself. If anyone among you supposes that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool [let him discard his worldly discernment and recognize himself as dull, stupid, and foolish, without true learning and scholarship], that he may become [really] wise. Verse 19, 19 For this world’s wisdom is foolishness (absurdity and stupidity) with God, for it is written, He lays hold of the wise in their [own] craftiness; 20 And again, verse 20, The Lord knows the thoughts and reasonings of the [humanly] wise and recognizes how futile they are. (1 Corinthians 3:18-20 AMPC)
So, it’s interesting that when this passage of scripture is talking about the body of Christ, corrupting your body, the person that needs to be able to look out for the body, look out for the individual and the collective and don’t allow yourself to be corrupted with false doctrine. It’s interesting that in the Book of Timothy—false fables, exercise and your body are connected. Here in Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is again connecting your body and what supposed wisdom the world’s got to offer and what supposed good things and wisdom the world’s got to offer versus what God says; the world’s wisdom is stupidity.
So, what’s that got to do with our body? Here, if I’m focusing on developing my body so that my body becomes my identity. If I’m focussing on my wisdom and my intellect, my achievement of both my soul with the worldly learnings and my body, that is a representation of my identity. Now, my identity is in my learning, it’s in my worldly craftiness, and it’s in the way—how good my body looks.
What I’m doing is, I’m actually projecting myself in my body as something that’s worth something. God is saying, “Hey, you’re the temple of the Holy Spirit, you are the temple of God, use your body for the advantage of godliness. Use your body for the advantage of allowing God’s Word to demonstrate itself through your body.”
But when you allow your mind and your body to work together, to present itself as, as to how can I say it, someone that considers himself wise in this age. The Bible says, “Let him become a fool.” So, if you’re going to exercise, exercise not to perform, to compete, to say, “Look, my identity is in how great my achievement is, and how great my body can operate, how disciplined I am in all of that, and look at my achievements.” That’s worldly wisdom because you’re actually creating an identity that is wrapped up in the quality of your body and the quality of your mind.
Whereas God is saying, “It’s about the quality of God’s life in you.” So, therefore, look after your body, be good to your body. Keep it in good condition, don’t – and if you read, if you read in various chapters in the book of Corinthians and others, it also says, “Don’t get yourself involved in sexual immorality, because your body belongs to God.” Don’t let the world’s wisdom of sexuality and sexual immorality and giving your body over to that stuff. Don’t let that supposed worldly wisdom, do not let that control your life.
Look after your body, give it to God, do exercise, and eat well. What a great way to do exercise. When you can do it with the fellowship of the church and the body together, you can walk together, run together, cycle together, and do triathlons together. If there are people that do other things, like play tennis, and play golf, or do whatever you do, to actually keep yourself healthy, but if you’re going to play golf, don’t run around in a cart, walk the course so that you can get your body healthy. Do it with believers, do it with people that you can fellowship with.
I wanted to just share that with you today that I thank you for working with us in this digital service that we have gone live on-site. We are bringing live clips for you of our exercise and what it’s been able to do for us. How we’ve progressed, and the fellowship that we’re having. I trust this will be an inspiration for you to give your body to Jesus, to give your body more to God, to condition your body, and exercise it.
I know winter’s coming, and it’s going to be difficult in winter, but hey, let’s make a good goal together. I’ll put something to the church that in winter we don’t just eat chocolates and eat all of the nice cakes and bread and hot cross buns and croissants and all of the nice things that you crave in the winter. Let’s get through winter in good condition, so that when we hit the summer, we can really, really be in a good space, in your body, in your mind, and in your spirit.
Hey, guys, thank you, thank you for joining us. I trust that, this Sunday, even though we’re not together, it’s a digital service, that this message ministers to you. That it will help you to develop and to grow and to get stronger in a part of your life that is not really often taught in church, and it’s not really often given much exposure in church, but it ought to be, and we are certainly working at doing that.
Once again, thank you. God bless you, may the Holy Spirit rest upon you, and He give you peace. May the joy of the Lord rise up inside of you, and may the Holy Spirit inspire you and motivate you through the Word of God and through the testimony of others to do greater and more wonderful works in the church and in Him in Jesus’ name. Thank you, and God bless you.
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