The police reported it as a church robbery. To the members of Arlington Avenue Lutheran Church, it was an outrage.

It was an outrage, not because of the broken stained-glass and twisted lead. It had nothing to do with the splintered office door, the trail of blood, the Sunday school envelopes strewn across the floor, or the microphone dropped in the street during a hasty retreat. The irony was that nothing of real value was missing.

Still, it was worse than a robbery. It was a desecration. After all, this was no ordinary place. It was our Bethel--our house of God. Here God's people rested from their pilgrimage. Here God pitched his ladder between heaven and earth. Here, in the midst of angelic traffic, the supplications of God's people ascended to his throne and his reassuring voice touched their hearts. The wealth distributed in that building was priceless, everlasting, free, and open to the public.

So when someone decided that the building existed for his purpose, not God's, it was more than a robbery. It was a declaration that God no longer had a right to his own house.

Desecrating God's temples

We make the same declaration--that God has no right to his own house--when we sin sexually, because our bodies are the temples of God. Our creator claimed us as "the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise" (Isaiah 43:21).

In the perfection of Eden, God made our first parents sexual creatures. The divine plan was to involve husband and wife in ongoing creation of the human race. Since their hearts and minds were

perfectly in tune with God's, Adam and Eve found complete joy in marriage and family life. They used God's bodies God's way. Their married life was a proclamation of how marvelously God does things.

Sin ruined God's marvelous plan. Sin leads us to tell God that he no longer has a right to his temple. Sin makes us announce, "This is my body. No one can tell me how to use it."

Wrong. Society tells us how to use our bodies. No man is an island. Actions have consequences. I dare not use my tongue to tell hijacking jokes to flight attendants. I am forbidden to use my hand to write threatening notes to bank tellers.

Using our bodies for promiscuous sexual activity sends into society some of the biggest ripples of all: disease, medical and financial burdens, death, abandoned souls, broken families, loneliness, jealousy, rage, compounded guilt, and spiritual decay. Although sexual sins may be done in private, ultimately there is nothing private about them.

Handing God his eviction notice

But the effects of sexual sin on the world is not the point.

Joseph got to the heart of the matter when he used these words to repel the advances of a seductress: "How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?"

Sexual sin hands God his eviction notice. And that is the point.