Open the Word of God to 1 Corinthians 10, and we'll be looking at verses 14-22. 1 Corinthians 10, verses 14-22. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as two sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No. I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? This is God's holy word, let's pray. Father, we are your holy people. set apart at the most precious cost, the blood of your Son, gathered together by your Holy Spirit to hear from you. And so we do pray, Father, that you would speak to us through your word, by your Spirit, that your Son would be exalted in our hearts and in our worship, that you would be worshiped and glorified in how we listen, in how we receive and believe, and in how we respond to your holy word. We pray this, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, yesterday, my family and I had an opportunity to go out to western Maryland, a little west of Frederick, Thurmont area, Catoctin Mountain, Cunningham Falls. Just enjoyed a great day trip out there. It was beautiful weather yesterday afternoon. And so we went out there and we took a couple of short hikes, one over to Cunningham Falls and one to the Thurmont Vista sort of overview on Catoctin Mountain, just beautiful. Went to an orchard, walked into the orchard and just, they had two ovens full of apple pies baking. They were not available for sale, because I think as soon as they came out of the oven and were put out for sale, swarms of people took them, so we had to settle for fresh-baked apple dumplings. But it was great to get away. It was great to get up into the mountains. It was great to get perspective. One of the things that I appreciate about being out in the beauty of God's creation is that you get away from the sort of intensity of the lives that we live and the busyness that we're involved in and the things that we have to deal with every day. You get a break, and you get some perspective, and you realize it's a beautiful world that we're given to live in. Creation resounds with the glory of God and his handiwork. Just picking up leaves off the ground and looking at the color patterns is fascinating. It was just a great break to get some perspective. Perspective comes in other ways, too, and sometimes it's not quite as enjoyable. And Paul is giving the Corinthians some perspective on their daily lives. Because the daily life in Corinth was dominated by pagan temples. They lived not only in a pagan city, but in a very densely religious pagan city. And by densely religious, I mean Corinth was renowned throughout the Roman world for the number of temples to the gods that were there, as well as the number of cult prostitutes that prowled the streets at night. And so it was thick with idolatry and thick with pagan worship. And when you're living in that, you can just sort of get used to it. You can just sort of say, well, this is just the life that we live. This is where we are. So I've got a business meeting today with my guild, my tradesman's guild, and it's gonna be, you know, in the temple courtyard, and we're gonna have a feast together, or I've been invited by some friends of mine, longtime friends, to go to a, you know, a temple feast, and we're gonna go and enjoy, and they can just go along without even thinking about it. Now Paul's been trying to be gentle and kind in how he's spoken to them about this practice. He's spoken earlier in chapter eight about how when you go and do that, you have to be careful because you might cause a weaker brother to stumble. You might go to the courtyard of a God's temple and you might participate in a feast and you might be very clear in your mind, there's no such thing as that God This is just food. I'm not in any way worshiping that God. I'm going to give thanks to the Lord for this food, and I'm going to look for an opportunity to share my faith. But a weaker brother or sister might be walking by, because these were public places, and they might see you there, and they might say, hey, he goes to my church. Hey, he's a leader within my church, and he's sitting there in the temple courtyard eating food that I know was sacrificed to an idol. Maybe it's okay to be a Christian and an idol worshiper. Maybe we can sort of do both of those things. So maybe I can go and participate in pagan idolatry. And so Paul says, so don't do that, because you'll make your brother stumble. Well, now he's getting more intense. We looked at this last week, just verse 14. He's given them a very clear, very concise, and very strong command. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. And he's given them as background to that all the history of the Exodus generation of the Israelites and the various ways that they were ensnared because of their grumbling, because of their materialism, because of their desire for fleshly indulgence. And we looked at that, the sins of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life all snared them up. And many times, it looked like idolatry, golden calf, Baal worship, And so he used that as background. He said, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. And that command we looked at last week is very strong. When he says flee from idolatry, you may or may not have noticed this, but the other flee commands he gives, like flee sexual immorality from earlier in 1 Corinthians, or flee youthful passions that he gives in 1 Timothy, or flee all these things, they're missing that word from, and you might just say, well, who cares, it's flee or flee from. It's actually a difference in emphasis between fleeing something and fleeing from something, in the Greek. And David Gardner, in his commentary, put it well, and he said, the effect of that command, by adding that from, is like, stay far away from it. You are to treat idolatry like it's toxic waste, is what David Gardner compares it to. Like a radioactive toxic waste. If we knew for some reason, when we walked into the building this morning, that there was a pile of radioactive toxic waste that got dumped into the corner, what would we do? Would we come in? Would we set up for worship? Would we see how close? You say, well, Larry's probably gonna get infected, but Bob's gonna be okay. So as long as you stay on the second row, No, we'd be out of here. We'd be gone. We'd be long gone. And that's the emphasis here with flee from idolatry. Get away from it. Get far away from it. Go in the opposite direction. Don't see how close you can get. Go. Now, because of the strength of this command, Last week we looked at the fact that he expresses it to them in the context of his love for them. He says, therefore my beloved, my loved ones, my dearly loved ones, the ones I love with an agape love. So he's wanting to emphasize he's not trying to be harsh to them or condescending or demeaning. He loves them and he wants their good. He wants them to hear this command and to heed it. But ultimately, he doesn't want, he does not want, their obedience to God and his command, and their fleeing from idolatry, to rest upon him as the Apostle Paul. He doesn't want it resting on his authority as an apostle, because I say so. How many of us parents have done that to our kids? Do this. Why? Because I told you to. I'm sorry, there's times when that's what you say, right? You don't need to get into an extended debate over all the reasons and the wherefores. Do it. You've been told, right? But the Apostle Paul doesn't want them just doing it because he says so. He also doesn't even want them doing it because he loves them. He wants them doing it because it's the right thing to do, and because they understand for themselves that it is the right thing to do. And so right after the command, in verse 15, he says, I speak as to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. Now the word that's translated sensible here is one of a group of Greek words that are used for being wise or having wisdom. And this particular word being translated sensible is an emphasis on practical or insightful wisdom, not sophistication or eloquence, but on know-how. We might call it being clever. You're clever enough to figure this out, right? Think, judge for yourselves what I say. Now sometimes when Paul uses this word that's translated sensible here, he's using it in a way that is corrective. So, for example, twice in the Book of Romans 11.25 and 12.16, Paul says this, Romans 11.25, lest you be wise in your own sight, and that's the same word being used here. And in 12.16, never be wise in your own eyes, 12.16. In other words, don't think yourself too clever. Don't have an overinflated sense of your own smarts, of your own, you know, we're the ones who get it kind of an attitude. In fact, earlier in 1 Corinthians, he had used the word in this way, when he had said, we are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. And here he's correcting them and saying, you're the ones who think yourselves so clever. You're the ones who think yourselves so with it. And so some commentators have suggested that even here, in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is using this expression maybe a little bit sarcastically, saying, you think yourselves to be such sensible people? I don't really think that's what he's doing, because I think that would undermine his expressions of love for them. So I don't think he's mocking them with sarcasm. What I think he's doing is telling them very simply, you are clever people. So think this through for yourself. And then he goes on to give them illustrations and examples of how to think this through for themselves. And I want to just observe that that is a key difference between being a responsible and caring spiritual leader and being an abusive and controlling spiritual leader. It is encouraging people to think for themselves, giving people the information they need, the text, the passage, the references, and say, here it is, now you think about this. You take this and you consider it for yourselves, rather than trying to say, here's the list of rules at this church, we do these things, we don't do these things, comply, or you're out. That's manipulation, and that's not good spiritual leadership. We don't act in a way that is domineering or controlling. And Paul was definitely not domineering or controlling. One sign that we see of this from the book of Acts is how much Paul and Silas appreciated the Jews who were in Berea. and the way they responded to the word of God. In Acts 17, we read this, the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away at night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now, these Jews, the Jews in Berea, were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, and not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. So never, ever turn off your brain when you're reading the Bible or when you're listening to a sermon. Always think, is this biblical? Does this make sense by the light of scripture, whether what is being said is true or not? So the issue for these Corinthians was whether or not they could go and participate in the idle feasts of Corinth. And so Paul begins to unfold, he's already hinted at it back in verse one and two, when he talks about the Exodus generation, he refers to them as those who were baptized into Moses, and who all ate the same spiritual food, and who all drank the same spiritual drink. And I told you that that's a first reference to the Lord's Supper. Well, now he gives a more extended teaching on the Lord's Supper, which he's gonna come back to in the next chapter, chapter 11, and we get actually the clearest teaching on the Lord's Supper that we find anywhere in the New Testament, outside of Jesus' institution of it in the Gospels. So, here's just what he says. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Now, the Lord's Supper, as we refer to it, goes by many different names within Christian circles, and each name that it goes by actually tells us something more about what happens at the Lord's Supper or what is communicated by the Lord's Supper. So first of all, we call it the Lord's Supper. That's the most common way that we refer to it, kind of within Reformed Presbyterian circles, as we read earlier in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Why do we call it the Lord's Suppers? Because the Lord is both the host of the meal who is serving all of us, And he is the spiritual substance of the meal. He is the one we are receiving and our souls are feeding on him by faith. So it is the Lord's supper, the supper of the Lord. He is both host and feast to our souls. And that's why we call it the Lord's supper. It's sometimes referred to as the Lord's table. And that is a reminder that when we eat, we are eating from a table and we are not offering a sacrifice on an altar. There are no altars in a truly Christian church, because in a Christian church, the only altar that we recognize is the cross, where Jesus offered himself once for all for our sins. So we have a table where we share a meal. It might not seem like much of a meal, because it's just a little piece of bread and a little bit of wine or grape juice, but it's representative of the fact that we are sharing in this meal together. Now sometimes we call the Lord's Supper communion. I think within Baptist circles that I'm familiar with it's more commonly called communion and some others as well. That's actually reflective of some of what's being taught here in this passage. because of the word participation, that's repeated a couple of times, is the word koinonia. And koinonia is the word that's most often translated in the New Testament as fellowship, but it means partnership, or participation, or communion. Communion is when people come together in unity to partake in something, or to participate in something. That same word, koinonia, would be used of a business venture. If two people got together and said, we're going to go into business together as a partnership, it also could be used of the fellowship feasts that were used in worship. So that's the one emphasized in this passage, is this idea of communion. And then finally, there's one other word that's sometimes used, and that is the word eucharist, and that's typically used in Episcopal, Anglican, more high church, but it's not really a high church type word, it's just a word that means giving thanks. It comes from the Greek word eucharisteo, which means I give thanks. And you are familiar with the words of 1 Corinthians 11, which we hear every time we share the Lord's Supper. And it says, And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. So Jesus took the bread and gave thanks, and that's Eucharist, the Eucharist. And certainly, whenever we partake in the Lord's Supper, we are giving thanks for the body and blood of Christ. And so it is not inappropriate to refer to it as the Eucharist. What we don't call it is a mass. because that just gets really confusing, because Roman Catholic theology does hold that it is a sacrifice. It's a sacrifice that the priest offers up to God, and then shares with the people from an altar. And we don't wanna be associated with any of that language, because that's very confusing, and so we don't refer to it ever as a mass. But if you wanna call it the Lord's Supper, or the Lord's Table, or communion, or even the Eucharist, that's perfectly fine. But we typically use the term Lord's Supper, but there's no special, exclusive reason for that. Communion is a very good word, and it's the word that is really reflected, as I said, in what is being taught in today's passage. It's a reminder to us that when we partake of the Lord's Supper, it is a dual communion. It's a communion with Christ, and it's a communion with one another. It's a reminder to us that we are living and vital members of the body of Christ. And that means two things at the same time, both of which are reflected in the Lord's Supper. We are connected to Christ because we need Christ. We are dependent upon Christ. He is our sustenance. He is our nourishment. He is our life. He is everything. and we are also connected to one another. God, who has connected us vitally to Christ, has, in the very same act, connected us to one another. Because just like your left hand is part of your body, it is also important to your right hand, right? They work together, and if you were to, for some reason, lose, your left hand, the whole body would suffer the loss. And the right hand would be very much overworked. And so we can picture that within the body of Christ that is the church. We belong to Christ and we belong to one another. And part of the reason why Paul is emphasizing this is to say, don't blow me off when I'm telling you how important it is to be mindful of your weaker brothers and sisters. Paul knows human nature, and people are people. 2,000 years hasn't changed anything about human nature. So you can imagine the guy going to the temple courtyard and participating in the luncheon, and Paul saying, don't you know that your weaker brother could see that and it could stumble? You could cause him to go back into idolatry. And what is human nature tempted to respond in that circumstance? Well, that's their problem. You can't blame me for that. If they're so weak that they would just slide back into idolatry so quickly, don't put that on me. That's their issue. Uh-uh, that's not how it works in the body of Christ. The way it works in the body of Christ is you care about your weaker brother and you will not make them stumble. And if something you're doing is causing them to stumble, then you don't do it. period. You care enough that you say, I will inconvenience myself. I will even hurt myself economically if I need to, in order to not make my brother stumble. It's not an option for me to willingly do something that's going to cause my brother to stumble. It's not his issue. It's my issue too, because we are one in the body of Christ, but also the participation in Christ. that is emphasized here shows us that the Lord's Supper is more, so much more, than a mere memorial. In some circles it's emphasized that it's just a memorial, and they say, you know, we're just doing this in remembrance of him, and we are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes again. Now certainly we are, we are doing it in remembrance of him, and we are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes again. But there's more happening than that. Paul tells us it is a participation in the body of Christ. It is a participation in the blood of Christ. We need Christ's body to be our life, our peace, our righteousness. And we need Christ's blood to be our atonement and our forgiveness now. here and now. Because we have no righteousness, we have no life, we have no peace, no forgiveness, no atonement, and no reconciliation with God, but that which we have actively right now in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We don't need Him to have just died for us on the cross 2,000 years ago. Yes, that was a once-for-all death, and its effect is ongoing, but He is seated right now at the right hand of God the Father, and He is nourishing and sustaining us, and we need Him now. And that's what we're doing when we come to the Lord's table month by month. We're saying, I need the Lord. I need Him today. I need Him this week. I need Him this month. He is my life and my peace and my sustenance. He is my forgiveness. He is my reconciliation with God. He is my only hope. And so in many ways, the Lord's Supper sets definitions for us. It sets boundaries for us, which is why we're called to fence the table. That's when I say, you know, if you don't believe in the Lord, if you've not professed faith in His name, don't partake. That's why Paul has strong warning judgment in the next chapter, warning language, because The Lord's Supper sets a definition and a boundary. And it basically tells us this, a true Christian, a true Christian is one for whom Christ and participation in Christ is everything. And a true Christian is one who participates in Christ together with his body as one people of God. We belong to him, he is our everything, and we belong to one another. Later, Paul is going to develop this theology at length in chapter 12, and I'll give you a little preview of where we'll go in a few months. Chapter 12, verses 12 to 13. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. And then in verses 26 and 27, if one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. So our need for Christ and our concern for one another are both non-negotiables in the life of a Christian. To love Christ and to love one another are indeed the two most important commands, and that's reflected in how we partake of the Lord's Supper. But I need to not only be concerned with depending on Christ, And with caring for my weaker brothers and sisters and my decision making, I also need to be concerned with my loyalty to the Lord and with his jealousy for me. And so Paul now gives them perspective. He now raises their eyes up a little bit. You know, when you go up, you drive up the mountain first at Catoctin, and then you walk up through the woods, and you get to the Thurmont Vista, which is where we went, you get to look out over the town of Thurmont and the whole valley there. You get that higher perspective. You see things in their place. This is what he's doing. He's saying, you think that an idol is nothing, and that things sacrificed to an idol are nothing. That's true, but there's more to it than that. Listen to what he says. Consider the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything? Or that an idol is anything? No. I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot participate in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Now, just to clarify for a minute, verse 18 talks about altar, right? Those in Israel who eat the sacrifices are participants in the altar. Paul is not saying that the Lord's table is an altar, or that the Lord's supper is a sacrifice from the altar, but we are sharing together in a sacrificial meal. So you have to follow the logic of the analogy a little bit. When a worshiper would go to the tabernacle or the temple under the old covenant, they would bring a sacrifice, and that sacrifice would be offered by the priest on the altar. It would be cut up a certain way, and depending on what kind of sacrifice it was, part of it was burned up in the fire as a direct offering to the Lord. So it would rise up in smoke to the Lord. And then part of it was set aside as the priest's portion, and the priest would partake of that in the temple. The priests weren't actually allowed to take that home. They had to eat it in the temple. And then the people would take the rest of it home, cooked meat, and they would go eat it around their family dinner table, at their tent, or sometimes back to their home if they lived near enough. What Paul is saying is, when you go back to your home, and you're eating that meat, you are still a participant in that altar because that meat was what was offered up in worship and then you took it home. So what we have is a family dinner table of sorts at the Lord's Supper. It's not an altar, we're not offering the sacrifice, but it's what we get to enjoy as what comes from the sacrifice. Again, it's not physically, literally the body and blood of Christ, but it's our sharing in the blessing and benefits of it. Now, go to the pagan temple for a minute. The sacrifices at the altar were the actual act of worship. And it's not like Christians were bringing a lamb to the temple of Apollo and saying, would you, here priest of Apollo, would you please offer this up for me in worship to Apollo? They weren't doing that. They knew better than to know they couldn't do that, right? But they somehow thought it was okay to sit down and eat the meal that came out of it. and he's wanting to tell them, okay, yeah, an idol is nothing. It's a false god. The food sacrifice to an idol is not really being offered up to the idol, but here's what is happening. Pagan worship is actually demonic. Just because a false god is not a true god doesn't mean that it's a completely spiritually meaningless exercise. Pagan worship is demonic. And so when they engage in worship, They are actually being deceived by demons, and they are having fellowship with demons, and then you are then eating at the table of demons. Oh boy, that's perspective. I never thought about it that way. Well, you need to, right? Now, that's pretty heavy, but Paul wanted them to see how wrong it was for them to do that. Now, we come to the point where we need to make application to our lives, and this gets difficult. because how do we make application? We buy our meat at ShopRite or Wegmans or Giant or wherever you happen to shop, Costco, right? It wasn't offered up to pagan idols, thankfully. There's no worship involved in the process. We just go buy the meat. Somebody invites us over to their house. We're not really concerned about it. But, as we said last week and the week before, that doesn't mean that our culture is without its idols. And that doesn't mean that we have no danger of ever participating with our culture in its idolatry in a way that is harmful. Now we have to be careful, and here's where I'm gonna ask you, as sensible people, to think these things through for yourselves, because I'm gonna give you a few examples. And the examples I'm going to give you are not, thus says the Lord, thou shalt and thou shalt not. These are, think about this. Think about this. One example we talked about last week is that one of the most common idols of our age is the American Dream. And the crude version of the American Dream is that basically, all you need is money, essentially. So, you know, you work hard, you get good grades in school, so you can get into a good college, so you can get a good job, so you can make a good salary, because if you make more money, than you have a better life, right? That's kind of the crude version of the American Dream. What is our culture's idolatrous shortcut to the American Dream? I would pose to you that one form of that is the lottery. The lottery is a scam. Some people say the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. The lottery is a scam that the government runs. It's ironic, they used to put people in jail for running numbers, that used to be something organized crime did. Oh, he's running numbers. That means he was running a lottery. Now the government runs the lottery for education. To teach kids math that you have to be bad at to do the lottery. I've seen people, you've seen people who spend money they can't afford on lottery tickets because they've been convinced that if they can just win the lottery, they can get lucky, they can get rich, and all their problems will go away. And I know someone who won. $100,000 in the lottery. Boy, you know, she'd been playing the lottery for her whole life, and finally she hit it big. She won $100,000 in the lottery. And you know what? It solved all of her problems. No, it didn't. It caused more problems, and pretty soon the money was all gone, and all of her kids were mad at each other. because different ones sort of said, mom, I need 10,000 for this, and mom, I really need 15,000 for this, and why did you take that money from mom, and why did you take that money from mom, and vroom, right? So, when we're tempted to buy a Powerball ticket, we need to think on a couple of levels. What if someone sees us buying that ticket and thinks, oh, playing the lottery is something that Christians should do. Maybe I can spend that money I can't really afford on lottery tickets. Or maybe you're participating in something that Satan is using to ensnare many people and sell them on a false dream. I'm not saying it is necessarily sinful to ever buy a Powerball ticket. I'm just saying, concern for a weaker brother, concern for participating in an idolatrous system, is something we should be aware of. Another, much more serious and much more deadly form in which the American Dream is sold, is abortion. Most often, Abortion in our country is a form of child sacrifice on the altar of the American dream. And I'm sorry, those are hard words, but it's true. Young women are told, if you have this baby, it's going to ruin your life. And what ruin your life means is that it will derail you from the American dream. So you better take care of it. And one of the deep, dark secrets of the abortion industry is that a significant number of young women who have abortions are pro-life Christian young women. They go in knowing that what they're doing is wrong, living with the guilt of it for the rest of their lives. And I do wanna say that if you or someone you know has had an abortion, it is by no means an unforgivable sin. God's grace covers and will heal. But as a culture, we have sold young women a lie. And it has come under the guise of the idolatry of the American dream. And our tax dollars go to support it. Despite the fact that President Trump has been called the most pro-life president in the history of our country, last year Planned Parenthood received a record high amount of federal taxpayer funding, more than they ever received ever before in their history. It is wrong, and it is something that we should be grieved over, and we should speak out against, and we should look for any way to refuse to participate in it. I remember going to downtown Baltimore with my friend Bob Brown and praying in front of the Planned Parenthood that's in downtown Baltimore, and the windows proclaim their slogan, Every Child a Wanted Child, which is another aspect of the American dream, choice, right? You can have whatever you want. Here's another one. Another idol in our culture is technology. We think that there's probably not a problem in the world that can't be solved by technology. And among the things that we believe is that technology somehow makes us all safer. And one thing that grieves me to see Christian parents do in participating in this deception is they give one of these to a small child and they don't put any sort of filtering or monitoring or blocking on it at all, and it's a wide-open access port to the worst filth imaginable under the sun. And this is dangerous. It needs to be used wisely and locked down. We can't just say, oh, I gotta give my kid a phone because all their friends have phones. Peer pressure. It's part of the American dream. They need to have a smartphone. It'll keep them safe. No, no, no. They probably don't need one until much older, and when they do get one, it needs to be, like mine is, locked down and filtered and monitored. We need to be aware of all the ways in which our culture is constantly pulling us to participate in its idolatrous fantasies. Sometimes, doing so causes us to blatantly forsake the Lord's commands and the Lord's kingdom priorities. Take politics, for example. We are called as Christians to speak the truth in love. It's a very clear command. We are salt and light, and as salt and light, we are called to always be speaking the truth in love. But how many of us, and I'll raise my hand as guilty, how many of us have ever been sucked into a political debate and we've ended up saying things that were not true and that were certainly not spoken in love? I have seen Christians on both sides of political debates openly slander their neighbors, and say vile things about others that are often completely untrue or completely unfounded. God tells us, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, and there's no exception clause for those who disagree with you politically. Well, like I said, we need to think about these things. I'm not saying that these are absolute, because there's places where, of course, we want our kids to do well in school, right? There's nothing wrong with that. We want our kids, I want my kids to go to college and get a good education. I believe in education, even though it's part of the American dream, it's not bad. The American dream, rightly understood, is not necessarily a bad thing. To improve yourself and to become educated and to be a vital, contributing member of society is good, right? And I teach government and politics. I teach the Constitution. It's one of the things I've done since I got out of college a long time ago. And I love the importance of sound government. It's important for human well-being in the world. But the problem with the idols of our age is that something good can be quickly turned into an idol if it's made into something ultimate. If it's made into a god. And so when we allow the world and its idols to shape our affections, our priorities, or our behavior, Paul tells us we're provoking the Lord to jealousy. And are we stronger than he? That's pretty strong language. It's not just, oh, well, what's the big deal? Who cares? Obviously God cares. He wants our hearts. Remember what I said last week? He wants our hearts. He wants our devotion. We are His. And one thing we do in the Lord's table is we say, I belong to you, and you belong to me, and we belong to each other. Right? My first loyalty, my core identity is Christ. And so shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? Obviously, we're not stronger than the Lord. And the Lord, in His love, will pursue us and will draw us back to Himself. But His discipline of His children, while it is exercised in love, can sometimes be quite painful. Amen? I know when I've been going astray after an idol, sometimes when the Lord has done what He's had to do to break me of that and bring me back to Himself has been something very painful. You might know the story of the way shepherds in the ancient world used to keep straying lambs from straying. You had a lamb that went astray too often, break its legs and carry it around your neck. So if you see a picture of a shepherd with a lamb around its neck, just know that lamb has broken legs because it wouldn't stay close to the shepherd. And so Paul is here pleading and the Lord is here pleading with all of us with all of us, stay close to me. And frankly, I wonder, and this is just me saying I wonder, if that's not a large part of what we're experiencing in this difficult year. Perhaps we were guilty of devaluing and neglecting the gathered worship of God's people on Lord's Day mornings. And so the Lord was pleased to take it away from us for a while. and then to give it back to us under more difficult circumstances so that we would learn to value, to treasure what is a blessing. Are we listening? Are we learning to stay close to Him and to depend on Him? Or are we still pining after the idols of this age? God wants us, whenever we come to worship, and especially whenever we come to the Lord's table, God wants us reminded of these things. We are His people. He is our God. We have been purchased by the blood of his son. And our hearts are his first and foremost. And then we belong to each other. We need each other. We are called to love and encourage each other. We need to remember that, and we need to walk in humble dependence, because He is stronger than we are. And not only that, but His love is better than anything this world could ever offer. You know what all the idols of this age have in common? Every idol ever formed by the hand or imagination of man has one thing in common. It's a liar. It's a liar. They don't keep their promises. Look at the suicide rate among millionaires in America. Look at the drug abuse rate among celebrity athletes and movie stars and singers, the successful people. Look at the divorce rate among the successful, and you'll see that the American dream doesn't keep its promises. Neither does politics, neither does technology, neither does fill in the blank with whatever idol is drawing us away. You know who always keeps his promises? The Lord and the Lord alone. He never disappoints. He never breaks a promise. He says, I would rather be broken than to break my promise to you. And that's what we remember in the Lord's Supper. He said, I would rather be broken than to break my promise to you. So let's give our hearts to him and to him alone. Let's pray. Father, we live in a world of idols. We are awash in distraction and deception. It's all around us, and it's in our own hearts, Father. It's in our own hearts and minds. Forgive us, for we and our fathers have sinned. Have mercy on us and draw our hearts to you. that we might walk more closely with you, that we might depend more vitally on you, that we might look to you, the author and perfecter of our faith, the alpha and the omega, the all-sufficient one, and our hearts might be wholly yours. We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. And now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. By the blood of the eternal covenant equip you with everything good, that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Amen.