to 1 Corinthians chapter 8 as we continue to make our way through 1 Corinthians. And we'll be looking at the entire chapter this morning, 1 Corinthians 8 verses 1 through 13, where Paul is addressing a pastoral situation that took place in the early church with food offered to idols. And this morning we'll be seeing especially the importance of love. loving one another when we're seeking to be holy in a culture that is pagan, as it was the case in Corinth. If you found 1 Corinthians 8, let's stand together as we share God's word, verses 1 through 13. Let's hear now the word of the Lord. Now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge, but some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we eat, if we do not eat, and we are no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat. lest I make my brother stumble. This is God's word, the grass withers, the flower fades, but God's word endures forever and ever. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the Holy Spirit who helps us to understand your word. We ask that you would send forth the presence of your spirit to convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, showing us the way of love, love for you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and also how to love one another in the body of Christ. And so we pray that you would give us clear minds and attentive hearts that we might grow in your word. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Would you please be seated? As we're reading through 1 Corinthians together, it's always important to be reminded that we are reading someone else's mail. It is true that the Bible was written for us, that it was written for our benefit, but the Bible was not written to us. That is, it had an original historical context. And as we've been reading through Corinthians, we've learned again and again that we cannot neglect that original historical context. Paul is writing in the first century, in the 50s AD, and he's writing to Corinthian Christians who are living in a very pagan culture. The city of Corinth was full of temples devoted to the Greco-Roman gods, especially to Aphrodite. And we've already seen in our study of 1 Corinthians that The Corinthians were constantly tempted to go into those temples and worship these Greek gods and goddesses. And one of the ways that you did that was by sexual morality. They practiced cult prostitution. But there were other issues, pastoral issues, that came up for Christians living in Corinth because of that pagan context, and one of the issues that was unique to that day was the issue of food offered to idols. In order to understand this passage, we have to know something about that historical context, because we're reading someone else's mail. You'll remember Paul is writing to the Corinthians and he's addressing some of the concerns they had expressed in their letter to him. That started way back in chapter 7 in verse 1 where he said, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, and he started to address those concerns in chapter 7. Well, he's still doing that here in chapter 8 when he says, now concerning food offered to idols, he's addressing concerns that these first century believers had. And one of these concerns was the situation of food offered to idols. So we need to know the background. Well, essentially, the important thing to remember is that idols in the first century, or temples rather, devoted to the worship of idols in the first century, often were not just places of worship, but they kind of doubled as banqueting venues and also as meat markets. Before the days of refrigeration, essentially what would happen is there would be a sacrifice that was made within the temple devoted to some pagan deity. We may say Aphrodite or any one of the Greco-Roman gods. And there would be meat left over. Some of the meat would be consumed by one of the priests. But then the meat that was left over, you had to do something with it or it would go to waste. And so those idol temples would also be banqueting houses. And if you lived in Corinth, it would be like going out to eat, going to a restaurant. And you could actually go to those temples and you could participate in a meal from the food that had been previously sacrificed to idols. The rest of that food was kind of sent off to the meat market, the temple kind of being served almost like a butcher shop, and that meat would have been sold in the meat market. And sometimes you would see, when you purchased the meat, it would say, this food had been offered previously as a sacrifice to Zeus or to Aphrodite or to whatnot. And so Christians who were saved out of that pagan culture struggled with, how do I continue to live in Corinth that has this kind of culture everywhere and not participate in the idolatry, but also still not completely retreat from society? For example, if a business partner asked me to go to this temple and participate in a business lunch where there's food that has been previously sacrificed to an idol, can I participate in that? If my friend invites me over, my unbelieving friend invites me over to his house and sets food before me and he tells me that this food has been previously offered to a god or gods, Can I can I eat that food? Is that participating in idolatry? Even some of them were wondering, well, we know the food is just food. Is it OK even to go into the temple and participate in the idolatrous service, knowing that the idols have no real existence? And so it became a thorny subject in the early church. You had some Christians who felt like you couldn't eat that food in any context. And then you had some Christians who said, well, it's just food. We have the freedom in Christ to eat it. As long as we're not worshiping those deities, we have the freedom. Food is just food. It doesn't really matter. And so there was a sense of division in the church and Corinth. And so they had written to Paul about this concern. What do we do? Who's right? Who should bend their will to the other part of the body that has it right? Is it the strong Christians that are right? Or the weak Christians? Or who are the strong Christians and who are the weak Christians? How should we handle this situation? And when Paul writes to the Corinthians here in 1 Corinthians 8, he says something that is very important in any day in which the church lives, in any culture in which the church lives. Essentially what Paul says here in chapter 8 is this, he says, walking in love is more important than being right and asserting your Christian liberty. Walking in love is more important than being right about your view on some cultural issue in a pagan environment and what Christians should do and what constitutes holiness in that context. Walking in love is more important than being right in asserting your liberty to do this or that. And that's essentially what Paul is pressing home on their conscience. If you take away anything from the sermon today, take away the importance of love. Do we talk about love enough in our Reformed churches? We talk a lot about knowledge, we talk a lot about doctrine, we talk a lot about getting things right, and that is important. But we also need to be equally clear about the importance of love. When Jesus summarized the law, he said, it's love for God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. That God is love, the Apostle John tells us, and that love should characterize all of our interactions with one another in the body of Christ. Love is the most excellent way, Paul will say in 1 Corinthians 13. In fact, if you have everything else right in your life and you don't have love, you're nothing. Love is that important. Now in 1 Corinthians 8, I see four different things that he drives home as he's discussing this pastoral situation. Four different lessons about that priority of love when you're dealing with something, some cultural problem like food offered to idols. And there are four things that he says, and I think these are very important for us to remember and keep before us when we consider some of these things. Because cultural things like this come up in our day. We can think about things like alcohol, or television, or what Christians can wear, and all kinds of things that you might say, well, that's associated with paganism, and Christians should be completely separate from that. And yet others would say, we have the freedom to enjoy those things, and how do you consider these things? And so even though the context isn't the same today, the truth that we're gonna look at this morning is still very relevant. It transcends culture, and it's relevant for all of us. Four things. First of all, I want you to notice here in this passage, the first observation here. Notice how Paul stresses that love is greater than being right. Love is greater than being right. We see that in the first three verses. Notice what he says. He says, now concerning food offered to idols. They had sent him a letter. They asked about the situation. What do we do with this? And he quotes from their letter. He says, we know that all of us possess knowledge. Notice the quotation marks. They had said that in their letter. They had said in their letter, we all know that food is just food. There's nothing magical about food. If it's been offered to an idol, we know idols aren't even real. And so we can eat the food in the meat market. We can have this. It's not a big deal. And so they had said that in their letter. Most likely, most of the Corinthians were asserting their liberty to eat this food. But notice what Paul quickly says. He agrees with them. We all possess this knowledge. But this knowledge, in quotes, puffs up. But love builds up. Isn't that interesting? He's essentially saying that, yes, there is knowledge that you have that idols aren't real and that this food is just food and food doesn't commend us to God and food doesn't condemn us before God. You know those facts. And those facts are true, he will later on say. But walking in love is more important. than just being right about those facts. Isn't it interesting how knowledge, the knowledge that he talks about here puffs up. We all know that that's what knowledge can do when it's devoid of love. You can grow in your intellectual understanding of facts about God or about his world or about his word. And that can just be head knowledge. It can just be facts that puff you up and make you proud of what you know. We've all, in the Presbyterian context, we've all met people who are in what has been termed cage-stage Calvinist. They've learned the doctrines of grace, they've learned the basics of Reformed theology, but they're so proud of knowing those things that they're puffed up and they're arrogant. And they look down on others because they are not as enlightened as they are about theology. We recognize that theology is important, knowledge is important, learning things is important, but if it's not seasoned with love, if it's not permeated with love, if it's not saturated with love, it can become an occasion for great pride. When I was in seminary, there was once in chapel, there was a visiting man preaching in the chapel, and he preached a very strong doctrinal sermon. And afterward, one of the professors was asked, what did you think about that sermon in chapel? He said, well, it was theologically accurate, but he did not adorn the doctrine. And when the students asked him, what do you mean adorning the doctrine? It meant it was just presented in such a harsh way. It was presented in such an arrogant way that it seemed to just puff up. But see, love builds up. Love includes knowledge. We need to know things to love. But love uses that knowledge for the edification of the body of Christ. These Corinthians were so concerned about being right, that they had fallen into pride and arrogance. In fact, their knowledge was actually deficient, ironically. He says in verse 2, if anyone imagines that he knows something, he doesn't yet know as he ought to know. What a paradoxical statement that is. If someone thinks I really know something, I'm really puffed up in what I know, and I've figured this out about the Christian life, or figured this out about how Christians should relate to the pagan culture, and I know so much more than you, and I'm right. That person doesn't really know as he ought to know. Those of us who've lived the Christian life for any amount of time know this, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. Does anyone agree with that? The more that you know, the more that you realize you don't know. And the more that you truly know, the more humble you become towards those who do not yet know what you took time to learn. We often forget when we come to new ideas, ideas that may be right theologically, ideas that might be right about how to interact with the culture, we sometimes can forget we didn't come to those in an instant. And yet we expect everybody to immediately know what we know, what may have taken us years to understand from the Bible or to ponder what the right thing to do is with regard to pagan culture. And so what Paul is saying here is, if you really think you know something, you don't really know as you ought to know. And he goes on to say, if anyone loves God... See, love is the issue. If anyone loves God, he's known by God. It's not about knowing facts. It's not about using those facts to puff you up in an arrogant way. But it's about loving God. And the far superior knowledge is to be known by God, not about what you know about God, but God's knowledge of you, his personal, intimate, covenantal knowledge of us. Love is greater than being right. You see what he's saying there? Love must help us in all of our interactions. He's going to come back to this, flip ahead for a second to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 1, where he says this, you know the chapter well. He says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love. I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. You see what he's saying there? Eloquence, tongues of men, tongues of angels, great oratory. If I speak that way and have not love, it's just like bong, bong, bong. It's meaningless. And then he goes on to say, look at this in verse two. If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries, all the mysteries of the Bible, all the mysteries of the book of Revelation. If I know all of those things, if I have, he says, all knowledge. And he even adds faith to this, even if I have all faith, confidence in God and His promises, so as to move mountains. But if I have not love, I am nothing. Those are powerful words about the priority of love. He even says, if I give away all that I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but I have not love, I gain nothing. He's emphasizing the centrality of love. So our pastoral situation is very different from that. We're not dealing with food offered to idols. There are places, by the way, in the world where that's a very real pastoral problem, especially in the East. But in our context, we're not dealing with that. But we can ask this question. Examine your own heart and ask yourself this. Do I care more about being right than I do about loving others? Do I feel a sense of superiority because the things that I know, which may be true, but other people do not yet know them? That's what Paul is digging deeper to get us to see. The Spirit wants us to see that love is greater than being right. That's not all he says here. He also says, secondly, that love affirms the truth. Love affirms the truth. Look in verse four. Paul is not being a relativist here. He's not saying no one is right. He's not saying there isn't truth. He's not saying someone doesn't have the facts of the matter. He says in verse 4, as to eating the food offered to idols, we know. An idol, he quotes them, you see the quotation marks, an idol has no real existence. You're right, Corinthians, we know that. And we know that there is no God but One. We know Deuteronomy 6, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. We know the creed of the Old Testament. We know that monotheism is true. Yeah, there's many so-called gods, he says, in heaven and on earth. Many things that would purport to be gods. But he stresses again in verse 6, He stresses the singularity of God. He stresses the lordship of Christ. These are things love affirms. We know that later on in 1 Corinthians 13, he'll say, love doesn't rejoice in iniquity. Love rejoices in the truth. Love speaks the truth. Love doesn't compromise the truth. Love is clear about the truth. It's very clear here what the truth is. That there is one God, that the idols are false, and that the food is just food. And so sometimes we are afraid that if we walk in love, if we don't assert what we know to be true against our brother who may not yet understand that truth, sometimes we feel like, well, if I'm gentle with people, if I'm kind with people, if I'm loving with my brothers, that I'm somehow compromising the truth. But God's word here is not compromising the truth, it's speaking the truth clearly, but also affirming that that truth must be seasoned and saturated and motivated and permeated by love. In fact, the love, love is what speaks the truth and the truth must be spoken in love. And so we should never think that walking in love and recognizing that people have scruples and people have maybe issues and such in the first century of food offered to idols. And we recognize that we're not compromising by loving and welcoming a brother because we're still affirming the truth. Love is greater than being right, but it doesn't mean that knowing the truth isn't important. Thirdly, notice here, he also says that love respects our brother's conscience. It respects our brother's conscience in the third place. Notice how he, after affirming the truth that everybody agrees on, he says here in verse seven, he says, however, not all possess knowledge. Not all possess this knowledge. What is this knowledge? It's that the food is just food. It's not corrupt. The food itself doesn't corrupt you. Idolatry corrupts you, but the food is just food. Now, notice the contrast. Verse 7, Paul says, Not all possess this knowledge. Earlier on, he quoted the Corinthians in verse 1, and he said, All of us possess this knowledge. They had assumed everybody knows this. Everybody's where I've arrived. Everybody thinks this thing is obvious. but maybe everybody doesn't know that. Everybody knows watching TV is wrong. Everybody knows drinking alcohol is wrong. Everybody knows practicing yoga is involved in demonic spirits. Everybody knows it's wrong for a woman to wear pants. Whatever you fill in the blank with in your own culture, right? Everybody knows this. Everybody thinks this. Everybody thinks it's obvious. And that's not to say it's relativistic. Someone's right. Someone's wrong. But notice what Paul does as he talks about this. He says, not all possess this knowledge. Not everybody knows. Not everybody's at the same place. Not everybody's faith is equally informed by the word of God. Not everybody's faith is strong. He says, not all possess this knowledge, but there are some people who, through former association with idols, they used to eat that food as if it really was connected to Zeus, and it really connected you to blessings of these gods. They had that former association, and now they can't get it out of their mind. When they eat the food, it's as if it's really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Notice the emphasis on their conscience. And the Bible is very clear that all of us have a conscience. Your conscience is your inner knowledge of right and wrong. You know, when you do something wrong and you feel bad about it, that's your conscience. When you do something right and you feel good about it, that's your conscience. It works both ways. Now the problem with our conscience is it's not always right. Sometimes we feel bad about things that we shouldn't feel bad about. And sometimes we feel good about things that we shouldn't feel good about. Because our conscience is fallen. It's also corrupted by sin. And so the Bible teaches that it's very important for our conscience to be informed by the Word of God. We should correct our conscience with Scripture and bring it in line. It's not like Jimmy Cricket said, Jiminy Cricket, when he said, let your conscience be your guide. Your conscience can't be your guide because it's corrupted by sin. You can sear your conscience. And yet, even though it is true that your conscience is to be informed by the Word of God, the Bible stresses that It's wrong to go against your conscience because you can sear your conscience, you can corrupt your conscience further so that it doesn't function the way that it should. So we see, for example, when Paul writes to the Romans in Romans chapter 14, he says, anything that doesn't proceed from faith is sin. talking about dietary laws and things like that. He says, look, if you can't eat with faith, if you can't participate in this action with faith, knowing that God approves of it, it is sin. If you think it's wrong, it can be wrong for you because you're going against your conscience. That's the principle that God says, don't go against your conscience. So in this case, the weak brother believes it's wrong to eat the food offered to idols. Now, it says here it's just food. Food doesn't commend us. We're no worse off if we do eat it. But this weaker brother has scruples. And for him, he would feel like he was going against what he knows to be true. And what Paul is saying here, what God is saying through Paul is love respects your brother's conscience even when you don't agree with it. So if you think it's okay to have alcohol in moderation and your brother thinks it is wrong to have alcohol in any context, love says, I respect my brother's conscience. It doesn't mean you don't try to inform it with the word of God and give the truth, but it means that you allow that person to be part of the body of Christ, welcomed into the body of Christ, and you don't try to coerce that brother or sister to go against his or her conscience. Even if you disagree, maybe you believe that you're right, but out of love you respect the viewpoint of your brother, and you want to bring him along, but you also want to meet him in love by respecting his conscience. Conscience is a very important thing. Just as a broader application point, we should take seriously our own conscience, that when we do something that is wrong, and our conscience convicts us that it's wrong, Consult the Word of God and see if it is really wrong. And if it is really wrong, your conscience is bearing witness with the Word of God and repent. Similarly, when we think we're doing the right thing, we think we've chosen the right course of action. If someone comes along and says, yeah, you feel really good about that, but actually you're doing the wrong thing. And here's where the Word of God says that's wrong. Allow your conscience to be corrected by the Word of God. The word of God is more important than our conscience, but to go against conscience, as Luther said, is never right nor safe. So love is greater than being right. Love affirms the truth. Love respects our brother's conscience. And then it takes it a step further here in the fourth place. He says, love surrenders rights. for the good of our brothers." Surrenders rights. Look what he says here in verse 9. Take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. What is he saying? He's saying that, yes, you have the right to eat food sacrificed to idols as long as you are not participating in the pagan worship. He does in chapter 10 address going into the temple and participating in the pagan worship service. Christians are not to participate in the worship of demons. He gets into that. But with regard to the food, the food that's sold in the meat market, the food at a business meeting, it's just food. You have a right to eat it, but make sure that this right to eat it doesn't cause your brother to stumble. What does he mean? Doesn't cause your brother to see you eating it and therefore go against his conscience and do it even though he thinks it's wrong. So he says, if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols? That is from his perspective, food that is really offered to idols and it's really contaminated. And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed. And notice the crushing line here in verse 11, this brother for whom Christ died. What the Word of God is doing there is elevating our understanding of the dignity of our brother. Because he was redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. If you think your rights are more important, if you think asserting your Christian liberty is more important than your brother for whom Jesus died, the Word of God would say our priorities are out of whack. Our thoughts are skewed. For Christ redeemed that person. Yes, that person with weaker faith, that person with weaker incomplete knowledge, lesser Theological accuracy, Christ still died for him and you are called to love him because Jesus loves him. Also probably implicit in this idea here is the way Jesus zealously defends his bride and identifies with all the individual members of his church. such that to sin against a church member, another believer, even a believer who's weak in knowledge and faith, is to sin against Christ himself. Where do you think Paul learned that? Remember on Damascus Road when the Lord Jesus knocked him off his high horse? And what did he say? Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my church? Not what he said, is it? He said, Saul, Saul, Why are you persecuting me? Because Jesus takes it personally when we sin against the members of his body. Even individual members for whom he died. Notice the personal nature of this. Your brother for whom Christ died. Your brother that Jesus had in mind when he was hanging on that cross. It causes us to think about every individual member of the body of Christ. Why would I want to ruin someone's conscience who is redeemed by Jesus? It's a very gospel-centered application and a heart-searching one. And so he says that thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you actually sin against Christ. Sinning against your brothers, you actually sin against Christ. I'm going to ask that when the Word of God is being preached that we try to be respectful and sit and listen carefully. And so he goes on to say here in verse 13, therefore if food makes my brother stumble, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a vegetarian. But you get the spirit of what he's saying. I have a right to eat meat. I have a right to eat food offered to idols. I know it's just food. It doesn't matter. I want to do it. But Paul says, I'm willing to surrender that right to love my brother for whom Christ died. In our pride and in our selfishness and in our desire to be right, we can just bulldoze people into agreeing with us and being where we think they should be. And yet Paul says, no, I value even the weakest member of the body of Christ, even the most ignorant Christian, meaning ignorant in the truest sense of the word, not having fully developed theology and doctrine, maybe being wrong about many things. about how to relate to broader culture, whatever those case may be. We could mention a lot of them, but quite frankly, if I mentioned some of those things, you'll be so focused on the application with which you disagree that you'll miss the point. Because experience has proven that to be true. But what is the point? The point is love. the love of Christ for us, the love of Christ dying to redeem us, and that love filling our hearts and causing us to relate in love towards our brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. I don't want anyone to feel particularly targeted by my comment about moving around. But we have a lot of commotion during the service, and I'm not talking about children. We have some moving around going on, and we need to make sure that we remember that God's Holy Word is being preached. When the pastor is faithfully expounding the Scriptures, it is the Word of God, insofar it is faithfully expounded, and it's God's Word to us. And we have had some disruptions and some moving around and just have to be careful about that. And it's not a one-time thing, it's been a repeat occurrence. And so not yelling, not saying that, but I think we should work better at that so that we don't distract one another when the word of God is being preached. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for speaking your truth to us. We pray that you would show us all areas where we have sinned against you. We know that each one of us desires to be right. Each one of us desires to enjoy our Christian liberty. But Lord, we also recognize that sometimes that becomes more important than love. And so help us to remember that love is more important than being right. Help us to remember that love causes us to surrender our rights for the good of our brother, that love affirms the truth, but also respects the conscience of our brother for whom Jesus died. We pray that you would help us to walk in the truth of your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.