Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. We'll be reading today verses 14 through 22. 1 Corinthians 10, 14 through 22. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to 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 pagan 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? Let's pray. Father, help us to take the word of God and apply it to our hearts. We pray that your spirit would work in each one of us, changing us, transforming us, making us more like Christ. And Father, should there be anyone here who knows not Christ, we ask, Lord, that even in the discussion today of idolatry, that they would see Christ. May your spirit do his work of illumination. May we understand better how it is that we ought to worship you. May we understand better how it is we ought to relate to the world around us. We ask, Father, that this exercise in worship would bring honor to you, even as it transforms our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Last week, we looked at the preceding verses, the beginning part of 1 Corinthians 10, and it demonstrated and made very graphic before us the punishment that Israel endured at the hands of God, the hands of the Lord. Verse 8 said that they were sexually immoral and 23,000 of them died in a day as a consequence. Verse 9 says that they tested the Lord and that they were destroyed by serpents and in verse 10 says that they grumbled and their grumbling resulted in them being destroyed by the destroyer in the wilderness. These are all things that Paul in 1 Corinthians has already been talking about, right? He's been talking about the infighting and the grumbling that's been going on in Corinth. He has addressed the sexual immorality, what he says in chapter 5, the kind that isn't even spoken of among the the Gentiles, and now he's talking about idolatry, and for each one of these things he says Israel was disciplined, Israel was punished, Israel suffered profoundly. And this is why verse 14, our text today, begins with that word, therefore. Because of the punishment that Israel suffered, because what we see in the Old Testament We need to take note. We need to see how this applies to us. Therefore, he says, because the severity of God's judgment on Israel ought to demonstrate to us the severity with which God views sin. And then he says to flee idolatry. We've already talked about the multiple idolatrous temples that were surrounding the area of Corinth. Corinth was a central place of worship. It was a cosmopolitan area and every single group that had some kind of patron god would come and establish itself within the area surrounding Corinth on the Isthmus there and they would establish the worship of their patron god. And temples were built. And they fancied themselves in Corinth as tolerant of all these religions. There was even, as we read in the Book of Acts, there was even a vibrant synagogue there where the worship of the one true God continued and occurred. Superseding everything else, though, in the Greco-Roman world, they would have these different patron gods, particularly the king of all the gods in their form of polytheism or henotheism, and that would be the worship of Jupiter. Jupiter was always at the pinnacle And there was a ceremony that we're told of that would happen in places where they wanted to give, go through the correct Greco-Roman protocols and give due weight to the prevailing culture. And so at different feasts that surrounded the temples, they would use the temple hall for all kinds of feasts. And during those feasts, there were three cups of wine, communal cups of wine that were drunk. The first was a cup of wine that was drunk admittedly, simply just to Jupiter as the founder of the feast. The second cup of wine was drunk and it was passed around and not everybody partook of it apparently, but they were all allowed to partake of it and they were all encouraged to partake of it and this was a cup of wine that was drunk and shared in honor of the nymphs. These were like the lesser gods, the demigods that were surrounding the feast. The third, if you can even imagine this, the third cup of wine was drunk then and was shared in honor of Jupiter again, but it was a specific office of Jupiter. It was Jupiter Soter. Jupiter Soter, the word Soter is a word we find in the Bible actually all the time, and Soter literally means savior. Jupiter, the savior. We cannot tell if this is the exact ceremony that is behind the cultural background of this passage, but we can imagine that it has to be something similar. that in sharing of food at a banquet that is specifically designed in honor of false gods, or just in sharing a communal cup of wine to give some kind of obeisance and acknowledge some kind of authority to this god, that this has to be something that was going on. And for this kind of thing, for this kind of practice, The Apostle Paul says, flee, run. This isn't the first time he said to run from something, right? Because back in chapter six, you remember he said to flee from something else? He said, flee from fornication. Flee from fornication in chapter 6, 18. It's very interesting that while Paul makes an exclusive argument surrounding the idea of idolatry, his argument is going to start to look very similar to something that has already happened. In chapter 6, verse 18, he says, flee fornication. Flee this. And in chapter 10, 14, he says, flee idolatry. In chapter 6, verses 15 through 17, he warns against union with a prostitute in that process of fornication. He says, don't become unified with a prostitute. And in verses 16 and 17 of chapter 10, he warns against fellowship or union with demons. In chapter 6 verse 12 he says all things are lawful but not all things are helpful and he repeats that same thing in chapter 10 verse 23. All things are lawful but all things are not helpful. In chapter 6 verse 20 he says therefore glorify God in your body. At the end of chapter 10 he says Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, glorify God. Do all to the glory of God. So what Paul does is he takes the exact same template of an argument and he overlays it because the truth is the same whatever issue we are dealing with, isn't it? Do what you do to the glory of God. All things are lawful. Yes. We will not be condemned as Christians for anything that we do. It's all under the blood, praise the Lord. But all things are not helpful. All things are not loving. And this is the argument that Paul makes, he says, as it relates to sexual immorality. And this is the argument that Paul is going to make as it relates to eating in an idolatrous feast. So verse 14 says, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. The urgency of this command, he says to flee. Notice. the urgency here of avoiding sin, right? There's an urgency to avoiding sin, but even what I just said right there, I just said avoid sin. Paul doesn't say avoid it. He says flee from it. There's a difference between avoiding and fleeing. There's some self-defense instructors that you can watch on YouTube. And there's always these things where this is how you disarm someone who has a knife. Someone comes at you with a knife, you hit his wrist right here and it shocks the nerve and the knife comes flying out of his hand. Well, there's some other self-defense instructors on YouTube who have tested all of these things and have said, none of that works. Unless you're going to hit the guy's hand with a baseball bat and shatter his nerve and shatter his bone, then just tapping his hand like that's not going to work. And so they have their own video about how you ought to deal with someone coming at you with a knife. And so they show the guy, this guy who is this trained martial artist who has broken boards and broken bones and broken all kinds of stuff, broken bricks. And he stands there in his ready stance and the guy comes up to him with a knife and the guy in his ready to fight stance says, what's that? And when the guy with the knife turns and looks, he takes off running. He flees, he said, because that's the only real defense against somebody wielding a weapon is to run, is to get away. Folks, we're not talking about dodging and slipping punches, right? We're not talking about, you know, here comes idolatry, and you know, idolatry comes at you, and you just, you know, you just, well, there it goes, there's another one. No, idolatry comes at you, fornication comes at you, and he says, run! When I was in college, I've told all of you this story before, but there's a different application to this story, so anybody who thinks I tell my stories too much, there's a whole different reason for me telling this story. But I was in a car accident in college, and I caused the car accident. We were driving cross-country from South Carolina. Although we were supposed to be going to El Paso, Texas, and we got to Dallas, it was my turn to drive. But it had also been my turn to keep everybody awake from South Carolina to Texas. And when it came to my turn to drive, it was nobody's turn to keep me awake, and I fell asleep. And we spun around four lanes of traffic. Thankfully, two o'clock in the morning. Praise the Lord for that. But we spun over four things of traffic and hit some water barrels, hit some posts, destroyed this car. The guy in the back broke his neck. The girl next to me broke her back. Both of them had no neurological damage, once again, praise the Lord. And I was the only one who was awake through the whole thing. Well, I wasn't awake through the whole thing, obviously. But I remembered specifically looking at the road, watching the barrels, because it was construction and you have those water barrels that they put. And I remember watching the water barrels turn and the road was turning and thinking to myself, I'm not going to make that turn. I think we're in trouble. and trying to pull the car into this turn and it just, the car slid and slid through the barrels and hit the median and spun through a bunch of other things and took out the post. And every second of that thing was so vivid, because when we hit and the wheel of the car spun, I remember the wheel just coming out of my hands. And in a panic, I went to grab it, and I did this. I just pulled my hands together, and the plastic column around the steering column, the plastic protection, shattered in my hands. And it sliced my hand. I actually still have a scar somewhere here from that. And I remember pulling over and we actually ended up facing the right direction. And at two o'clock in the morning, just outside of Dallas, Texas, this woman pulls over and says, are you okay? Do you need help? And I said, no, I think we're all right. Had no idea what had gone on. This truck full of off-duty paramedics pulled over. And I see, I remember this so graphically. They were coming back from line dancing. They're all dressed in their big belt buckles and tight jeans. And one of the guys came in and looked in the car. He said, buddy, you going to need some help here? And I said, no, I think we're OK. He goes, I don't think you're as OK as you think you are. I said, yeah, maybe we need some help. And I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. And I remember him sticking his head in the window. This is what I remember. He stuck his head in the window and he said, if y'all have got any alcohol in here, you might want to throw it out because the police are on their way. I was so proud that I hadn't been drinking or anything like that that I said, no, we have no alcohol in here at all, as if that was going to make anybody feel better. I didn't do any long distance cross country driving for a little bit. And certainly when I was tired, I pulled over right. I remember a couple of years later that I had to do some cross country driving. It was going to be about a four hour drive. I got a half an hour out of town and I felt I started to feel sleepy and I pulled over and I slept for an hour. I just laid there in the car for an hour and I told myself, I am not moving until I have lost consciousness. And it traumatized me. I mean, any little thing, time to pull over, I need to go get a rest. And I literally had PTSD from this accident. Do you understand the reason that the Apostle Paul brings up the graphic nature of the punishments that Israel underwent was to shock us, to give us a projected PTSD, so that when you look at the things that Israel endured because of their idolatry, because of their fornication, When you look at the things that Israel endured because of their grumbling, you would come to the conclusion, I don't ever want that to happen to me. And that is why he starts this injunction by saying, therefore, my beloved, flee, run. Verse 15 says, I speak to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. Paul emphasized there the illogic of idolatry. This is important because he seems to be simultaneously commending them. You guys are reasonable. You're sensible people. But at the same time, he's warning them. You are sensible people. Act like it. Now, you are sensible people, act like it. The thing that comes to my mind is, aren't reasonable people reasonable? Not always, right? Reasonable people are not always reasonable. And Paul is simply saying here, use your reason, use your rational faculties. Think about what I'm saying. And there's so many reasons why they would be detached here from their sensibleness that he has to warn them. There's so many reasons why people who otherwise are reasonable people would be detached. from their sensibleness. Whatever the reason is, Paul says, you're sensible, act like it. The next section here, then beginning in verse 16, starts to allude to the elements of the Lord's table. Verse 16 says, the cup of blessing that we bless, and it's called the cup of blessing because it's the cup that is actually blessed. Same night Jesus was betrayed, he took the cup, and when he had blessed it. And that was just part of the Seder Feast, the Passover Feast ceremony. So it came to be known as the Cup of Blessing. It was also known as the Cup of Redemption. Cup of Blessing because you blessed it, the Cup of Redemption because of what it symbolized. The cup of blessing that we blessed, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not participation in the body of Christ? He says here, he alludes here then to the Lord's table, and he uses this word twice in this verse, participation and participation. It's a word that we hear frequently throughout the New Testament, it's the word koinonia. It's the word that is often translated as fellowship. Is not the cup of blessing our fellowship in the blood of Christ? The thing that we have in common, isn't the blood of Christ what we have in common? The bread that we break, is it not fellowship in the body of Christ? Isn't the body of Christ what we have in common? It's the blood of Christ, the body of Christ. That's what makes us who we are as a unique entity. We don't come from the same places. We don't have the same backgrounds. And yet we're one. Why? Because of the body and blood of Christ. Now, since Paul is not developing here his theology of the Lord's Table, I think it would be wrong for us to try to squeeze too much in this about what the meaning of the Lord's Table is. In fact, what he's doing here, he's building an analogy to demonstrate the seriousness of casually participating in idolatrous practices. One Greek writer, and you see how the analogy then can build, this is a Greek writer from about 100 years or so after Paul. His name is Aelius Aristides, and Aelius Aristides says of the god Serapis, and Serapis itself was a unique Romanesque god, not Romanesquen, but he was a Roman type of god because he was a hybrid of a Greek god and an Egyptian god, which is something that Rome liked to do. They liked to smash things together like that. This is what he says of that God. He says, men share in a special way the truest fellowship in the sacrifices to this God alone as they invite him to the altar and appoint him as guest and host. Isn't that interesting? That sounds exactly like the context that we have here, that here they invite this God to be guest and host And according to this person who is writing in favor of Serapis, he's an advocate of Serapis, he says that they actually have this commonality, the thing that they have in common, the union that they have as a group is this one God. Now, when it comes to the Lord's table, what does the wine and bread celebrate? Our communion with Christ, it celebrates our communion with Christ in the shedding of His blood and in the breaking of His body. Verse 17 continues with the analogy. He says, because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. What's he saying? He's saying there's only one sacrifice for sin. And fellowship in that makes us one. Fellowship, the commonality, the union that we have in that makes us one. When you come to church and you look around, have you noticed that we're not all that alike? Anybody notice that? We're quite different. As some would say, some of us are a lot more different than others, but we're all different. We don't look alike. We don't come from the same places. We don't even talk alike sometimes, speaking the same language. And yet, we are one. And this is what he's getting at here in verse 17. We're won. We're won because of the shedding of blood and the breaking of the body. Verse 18 says, consider the people of Israel, or literally what it says, it says Israel according to the flesh. The ESV translators made it the people of Israel. but the literal rendering would be consider Israel according to the flesh, are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? The word participants there is the word fellowshipper. These are the fellowshipers. So the one who eats the sacrifice, are they not fellowshipers in the altar? Once again, from the same root as koinonia. They eat the sacrifice and they reap the blessings of the ministry of the altar. Now anticipating the objection, Paul says, what do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything? And 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 fellowshippers, participants with demons." Notice he says, I'm not here saying that idols are something because idols are nothing. But he's saying here that somehow in some way the worship of idols is connected or maybe even energized demonically. The demonic reality means that you are not fellowshipping with empty statues, as some would argue, is what they're arguing here, but you are actually in some sense having participatory fellowship with demons. Now folks, we, as we're here this morning, we're literally like 40 yards from a place of idol worship. I don't know if you know anything about the Tenricio that's next to us, but the woman who founded Tenricio was said to get special revelation from the gods. And she was supposedly getting this special revelation that was supposed to then transform the nature of Shintoism. and make it a subtly different thing. Do you know, when we came here, when we began building here and stuff, we were interacting with the priest or the reverend, whatever, I don't remember what her title was there. And we gave them a Bible in Japanese, and the idea was that they would read the Bible, right? They actually took the Bible and put it in their shrine over there. And since we gave them our holy book, they gave us a book called, I think it's The Life of Oyasama or something like that. And this is the lady who founded Tenrikyo. And so I started reading the book. And it talked about how she got these revelations. And do you know the proof that she was getting these special revelations from the gods? Was that this demure woman began speaking with the voice of a man. Nothing? Yeah, the shrine is nothing. The idols are nothing. But why did her voice materially change when it came out of her throat? She showed the signs of demon worship. It's not nothing. Verse 21 says, 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. Why can you not do this? Why can you not participate? in the cup of demons. Why can you not fellowship at the table of the Lord and fellowship at the table of demons? The reason is because at its root, fellowship, koinonia, means to have in common or to hold certain things in common. It means to be in union You cannot be the unifying element, folks, listen to this, you cannot be the unifying element that unites the holy God of the universe with demons. It's impossible. And that's why he doesn't say you ought not to do this, he says you cannot do this. It's impossible. And if we're participating in the worship of demons, he literally says here that God will see this as a provocation. And just like Israel, we cannot abide God's wrath. Notice what verse 22 says. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Isn't that a silly question? But if we are, as he says here, reasonable people, then it's a question that we have to ask. If we are affronting the holy God by trying to, attempting to do what is impossible, and that is to unify him with demons, do you think we can stand against his wrath? So Paul points out the impossibility of unifying the worship of idols and the worship of God. Now how does this apply? How does this apply? Now, most applications can go two different ways. You can have a literal application, and then you can have a principal application. That is that if the direct command relates directly to what you have in your life, then it's a direct application, right? But if it doesn't really relate to what you have in your life because of time, because of history, because of whatever, then you can derive a principle from it and you can apply the principle to your life. Well, what do we have here? Well, we have a unique situation in all the West here in Hawaii because we have both We're connected to the Western world in which this would definitely have to be applied principally, but we're also connected to the Eastern world in which this can be applied directly, right? The application of this, I think, would be vastly different if I was speaking to a church from Ohio. Sorry, Ohio people, but that's true, right? If I was speaking to a group of people from there, you don't see what we see here, right? Tenrikyo, Soka Gakkai, There's another branch of, I think, Soka Gokai, and then the other Buddhist building on the other street over there. They're also the same branch of Buddhism, a Japanese form of Buddhism. Now think about that. False religions to Christian religions, and we're not even discussing the fact that you have a church over here that is a word-faith church, which could arguably be described in non-orthodox terms, to put it lightly. But if you just talk about general Christianity and not Christianity, the worship of the one true God and the non-worship of the one true God, we're outnumbered on this block two to three. And that's not even including all the variants and variations that people perhaps living along these streets who consider themselves non-religious are engaged in. It's unique. So how does this apply? Here's the first application. Don't worship idols. How about that? Don't worship idols. We actually live in a land where idolatry literally abounds. And it's always been a problem in Hawaii, not just with the foreign introduced religions, even during the time of Kamehameha V, you remember that during, well, right after, during the time of Kamehameha I, that he had abolished much of the religious system by imposing his god over all other gods. He didn't abolish it necessarily, but he certainly relegated everything else to kind of second-class status. It was shortly after that that the Christian missionaries came, and the Hawaiians embraced that. And really it was a top-down system where the Ali'i understanding what was going to happen, and the wave of Westernism that was coming in, and that it was the Ali'i's right to choose the god of the people according to the tradition, and they chose the god of Christianity. skip ahead to Kamehameha V, and Kamehameha V reinstituted the call back to the medicinal kahuna. And so you had the kahuna, but the kahuna was a spiritual priest, but the kahuna was also a doctor, in a sense. Well, how does the church, how does the Hawaiian church, split the difference between physician and spiritualist. It was a very, very difficult thing, and it didn't always work out right. It became a controversy even when the Hawaiian Church sent out the first missionaries to the Marquesas Islands. The Marquesas Islands bear a very similar culture to Hawaii. Similar, not exact, but similar. And the mission board thought it would be much better to have fellow Polynesians go down and present the gospel to the Marquesans rather than Westerners. And so they did. They had trained pastors, Hawaiian pastors, who went down to the Marquesas Islands, and they shared the gospel. And they had a horrible time. One incident that was recalled was of one of the missionaries. His name was Hapuku. And Hapuku was one of the prime missionaries and pastors that was called down there. However, his daughter, his adult daughter at one point, gets very, very ill. And there is no physician anywhere. So what do you do? Who knows about the local medicine and who knows about the local ailments and what can treat the local ailments better than the local Marquesan kahuna? And so what does he do in desperation? He calls and asks for the kahuna. The kahuna comes and does some right over her and whatever it does apparently works because she gets better. And then as payment, the kahuna asks for a horse. So now, Hapuku gives a horse to this pagan priest. And because of that, he's disfellowshipped from the mission board. And his response is, well, what was I supposed to do? Let my daughter die? You see how this can happen? He gave homage and he gave a sacrifice to the pagan temple. And it's a real serious problem, right? This isn't something to be taken lightly. It's not, oh, this is so easy. If I were in this situation, I would never, well, what if it was going to cost your daughter her life? And you could justify and say, well, I don't really want the spiritual part. I just want the medicinal part. Now what do you do? Hapuku never actually apostatized and even in his last days he was declaring praise to the Lord. But it's a problem. Like I said, the incident resulted in his exclusion from the mission. It's not always easy. It's not always easy. Paul's commendation still stands though, right? What does Paul say? slip the punches, stand in there, take this part, but avoid that, right? Is that what Paul says? He says, flee! Run! These poor missionaries that went out there, I think there was a group of about six or seven men and their wives, some of them weren't married, Of the women that went, two of them abandoned their husbands and took up with other men. The missionaries, these are the missionary women who did that. Flee, run. What's another application? Well, another application, of course, can be something principal. And principally we can say, as is often said, that there are a lot of different ways that we can have idols. One writer lists eight different kinds of idols. He says, worshiping the true God in the wrong way is idolatry, right? Worshiping the true God in the wrong way is idolatry. He says, worshiping any image is idolatry. Worshiping angels is idolatry. Worshiping demons is idolatry. Worshiping dead men is idolatry. Supreme loyalty in our heart to anything other than God is idolatry. Covetousness is idolatry. Inordinate desire or lust is idolatry. And we can take that principle and say, yes, In that sense, even though in the whole New Testament we only read about the concept of idolatry of the heart once in the entire New Testament, yet we do understand that these things can be true. A third application, also principial. Now I want you to think about this. What is it? that would possess a Corinthian Christian to even consider participating in idolatrous worship? I mean, think, what is it that would even... Like, if you were to ask somebody in here, hey, do you want to go down to the Buddhist temple and light some incense and bow before a statue? Probably most of us here would say that's not even appealing, right? It's not even something that I think of and go, yeah, I'm tempted to do that. What is it that would possess them to want to do that? This is what it is, folks. It's the ambient culture. We've talked about that before. We've talked about the ambient culture. That if the culture around us says, you know what, this isn't so bad, then you know what we tend to do as Christians? We kind of snuggle in. You know, meh, this isn't too bad. This isn't, I can deal with this. And technically, this part right here, if I sit right here, it's not a sin. And if I get right here, it's not a sin. Now, I don't think the other side is all that appealing either, and that is to make a bunch of rules that have absolutely nothing to do with the Bible and say, ah, here's the problem. You're doing this and you're doing that. You're doing all of these evil things that the Bible never talks about. being a legalist in some way. But at the same time, we have to understand that the world's way of thinking creeps into our consciousness every day. It creeps into the way we think. It creeps into the way we view life, relationships. What's important to you? Not just by virtue of your proclamation, but what's important to you by virtue of what occupies your mind. And what is it that tells you that that's okay? Very often, it's the ambient culture. The culture that's around us. I mean, think about how people talk about, I don't even like this phrase, but people talk about doing church. How are we going to do church? You know that if we don't do this and this and that, and if we're not active in this and this way, then what is the world going to think about us? Now we're going to learn in 1 Corinthians that there is a place for us to think about how we are being perceived by the world. There's a place for that. But what ought to drive worship in the church is not what the world thinks about us. What ought to drive worship in the church is what God thinks of us. What he says in his word. And please understand this, that when we get acclimated to that ambient culture, and we start to think, yeah, you know, we really need, we need to be more like this, because this will attract more worldly people to Jesus, and this will appease God's enemies here, so that they'll love Him more, and those who hate God are not going to hate Him anymore if we just would do this, this, and this. Do you see how far afield it can go? When we start to appease the ambient culture and we start to think like the world and we start to think the church needs to be marketed and that the gospel needs to be marketed rather than simply proclaimed. How do we do this? By succumbing to the ambient culture. If the church does X, then we're going to look bad to the world. Unbelievers aren't going to like us very much if we do this, if we say this. We're not here to appease the world. And listen, folks, in a very clear sense, and please understand what I'm saying and what I'm not saying. We're not here to attract the world. We're here to honor our God. Please understand that a tacit and common form of idolatry that exists in our world today is to try to worship God in a way that is thoroughly unbiblical and dishonoring to Him. We must not succumb to the ambient culture. So, what do we do when faced with that prospect? We flee. When you see Israel When you see Israel, that they constantly disobeyed God, that they worshipped idols, that they embraced sexual immorality, that they were constantly bickering and grumbling, and we look at what happens in the Mosaic Law to counter that, and then we see what happens in the Torah that says, this is how God dealt with that. Anything else we understand, folks, we understand that that, that displeases God. And the question is, does that matter to us that it displeases God? When you hear as many traveling preachers as I've heard in my lifetime with so many fanciful stories of idolatry that they traveled to lands far away and things happen. Some of these stories that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. That gives me the heebie-jeebies when I hear that story. And the fact is, they've told all these stories, but I don't even know if the stories are true. These itinerant preachers would talk about some of the dangers of idolatry and they would talk about being tourists walking into a Buddhist temple in some faraway land. And that one lady, as she was walking in there, began to choke like someone had wrapped their, like a demon had wrapped his fingers around her throat. Frightening, isn't it? Another one told the story of someone who walked by an idol shrine, and as he walked by the idol shrine, there was an overwhelming oppressive presence that just sent a chill. the center of his bones, he said. Another one said that one family tried to destroy their wooden idols and the demons would not allow the matches to stay lit. You know, I don't even know if any of those are true. But it doesn't matter. Because Paul doesn't talk about the fancifulness of demons, does he? When Paul wants to urge us to flee from idolatry, he talks about the status in the Old Testament, and then he uses this illustration of the Lord's table. Consider the prospect of the Lord's table. Jesus, on the same night that he was betrayed, took bread. When he had blessed it, He proceeded. Jesus, on the same night that he was betrayed, knowing full well the symbolism of the agony that was to befall him, that the very blood that was coursing through the capillaries in his hands that was holding the bread and that was pouring the cup would soon be spilled. In a few short hours, the reality of the symbols of the bread and the cup would manifest, and the one breaking the bread and blessing the cup would be hanging under the weight of my sin. Then think about the infidelity, folks. Think about the infidelity, the adultery of sipping the cup of Jupiter, or maybe in our context, sipping the cup of Buddha, Kamoana, sipping the cup of money, fame, and pleasure, while carefully avoiding getting the blood of our Savior on our shoes. Then the cup that you have in your hand, drop it. And flee. Let's pray. Father, may we not toy. And we not toy with that which grieves you. May we not toy with the things. For which. Our Savior bled and died. Give us the fervor. Give us the passion. Give us the godly fear to run. I pray, Father, that you would bless this the word of God to our hearts, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.