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Let me invite you to take your
Bibles, please, and go to 1 Corinthians 8. 1 Corinthians 8, and while
you're turning there, just let me express how encouraged I was
by the praise service last Sunday afternoon. It was a great day
all together, being able to be together in fellowship, but also
just really encouraged to hear how God is at work among us.
and to see him exalted through the praise of his people. What
a blessing it was, and I hope that it was encouragement to
you, and it's a great way to start the year, to seek the Lord
through prayer and then try, lift up our voices to exalt him
as well. I was talking with my grandchildren
this week and trying to help them understand the difference
between knowledge and wisdom. My little way of always focusing
on knowledge is you know the facts. Understanding is you know
how they relate to each other. And wisdom is you understand
the significance and application of them. You live them out. and
the way I was trying to help my grandson recognize is that
knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting
it in a fruit salad, right? I mean, just practically speaking,
it is technically a fruit, but if you know that, then you understand
how it relates to other fruits, you'll go, eh, that one doesn't
belong in the fruit salad. Right, and someone might have
that fact, but not recognize the significance of that fact.
And that's part of the problem at Corinth about the issue of
food, which has been offered to idols. They have some knowledge
of things, that an idol is nothing, that food doesn't commend you
to God or away from God. And those things are actually
true. but they're lacking some components
of understanding about that. They're not taking everything
into consideration that needs to be taken into consideration.
And they're also not translating it into the right kind of behavior
toward others that's described as love in this passage. And
instead of their knowledge moving through understanding to wisdom,
which produces love, it's actually causing them to become arrogant
and puffed up. And so their knowledge is actually,
instead of being something of benefit to them and to the congregation
at Corinth, has actually become something dangerous, both to
them and the congregation at Corinth. We looked at the first
half of chapter eight last week. We're gonna look at the second
half this week. So if you would please follow
along as I read, beginning in verse seven. However, not all
have this knowledge, but some, being accustomed to the idol
until now, eat food as if it were sacrifice to an idol, and
their conscience, being weak, is defiled. But food will not
commend us to God. We are neither the worse if we
do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. But take care that
this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block
to the weak. For if someone sees you, who
have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience,
if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he
who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And
so by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience
when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes
my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again so that
I will not cause my brother to stumble. You know, it's common
in our day and really in some ways, probably since the 1960s,
the idea of love as an ethical principle has been distorted
in a way that has caused sometimes believers to react negatively
to an emphasis on it. All right, so situation ethics
began to be pushed forward in the middle of the 20th century. So there are no absolutes. It
just depends on the situation and circumstance. So the thing
that controls you in every situation or circumstance is love. What's
the loving thing to do? But apart from a biblical definition
of love, that ultimately leads into really a kind of feeling-oriented
subjectivism that actually undercuts all moral absolutes. So it might be loving to actually
do something that's morally wrong if it benefits somebody. And
so all of a sudden people can start to justify actions that
were not actually right based on principles of truth. And that's carried all the way.
I mean, that's why, you know, you'll hear, you'll see signs
that say, love is love, or see a bunch of guys with helmets
on that are trying to kill each other with choose love on the
back of the helmet. It's sort of like a little ironic
there. But the point is it's trying to say, well, love's the
thing. But then no definition of what
love is, so it just becomes a sentimental guiding force of some sort. And so it's easy for us to go,
no, it's not about love, it's about truth. But a biblical response
actually can't go there, because do you remember what the first
commandment is and the second commandment? The first is love
the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength.
And the second is love your neighbor as you love yourself. And the
scriptures say, on these hang all the law and the prophets.
That is a genuine understanding of love in relationship to God
and in relationship to others actually is a foundational, fundamental
ethical principle. But the key is understanding
how the scriptures would define love and what exactly that looks
like. We can't abandon it or else we
go from one kind of self-centered ethical collapse to another kind
of self-centered ethical collapse, because that's what's happening
in Corinth. Well, I know these things. And then they're using
their knowledge actually to harm people because they're getting
what they want, right? Their knowledge is serving their
selfishness. instead of actually issuing forth
in love. And so, Paul helps us here in
the first part. Remember, eight to 10 are one
long piece of biblical apostolic instruction about how to handle
the issue of food offered to idols. And so, what Paul does
is, work really in a sense in layered
approach to teach them principles. He had the authority to just
say, stop. But life is often more complex
than that. I've already said in these three
chapters, you encounter food offered to idols in a variety
of different contexts. He talks about it actually being
offered in the idol's temple. He talks about that same food,
because idols actually don't eat, being taken from the temple
and being sold in the marketplace. So here's food that's been offered
to an idol and now it's on sale in the meat market. What do you
do about that? Or you might show up at somebody's house who's
an unbeliever and they're offering you a meal. What should you do? And then especially what should
you do if they say, we're eating this meal in honor of such and
such a deity. All right, so there's at least
four different kinds of circumstances they might encounter. And so
Paul's answer isn't a one size fits all answer in the sense
of here's the exact action you have to take. It is, in some
parts, here's the exact actions you have to take, but it's always,
here are the principles that govern why that action is the
right action. What is the truth that holds
power over our choice? Because that's the way in which
we would exhibit our love for God and our love for others. How do we move in a way that
puts those principles into practice? And so one of the things you
have to do as we're walking through this is remember that it's like
when you have a conversation, right? If you're in a conversation
with somebody, and let's say that conversation lasts 30 minutes,
and in the first five minutes, you're making one point, and
then you, in your mind, are adding a second layer to that point
and a third layer to that point, but the person listening to you
goes, forget those other three points, I'm just gonna take this
one. and they're missing the big argument because they just
wanna zero in on one part of it. And that's often what happens
in chapter eight, because Paul's gonna start with this issue of
how love ought to control our choices, and he's gonna say things
based on that truth that is consistent with what he's gonna say the
rest of the way through. but it also needs to be understood
in light of that. You can't just go, well, hey,
I heard chapter eight, so I draw my conclusions now. No, it's,
I need to hear what he says in chapter eight and understand
it in light of everything that Paul's saying, because Paul's
not just randomly throwing things out there. He actually is writing
with a very clear purpose to help them live in a way that
is modeled after the love of Christ, and in fact, demonstrates
love for Christ in what they're doing. And the end of chapter
eight is basically two directions in which he sort of pushes. The
first in verses seven through 11 is that their choices need
to reflect their love for other people. Right, that they need
to recognize that what they're doing should in fact demonstrate
their love for the body of Christ. Look at verse seven, because
the first thing he'll say to us is love, biblical love is
sensitive to the spiritual condition of other people. Verse seven
says, however, not all men have this knowledge. That knowledge
he's referring to is that an idol is nothing. There are no
gods in this world. There's only one true God and
one Lord. And then he says, but not all
have this knowledge. So as you live your life, you
need to be sensitive to that. You need to be aware of that
and recognize that, take that into consideration. And that's
not true just of unbelievers. It's also true of what he calls
a weak, a weak-conscienced professing believer. I look at the end of
verse seven, but some, being accustomed to the idol until
now, eat food as if it were sacrifice to an idol, and their conscience
being weak is defiled. So it's possible for professing
believers to still struggle with sinful issues of their past,
in this particular case, that they actually had been a part
of these pagan feasts in the temples to idols, and they, in
their lost condition, thought that they were actually involved
in worshiping gods. I mean, they went to the temples
because they thought the gods had some power or authority,
they had some obligation to them. Now they've heard about Christ
and turned to him, but they're still wrestling with what that
all means. They still are struggling with
this reality. And so if they eat food offered
to an idol, they aren't thinking, well, that idol is just a piece
of wood or metal. They're thinking, this is actually
to a God. This is an act of worship to
a deity of some sort and their conscience, I think he's using
it here, something like moral consciousness, awareness of what's
morally right or wrong. their conscience because it's
weak. In this case, it's weak because
they're susceptible to it. And again, there's a cultural
gap for us that we probably struggle with a little bit because we
don't live ostensibly in this kind of a culture. All right,
but I mentioned last week, like let's say in Eastern Africa,
where your village is dominated by the presence of the witch
doctor and you grew up with a worldview that unless you presented offerings
to your ancestors, they would influence the spirits and they
could send illness or curses on you. And so you grew up thinking
you had to wear little amulets around your waist to protect
you from evil spirits. And you had to lay out food on
the porch of your house for the ancestors to be satisfied or
else evil would come on your home. And you've seen things
that we think like are just excluded. but you've actually seen demonic
activity happen. And so you're not just thinking
like, this is like a Hollywood movie. This is like stuff you've
seen. And so it actually has a hold
on you that you've heard about Christ and you've turned to Christ
because you know you need to be rescued from all of this stuff.
But just because you know you've been rescued from this stuff
doesn't mean you all of a sudden just like, oh yeah, that was
just a joke. That was all nothing. No, you're still wrestling with
it. or you've got those tensions, or you grew up in a, say, an
Asian context where you were taught so much about how, lots
of worldviews, where the well-being of your ancestors is dependent
on how much you remember them and care for them, right? The kind of stuff that slips
into like the Lion King. when Simba's told, I will be
around as long as you remember me. Right, that's a worldview
about ancestors who've departed and the responsibility of the
living to sustain them by it. And you come to Christ and then
you come over to your larger family and that dinner is being
offered up to your grandfather. because they're praying to him
and depending on him to influence them, and they're trying to sustain
him. So if you grew up in that kind of a culture, that wouldn't
just like, you don't come to Christ's house and that's all
gone. Your conscience is still gonna be fighting with those
kinds of things. There's lots of ways in which
that is going on. And Paul says that a person whose
conscience is still weak is gonna be affected by your actions. So if you're really operating
by love, you will take into consideration other people's spiritual condition
as you make decisions about what you do or don't do. That's really
the point of verse seven. Not all have this knowledge.
Some eat as if it is sacrifice to idols. And therefore you need
to take that into consideration. You need to think about the impact
it may have on them in that regard. So look at now verses eight through
10. Paul says, love is more concerned
about their spiritual health than personal freedom. He starts
by acknowledging something about food that's true, right? When
it's considered in isolation, it is not a spiritual factor
in our relationship to God. But food will not commend you
or present us to God. We are neither the worse if we
do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. So Paul, look at verse
four real quickly. He, in verse four, dealt with
the issue that idols are nothing. Therefore, concerning the eating
of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such
thing as an idol in the world and that there is no God but
one. All right, so think about it. Eating things sacrificed
to idols, right? So that would be food sacrificed
to idols. He starts with idols. We know
that there actually are no other gods, right? I mean, an idol
is actually nothing. So that's what he says in verse
four. He doesn't deal with the food question now till verse
eight. And now verse eight, he says, food will not commend us
to God, right? So you don't actually eat something
to present yourself to God as better or worse, right? If you eat, it doesn't make you
better. If you eat, it doesn't make you
worse. If you don't eat, it doesn't
make you better. Food doesn't do that. And so he starts with
that reality for them because that seems to be the basis on
which they're prepared to just throw open the door to do whatever,
right? Idols are nothing, food is nothing.
So like, just go eat, enjoy. Demonstrate your knowledge of
the truth by doing that. That's why they consider themselves
strong and other people weak, because the person who has idols
and food joined together as a something is actually weak in their conscience.
The idol's nothing, the food is nothing. And if you hold to
the truth, you know that. But that's not the ultimate in
it. And that's his point. You have
to recognize that there is something else at play in it. So look at
verse nine. But take care that this liberty
of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block for the weak. So he wants them to recognize
that if this food is joined to idolatry, then it is going to
have some impact on other people that believe idolatry is real.
So food may not have any advantage or disadvantage, literally. Right? It literally can't move
you toward God and can't move you away from God, but it doesn't
sit alone. And so that other person may
find themselves disadvantaged or damaged by it if you don't
take that into consideration. What does Paul mean by liberty
in verse nine? But take care that this liberty
of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.
I think the point of verse nine is tied
to verse eight, right? So think about this in terms
of the progress of God's revelation. Could an Israelite, Under the Mosaic law, actually
say verse eight, food is not for the better or
for the worse. No, actually, they couldn't.
They had all kinds of foods that they couldn't eat without being
disobedient to God. Food actually was a part of the
rule of life for them, and it had very significant relationship
to their obedience to God. But Jesus in the Gospels declared
that all food was clean. So now you and I can eat whatever. There you go, all right. You
must have had some good bacon for breakfast this morning. We have the freedom, the liberty
to eat that. We don't have to worry about
it. I don't have to sit down at the table and go, is this
kosher? Has this had any connection with
anything that makes it unclean and therefore I can't participate
in it? I have freedom. I have a right to eat is literally
the idea in the text. So I have now this privilege
of being able to eat whatever's set in front of me without asking
questions for conscience sake, because the earth is the Lord's.
It's all good. Well, it's all edible. Well,
it all is permissible to eat, all right? We'll put it that
way. So I have that wide open door. But that doesn't mean like, so
I can eat whatever is the ultimate guideline for me. It is possible
that there might be circumstances and situations within which my
food choice might be destructive for somebody else. And at that
point, the good of the other person takes precedence over
my freedom. That's what he's driving home
in verse nine. So we have to be careful that
we don't use it to the disadvantage or damage of someone else. Look
again in verse nine, but take care that this liberty of yours,
this freedom or right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling
block to the weak. For if someone sees you who have
knowledge, that is you, the one who has knowledge, dine in an
idol's temple, will not his conscience, if it is weak, be strengthened
to eat things sacrificed to idols? The word strengthened there is
the word that's translated a number of places, edified. So it's a
good choice for strengthened, but you know what it means when
you edify somebody, you build them up, you enable them, you
strengthen them. So here's Paul's lay of the land,
right? He's again, remember I said about
chapter eight, Paul is not saying here, it's really okay for you
to eat in the idol temple if nobody sees you, right? Because that would be
a false conclusion based on what he's saying. It's not just that
they see you eating in the idol temple that makes eating in the
idol temple a problem. Chapter 10 is gonna say, you
can't do it. What he's doing though is making
the first level of argument, and the first level of that argument
has to do with their love for other people and their love for
Christ. And so here's what he's saying.
Listen, if this other person who's struggling with the sort
of hangover of idolatry in his life, the remnants that are there,
that person, is struggling with the fact that idols are nothing
and food is nothing. You have that knowledge and technically
you're correct in that knowledge, right? You have the truth on
your side, but you're not taking into consideration that not all
have that knowledge. And in fact, if they see you
seated in that temple, eating that meal offered to that idol,
they're gonna go, Well, it's okay, right? I mean, if they're doing
it, they seem, they've been a believer longer than me. They seem to
be gifted in serving God and present themselves as very knowledgeable
about the truth. And if they're doing it, well
then, you know, it might be okay. And again, I'd say we have to
factor in some of the variables. I mean, I just mentioned the
one, like you, if you're from a certain cultural background
and your family gatherings, the meals are always done as worship
to the ancestors. Do you realize what, I mean,
chapter 10 would come around and say, well, you can't eat
those. All right, so think about this
person over here who's just trusted Christ and is now coming to the
ramifications of what that means. And here's where it's starting
to hurt them, right? They're starting to feel the
pinch. They are not able to participate in any kind of family gathering
that involves a meal because they're all being offered to
the gods. So they have to step away from it. They work in a
trade guild where whenever that trade guild gets together, they're
offering up something to a god and they have to start to pull
back from it. Socially, this factors into almost
every variable of their social interactions and they're finding
themselves having to pull away from all of those kinds of things
that would touch up on idolatry. And so there's this tension in
them that they don't want to give up all of those other things,
right? They don't care about the idol,
but they still think the idol has some reality to it. So the
choice they're having is, will I follow Christ exclusively Or
is it okay for me to still dabble a little bit with this stuff
so that I can keep my family and I can have my economic well-being,
that I can live in the society and culture I'm in without being
looked at like some kind of outcast? Right, they're feeling the pressure
that comes from that kind of a world, because for them, the
choice is really about whether they will be entangled in idolatry
or they'll be exclusively worshiping Christ. Because they still struggle
with the fact that this is an item. And they have to have that part
of it. And so that's where the stumbling
block part comes in. If they see this more knowledgeable
Christian doing something and they're struggling with the rightness
of that because they know that there's some idolatrous worship
connected to it, and they know the choices between exclusive
worship of the true and living God or dabbling in idolatry,
think about how significant just the concept of dabbling in idolatry
is. You don't dabble with idolatry. That's what chapter 10 will say.
Can you sit at the table of demons and the table of the Lord? Can
we provoke the Lord like that? There's no minor idolatry. There's no acceptable toleration
of disloyalty to the true and living God. Well, yeah, I mean,
I'm gonna go to that meal, but I'm gonna have my fingers crossed.
You know, as if you can somehow subvert the false worship that's
happened. So they're pushing these weakened
conscience Christians to a kind of decisive choice, which is
down a pathway away from God. That's why it's called a stumbling
block. And it's not just a stumbling block. Look what he says in verse
11. He says, the weak is ruined,
right? And then again, wounding their
conscience in verse 12. I mean, he's talking about a
serious, serious departure from the truth. So when food is joined
to idolatry, it can become a stumbling block for those who are struggling
with this issue. And the end of verse 10 is really
crucial understanding what it means to be defiled and to stumble,
right? Paul isn't concerned about a
minor issue here. If he strengthened to eat things
to sacrifice to idol, you actually are causing spiritual damage
to him. So let me just step back from
this a second and just a quick contrast with Romans 14, because
sometimes people throw Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 through
10 into the discussion as if they're about the exact same
thing. And they're not actually about the exact same thing, right? In Romans 14, the strong are
those who can eat and the weak are those who cannot eat. Because
in Romans 14, the issue is whether or not you have faith to do something
that God has given you permission to do. Right, go back to what
I said about Jesus making all foods clean. Right, so you grew
up as a Jewish young person, taught all the rules about kosher
food, and you come to Christ, and all of a sudden you're with
Gentiles, and they're eating things that you were told all
your life you can't eat, and you're struggling with the freedom
to do that. Right? They're going, oh, this
is all clean. Jesus said it's all clean. And
you're going, I don't know if I can do that. So the reason
you're weak is because you're not, you don't have the faith
to do what Jesus said you could do. That's why Paul sides with
the strong in Romans 14, but tells the strong not to harm
the weak. Right? And so there's an issue
there about what we might call debatable things within the consciences
of believers, but the scriptures are clearly on the side of the
people who can eat the food and can not observe the day. Because there are no holy days
and there is no kosher food. So strength is, I don't have
to observe those holy days, and I can eat that food. Weakness
is, I still need to keep the Jewish religious calendar, and
I need to keep the kosher laws. That's a different world than,
you come over to 1 Corinthians 8, and you're talking about pagan
idolatry, and it's not at all, if you're strong, you can do
it, weak can't do it. Now, chapter 10, he's gonna say,
no believer can do it. You can't eat food offered to
idols if it's being offered to an idol, right? If it's in the temple being offered
to an idol, you cannot do it. If it's at an unbeliever's home
and they're offering it to an idol, you cannot do it. It's
not a debatable thing on that point at all. It's an issue of
right and wrong. It is wrong to eat it in the
temple. It is wrong to eat it at a feast
in a person's house offered to an idol. It's fine to eat it
if you buy it from the meat market, because the earth is Lord's.
And it's fine to sit down to dinner and not ask a question
about it. I don't have to do a background
check on my steak. Hey, can you tell me where this
has been and what's going on with it? He says, don't ask questions
for conscience, see? So wrong, right, right, wrong. It's not an issue of debatable,
it's right or wrong. And if you encourage somebody
to do the wrong thing, then you are gonna cause spiritual harm
to them. Right, so it's different in that
regard. And what we have to recognize
is the importance that Paul is making on being careful about
the consciences of other people so that you don't ruin them or
destroy them, which is a word that Paul uses regularly about
eternal destruction. He's not just talking about like,
well, yeah, they might, you know, trip into a little sin. Now,
if someone's encouraged to pursue idolatry, they're being encouraged
to turn away from the Lord. And this person who's professed
faith in Christ might be shipwrecked by your carelessness, because
the ultimate state of their soul is beyond your ability to see. I just spent all last year on
Sunday evenings talking about this. We walk among those who
have professed faith in Christ. As a congregation, to be welcomed
into the congregation as a member, you have to profess your faith
in Christ. But we have no ability to scan you to see if
you have had the new birth or if the Spirit of God dwells in
you. All we can do is observe the fruit in your life and hear
the testimony of your limbs. So at any given time among the
congregation of God's people, it is possible that there are
people who have professed faith in Christ who haven't fully actually
trusted in Christ. Right? That's why, I mean, it
used to be the way you talk about it is professors, right? But
not people who teach, but people who are professing faith in Christ. And so Paul's concerned that
among the congregation at Corinth, there might be some who have
professed faith in Christ, but yet are still weak on this issue
of idolatry. And it might actually prove,
if I could put it this way, to be a kind of eternally terminal
weakness. Because they're sitting at the
table of demons. Therefore, they're giving demons
access to their lives. and they are taken in the snare
of the devil to do his will. And so you and I have to think
about what kind of catastrophic consequences might be had by
our raw use of our liberty and knowledge. Because I'm thinking
only of what I want to do at that point. I can keep all my
connections by going to this feast, and I can keep all my
connections by going to this temple, because the idol's nothing,
food's nothing. And I march in there thinking,
this is a display of my strength. I am spiritually strong enough
to go, that's just a piece of wood. That's just a steak. It means nothing religiously.
So I'm gonna eat this thing. And I think I am good, right? Knowledge puffs up. But in my
doing it, I send a message of influence to somebody who's struggling
at those points and actually starting to think that they could
do both, right? They can worship the idol
they used to worship and they can worship God. And in so doing,
I turn them away from Christ, and I actually make them subject
to potential destruction. Look at the end of verse 11,
because this is a part, and when we come to seeing what's going
on here, why this love for others should be important to us. For
through your knowledge, he who is weak is ruined, the brother
for whose sake Christ died. I think the point that Paul's
making here is if Christ loved this person enough to die for
him or her, how can you make choices that might ruin him or
her? And in the context of, I think,
Corinthians, and I think if you go back to chapter five, he says,
any so-called brother be involved in this immorality. It's, again,
fitting in that context I just described. The visible church
are those who have professed faith in Christ. And so that's
why I don't think he hesitates to call the person a brother.
They're a part of the assembly. And I think Paul's view of the
atonement of Christ is that it is sufficient for all. And so
he doesn't flinch by thinking this lost person Christ died
for, right? So I don't think it's a problem
in any way that way. What he is trying to get us to
see is if Christ would love these people so much that he would
die for them, if I put it in a sort of base level way, how
can you love a stake so much you'll ruin them? How can you love your pocketbook
so much you'll ruin? How can you love your social
standing so much that you'll ruin them? Why would you put your temporal
pleasure and comfort and acceptance ahead of their soul? That's demonstrating that you
have missed the point of knowledge because it hasn't produced love
in you. And when he says this, for whose
sake Christ died, remember the overarching theme of 8 to 10
is that the gospel is what controls our responses and all these things,
and that's what Paul's doing. Christ died for our sins, according
to the Scriptures, at the very center of the gospel, right? That the sinless Son of God gave
himself as a sacrifice for sinners. Christ died for this person,
right? And that presupposes that they
had a debt to sin that they could not pay, And in fact, that there
was a kind of depravity in them that was that they were a sinner,
unable to pay off that debt or achieve that atonement, that
this was something that God had to do for them. And he did it
through his son. that Jesus became human so that
he might, in fact, live a sinless life, but also be able to sacrifice
that life to die for them so that they could be rescued from
death. He came so that He might be an
atonement, a propitiation for our sins, so that we might live. If you've ever been born again,
that's what you confess, that's what you hold to. You believe
at the very depths of your soul that that is the ultimate game
changer. because you were a sinner who
could not save yourself, but Christ loved you enough to die
for you. He died in your place to rescue
you from your sin and its eternal consequences. That's like, that's
it. And yet at times, apparently
the Corinthians could live like that's not that big a deal. Having
a meal in the temple is a little bit bigger than that. fitting
into the culture around them is a little more important than
that. So there's the glaring contradiction. If you believe that Jesus Christ
is Lord, and he is so because he obeyed his father even to
the point of death on the cross, and God raised him from the dead
and exalted him to his right hand and gave him a name that
everyone will confess, he is Lord. If you believe that, then
that has to translate into a heart that so appreciates that, that
it wants to see that advanced never hurt. What I do should
serve that, not stand in the way of that. And if you're here
this morning and you've never come to recognize that you're
a sinner, you have sinned against God in ways that have cost the
wages of death. Right? The soul that sins shall
die. The scriptures are clear. The
wages of sin is death. If you've not recognized that
you have sinned against God in such a way that he righteously
can condemn you, but has mercifully sent his son to rescue you. He set forth Christ as the atonement
for sin. And you can trust in him today. God has promised that if you
will call on the name of the Lord, you will be saved. That
Jesus can provide for you what no religious effort can provide,
no rituals can provide, no priest can give you, no church can give
you, no keeping of God's law can give you. He can give you
the forgiveness of your sins. He can give you a new heart,
a new life. You can be the child of God,
welcomed into his family, because Christ died for you. I hope you trust him this morning,
and I hope those of us that have, have been completely rewired
by that, so that our approach to life is not about us, but
it's about the gospel. And that would show forth in
love for others. Then look at verses 12 and 13.
It shows out in love for Christ, because look at what verse 12
says. And so by sinning against the brethren and wounding their
conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. You know
how you honor Jesus? You love his body. I mean, we
know this, but we need to really pull it deep into our heart.
I mean, Jesus said to Saul, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting
me when Saul was persecuting Christians? And here's the same
person, Paul, saying, do you realize that when you're sinning
against these brothers, these brothers and sisters, you're
actually sinning against Christ? Right, so it's not just about
the damage it could do to them, it's actually also about the
disregard it shows to Jesus. Right, Christ died for me too,
and I ought to live for him. And if I really wanna love and
honor him, then I will love and honor his church. his body. I will be careful because I don't
want to have a contrast between the sacrifice of Christ and the
selfishness of my heart. I want my heart to be lined up
with his and their selfishness wasn't just against those they
hurt, it was also against Christ. So it needs to be stopped. That's
what Paul's getting at. And look at verse 13. Therefore,
if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat
again, so I will not cause my brother to stumble." So again,
think stumble here is to cause them to fall away from Christ,
to be ruined, have their conscience strengthened to participate in
idolatry. And so our love for Christ means
we will put him ahead of our personal desires. And Paul's,
he's clearly speaking in hyperbolic terms, but it's expressing his
priority system, right? If food creates stumbling in
other people, then food's gone, right? Meat's gone. It's clearly
meat in context of this issue. So if you go temple, marketplace,
meal, And then meal offered to a God, two of those are out.
I think he's saying here, if it causes people to stumble,
then it's out across the board for me. I won't eat it at all because
the good of a person's soul and my love for Christ and what Christ
wants to accomplish is more important than food. I won't surrender
them. And so he wants to make certain
that he has confessed Christ as first place, which is gonna
set the, probably a bad way to say it in the food offer, but
it's gonna set the table for chapter nine, right? And he's
gonna talk about this issue more, but the primary focus he wants
to see is that Christ, love for Christ, will show up in love
for Christ's body. and we're not using our knowledge
properly if we disregard those things. So Christ's love for
sinners should capture our hearts. If you're here and you don't
know Christ, I pray it captures your heart. Nobody, nobody has
ever loved you like Christ loves you. He took upon himself the
eternal wrath of God against your sin. He became sin so that
you might be made the righteousness of God in him. No one has loved
you like that. And once you recognize that,
then your heart should be aligned with his love for sinners so
that we would not do anything that would damage or destroy
the soul of those for whom Christ died. You know, we live in a
world that treasures personal freedom above everything else.
I mean, I hope we recognize how we have been marinated in that
all of our lives, that the most important value in this world
is me being able to be me and do what I want to do. It has
turned the vice of selfishness into the virtue of self-expression, of self-advancement,
right? We live in a world that is so
full of self, I think at times it's hard for us to see how much
that is factored into us. I mean, we ought to regularly
probably ask ourselves, at what point and what places in my life
am I sacrificing anything for Christ and his people? I mean, when I actually tell
myself no to something that I want to do because it would be better
for other people. Where am I restricting my freedom
for the sake of the gospel? Does it show up at all? Or is
the first note out of our mouths tend to be the one that's in
our culture? Well, tell me why I can't. Tell me what's wrong with that.
Prove it to me. Because the first thing we start
with is I can do all things through Christ. Right, I can do whatever
I want to do. Not, I have been bought with
a price. My life is not my own. It's to
be lived for Christ, for the events of the gospel, for the
good of his people, the building up of the church. And I think
a part of what we need to see in this chapter is the deceptiveness
of sin. Think about what's going on in
the life of those that have knowledge. Right? They have found a sophisticated
way to get what they want. I mean, they want to eat the
meat offered in the temples. And there's lots of personal
advantages to that, I've said. I mean, they retain all kinds
of social ties, economic ties, familial ties. They avoid just
sort of being the outcasts who all their former acquaintances
look at them and say, why are you such a weirdo? Why can't
you just go along? Why do you have to make everything
such a big deal? I mean, why can't you, the whole
family's gonna be taking the mass at the wedding, why can't
you? You know it's just juice, it's just the bread. You know
it's not anything big. Why do you do that? And we could
multiply all kinds of things that we might be inclined to
go, well, so, okay. Like in my heart, I know that
this is actually nothing. Right, I think it's okay. I can,
you know, I'm not really, like I'm really not bowing down inside. Right? And what we have an incredible
capacity to rationalize away the wrongness of things in order
to get what we want. Right? We can talk ourselves
into stuff that is really us just trying to make our heart
feel more comfortable with the choice. That's why the Bible
says the deceitfulness of sin that can harden the heart. And
that's where it seems a lot of people at Corinth were. They
could come up with all kinds of good reasons why it was okay
to do the thing that was actually not okay and also harmful for
other people. Because we have an immense capacity
for sinful rationalization. And a text like this should sober
us about that. Where are the places in my life
where I might be justifying things that are not serving the gospel
well? I am right to think this way. I'm right to feel this way because
of X, Y, Z. So I can keep doing what I'm
doing in spite of what might seem to be dangerous consequences
for myself and for others, because I am right about this. And that rightness causes you
to be resistant to all other arguments. And I would say in
the language of 1 Corinthians 8, there's at least a decent
probability that you are puffed up by your knowledge because
it's not showing itself in love. And you may be dangerously self-deceived. So let's be careful, all of us. Let's be careful that we don't
step back from 1 Corinthians and go, man, those Corinthians
were a mess. Amen, let's go. Same problems. The same problems
are in our hearts and in our culture. We just need to see
how they're dressed and what they look like and be controlled
by the fact that Christ died for sinners. and let's seek the
good of those for whom Christ died and advance the gospel. Let's pray. Father, please help
us to have sensitive hearts about your truth and be aware of those places
where we might be compromising the full testimony of your truth
by grabbing one part of it to use it to our advantage. And Lord, help us to be fundamentally
altered by our understanding of the gospel and the desire
in our hearts to glorify Christ who died for us and to see others
grow in Christ and see others come to Christ. May we be controlled by that
in our choices so that our thinking and affections are lined up with
a kind of life that is guided by the truths that we've seen
this morning. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.
Choices Based on Christ’s Love
Series 1 Corinthians
| Sermon ID | 12025141111048 |
| Duration | 59:19 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 8:7-11 |
| Language | English |
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