The Lamb of God has paid for our sin. We rejoice in that truth. Sometimes we still struggle to discern just what is sin. and what is okay, what practices, what activities, what's going on around us that is actually fine and what's not. One time I received a phone call from a missionary requesting my urgent assistance. This was about 35 years ago. It was while I was pastoring a church in New Hampshire. He told me his name and said he had visited our church a few years earlier. Didn't recognize the name. I couldn't place a face. But he said, well, that's okay. I understand you don't remember. But he said, we were there. And he said, we just now arrived back in New York City. We're coming back for a short furlough. And at the airport, I fell and broke my arm. Now I'm at the hospital, and they've taken care of it, but they won't let me leave until I've paid the bill, and I don't have any American money yet. I was going to get some at the bank the next day. He said, I need $500, and I'm coming up to New Hampshire in just another week or so, and I'll be able to pay you back. I've got the money, it's just not in dollars. Well, I was so embarrassed that I couldn't remember who it was. I asked him again, when was this? And we had recently, a few years before, we had outgrown the little building where we started, and now we are meeting in a Christian school. And I thought, maybe if he can tell me where we were at the time he was there, help me place him in the service. And so I said, well, so where were we meeting back then? I was really looking for some help here. And he said, well, right there on High Street. High Street, I thought. That was where the church had rented an office for me because there was no place for me during the week at the Christian school. For those that have been born in the last 35 years, I have to remind you, these were the days before cell phones, internet, ATMs. The main tools for communication was the landline and the telephone book. And I said, well, no, you must be confused. I said, we've never held services on High Street. Oh, yes, you did, he insisted. And that's when I realized he was looking at a phone book. And he had found a phone number and the only address our church had at that time. The whole thing was a scam. Did you think scams were invented when the internet started? They were invented a long time before even this circumstance. And I thought, why would somebody try to steal money from a small church? $500, that was going to be a challenge for me to arrange for him at that time. Why would somebody do that? The answer to that question is a reminder of the dangers all around us and our fallen world. Satan uses deceptive practices in his continual quest to subvert the Lord's work. And he'll stop at nothing. Not only does he try to divert the Lord's resources to his own use, he's also trying to divert the Lord's people to his own service, trying to hijack God's people to accomplish his purpose. And he has been shockingly successful in that for many, many years. We are all in constant danger of succumbing to his subtle techniques. Now in today's section of 1 Corinthians 10, Paul, having given all those other reasons why the Corinthians should not eat meat that has been devoted to idols, as he now has given all these really good reasons, but the Corinthians are still thinking, but what are we supposed to do? Is this right or wrong? It's like they still haven't gotten it. So now finally here at this culmination of his answer to their concerns, It's like he rips off the mask that the enemy has been wearing and exposes Satan for exactly what is going on here and what Satan is trying to accomplish. His burden throughout this passage is that Christ deserves your soul allegiance. that he will share that allegiance with no one else, certainly not his enemy, which means you must forsake every form of idolatry. Now in the first century and Corinth, idolatry was a very vivid, real, visible thing. there was a temple to Apollo that stood for thousands of years. I mean, this goes, excuse me, not thousands, it was hundreds of years at that point. It was 500 years before Christ, this temple stood right in the center of town. To this day, there are still five or six pillars that are standing, marking the spot where every citizen in Corinth could see the pagan worship going on, could smell the aroma of the food that had been dedicated to Apollo for sale or available in a restaurant form right there in the temple precincts. This was real life for them. We also are very well aware that that's not real life for us. Yes, there are churches, there are mosques, there are other forms of worship around us, but idolatry here isn't just other religions going on. Idolatry in our day, with all the warnings in God's word about fleeing idolatry as we have in today's passage, idolatry now takes very often more subtle forms. Idolatry includes anything that has diverted your focus from Christ. that is getting attention that only Christ deserves. And there are any number of things that Satan is using today to try to get some of that allegiance that only Christ should ever have. In order to make this statement clear, Paul now just prohibits. Flee from idolatry, he says. You need to run from this. Don't try to stand there and fight against it. You need to forsake it and every aspect of it. So he begins in verse 14 with the admonition, flee from idolatry. My guess is that seeing that admonition at this stage of Paul's argument has left the Corinthians a little bit puzzled. Idolatry, Paul, didn't you already agree back in verse eight that an idol really has no existence? That there are no such false gods behind the idol. That it's just an empty exercise on the part of paganism. So isn't it okay for us to be eating their food? That was their reasoning. And now for Paul to say, flee from idolatry. Well, now are you changing your mind, Paul? Is this actually idolatry for us to be eating that food? I think they're still a little skeptical. So he begins to explain and he says, this isn't gonna be hard for you to understand. He says, I know I'm speaking, in verse 15, as to sensible people. You can reason, you can think, I'm going to tell you some things now that you ought to be able to understand, but you need to think about it. Judge for yourselves, he says, what I say. These are going to be clear, compelling arguments that need to have their impact on us today as well. Verse 16 then. He begins by using a technique we've seen him use earlier, rhetorical questions for which the answer is clear. Nobody's going to argue with these. So, consider, he says, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? He's talking about the Lord's Supper. And the blessing here is when we thank God, following the pattern Christ used, we thank God for the provision of his son and for what this cup represents. That's the cup of blessing. It's not saying the cup is a blessing, it says we ask the blessing upon it from God. We thank him for it. So this cup of blessing, when we participate at the Lord's table, are we not then participating in the blood of Christ? Well, yes, that's exactly what is going on when we drink from that cup. Scripture tells us that. No argument here from anybody. Yes, taking the Lord's supper affirms your connection to Christ. It doesn't establish that connection. You must have received Christ as Savior and now participation in the Lord's table, as we are going to do this Wednesday as part of our special service, Reflections on the Cross. participating in the Lord's table affirms that connection to Christ. Taking the Lord's Supper is fellowship with Him. It's a public testimony of that fellowship. You are in fact joined to the Savior. And it's not just the cup, but also the bread. He says the bread that we break, Is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Of course it is. Yes, we all know this, the Corinthians would be thinking, and we would say so as well. We are sharing in the covenant relationship with Christ. Eating and drinking that meal is that public testimony of I participate in the death of Christ for me. I have accepted the benefit that he offered by dying in my place. So you are joined to the Savior and eating that food says so. It also does something else, it also affirms something else in verse 17, because there is in fact one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. You see, it not only affirms a connection with Christ, this vertical connection with him, it also affirms when we all participate around that one table with the one bread and the one cup, that means that it all reflects Christ's death for us. We are also affirming a connection with each other. You have joined God's people. There's a relationship here as well. Participating in the Lord's table says that as well. Now Paul takes his argument one step further and says this isn't just something brand new that started with the death of Christ and the institution of the Lord's Supper. In a sense, he says in verse 18, this has always been true. He says, consider the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? Of course they are, is the response. The point here is that, and at the time that Paul wrote this book, the services at the temple in Jerusalem were still going on. The destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of that temple is still a few years in the future. And so even then, there were sacrifices that people would bring. And then many of those sacrifices, you know, some of them were whole burnt offerings. Whole animal burning there on the altar. But many of their sacrifices, it was only a representative portion that would be burned. And then the priest would get his portion, a meal with his family, and all the rest would all be available for the family that brought the sacrifice. So they would have their sacrificial meal. That's the basis of Paul's question here. Among the people of Israel, those who eat the sacrifices are participants in the worship of the God whose altar it belongs to. Of course it does. Paul might also have in mind some of the negative instances among the people of Israel. He has just referred to some of them explicitly in the previous paragraph, if you remember. One of those was the instance when they were on the eastern side of the Jordan River about to cross, And as they were camped there on that eastern side, Moabite women approached them, and they had the food that they had just sacrificed to their gods, and they offered it to God's people. God's people knew full well where this food had come from, and they ate it. Let's read this verse in relation to that kind of a negative instance. Consider the people of Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices of other gods, are they not participants in the altar of other gods? Yes, worship of the true God works this way. Worship of false gods works this way as well. Eating any food consecrated before an altar identifies that person with that altar. At this point, this whole idea of, I really think it's okay to eat food that's been offered to an idol, that whole thing starts to feel a little shaky. But now Paul comes out with his strongest statement yet. He acknowledges that he's not actually changing his position. In verse 19, he had said way back in chapter 8 that, yes, you're right, there is no such thing as all these gods that they have named, Molech, and Chemosh, and Baal, and so forth. There is no actual god that they are worshiping. The god is nonexistent, which means the idol is empty. It's worthless. It's harmless, was their conclusion. Oh, not so fast, Paul says. Yes, there's no reality to the idol. The idol is false. Verse 19, he acknowledges that. I'm not saying here that food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything. They're both insignificant. The problem is not the food. But there is a reality behind it. No, he acknowledges in verse 20, I imply that what pagan sacrifice They offer to demons and not to God. The pagans don't know that. The pagans think they're worshiping a particular false god. Well, they wouldn't even call it false. They've got a god that they think if they offer a sacrifice to that god, somehow there will be some benefit to them. They don't know that that God is empty, that that idol is worthless. It's a block of stone, it's a piece of wood, it's fashioned out of metal, but there's no God inside it. What they don't know is that there was a demon behind it. that prompted them to decide to worship that idol in the first place. People don't just stumble upon false worship. They are led there. People don't stumble upon any instance of sin. I just happened to do it. No, there's a demon behind that temptation. Ultimately, it's all traceable back to Satan's work to redirect people away from the only God who deserves our worship and to take some of that allegiance, or all of it if he can get it, to take it for himself. Every temptation has a satanic influence behind it. Otherwise, how is it possible that so many people, by some estimates a majority of American citizens today, are on a crusade for the abortion of unborn babies insisting on the right to do something that left to itself would ultimately bring the demise of the whole race of people. Why would they do something that is ultimately so self-destructive? It makes no sense, unless there's a deceiver behind it all. You see, every wrong that is going on in our world has satanic influence behind it. Every temptation. And Satan tends to be far more subtle in our day. There were periods of time in history, there were cultures in which he could come right out and announce his presence. Demon possession gets so much attention in scripture because that was one of Satan's main tactics in that era. He's shifted now. He doesn't tend to be quite so blatant. He finds he can make greater inroads by being a little more difficult to detect. And so his deceit has become more effective. Paul is stating with clarity in verse 20 that although the idols are false, the demons are real. He's actually quoting a phrase from Deuteronomy 32 in verse 20. Deuteronomy 32 verse 17 says, referring to the people of Israel, they sacrificed unto devils, not to God. Real experiences in the history of God's people. A shocking exposure there. And so he says, they offer to demons even today. Idolatry in every form is demonic. Well, what forms does idolatry take today? It's going to be subtle, but anything that takes God's place, whether that takes God's place in whole or just partially, whether it does so always or only sometimes in your life. But this can include, Paul's already identified some, this can include any kind of sexual sin. Satan's behind those. It can include something that seems much more innocuous, like material possessions. Material possessions can take God's place. We can love our things. Sports activities, any chance that could take God's place? At times during the week, whether that's participating or just watching others do it. Any possibility of danger there? Can someone's work become their God? Of course it can. Probably one of the most insidious of all is that Satan can convince us that our families are more important than God. family considerations will deprive God of honor that he deserves. I don't have time to serve God. I don't have time today to worship God. Our family has other plans today. So the real question isn't, are you connected to Christ? If you are, if you've trusted Christ as Savior, good. But the question is, are there other gods that you're also connected to? Other things that you put alongside God or maybe even ahead of Him? All these instances and so many other possibilities are of idolatry. Paul is arguing here they're all demonic. Satan behind every single instance. But now he goes to verses 21 and 22 to tell us that that very idolatry is repulsive to God. Verse 21, 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. See, the Corinthians were doing that literally. They were going to the table where the food was being served, or they were buying it in the market, clearly identified at times, this has been sacrificed to the local gods. And so that was actually an attractive thing for pagans. Oh, well, I'll probably be especially blessed if I buy that and buy my purchase, support the temple. Now Paul is saying God demands exclusive allegiance. Participation in both is not possible. It's not possible because God won't participate. God is the one drawing the line. Satan might be very satisfied, for a while at least, to share some of God's glory. Ultimately, he wants it all. He wants all of your focus. But if he can get just a little bit now, okay. If God loses just a little bit now, that's not okay with him. You cannot do that. Paul says in verse 21. Now in verse 22, he reverts back to his technique of rhetorical questions that nobody's going to argue with. Verse 22, shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? And immediately all God's people, oh no, no, I would never want to do that. Shall we, are we stronger than he? No, no, I don't think that. I don't want to challenge God to this duel. I don't want to be focused on something that God is saying, oh, now we're coming head to head here. Put up your fists with God. No, no, nobody would choose that. Except we do. we are. By succumbing to Satan's deceptions, we are challenging God, provoking His jealousy after He's made it so clear that He will not share His glory with another. Paul is again referring to Deuteronomy 32. which the verse 16 says, they provoked him to jealousy. And now Paul is saying, and we're doing the same thing. Not a good idea. This is not good for you. What looks like it would be pleasing, an activity, it ought to be okay. I've reasoned through this. I can't find anything wrong with this. But it's distracting you from the Lord. There's an implicit threat here. Flee idolatry in all its forms or else. We don't want to know what the for else is on God's part. I had the opportunity to visit in Zambia a number of years ago. We weren't supporting the Beeman's directly at that time but I did spend some time with them then as well as another missionary that we were supporting at that point. And I have been warned ahead of time that mosquitoes are big and they carry disease and you need to get this prescription and get on the medication that will prevent malaria. because otherwise there's just no way you're going to avoid the mosquitoes there. Well, I have been thoroughly warned and yet assured that this medication works. You're safe when you're taking this, so I was taking it dutifully every day, taking my dose. That first night in Zambia, we were shown to the little building where we were going to be sleeping that night. That's all we did there was sleep. So we got there late at night, and another man was traveling with me. We each had our own little bedroom. So I got into my room, and I immediately noticed a mosquito on the wall. I was looking around, there must be more as well. Now, I could have reasoned that through and said, you know what? I've got the medication. Here, you want a bite? But I didn't do that. I have been so thoroughly schooled on the dangers that as soon as I shut the door, I saw the bed over in the corner with a nice net over it, and I ran for the net. Not taking any chances with that mosquito. That's the frame of mind, that's the heart attitude that this passage is striving for. I'm not going anywhere near that. I don't want the danger of compromising my allegiance to the Lord. I'm staying away from those. Now I mentioned something back as we started this study in chapter 8, that this whole issue of eating food that's been dedicated to an idol, that The church leaders back in Jerusalem had actually settled that several years earlier. They had come together to consider, and they came up with a rule. The rule for God's people was stay away from food that's been devoted to idols. They were very explicit about it. They put it in writing. They distributed it to the various churches all over and Paul took those letters with him. There were a few other items on that list. But they all were aware that this came from people. People back in Jerusalem thought it through and this was their decision. And at that point, that as Paul delivered that to the church in Corinth, some of the people said, yeah, well, let's think about this ourselves. And here's where they reasoned. Well, you know, they're really, the idol is nothing. It's empty. It's dead. There is no such Apollo. There's no God Apollo operating in the world today, and both points were right. And so they concluded, I know what they said back in Jerusalem, but I think they're wrong. I think there's really nothing wrong with this. We can go ahead and eat this meat. That's the proposal they had made to Paul, and that's what Paul is responding here to. If you want to read about that church decision that was in Acts chapter 15, you can check that later. Are there any modern challenges that we face that could correspond to this? Paul doesn't list any for us. He would have to do a separate list for every new culture, every new time period in the history of the church. Instead, he devotes here three chapters to this issue. to make sure we get the idea that this wasn't just limited to the first century. There are going to be other things that we need to get this principle down and we need to look for places where maybe we need to apply this. Are there any activities that were considered wrong in the past that God's people, many of them, have been rethinking. Well, let's consider, is there actually anything wrong? And many have come up with the answer, I don't see anything wrong with this. At least at some time was a controversial thing. And our day has become much more widely accepted. Oh, everybody does it now. But could it be that there is some diverting of God's people away from focus on Him? Could it be that Satan might be behind some of this? Now, I've given some suggestions of things that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to say, yeah, that's fine, we can do that. So I've got some suggestions of things that might in fact be in this category. Not suggesting this is all there could be. But it's gotten very popular among God's people in our day to conclude that alcoholic beverages, there's no problem with that. Just don't get intoxicated as if that's the only real issue here. The use of cannabis. A lot of God's people are rethinking that one. Now it's actually legal in a lot of places in the states. Those states seem to have decided there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe it's OK for us as well. Gambling, tattoos, no problem. So many are saying today. I have to tell you, I'm not so sure. You get the sense we need God's help with this. Just to assume, hey, nothing seems to be happening to them. They've been doing it. I think it might be all right. That might not be good enough. Would you join me in asking for God's discernment about things that are so common in the world God, would you direct, is that clear? Can I be 100% confident that this is okay with you? No issue here. Other things maybe, but I think this is okay. If you ask for God's help, that if you can't be 100% confident, that then you ask for his grace to stay away. flee from what could be Satan at work trying to get you to stop focusing on God so much. Let's bow for prayer. Father, this passage leaves us with questions. We can see clearly the issue that was deceiving some of your people back in the first century. Father, we need your help that will not be deceived here in our time period. We are confident that Satan has not diminished his efforts. He's only gotten better with the practice. Father, knowing, assuming that there are aspects of life in this world that Satan is currently using, maybe even succeeding with, would you help us, Father, to exercise the discernment, and then to take the stand that says, I'm going to focus on the Lord, and I'm not taking a chance. on that activity. Father, grant us the grace we need to determine that we will not take chances with our devotion to you. We need your help. For Jesus' sake, amen.