We're gonna look at 1 Corinthians 10, verses 14 to 22. This is the middle of the section that is discussing idolatry, and this section will flow into direct application next week, but for sake of time, we'll only be able to get through these eight verses today, and we will discuss where we were last week as well. So let's go ahead without interruption and read through 1 Corinthians 10, verses 14 to 22. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak to you as wise men. Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of that one bread. Observe Israel after the flesh. Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What am I saying then? That an idol is anything? Or what is offered to an idol is anything? Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Father, in the mighty name of Jesus, we come boldly before the throne of grace, needing and asking to obtain mercy and help in time of need. For King Jesus has conquered sin and death. He has put under his footstool the enemy once for all, and soon will make his earthly kingdom come. But in the meantime, Father, we pray that you'd give us grace to understand the text today, that you'd put aside any distractions of the week, the things to come, or the things that have passed, the concerns or cares of this world that might draw our attention away from Christ and the communion around the Word of God at Crossroad this morning. We ask your blessings on the text. We ask that it will return profitable. We know your promise that the Word of God always returns full and bearing eternal fruit, will not ever be empty, but will accomplish its purposes. So we ask that its purposes be accomplished here in this group with these people at this time. And we pray, Father, that you'd help us to have comprehension and understanding of the argument of the text. We pray these things in Jesus matchless name. Amen. As you can see, the text, the title of the message this morning is, Worship Responsibly. Worship responsibly. Because our worship has consequences. We're gonna ask and answer this important question in the text this morning. What actions must we take to ensure that we are worshiping the Lord responsibly? And as we answer that, we are going to see really just two actions that we must take to worship the Lord responsibly. The text tells us in verses 14 to 20, the first part, that to worship the Lord responsibly, we must flee idolatry. And we'll have to explain that. That's straight up from the text, but obviously we don't have the same struggles that the Church of Corinth had. We have similar struggles from a different angle. And secondly, we're going to see that we're commanded that we must not fellowship with demons. Don't fellowship with demons. These are the two primary commands in the text. Now, some of you probably did like I did when I first read this and thought, Idolatry, demon worship, I'm good. And then we dug into the text and realized how important it is for us to truly contextualize this and make it our own this morning. So as we look at the text, I believe God will help us to answer this important statement, this important question by this proposition. You must choose Christ over corruption. You can't have both. This morning, may God help us to choose Christ over corruption, because we cannot have Christ and corruption. So as we think about this worship responsibly, let me set the stage for us a little bit. Last week, Pastor Stephen masterfully introduced this section by linking it to the marathon of our Christian faith from the end of chapter nine. You notice that? The end of chapter nine, Paul says, hey, look, we're all in a race, but if you run a race or you're in a boxing match, you have to do that according to the rules. And if you do according to the rules and you are victorious, then you're crowned at the end. And that is the context as he leads into chapter 10. Chapter 10 is a bigger context that goes all the way back to chapter 8. So from chapter 8 to chapter 11, Paul is discussing this main point of idolatry. but he's going to apply it on how we handle the cultural connections in our world that draw us to be idol worshipers. We've already dealt with the strong versus the weak conscience in chapter eight, and he's gonna go back to this argument at the end of this chapter and into chapter 11. However, last time we noted, as Pastor Stephen explained, we fail to run our race according to God's wisdom, which is, by the way, following the rules. What are the rules? God's rules, God's wisdom. We fail to run our race according to God's wisdom when we fall prey to man's wisdom. Does this sound familiar? This is a major theme in the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians. He talks about the folly of man's wisdom and how men think God's wisdom is foolish, but God thinks man's wisdom is foolish because it is. And so Paul is playing on these concepts and he's helping us to understand that we fail to run our race according to God's wisdom when we fall, pray, to man's wisdom. So last week, Pastor Stephen showed us, based on Paul's clear references to the Old Testament Israelites wandering in the wilderness, that man's wisdom leads to perpetual idolatry by causing us to do three things. Last week he said, first, trust in experience rather than in Christ who saves. That was verses 1 to 5. Secondly, we saw that man's wisdom causes us to tolerate sin. That's verses 6 to 11. which we saw through four illustrations that Pastor Stephen masterfully connected to the Old Testament. The illustration of idolatry there in Exodus 32.6, which led to sexual immorality in Numbers 25.1-9. And then we saw putting Christ to the test, Numbers 21.4-7. And finally, we saw grumbling or complaining, which was connected to Numbers 14, because that grumbling or complaining is at its root, unbelief. What does the text tell us caused the Israelites to fail to enter their rest? Unbelief. What does Hebrews make a strong case for? Connecting, though Israel and the church are separate entities, he's connecting the sin of unbelief in Old Testament Israel, wandering the wilderness for 40 years where over a million people die, only two survive from that first generation. He connects that to the church by incriminating we followers of Christ who claim to follow the Lord with our mouths but don't believe in our hearts the truth of the gospel. And that's why Hebrews gives strong warning. He doesn't teach that you can lose your salvation. He teaches that if you claim Christ, but you don't know Christ, you aren't a Christian. And that's what Hebrews is strong about. But here, same thing in the text. And so we found last week that unbelief, unchecked, leads to destruction. And as Pastor Stephen said, and I quote, sin always escalates. To tolerate sin is to start down the path of self-destruction. Great quote from Pastor Stephen last week. Finally, we saw last week that man's wisdom leads to perpetual idolatry by causing us to miss our escape through Jesus, our only hope. That's what verses 12 to 13 say. Why? Because what we noted in verses 12 and 13 of our chapter this morning is that temptation is not unique, and it is not impossible to deal with. Through Christ, we learned last week, we can and will have victory over sin and idolatry if we persevere to the end in our marathon race, clinging to God's wisdom, which is the gospel. and not man's wisdom, which is idolatry. Now, I know I have simplified very complex argument. Pastor Steven did a great job last week introducing this. So, last week's message suggests, or excuse me, last week's message segues well into this week's message. The major problem of preferring man's wisdom over God's wisdom is what has led the Corinthians into their mess of idolatry. If we, in 2025, at Crossroad Baptist Church, as followers of Christ, if we aren't careful, we will fall prey to the very same satanic lies and misappropriated truths that led the Corinthians astray as well. Our modern world communicates oxymoronic truths, sending mixed signals to consumers daily, doesn't it? Well, here's a brief AI search that I've listed here to name a few. Some of the English oxymorons. You ready? Deafening silence. Bittersweet. Cruel kindness. Jumbo shrimp. Same difference. Silent sarcasm. Virtual reality. Alone together. Clearly misunderstood. Exact estimate. Living dead. Very popular movie theme these days. Love hate. Minor crisis. Only choice. Original copy. Seriously funny. Small crowd. unbiased opinion, crash landing, freezer burn, civil war, climb down, and lastly, foolish wisdom. Now, many of these English oddities have been the cause of counterproductive harm, and some in the list are quite funny. Are they not? You know, I think I alluded to this, these oxymorons a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I said it in private, get in trouble to say it in public, but military intelligence, right? We've observed that as an oxymoron over the years at times as well. But there are some other things that our world says that I think are very similar to the problems that the Corinthians face, the problem that Paul has already alluded to from chapter eight to the present, that I think our world and our culture and even our church is exposed to as well, that we must be very careful about. Because quite frankly, we can fall prey to the same deceptive subtleties of oxymoronic foolish wisdom of man as can the Corinthian believers. I'm gonna give you two other modern examples of what I think are oxymorons. Safe sex. Drink responsibly. Now, the former slogan, safe sex, is taken by our society to mean it's okay to participate in illicit sexual activity outside the commitment of marriage if you are chemically or physically protected somehow. The concept of safe sex emerged in the 1980s as a response to the global AIDS epidemic, and possibly more specifically to the AIDS crisis in the United States. It was fine as long as it was across the ocean, but when it creeped into the United States, oh, we've got to do something about it, and it happened as a slogan of the World Health Organization, dubbed from the United States as its leader in the 1980s. What did they do? They promoted safe sex. And in fact, promoting safe sex is now one of the main aims of sex education to prevent STI transmission, especially reducing new HIV infections. According to, by the way, this is a quote from an online source. Safe sex is regarded as a harm reduction strategy aimed at reducing the risk of STI transmission. Although some safe sex practices can also be used as birth control, most forms of these contraceptions do not protect against STIs. Likewise, some safe sex practices such as partner selection and low risk sex behavior might not be effective forms of contraception. That's a direct quote from a secular source. God has other things to say about it. He already has to the Corinthian believers, and it's linked directly to this discussion of idolatry. Now, there is nothing more pervasive that has crept in to our society than sexual activity. The porn industry in the United States of America is the most wealthy industry on the dark web and in the black market globally today. It is said that where once was 80% of young men and 13% of young women were addicted to pornography, now the statistics have flipped and it's the majority of young men and young women. Our society has branded a slogan from the 80s to reduce the transmission of unwanted diseases. And instead of squelching lustful desires that are against God's word, man's wisdom has expanded and inflamed that, quote, wisdom. And unfortunately, it is pervasive not just in our society as an addictive and self-destructive sin, but it also has caused an entire generation of young people to misunderstand what we read in Scripture this morning in Genesis chapter 1. God made man in His image. and you have incredible value, and men and ladies, your value is not in your sexuality. Your value is in your connection to the God who loves you, made you in his image, and has a perfect plan for you. And the world crams sexual choice and promiscuity down the throat of young people, even starting sexual education as early as kindergarten. So much so that in our school district, starting in 2008 to 2020, there were incredible insidious books in local libraries that were as filthy as you could possibly imagine. Safe sex is an oxymoron, according to God's word. And as we look at the second oxymoron, drink responsibly, Ironically, this was a slogan that began in the 1970s and is still widely used by the alcohol industry. It is almost, listen to this, almost never used by anyone else. In other words, it's the alcohol industry that is using this slogan. Now, listen to what else this means. It has been shown to be ineffective and even it's shown to be counterproductive. For instance, adolescents become less opposed to drunkenness when exposed to please drink responsibly messages. Ironically, and these are statistics, this was pulled off of some statistical analyses online. Ironically, in both instances, statistics show that irresponsible drinking and illicit sex, with all of its horrible ramifications, continue to cause irreparable harm since those campaigns went public 40 and 50 years ago. Is it any wonder that God himself uses the oxymoron, or oxymoronic term, foolish wisdom, in reference to man's wisdom, in his letter to the Corinthian believers? God says man's wisdom is foolish. Our text today showcases such foolish wisdom in what could be considered the more eternally damaging case of all, irresponsible worship. The title of this message, Worship Responsibly, was meant to poke jabs at that slogan. But friends, can I say God is deadly serious about responsible worship. You and I must choose Christ over corruption. You and I cannot have both. And so today, as we look at the command of how we are to answer this most important question, what actions must we take to ensure we are worshiping the Lord responsibly, then we are going to first start with the reality we must flee idolatry. Looking at the text, verses 14 to 20, as we split verse 20 and a half there, we're going to see some aspects of what it means to flee idolatry in the very language of the Apostle Paul. And so, we're going to see, first of all, that fleeing idolatry requires us to be sensible. Be sensible. Sensible here is the idea of pay attention to more than just the physical. Pay attention to the spiritual message that God has for his people. Paul is appealing to their reason as sensible people in verse 15. And through a series of rhetorical questions, did you notice that as I read through the text? He makes a final climactic argument by comparing these two incomparable activities, that is, participating in the Lord's Supper and participating in pagan feasts. This section, verses 14-22, and the next section, verses 23-11, verse 1, bring the discussion of meat sacrifice to idols to a conclusion. Okay, so we're going to actually get to the meat sacrifice to idols issue that Pastor Stephen preached on in chapter 8 and all of its ramifications, the strong conscience versus the weak conscience, which I'll allude to later in this message. All of that is going to come to a culminating head as we work through the rest of this chapter. The command to flee idolatry in chapter 10 verse 14 sets forth the only acceptable response to those bound in covenant with the one true God, as he mentioned in chapter 8 verses 3 to 6. Why? Because this God is faithful to protect and preserve his people in the day of temptation. We just read that in verse 13, right? Temptation is not unique, and it's not something we can't overcome. God has given us a way of escape. That's the context of this statement. So Christians must have no part in idolatry, which embodies all that is the opposite of one's love for the one true God. The injunction to take flight from idolatry is heightened by way of analogy to the Lord's Supper, which we all partook of this morning, which signifies the believer's participation in Christ and demonstrates the complete incompatibility between God and the idols of the world. because the false worship of idols in which the participants fellowship with demons and the worship of the one true God in celebration of the covenant meal cannot go together. We can't worship Christ and worship the altar of self. We must choose Christ over corruption. Flee idolatry. How do we do that? We must be sensible. Paul is appealing to their sensibility. So what are some applications to this command to be sensible, to be spiritually attuned to the Holy Spirit's directing to avoid sin in our community and in our context, in our cultural context? Well, some of the applications are this. You and I must check our passions daily. Do we love anyone or anything more than Jesus? How do we know what we love? How do we know who we love? Well, what we give our time to reveals who and what we love, right? Friends, James and John both imply that love for the world makes us aggressors and against God. We are aggressors and at enmity or against God. We cannot have it both ways. You must choose Christ over corruption. You can't have both. We must be sensible. What are our passions? Who do we love? The world would like us to love its entertainment, its model of leadership, and yet we must be sensible. The second thing we see is we must be discerning. We must be discerning. As we look at verse 15, the second part there, the command to flee idolatry also parallels Paul's previous command to flee sexual immorality. That's why I talked about the slogan, safe sex. Furthermore, there are significant parallels between Paul's argument regarding the believer's body in chapter 6, verses 12 to 20, and his warning against idolatry. And that's because in the Corinthians day and age, worship in the local temple included sexual immorality of all kinds. I would say that being sensible and being discerning would say that when we worship at the altar of American consumerism, when we allow our passions and our temptations to consume our time, then we are being just as carnal and fleshly and sinful as the idolatrous Corinthian believers. Do you know the average office worker spends more than four hours a day on Facebook, Instagram, or mobile games? That statistic comes down from the Department of Labor, which I'm not sure how efficient they are. Doge is looking into that nowadays. But over four hours of an eight-hour workday is spent by workers feeding their flesh. scrolling through social media. And I think if they included other platforms like YouTube and Instagram and Reels and TikTok, we might get more than four hours of the workday. You see, friends, our passions are something that the world, the flesh, and the devil are appealing to. Our enemy, our adversary is the devil. He is like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He is a deceiver and a liar from the beginning, and he has followed the pattern of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life from Genesis 3 to the present. And he is going to try to appeal to your lust of your eyes, to your lust of your flesh, and to your pride of your life. And when we fail to be sensible and fail to be discerning, we fall prey to the idols of 2025 in American consumeristic culture. And this message isn't necessarily for me to tackle out-of-control insane intoxication or tackle sex outside of marriage. Those were just two slogans I picked that are oxymoronic. Scripture clearly says that drunkenness is sin. So we as Christians understand that alcohol irresponsibly leads to drunkenness and drunkenness is sin. It also leads to destruction. DUI, jail time, millions of taxpayer dollars spent to rehabilitate people who are released and do it again and again and again. And if you're in my family, you know that my cousin actually killed someone and himself under the influence of alcohol. It happens. But that's not, if I were just to preach a message and target those, I don't think we have irresponsible drinkers in this room. I don't think we have people addicted to spousal abuse and sleeping around and sexual mal- I hope and pray that's not the case. So my goal in bringing those two things up wasn't though to set you off the hook. Right? My goal in bringing those things up wasn't to say, well, I'm not doing that, so I'm good. I can check that box. We're good this morning. No, my goal in bringing that up is what else does the world cram down our throats in 2025 that we're not sensible and we're not discerning about that has become idolatry. And so, in way of application, Wow, that's a lot smaller than I intended that, I'm sorry. We often have more discernment about what we ingest physically than what we take into our hearts spiritually. Do you remember the uproar during COVID-19 regarding shots, medicine, supplements, wearing masks or not wearing masks and the role of government over the individual? Oh, you didn't just go there, did you Pastor Ryan? Yeah, I just went there. And it was pretty polarizing, wasn't it? There were church splits. Thank the Lord there was not a church split at Crossroad. We learned how to balance out the two extremes and tried by the grace of God to display the love of God with one another that had strong opinions on those issues. But our American Christian culture was also consumed with and totally divided over conversation about those topics. Instead of going back to the basics of our Christian responsibility to Jesus to obey and to love one another, whole Christian communities attacked, belittled, assaulted, and dismantled one another. How shameful and embarrassing it was to see Christians show such a lack of spiritual discernment While we will say more about this next week when we get to Paul's concluding application, we must think hard about our personal discernment when it comes to the world around us. Do we employ God's Word to shape our thinking or do we employ the world's wisdom? I think this is a case in point and please understand, I'm not using this as an illustration. In fact, I'm not even gonna name the ministries, okay? But there are two prominent ministries, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast that made appropriate cultural applications during the COVID pandemic. And I do mean they were cultural appropriate. They're part of our evangelical conservatives. They love Jesus Christ and they love the gospel. One was on the West Coast and they were dealing with an anti-authoritarian, anti-government, anti-constitutional government in their state. And so they stood up and said, we're gonna continue to hold our services, and we're gonna continue to preach the gospel, and you can pull our permits to park, or whatever you're gonna do, but we're gonna keep doing it, and then you can fine us, and we'll see you in court. Another one on the far east coast, which is close to our nation's capital, which is obviously in a culture of following the law. Congress, which is really ironic, because I don't know if our congressmen follow the law. But anyway, we have the legislative, judicial, and executive branches in this part of the country, and they chose to close up shop vacate their building, meet in a public space, cover their faces, do everything that was required of them, and then they sued the government. And in both instances, both of them won. Both of them, left coast, right coast. And she's thinking, what's the problem, pastor? Well, the problem is both of them were contextualizing a response to this, the pandemic and religious liberty and freedom to preach the gospel and our right to gather Sunday and whenever we want to, to worship Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the freedom of religion we have in the United States of America. And both of them in their cultural context decided to do that with spiritual discernment. But after the fact, about a year later, they started lobbying verbal bombs at each other. Well, you didn't obey the law, the right coast folks. You didn't obey the law. You just kept meeting. That was sin. You sinned against the government. You didn't obey the government. Not even understanding that there was basically no government, no constitutional support, right? Totally lawlessness couched in lawful aggression against religion. And then they started lobbing bombs at the right coast, where they culturally decided, well, if we're gonna reach our Jerusalem for Jesus, we better obey the law, or we'll have no credibility when we're trying to win people to Jesus, because we ignored the law. And so they decided to follow the law, even when the law was egregious. And so they're lobbing bombs at each other verbally, and it was just discouraging. But that is a macrocosm for a microcosm of problems that get unresolved in our local churches when we fail to be discerning, we fail to be sensible, we fail to do this third thing, and that is we fail to be united in Jesus together. You see, the text tells us that part of fleeing idolatry is being sensible, being spiritually sensitive, being spiritually discerning, and thirdly, being united in Jesus. And as we look at the text here, what we find in verses 16 and 17 is Paul's appeal to them to judge for themselves the rightness of his firm position regarding idolatry. It takes the form of six, no less than six rhetorical questions from verses 16 to 22. So Paul is going to ask six questions that expect a specific answer, a yes or no answer in the text. And all of that is driving to the point that we are actually supposed to be united in Jesus together. So the first two questions happen in verse 16. They bring the Lord's Supper into the argument by way of analogy in order to draw out the implications for his main concern regarding the participation in idol feasts, which was obviously idolatry. Paul's intent, therefore, is not to set forth a full statement of the theology of the supper. The first two questions refer to the cup of blessing and the breaking of bread, both of which constitute participation in the blood and the body of Christ. The term participation is actually translated elsewhere as fellowship. or communion, okay? What we did together, we participated together in the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ. So this idea of fellowship, it recalls the letters opening when Paul reminded the Corinthians of their call to fellowship or partner with God's Son. Remember that? Those whose knowledge in Corinth failed to comprehend the hostile spiritual powers represent or present in pagan corporate gatherings. So there are hostile spiritual powers that were present in their corporate gatherings, and by ignoring those, they weren't showing spiritual discernment. They certainly weren't unified in Christ. The Lord's Supper, on the other hand, signifies the corporate solidarity of the redeemed with their Redeemer. In other words, Paul is expressing that believers enter into communion with the Lord in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and one does not enter into partnership with others who partake in the meal. And he's saying, is that not the case? And the answer is yes, of course. When you partake together of this meal, you are partaking of the Lord's body, the Lord's blood, and you're doing it together. So could there be an element of both, both the body and the blood? In this instance, refer to the death of Jesus. This is the ratified new covenant. And he is saying, yes, when you partake of the Lord's supper, you are partaking of the ratified new covenant. You are proclaiming to others that you are a follower of Christ. So you can't be a follower of Christ and a follower of demons. You can't be an idolater and a worshiper of Jesus. That's what he's saying. We must be serious about the Lord's table and our regular fellowship with one another. If the gospel is what saves us, sanctifies us, and brings us to glory, then it is what we must truly fellowship around. Amen? We must not make, listen to this, because this goes back to chapter eight, strong conscience versus weak conscience, and I'm going to preach on this next week, but I'm alluding to it now. We must not make our personal preferences the litmus test of fellowship. We must give one another grace. We must strengthen our weak conscience. We must temper our pride by showing humility when we have a strong conscience. Paul is saying that being united in Jesus together recognizes that we must be spiritually discerning. We must be sensible. We must be united in Jesus. Our fleeing of idolatry demands those three realities. We must recognize that our union with Christ and thus our union with one another requires us to be discerning, Be careful, be sensible, and then be caring for one another. Is it true that in different churches you're going to have different convictions about different topics? Absolutely. I brought up two of them at the beginning. Now, I believe very strongly, regardless of a modern understanding of sexual orientation or sexual preferences, that any sex outside of marriage is immorality, it's fornication, and the scripture says God will judge that. But the reality is God has judged every fornicator and every adulterer who comes to faith in Christ. He's judged them already in Christ. So now there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And Paul would even tell them that some of you were even practicing abhorrent sexual activity, and yet now you are washed, justified, and you will be glorified one day. See, it's possible to have sin in our body in a sexual way, in such a way that's egregious to God, but also receive the forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus offers. But if we do, we will pursue Jesus and not our sexual activity or preferences. We'll be identified as Jesus's follower and not our sexual behind-the-scenes, behind-the-closed-doors preferences. Right? You can't claim Jesus and one of the other 72 listed genders. You claim Jesus and Jesus alone. Right? I'm in Christ. That's how I'm getting to heaven. Right? And the point here that Paul is making is appropriate to add that concept. Be united in Jesus together. Don't be a strong conscience buffoon that is in your pride beating down the weak conscience. Don't be a weak-conscious tyrant who is demanding everybody abide by your extra-biblical rule because it makes you feel better in your Christian walk. Paul already has dealt with that issue, and we're going to deal with it at great length next week as well. We're told to flee idolatry. There's a fourth aspect of fleeing idolatry we see here is being observant about whom you serve and sacrifice for. And that really brings us to the end of the first part of verse 20. Food here is not the issue. Food does not become spiritually contaminated in the idol sacrifice. Paul's already asked that question and answered it, right? Is the idol something? No, the idol's nothing. Is the food something? No, the food is nothing, right? It's a physical thing. The idol itself is also nothing, as the Old Testament affirms. In fact, Isaiah writes a rather pithy and funny passage about the guy who chops down a tree, and he cuts up part of it, and he shapes his idol, and he sits it out to worship it, and then he chops up the other part of the tree that he just built an idol out of, and he burns it on a fire and cooks his food with it. And then he expects this piece of wood that he just shaped to have ears and eyes and a mouth. And that's why Paul is saying, no, the idol is nothing. The food is nothing. There is only one God and one Lord. That's what he's already said in chapter 8, verse 6. But on the other hand, however, Paul interjects something not considered by the knowledgeable in Corinth, namely, the realities of demons who are present and involved in the pagan sacrifice. In other words, the issue is not about the food, but rather, association with spiritual powers opposed to God. Although the idols themselves do not have any valid spiritual reality and do not represent actual gods, there is a spiritual reality behind them in that they have been created at the instigation of demons posing as gods and those worshiping them worship those demons. Listen, you say, Pastor Ryan, I'm not a demon worshiper. I don't understand why you're harping on this one. Our world is obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. with principalities and powers and the rulers of the world of darkness. And whether they claim them as real or not is not the point. They are real. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of this world and darkness and wickedness in high places. Those are real things. There was a, I guess it was probably, well, it was definitely well before my time, 60s and 70s. My parents' generation, the Ouija, Ouija board. Remember, that was a fad, okay? Guess what? The Ouija was not a novel concept. You ever read the Old Testament? Before King David came, there was a guy named Saul. You remember Saul? He couldn't get an answer from God, so what's he do? He goes to an occultic witch, and he has the witch somehow connect and communicate with deceased Samuel who's in paradise. There are principalities and rulers of the darkness of this world, friend, that are real. In the New Testament, Jesus cast out demons. It happened, and they are very real today as well. And I don't, I could give you, I could list off dozens of ways our culture expresses that through literature, through art, through entertainment medium. But my goal here is not to bash one medium or the other, but to say, you and I must flee idolatry. And that requires us to be spiritually discerning. That requires us to be very careful about what we're ingesting, requires us to be sensible about the things that we like and watch and entertain us. It requires us to be unified in Jesus together and not disparate or disunified. And it requires us to be observant about whom we serve and sacrifice for. Now look, again, I'm not attempting to dismantle anybody's preference since I just said we don't want to dictate preferences here. But if there is a genre of entertainment that absolutely thrills itself on murder, dismemberment, blood, gore, the occult, death, and destruction of men and women who are made in God's image? Should that be a part of a Christian's life? Now listen, there are some people who were never taught that, that grew up on that stuff. How do we treat them? Should we treat them with disdain? No, Paul just says, don't be disunified. Don't beat them down with your proud, arrogant, strong conscience, right? But certainly, Christian, if you're sitting in this room today and you know that the devil is the deceiver, he is the father of lies, he is a destroyer and not a creator, that he ever lives right now to accuse the brothers before God Almighty, and one day he, as the dragon, the great deceiver, the father of lies, will be cast out of heaven, and what will he do? He will immediately set up false worship, a false trinity, He will immediately begin to kill and behead everyone who refuses to worship Him. He is a murderer. And friends, when we glorify murder, we glorify Satan. Wow. When we glorify a murderer, we glorify Satan. Man. We must be careful, friends. We must be observant about whom we serve. Now listen, I get it. The idol is nothing. The meat is nothing. But why would we fill ourselves with the entertainment of the destruction of the king, little K, of this world? when we know that Christ has conquered Satan and He rules and reigns and will do so for all eternity. He is called the Prince of Peace. He is called our Creator, not the destroyer, not Apollyon, not the dragon, not the beast, not the antichrist. He is the Christ. He is the one we worship. Do not be deceived, friends. There are principalities and powers and the rulers of this world in dark places, and we cannot be ignorant and naive that when people worship and follow those things, they're actually worshiping demons. That's what Paul says, and this is God's word. Be observant about whom you serve and sacrifice for. When we are callous toward the world's influence on our passions, our treasure, our time, our invested talents, we can easily be deceived and devoured by the devil. We end up serving and sacrificing to our old enemy instead of our Savior and Lord. We turn our good intentions and religious rituals into demonic worship instead of true service to King Jesus. Now, I didn't touch on the other side. Just as satanic and just as insidious, I'll bring it up next week in more detail, but religious ritual, adding to scripture, suggesting that somehow additional things are needed plus the gospel, that we should have a specific set of standards, a specific set of guidelines for specific types of areas of our life, and now we compartmentalize and we've done nothing but create more rules just like the Pharisees. And we have rules instead of a relationship with the Savior. And this is just as demonic. We must be really careful. Paul will deal with this as he brings it into play next week. So we have been told that we are not, absolutely not, to involve ourselves with idolatry. We're to flee idolatry by being sensible, by being discerning, by being united in Jesus together, and by being observant about whom we serve and sacrifice for, but there's a second reality here. We are not to fellowship with demons. Now, the second part of the verse, literally Paul says that. Don't fellowship with demons. He's used the same word as participate earlier in the verse. It's the same word that we translate as communion. It's as if when we gather around the altar of the TV or the movie screen of YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, that we are gathering around the altar to worship something or someone. And the question is, are we fellowshipping with demons? Are we fellowshipping with Jesus? Well, there are two things that he says here about fellowshipping with demons, and they're both negative. Don't be a bandwagon believer. Don't be a bandwagon believer. Food does not become spiritually contaminated in the idol sacrifice, as Paul goes on to say. The idol itself is nothing, as I mentioned. So the idea here then is although the idols themselves don't have valid spiritual reality and they do not represent actual gods, there is a spiritual reality behind them in that they have been created at the instigation of demons posing as gods and those worshiping them worship those demons. So on the issue of eating food offered to idols, the Corinthians reason purely on the basis of the nature of the food, but Paul argues on the basis of the potential significance of the act of eating the food. So, question is here, as we talk about being a bandwagon believer, we become experts at justifying our poor choices and sins based on the actions of others. Everyone is doing it, becomes the standard axiomatic fad to live by. By the way, the alternative is true as well. Well, that's the way we've always done it. It's the same error, right? We must not compare ourselves to one another, but rather to Jesus and his once for all sacrifice for our sins. Our true fellowship comes from Jesus and must continue in Jesus. Friends, if the gospel is our means to eternal life, and the gospel is our means to daily sanctification, and the gospel is our means to once for all glorification, then the gospel should be the means that we guide our lives by. Not a set of rules that somebody else made to add as a guardrail inside a guardrail with barbed wire on top of it, inside of a big actual extra spiritual wall that doesn't have windows in it that we can't climb over with barbed wire on top of that, inside of another road and another road and another guardrail. You get what I'm talking about? elongating the tassels of their garment, putting phylacteries on your forehead and on your wrists, adding a thousand different rules and rituals of how we are to wash our hands in a certain way, the top seven times, and then flip it over this way seven times, and now this hand the top seven times, and this hand the bottom seven times, and you can't eat without washed hands, and you can't pick grain on the Sabbath, and you can't... We become experts at justifying even good actions or well-meaning actions, religious activity. Either everyone is doing it well, that's the way we've always done it. Well, if those always done it and everybody's doing it don't match up with what scripture says we should do, the gospel, then we need to say no to both. Because you and I must choose Christ over corruption. We can't have both. It's either Jesus and eternal life, or it's no Jesus and eternal death. There's no in-between. We must not compare ourselves to one another, but rather to Jesus and his once-for-all sacrifice from sin. for sin. We must continue in Jesus, who is our true fellowship. You must choose Christ over corruption. There's a second reality here when it means we are not to fellowship with demons. Not only were we not to be a bandwagon believer, but we should not provoke the Lord. Don't provoke the Lord. Now, we're not going to read it, but the background text here is the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. Pastor Stephen alluded to it already. Paul brings it up again. We talked about it last week, so I don't need to talk about it again. But this Song of Moses recounts Israel's unfaithfulness to God through the sacrifice of demons in verse 17 of the chapter. Be a Berean. Go read it yourself after church. And he also talks about this and how that moment aroused the Lord's jealousy and anger. The strength of God mentioned in verse 22 here in chapter 10 may draw from the epitaph, Rock, as a title for God, which is actually part of the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. The comparative stronger word that is mentioned recalls Paul's assertion that the weakness of God is stronger than men, chapter 1, verse 25. And God's choice of the weak things of the world to nullify the strong things is also a reference here. That's chapter one, verse 27. So is the reference to God's strength a subtle reference to the so-called strong or knowledgeable in Corinth? And I would say yes, I think so. He is speaking in a way that the Corinthians can relate to. They have bought into the foolishness of the world and denied the wisdom of God. And thus he has said, no, the wisdom of God is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ unites us in Christ, and we cannot be united to Christ and united to idols. That's what he said, that's his argument. So, my question then is this, or my statement is this, God is a jealous God. which tells us that the emotion of jealousy is not necessarily sin if the response of jealousy is a righteous and just response. If God is a jealous God, then jealousy in some capacity can be sinless. Now, I would argue that because as man, mankind, we are sinners by birth and sinners by choice, that all of our choices are tainted by sin. And apart from walking in the Holy Spirit, that is walking in the flesh, our jealousy is generally sin. And generally people who are jealous do stupid and sinful things. like kill their spouse or kill their kids. This is what our world is full of these kind of things. So we think of jealousy as a bad emotion, but God says jealousy is a good emotion. God is jealous for you, my friend. He is jealous for your soul. He is jealous for your worship. He is jealous for your entertainment choices. He is jealous to keep you pure. He is jealous so that you will be his follower, that you will love his saints, that you will obey his word. We must be jealous and zealous for God. We must be meek and merciful. We must be compassionate and conscientious of others. We must be like Jesus. And so when he says, don't provoke the Lord, the provocation here is when we're not like Jesus, when we're not jealous for what God is jealous for. That is how you get to walk the tightrope of having a whole room full of people that have disagreeing opinions on personal preferences, but still love each other because we love each other in Jesus. And we're willing to listen to somebody else's point of view and discern when our strong conscience has been arrogantly pushing down the weak conscience and understanding when our weak conscience is pushing against in tyranny, the strong conscience to say, no, you need to do it my way. No, we just need to do it God's way. And what is God's way? By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. God's love is jealous. Is your love jealous? Are you jealous for the people of Crawford Baptist Church? Or do you participate in gossip about one another? Do you listen to someone speak evil of your shepherds? Or of your deacons? Or of friends across the room? Friends, we ought to be jealous of God's people. We ought to respond to gossip in kind. Wait a second. That's my brother or sister you're talking about. That's my deacon that serves me. Yeah, they're sinners, totally get it. Yeah, they probably did something wrong, but I'm not part of the problem or the solution. Have you talked to this person yet? Have you found out maybe why this happened? Would you go talk to them please? And if after meeting with them once or twice and this isn't resolved, I'll be happy to join in and help you in this restoration process, Matthew 18. But until then, I'm not part of the problem, the solution, so let's not gossip about another brother or sister. Is God's love jealous? Is our love jealous? And so we must be jealous and zealous for God. We must care about one another. Yeah, your pastor is a sinner. And I'll be the first to admit there've been plenty of times where I've stood in this pulpit and I've asked for forgiveness. I remember distinctly one Sunday when we used to have an extra row in the back back there that before serving communion, I had to walk out of this pulpit, sit in the back row and look my 16 or 17 year old son in the eyes and ask him to forgive me before I partook of the Lord's table. That was something that I needed to do. Why did I do that? Because I'm a sinner. There have been plenty of times where you've come to me and say, pastor, you know, you said such and such, or I heard this and I'm not sure whether you meant that to be hurtful, but it was kind of hurtful. And we've had conversations where I've had to say, oh, sister, please forgive me. I had no idea. That was not my intent. Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for telling me that. I never would have known. Will you please forgive me? That's what we do in jealousy for one another and jealousy for God. That's what unifies the church together. That shows spiritual discernment. That shows a serious desire to love God. That shows a desire to flee idolatry, right? Are we jealous for our good God? Are we jealous for one another? After all, you are the ones Christ died for. God so loved you that he gave his one and only son. He did. If he was willing to sacrifice himself for you, I am willing to sacrifice my emotions, my feeling, my pride, my understanding, my hurts, my fears to love you like Jesus loves you. Are you willing to do the same for one another? That's what God commands. So in conclusion today, we are reminded that choosing Christ over corruption means we must flee idolatry and we must refuse fellowship with demons. So how is your worship? Are you worshiping responsibly? Are you thinking about how you're investing your time, talent, and treasure? Are you thinking about the things, the affections that are pulling on your heart? If you measured your time out, there's 168 hours in a week, more than half of which you'll spend eating and sleeping, and the other 40 to 52, on average, you'll spend working. Are you measuring out those 18 or 20 hours of, quote, free time that you have? And those of you who are mom and dads of small children, that ends up being like 30 minutes. Okay, are you measuring out that, quote, free time and thinking, you know what? What can I do for the Lord today? How can I serve God's people today? How can I invest in someone else today? Are you worshiping the Lord responsibly? Or have you been led astray by the wisdom of this world? Friend, you and I must choose Christ over corruption. You and I cannot have both. Let's pray.