1 Corinthians 8, verses 7-13. However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled. Now, food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But, take care that this rite of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge, eating, literally reclining at table in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, built up, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so, by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. The Apostle John told us in 1 John 5, verse 13, little children, keep yourself from idols. Idolatry is always an issue in every human society. It's never right for a Christian to participate in idolatry or, as 1 Corinthians 8 is teaching us, to lead others to participate in idolatry. But the question we're exploring now, and we've been exploring for the last couple of weeks actually, How can that happen? For us, a sophisticated, scientific, 21st century Americans, who don't believe in having little statues on our shelves that we offer incense to, or things of that nature, that's all superstition. We don't do that. So does 1 Corinthians 8 apply to us? And what I hope we are able to see as we go into this today as well as what we've talked about previously, is that it applies very much to us. The kinds of idols that function in our society may not be the same, but they are there nonetheless. Many years ago, Balak, the son of Zippor, the king of Midian, I'm sure you remember him, hired a prophet named Balaam for a special task. He had received word and vowed to see for himself that sitting on the doorstep of his kingdom was a swarming horde of people that had just come up out of Egypt. In fact, these people were called Israelites. And Balak, being the king, quickly surveyed the situation and tried to decide what he ought to do about this. After looking at this huge swarm of people, he decided the military option is out. There are just too many of them. My army can't defeat all those people. I've got to get something else that's a little more powerful here working on my side." And so he thought, I'll get somebody who has access to the realm of the gods. You know, somebody who can get in touch with those mysterious powers out there that we try to work around with our sacrifices. I'll get this guy Balaam. I'll have him put a curse on these people so that, in effect, the gods will be on my side. They'll fight against those people and we'll all be okay." Well, his plan, unfortunately, backfired on him. Balaam at first told him, I can't go. And I'm shortening the story here. But eventually, The Lord allowed him to go with Balak. In fact, perhaps most of you, even young people, you're familiar with the story of what happened when he went along there. He was riding a donkey. And what did that donkey do? That donkey talked, didn't he? That donkey had to tell the prophet what was going on. There was an angel of the Lord that would kill him in the pathway. But to make a long story short, God allowed Balaam to go with Balak to see the people of Israel. But Balaam warned Balak. He said, you know, I can only say what the Lord allows me to say. And Balak said, well, basically, just try. Just try. So they offered the sacrifices and Balaam got up on this bluff overlooking all this horde of people. And what did he do? He blessed them. Well, this made Balak pretty mad. But he figured, well, maybe we didn't do it quite right that time. Let's go to a different place, we'll try this again and get it right. So they tried it all over again, and what happened? Balaam blessed them again. Well, this was not working, but Balaam tried to explain, this is all I can do. But after Balaam being furious about this, and after one final prophecy of blessing, The Bible just records that Balaam and Balak went their separate ways, went back to their homes. But then something curious happened. Immediately after, the Bible records that they went back to their homes. In Numbers chapter 25, verses 1 through 3, it says, While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate, and bow down to their gods. So, Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And Revelation 2, verse 14 reveals to us that Balaam taught Balak to put a stumbling block, just like in 1 Corinthians 8, before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols, just like in 1 Corinthians 8, and practice sexual immorality. As I said earlier, we're on a reconnaissance mission to identify the idols which are present in our society, those ones which we might legitimize in the eyes of a weak brother and thus lead him into idolatry, lead him to conclude it's okay to hold on to this idol and to Christianity too, which of course it is not okay. We've already talked about mammon and about Americanism with its gods of freedom and equality. Today, I want to point out another idol that I believe we have all the telltale signs of in our country. It's a huge idol in America today. It isn't a pleasant one to talk about. It's a very difficult one. The works of darkness. It is the idol of sexual immorality. But the Bible makes this connection so often and so pointedly between sexual immorality and idolatry. I think I would fail in my responsibility as a pastor if I did not bring this up for us to consider today. Sexual idolatry is rampant in America today. You, of course, heard of the Penn State scandal. that happened recently, and everybody's expressing their moral outrage about this. In fact, the revered name of Joe Paterno is now being erased from the book of life, or should I say the record book, so that he is no longer even remembered here on this campus. But as one astute commentator pointed out, If you take a look at the catalog of courses offered at Penn State University, you'll find courses that explore and study and examine every imaginable kind of sexual perversion that's available to humankind. And this is considered good to teach these things to students and to learn about them as students. And we wonder why. We have sexual predators in our midst. Now, if you think this God, this modern-day Aphrodite, is not a jealous God, just look at what happens when you challenge her. At Georgetown University just a couple of weeks ago, a student was removed for refusing sensitivity training. Now, just think about that. I think we all understand what that sensitivity training involves. What does it take today to get removed from a state university? You can do just about anything. You can go out and booze it up every single night. You can live in blatant sin of every kind almost. And that's not a problem. But if you refuse, Sensitivity training, that is a problem and you must be removed. In April of this year, a Christian ministry named Clear Note Campus Fellowship at University of Indiana hosted lectures on God's plan for human sexuality, what God has designed for this to be. And as soon as this began to be advertised, I mean, before it was not even close to coming yet, but just starting to be advertised, just starting to put up signs and posters and let people know, invite them, didn't even say what it was about yet. It was called sexual by design, God's plan. As soon as this was started to be advertised, controversy started brewing. And by the time of the lectures, police had to be on hand in order to keep the crowd under control. We're not talking about university administration, we're talking about the students. And even with that, many students try to shout down the speaker because you cannot say those kinds of things here. That's against our religion, my words. This kind of idolatry is not confined to university campuses. It reaches to the highest level of government. And those who adhere to it are trying to make it state-supported religion. For many years, the supporters of this sexual idolatry have been using tax dollars to teach children in the public school system how to perform the sacred rituals of this religion. Just recently, and again, you probably heard this in the news, the mayors of Boston and Chicago publicly declared that they would fight the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain coming to their city because the owners of that chain of restaurants believe that so-called homosexual marriage is actually wrong. And one of the hottest political battles of the moment is over the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and its requirement that contraception be covered. no matter what anyone else's religion says. In other words, our religion, our sexual idolatry will be written into the law of the land. And if you don't go along with our idolatry, you will be punished. This is the level that I believe this kind of idolatry has come to in our country. But of course, we have to remember that This religion is not just being pushed on people without the consent of a great number of Americans. The sexual revolution, as it's known from the 1960s, really propelled this idolatry into mainstream status. It's not that there wasn't a problem with this before. This god or goddess has always been around as long as there have been sinful human beings. But in our nation, it has come to be a dominant idolatry really my entire lifetime. I was born in 1973, so even longer than I've been alive, this has been a dominant and increasing viewpoint. Just consider these statistics. From a national survey of family growth done by the Center for Disease Control, As they surveyed many people, they gave statements and asked whether people strongly disagreed, disagreed, agreed or strongly agreed. And so here's a couple examples from this. Here's the statement. A young couple should not live together unless they are married. That's the statement. And then the response is, do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree? A young couple should not live together unless they are married. Of the females responding to this, a little bit over 68% fell into the disagree or strongly disagree categories. That is nearly 70% of all the women responding to this basically said it's okay for people to live together who are not married. Of the males who respond to this, slightly over 70% either disagreed or strongly disagreed with it, basically saying it's okay. It's okay for a young couple to live together unless they are married. Less than 30% were on the agree or strongly agree side of that statement. Here's another statement that was put forward. It is okay for an unmarried female to have a child. It's okay for an unmarried female to have a child. Of those who responded to this, females, roughly 76% either strongly agreed or agreed with that statement. It's okay for an unmarried female to have a child. 76% of women responding to this agreed with that. Of men, roughly 70%. agreed with that statement, that it's okay for an unmarried female to have a child. I think that's just one glimpse of mountains and mountains of research that demonstrate the pervasive attitudes toward this kind of a thing in our nation. In fact, I'll throw this out as well. Another sociologist just recently published some more research in the same kind of field demonstrating once again how children who are brought up in homes that are set up the way God has designed human sexuality to work really do do better. And he is being run through the ringer of the academic world right now. Everybody's castigating what he says, not because they can prove it not to be true, but because it contradicts the reigning ideology. You're not supposed to do that. if you're an academic in America. You're not supposed to say those things. Don't you know that? This is the state of our land. This is the impact of the sexual revolution. And it's been enormous in all kinds of areas of life. On divorce, on single parenthood, on abortion, on cohabitation, widespread pornography, open and increasingly demanding sodomy, You see, what we're seeing today is that sexuality is front and center in the battle between Christianity and idolatry, Christianity and paganism. And this shouldn't surprise us, really. Idolatry has always gone hand in glove with twisted forms of sexuality, forms of sexuality that God did not create us for and did not command us to participate in. The gods of Americanism get co-opted into this freedom and equality. Freedom and equality demand lots of ritual sex. We're free after all to do what we want. Now, of course, we've got to understand here the way the gods work. Of course, you're supposed to have lots of this, but you're not supposed to have babies. Babies are not free and equal. And if you have them, then you're not free anymore. So make sure you have lots of sex. Just don't have babies. This is the gods that dominate. our public sphere in our country. We do indeed live in what Aldous Huxley called a brave new world. But of course, it really isn't new at all, is it? I mean, the Corinthian believers face a very similar situation. They live in a tremendously immoral society. And much of the sexual immorality that went on there in Corinth was very much connected with the idols, with the feasts, with the meals that they would have together, even private meals. And many of these believers, in fact, had come out of that exact way of living. What did Paul said to them already back in chapter 6, verse 9? Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters. nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, you people that I'm writing to in the Corinthian church. You are these kind of people. But he says this, but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. Now that they had come out of this, they had to make sure they didn't lead a brother back into it. And that's exactly what we're working on here today. It's true for us as a congregation. Such were some of us. We're not really any different than the Corinthians, are we? We were all those people lost and bound in sin. and coming to know Christ, repenting of our sin, trusting in Him, and He has washed us and He has sanctified us. And now it is our responsibility not to lead a brother into those forms of idolatry. That's our task. For the glory of God, for the spread of the Gospel, we have to make a clear distinction between serving Jesus Christ as Lord and idolatry. We cannot participate in sexual idolatry ourselves. And if we have any love for our brother, then we're going to guard against leading him into that kind of idolatry too. So I want to ask today is how have American Christians, how have American churches who know so much, who have so much knowledge, you might say theological knowledge, how have we led Christians into this kind of idolatry? A lot to consider here, and we can't touch on it all. Let me start with this. I believe we have refused, in many cases, the virtue that used to be called chastity, or the fruit of the spirit called self-control. And by the way, when we talk about that, we're not just talking about a negative kind of virtue. Keep yourself from doing all those things you really want to do. That's not the idea, although obviously that may be involved. It's really the opposite of that. It is giving yourself body and soul and love to God to be wholly His and thus to enjoy fully all that He has for you. And that's why we don't do certain things, because they're not compatible with experiencing and enjoying all that God has for us. We keep ourselves for Him. But of course, that sounds so puritanical and legalistic to our libertine ears. In the name of freedom, we lounge around at an idol's feast and then we wonder why we keep wounding the weak consciences of our children and causing them to stumble and causing them to go away from the faith of Christ. So let's start right at home with applying how this might be a fact in our lives. It first of all goes to if we're going to make a clear distinction between the sexual idolatry around us and serving Jesus Christ as Lord, It goes to our love and our chastity in marriage. Yes, chastity is a virtue in marriage. With the onslaught of the sexual revolution, Christians in America did not fare well in their marriages. It's not that they did everything like the society around them, but have definitely been impacted by it. One of the factors of that is that marriage became more and more disconnected from bearing children. And the one invention which aided and abetted this more than anything else is known as, in short, the pill. The pill. And Christians, by and large, bought into it and use it basically the same as unbelievers do. But I would submit to you today that the very fact that it can cause abortions, can potentially cause abortions, is sufficient reason for Christians to reject it. We don't have time to go into all of that today. There's great debate about it. But I think it is clear that the biblical command not to murder includes not recklessly endangering human life. Not recklessly endangering human life. That's why, for instance, we rightly feel moral outrage and rightly legislate against Drunk driving. What's so bad about drunk driving? He's not hurting himself. Not necessarily, but what is he doing? He's recklessly endangering others by driving while drunk. And therefore, that is an immoral act. It is wrong to recklessly endanger others. The Bible makes that very clear. In a similar fashion, When Christians, and I'm talking about married Christians here, I'm not talking about the obvious of you shouldn't have marital relations when you're not married. I'm talking about married Christians. When married Christians take the pill while engaging in marital relations, I believe they are recklessly endangering the lives of any potential children that God might give them. And just because we can't see it, we don't feel it, doesn't mean it isn't real. It's from the simple mechanism of the pill. Not only does it work to prevent ovulation, but it can even work to thin the lining of the uterus, thereby preventing implantation, which causes the new little baby to die in the womb. That is against God's command, and we ought not to be doing that. Now, what I find even more distressing than Christians who take that without thinking and just go along with, oh, this is fine, okay. But what I find more distressing is Christians who will defend their right to do it, whether it's for reasons of their pleasure, reasons of their convenience, or whatever, even their practical reasons. Well, you know, let's see, I'm in college right now, and it would be really hard to support a child, so I'm just going to have my wife go on the pill until we get out of college, and then we'll be okay. Now, is it laudable that a husband would say, I'm responsible to provide for my family? Absolutely. But he must do that in godly and moral ways. Which means you need to take the responsibility, buddy. You married the woman, you provide for her. And if you're going to exercise that kind of discretion, you have to do it in ways that fit with God's instructions. You're never free to recklessly endanger human life. It doesn't matter what your situation in life is. You're never free to do that. But Christians in America haven't seriously reflected on this. Maybe for all kinds of reasons. But I think the words of Herbert Schlossberg about idolatry are apropos when we come to this. The more that practical people despise these precepts, he says, the clearer it becomes that pragmatism is the road to ruin. The idolatries have always been pursued by practical people. There's always practical reasons why this needs to work this way. Now, hear me out here. Whenever people consider some kind of wrongdoing to be necessary to their life or necessary to make the system work, then you know you're starting to deal with idolatry. We're not just talking about sin. All of us sin. All of us. We'll do things sometimes that we know we ought not to do. I'm talking about when it gets to the point where we will defend it because we believe it can't work any other way. We have to be allowed to do this sin. It may not be the best thing, but we have to be allowed to do this because it will ruin our life otherwise. We have to be allowed to do this because it will ruin the system otherwise. Our economy or whatever it is won't work if we can't do this. At that point, you know you're dealing with idolatry. You're putting your trust in something besides God for your life. And so, I believe the pill is an indication of the idolatry and how it can creep into our lives as Christians and as churches. We begin to not just say, take it out of ignorance, but begin to defend it as necessary to our lives. Then we're starting to bow to the pressure of the society around us. We're starting to think like the world, live like the world, and begin to bow at its idle shrines. Here's another way. Although, thankfully, this one is recognized as wrong, It still is pervasive and it's insidious, even within churches. And that's pornography. The Supreme Court justice once said that he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. Well, I think pornography can be rightly defined as removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners in order to display them deliberately to third parties. That's what pornography is. And this is wicked. This is sexual idolatry. It's one of those things Ephesians 5 talks about that ought never to be named among us. But it is. Obviously, the old way this so many times happened was a son would find a stash that his dad had hidden somewhere. Nowadays, it doesn't work that way. It's through the Internet. This is how most people partake of it. And of course, it's not just men today, although it's still predominantly men. And as Christians engage in this, justify this, begin to think of this as somehow normal, somehow okay, we begin to bow at that idol shrine. I bring this up again today because this is just indicative of how ill formed we are biblically and how shaped we are by the world around us. There was a recent question and answer on a Christian singles website where a young woman was writing in asking whether it was okay for her and her boyfriend to engage in things via Skype. That is, is this okay? And it was an honest question. She was morally confused. I don't know. Is this okay? And thankfully, the answerer, the woman who answered her, gave a very good, very biblical, very direct and helpful answer to that. No, it's not. But why do I bring that up? It's because it shows how conformed to this world professing Christians can become. That we don't even understand, well, this isn't good. This is destructive. This is damaging. This is bowing at an idol shrine. And idols do bring disorder and destruction. So I just submit to you today, beware of this. Parents, protect your children from this. Like I said, through the Internet and parents, protect yourselves. Don't think it can't happen to me. This idol does aggressively seek out converts. It seeks worshipers. It's been legalized in the name of free speech in our country, which, of course, it is not. But it's one way that this idolatry is prevalent. And I think we also have to be honest as we press on a little bit more here, more into perhaps what's a challenge more for us than blatant pornography. What much that passes for entertainment today is simply the same thing in different garb. It's still service to this libidinous idol. And no, you're not free to watch it. just because you know so much. No, you're not free to participate in it just because you know so much. Yes, you've done all your worldview studies, and you can parse that movie in terms of its plot, and its subplot, and its characters, and its genre, and its point of view, and all those kinds of things. And yes, you can evaluate that rap song like nobody's business, but it is none of your business to be at the idol's party, to be reclining at table in an idol's temple. If nothing else, for your own soul, it will destroy you, but it will destroy your brother as well. Now, let's recognize this isn't a new thing. It is being aggressively pursued by our society at this time, but it's not new. I think anyone who's willing to see it can see it. Just for one example, the no less a historian than David Hackett Fisher wrote in the 1930s, Hollywood promoted a vision of liberty and freedom as sensual gratification. This is this is how we enjoy our freedom. We gratify the senses. I want to give one specific example today of this in the entertainment world. Again, specific examples are always a double-edged sword. That is, I want you to get specifically how this works out, which is why I want to use a specific example. But I don't want us to get off track because of it. I want to pick out just one popular performer in our day by the name of Carrie Underwood. And I pick out Carrie Underwood not just because she's a popular performer today, but also because she is very explicitly known as a Christian. That's been her identity all along. On June 9th, the paper The Independent from the UK reported this. about Carrie Underwood. She's the musical darling of American conservatives, a God-fearing farm girl from Oklahoma who became a music phenomenon on the back of wholesome hit records about faith, family, and the greatness of the United States. Whether you agree with that assessment or not, that is at least a popular perception. But that article then went on to record her public endorsement of gay marriage. These are her words. As a married person myself, I don't know what it's like to be told I can't marry somebody I love and want to marry, she said. I can't imagine how that must feel. I definitely think we should all have the right to love and love publicly the people that we want to love. This was her rationale. This Christian superstar endorsing what's erroneously called gay marriage. The paper went on to say this, Underwood, whose new album, Blown Away, knocked Adele off the top of the US charts, draws much of her fan base from evangelical Christians, speaks frequently about her faith, and has made religion the subject of several of her best known songs, including the number one country hit, Jesus Take the Wheel. I would submit to you today that she can sing Jesus Take the Wheel or How Great Thou Art, all she wants to, but she's been dining at the idol's table for a long time now. Many of her performances can be fairly described as a ritual dance in the service of this idol. They're simply lewd, unfit for public consumption, but this is a good Christian girl. who's made it in the world. When she came out in support of gay marriage, it really surprised me about as much as Newt Gingrich saying he's had affairs. This is not surprising at all. This is exactly par for the course. That's what the idol demands. That's what you do if you're in service to the idol. Now, I pray to God that Carrie Underwood repents for the sake of her own eternal soul, but also for the sake of others who look at her as a Christian and are led right into the idol's den, where the bones of many a professing Christian lie scattered all over the floor. This is precisely what 1 Corinthians 8 is talking about. And yet, how many Christians are there in America who will fight tooth and nail for their right, because of what they know, to go to her concerts and to others like them? Does this kind of thing invade churches? Absolutely it does. There's no question about it. Look at the church in Pergamon, which we mentioned Revelation 2.14 earlier. Look at the church at Thyatira, Revelation 2.20. I have this against you, Jesus says to the church at Thyatira, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food offered to idols. There's not an accident that those things go together. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works and I will strike her children dead. Does this kind of a thing invade churches? Yes, it does. Has this kind of a thing invaded churches in America? No question about it. They train up these idolaters. They teach them. how to do this kind of a thing. They publish in their church papers how proud they are of so-and-so who made it to the finals of American Idol. And they bring it right into their church services in the name of worshiping God. There's much more we could talk about here. Revelation 2 reminds me of another way that we endorse this idol. And that is with our confusion over sexual roles and responsibilities. A confusion over sexual roles and responsibilities. And this has pushed its way into churches. Evangelical feminism, as it's known, has been pushing for years to give women, quote-unquote, equal rights in the leadership of churches, despite the clear teaching of Scripture otherwise. They will marshal all the best big names of scholarship to try to say the Bible doesn't really say that. Don't you know that in Ephesus, where Paul was writing to Timothy, When he said, you know, he did not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, that that was really because in Ephesus, all the women were uneducated, only men could get education. And so that's why Paul said that. And so nowadays, when women do get education, it's OK. Women can teach and exercise authority over men in the church. It's just it doesn't matter. And they very neatly eviscerate the word of God. Oh, don't you know 1 Corinthians chapter 14, where it talks about women being silent in the churches and that kind of a thing? That doesn't play well in today's society. Well, don't you know that that really isn't part of the original part of the Bible? It wasn't there. Despite the fact that every single extant manuscript we have of 1 Corinthians includes it. But we've come up with a reason why it wasn't there. Paul didn't really write that, and so we don't have to obey it. And by hook or by crook, they come up with ways to take out what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has always believed. But now we know. We're the enlightened ones in this 21st century America, so that we no longer have to obey the Bible and those outdated rules. We'll come up with theories of hermeneutics. We'll come up with anything. to justify why we can serve this idol. They will stop at nothing to redefine God's plan, and this is not just a peripheral issue, folks. I can list institution after institution that are known as conservative evangelical institutions, Dallas Theological Seminary, Reform Theological Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Denver Seminary, where this kind of teaching is allowed to go on. This is not a peripheral issue in the church today in America. We had another illustration of this. Let me just share this. I won't go on too much longer here today. A couple of weeks ago, there was a big dust-up on the Internet, in the little teacup of evangelical world on the Internet, over some things a Gospel Coalition blogger said relating to the relationships of men and women, and quoted another pastor, Doug Wilson, in one of his books called Fidelity. That really set things off because Doug Wilson was saying that women ought to submit to men in their marriage. You know, wives submit to their husbands. And this just didn't play well. Not to go into the whole details, but what I thought was A sad commentary on the state of things is that the original blogger who put up this post, after a couple of weeks, ended up taking it down and issuing an apology, a retraction. And basically the apology said, I'm sorry for hurting so many people's feelings. And that's really what it was about. Everybody's saying our feelings have been hurt. How can you be so uncaring? How can you be so unkind? How can you be so unfeeling for all the problems that are out there? Now, thankfully, the man whom he quoted, Doug Wilson, didn't issue a wrong apology and stood for the truth and said what was right, even if the people screaming about it didn't like to hear it. That's what we need today. We need courageous men and women of God who will stand up to the idol and say, it doesn't matter how you browbeat us. This is what God says. And we trust Him. We don't trust the idol. The idol can't give us life. He can. We love and serve and fear and honor Him. The Bible says, The people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifice of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. That's what we're up against today. That's what we're up against today in the Church of Jesus Christ in America, the 21st century. And so I would plead with you to consider your ways and be wise. The good news is, of course, that there is hope for those who are afflicted with sexual idolatry. As Paul told the Corinthians, such were some of you, but you are washed, you are sanctified. You're set apart now for Jesus Christ, for the One who can give you true fulfillment in a way this idol never can. It will destroy you. Don't go down that path. It will eat you alive and kill other people in the process. It's happening all around us. We as a church have to show the world the purity of the Gospel and the glory of God by showing them a different way, by showing them that chastity really is beautiful, that it's life-giving, that it's fulfilling, that we don't need the world's approval in whatever venue, the government, the rock concerts, I don't care. We don't need the world's approval in order to have full life. We can glorify God and then show the world the true way. Parents, don't lead your children into this idolatry. Starting in your own home, in your own marriage, the choices you make in your own home, show them that God matters. Don't lead them into idolatry. Don't wound their weak consciences. And if anybody fits the definition of a weak conscience, a child does. They don't know yet, well, what the scriptures teach. They don't have their senses exercised yet to discern good and evil. They are looking at you. And what they see you justify, they will assume is okay for Christians to do. Oh, they do it. Mom and Dad do it. Grandma and Grandpa do it. So-and-so at my church, they do it. Okay. Christians can do that. Christians can worship at that idol shrine. We have to teach them otherwise. We have to show them God's way. If we're to glorify God and make the gospel clear, we have to flee the idol of sexual immorality. And if we have any love for our brothers, which is the point of 1 Corinthians 8, we must not endorse the idol of sexual immorality.