The Cup of Demons

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I invite you to remain standing and open up your Bibles to the book of 1 Corinthians.
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Find your place at chapter 10 and verse 13 and we're going to read down to the end of the chapter and on to verse 1 of chapter 11.
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1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13.
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No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.
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God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.
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But with a temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.
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Therefore my beloved flee from idolatry.
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I speak as to sensible people.
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Judge for yourselves what I say.
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The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
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Consider the people of Israel.
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Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything? Or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons, not to God.
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I do not want you to participate with demons.
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You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.
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You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
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Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.
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All things are lawful, but not all things build up.
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Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
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Eat whatever is sold in the market without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
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For the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
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If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you're disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
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But if someone says to you, this has been offered in sacrifice, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience.
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I do not mean your conscience, but his.
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For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
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Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.
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Just as I try to please everyone and everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.
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Father, God, I thank you for your word and I thank you for the truth of the word, Lord, as we seek now to understand the word, I pray first and foremost that you would give me your Holy Spirit.
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And that your Holy Spirit would speak to me and speak through me in this time and speak to the hearts of everyone listening for Lord God, if what is said is not anointed to the spirit, if what is said is not given by the spirit and given to the hearts of men through the spirit, then Lord, it will be ineffectual.
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And it will be like sound going out into the air with no purpose.
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And Father, as I preach, I pray that you would keep the flesh out of this, that you would keep me from intervening my own ideas, but that I would stay tied to the text of scripture, that you would keep me from error.
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You would keep me in the truth for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of those who hear me.
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Lord, I pray for those who do hear me, I pray, Lord, for the believers that they would be encouraged, that they would be edified, that they would be challenged, Lord, rebuked if necessary.
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Reproved.
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If it is appropriate.
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And Lord, for those who are not yet followers of Jesus Christ, that today they would hear the word of the Lord that says repent.
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Repent and trust in Christ, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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Lord, may that admonition go out to all men from this pulpit, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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For in him alone is salvation and we pray it in his name.
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Amen.
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We live in a world that is ever increasingly questioning the existence of God.
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With the rise of secular humanism and naturalism, people find themselves more and more willing to live outside of the restraints of theism.
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A few years ago, there was a bus campaign that became pretty popular overseas, and I think some even came here to the United States, where a group of atheist activists paid to have signs put on buses and the sign said, God probably doesn't exist, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.
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That was the campaign.
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It was paid for by the the Atheist Association that put it out.
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And those signs were plastered all over buses around the world.
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God probably doesn't exist.
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So stop worrying and enjoy your life.
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And although those who claim to be atheists are still in the small minority, practical atheism is certainly on the rise.
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Practical atheism, we talked about this on Wednesday night, practical atheism are those people who may not say they don't believe in God, but who live as if God does not exist.
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In fact, most of us are familiar with the passage in the Old Testament that says the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
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Actually, the better way to translate that, it's not a statement against atheism, it's a statement against practical atheism, because the better way to translate it is the fool has said in his heart, God does not matter.
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That's what it means when it says there is no God, it's not that they're saying he doesn't exist, they're saying he doesn't matter.
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The fool says in his heart, God doesn't matter.
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And that's what we see around the world.
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People who live, whether or not they claim a faith, they live as if he doesn't matter.
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And if it is true that the disbelief in God is rising and it is, I would say it's even more true that there is a disbelief in the existence of the supernatural evil in the world, that is the belief in devils and demons.
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Or the devil and demons, to be more specific, and that's not limited to non-Christians, by the way, we might say, well, of course, the unbelieving world doesn't believe in demons.
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Of course, the unbelieving world doesn't believe in devils.
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But beloved, my friends, it's in the church, according to the Barna Research Group, who did a survey in 2009.
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They do surveys of churches all the time, according to Barna, four out of 10 Christians that were surveyed and they surveyed thousands, four out of every 10 Christians strongly agreed that Satan is not a living being, but is simply a symbol of evil.
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He's not a person.
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He's not an entity.
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He's not a being.
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He's simply a symbol of evil.
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That's 40 percent.
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Almost one out of every two would have said that.
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And of those who said they believed in him, even then they came off to some really wild and strange things, saying that they believed Satan was real.
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They didn't agree with the statement that he was just a symbol of evil, but only one quarter disagreed strongly, meaning only one quarter would say he's actually a person.
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So that lowers it even more.
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And the remaining 8 percent or so that wouldn't answer, we don't know what they think.
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So out of the 100 percent of those who were surveyed, 40 percent said, no, we don't believe.
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26 percent said, yes, we do believe.
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And there was some gray area in the middle there where, what do you think? And then there was an 8 percent that just didn't know.
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And this stands to reason, because in our world, Satan has become a character of fiction.
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He's depicted in movies and television with cartoonish features, ears and a tail and a pitchfork.
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One television show recently became popular, and the title of the show is Lucifer.
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Lucifer is the name of the devil in the show, and the story surrounding the show is Satan got tired of being the ruler of hell, so he gave up his throne in hell and he came to earth to run a nightclub.
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And now he helps the police solve crimes.
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I don't watch the show.
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I read that on Wikipedia, but I wonder what it was about.
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But again, Satan is and he's by the way, Satan's the hero of the show.
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And that's sick and that amazing Satan is the protagonist, just more evidence that the world doesn't take Satan very seriously, doesn't take the devil very seriously.
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And along with this view of Satan is a mere myth or symbol not to be taken seriously, there seems to be a shared belief in the subject of demons.
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When the subject of demons and demon possession comes up, people look at those who believe in them like they're out of their minds.
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It's OK to mock the demonic as long as we don't really believe in the demonic.
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In fact, I see this a lot if I ever mentioned the demonic influences in people's life.
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I'll say to people, you know, Christians really shouldn't be involved with this or that because there's demonic influences in this or that.
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People look at me like I'm out of my mind, like I just made that up, like I just came up with a lot of thin air and people they say, Pastor, you really don't believe in demons, do you? Yeah.
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I don't only believe in demons, I believe in demon possession, I believe that that it's hard to imagine explaining some of the absolute atrocities around the world without appealing to the demonic influence that is in the world.
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People say, I don't, who cares what I watch? Who cares what I listen to? Who cares what I allow my children to participate in? There's no harm in them.
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I have freedom in Christ.
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And you know what? That, in a sense, is the argument Paul is taking the task here.
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Because in this whole passage, what he's dealing with is what he started dealing with in chapter eight.
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In first Corinthians, chapter eight, Paul deals with the question of whether or not a Christian ought to eat meat that's been sacrificed to idols.
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Now, I understand today, not an issue for us, right? I mean, we don't go down to the meat market where they've sacrificed lambs to Allah and say, OK, I want some of that Allah meat.
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All right.
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We don't go over to the Hindu meat market and say, I want some of the some of the the the animals that have been sacrificed to Vishnu or any of those gods.
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So so this this this kind of goes outside of our realm of of experience.
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And sometimes I think because it's not in our realm of experience, we somehow think it's not important.
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All right.
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This is this is doesn't apply to me.
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And the thing is, this is four chapters that Paul is doing.
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Chapter eight, chapter nine, chapter 10 in the first verse of chapter 11 are all about this subject.
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Now, I'll tell you this.
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In chapter nine, he took a little detour and he talked about himself giving up things for Christ, giving up the fact that he could be paid as a minister, but he doesn't take pay because he doesn't want anybody to say he's doing it for the money.
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And then in chapter 10, he talks about some other things of the fact that the people who were in idolatry in the Old Testament.
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So he has taken some he's taken some turns, but he hasn't left the focus because the focus started in chapter eight.
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It's gone through chapter nine, chapter 10.
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And that's where we're at today, because the focus is still the same.
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Should a Christian engage in the idolatrous acts of the people that are doing them around them? That's the subject.
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Should the Christian world be engaged in the idolatrous world around them? And in chapter eight, he makes the point in chapter eight.
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He says, look, I know that none of that meat is really tainted because ultimately idols don't exist.
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Right? Vishnu and Zeus and Aphrodite and all of these gods are figments of man's overactive imagination.
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Actually, what they are is they are part and parcel of the attempt of man to suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness.
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Romans 1 tells us all men know God exists, but because all men know God exists and they don't want to be subjected to that God, they suppress that truth and unrighteousness and they replace the creature or rather the creator with a creature or something that they themselves have control over, like an idol.
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So idols aren't real in the sense of tangible.
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There is no Zeus out in the universe somewhere controlling his little space in the universe.
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There's no Vishnu out there controlling her little space of the universe.
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There is no Aphrodite controlling the sexual urges of men and women.
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Those do not exist.
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However, that does not mean that those things are to be trifled with.
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That does not mean that those things are to be engaged in.
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Just because the gods that they represent don't exist doesn't mean that we are to then consider them to be not dangerous.
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That's Paul's point.
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In fact, in a sense, that's Paul's main objective here is to say, yes, you can argue all day long that that God does not exist.
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But guess what? Demons exist.
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And guess what? The devil exists.
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And when you go off engaging in those things, you're engaging in demonic and devilish behavior.
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You're opening yourself up to the realm of darkness and the realm of the devil.
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So that's the context gets us now to where we want to begin today in verse 14.
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I know we read verse 13.
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I wanted to bring us into the context.
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I preached all the way through verse 13 and weeks before we do verse by verse preaching here.
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So I've preached through these texts and now we're beginning at verse 14 to give us the context is what I just did.
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And now he says, therefore, based on everything I've said up until now, that's what the word therefore means.
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Based on everything I've said up until now, my beloved flee from idolatry.
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And remember, the idolatry that he's picturing is the very real idolatry that's going on all around him.
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It's this eating of idol meat.
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It's going into the.
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By the way, if you want a picture of what it looked like there, they had idol temples.
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And in those idol temples was where most of society's activities were done.
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It's where you would have weddings.
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It was it's where you would have events and celebrations and they would go in and they would sacrifice to these idols and they would eat the meat there as it was a big feast.
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And the the God that was represented by that temple was was involved in the feast as part of the sacrifice of the animal.
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And there were Christians who were going to those feasts.
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There were Christians who were going into the temples.
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And then there were other Christians who had come out of those temples who'd gotten saved out of that sinful debauchery, who were looking at those Christians and going, what are you doing? Why would you do that? Why would you go in and engage in that? And so there's a division in the Corinthian church over whether or not that's right, whether or not you should go in there.
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And Paul is saying, look, I understand those of you who say we can go and we can eat because there's really no God there.
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We can go and we can eat because there's really no danger there.
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I understand you're trying to claim freedom in Christ because really that God doesn't exist.
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But there's two reasons why you need to consider the danger of this.
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One, because you are sitting at the table of idols, you are eating and drinking the feast and the cup of idols.
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You're celebrating their idolatry with them.
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And that's wrong.
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And two, you're offending your brothers who came out of that idolatry.
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You're taking them.
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You might even be opening up the door for them to go back to that idolatry.
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And that's wrong.
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So there's a twofold reason why it's dangerous.
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One is because you're engaging, you're sitting at the table of demons, drinking the cup of demons.
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That's wrong.
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And two, you're encouraging brothers who came out of that that it's OK for them to do so.
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And it might not be OK for them to do so because they may have come out of that and their conscience is still bound to that.
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So he says, flee from idolatry.
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Flee from it.
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The word flee there is in the present active imperative, that means keep on fleeing.
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Present means it's a present action.
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And it actually, if you remember the phrase earlier in 1st Corinthians, we saw the phrase flee sexual immorality.
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That was in chapter six, verse 18.
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It said flee sexual immorality.
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This is the same word, but this is actually more expressive because in that phrase it said flee pornea, which is sexual immorality.
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And this phrase, this particular term here, it uses a preposition apo.
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Apo means away from.
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So when it said flee sexual immorality, it didn't use the preposition, but now by adding the preposition, Paul is adding an extra sense of getting away.
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He's adding the extra sense of staying away from it.
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Not only flee, but flee from it.
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Get away from it.
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It's dangerous.
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The Corinthians lived in what we would call a pluralistic society.
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You guys know what that means? Pluralism is where there are many forms of belief that exist co-equally in a group.
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E Pluribus Unum, does anybody know what that means or where that comes from? You'll see it on your money.
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You see it on some of the statues in the United States.
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E Pluribus Unum is Latin.
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It means out of many, one.
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That was the motto of the United States.
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We're going to take people from every tribe, tongue and nation, and we're going to make them one person in America.
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Right.
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And you're no longer going to be a Mexican-American or an African-American or any kind of you're going to be an American.
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And that was the idea that America was founded on.
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E Pluribus Unum, out of many, we become one.
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But that didn't last, did it? Really doesn't.
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It doesn't last because people want to maintain their cultural subsets.
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And now we have places in America that are considered to be Mexican neighborhoods and black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods.
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And they court a subset off themselves.
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Right.
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They kind of have these groupings and that happens.
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That's because that's that's pluralism.
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That's saying we're going to maintain our cultural diversity and yet still live together.
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We're going to maintain cultural diversity and still live together.
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This is why you might see.
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And it's so funny when I drive down the street and I'll see a church on four corners of a road because you got the Lutherans, the Baptists, the Episcopalians and the Seventh Day Adventists.
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An overflow goes to their parking lot on Sunday because they meet on Saturday.
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That's supposed to be a joke.
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But anyway, the point the point is you've got you've got all these different groups and all these different churches.
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In America, though, we have every type of religion sort of represented.
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Right.
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We've got the Muslims, we have the Hindus, we have everybody sort of represented, but not equally.
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Right.
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You'd say there's probably 10 churches for every mosque, maybe 100 churches for every mosque in the United States.
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Right.
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Well, in Corinth, it was much more pluralistic.
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There were all these different gods and there was an expectation.
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You can have your God and that's fine, but don't tell me mine's wrong.
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There was an expectation.
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You can have it your way.
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And it was sort of like it was like the Burger King of the of the religious world.
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You can have God have him your way.
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And that's the way people did it.
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They did it their own way.
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In fact, that's the biggest problem with the early church, the problem with the early church was not that they were preaching what some consider to be a new God, Jesus, a new God.
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That wasn't the problem.
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The problem was they were teaching that Jesus was the only God.
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In fact, the early church was called atheists because they would deny the existence of these other gods.
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They said, you're atheistic if you don't believe in Zeus, you're atheistic if you don't believe in Aphrodite, you're atheistic if you don't believe in Diana or any of these other gods, because they exist, too.
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They exist alongside.
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And Paul is looking at the Corinthians who live in this midst of this pantheon of gods and he's saying, flee from that, flee from from pluralism, flee from idolatry, flee from this idea that there are many gods.
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There is one God.
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And that is all and all of these other gods are a myth, they're a fake and you need to get away from them.
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You don't need to be engaging with them.
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You don't need to be pretending like they may be real.
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You don't need to be eating in their temples.
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You don't need to be hanging out and and participating in their worship.
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In fact, the argument from verses 15 to 22, if you want to if you're making notes, this is the probably my first major point.
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Paul's argument in verses 15 to 22 is this to participate in a religious ritual is to participate with the God that it represents.
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To participate in a religious ritual is to participate with the God that it represents.
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He said, what do you mean by that? We'll read starting verse 15.
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I speak to you as sensible people.
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Now, some people think Paul is being sarcastic there because he's already said the Corinthians are kind of senseless, but it could be that he's being sarcastic, but it could also be that he's appealing to the fact that they're not they're not stupid.
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He say, I'm talking to you because you understand judge for yourselves.
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I'm about to say verse 16, the cup of the blessing that we bless is it not participation in the blood of Christ, the bread that we break is it not participation in the body of Christ? Because there's one bread, we who are many are one body for we partake of the one bread.
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OK, the argument here is simple.
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When we come as the body of Christ, we come to the table of the Lord and we come to the table of the Lord, we are participating in the Lord's table and we're participating with the Lord.
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Right.
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There's a sense now we're not Roman Catholic, we don't believe that that bread becomes Jesus's body.
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We don't believe that that cup becomes his blood in a literal sense.
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But we do believe that there is a union that we get when we come together and we all partake of the bread, we all partake of the cup.
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There's a spiritual unity that happens in the body.
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This is why we don't do communion by ourselves, but we do communion in the congregation.
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We do it as part of the body because we're one flesh.
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We are one in Christ.
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There's participation with Christ at the table.
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That's Paul's point.
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Keep that in your mind as he continues, verse 18, consider the people of Israel are not those who ate the sacrifices participants in the altar.
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What do I imply then? The food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything.
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Before we even get to verse 19, let's just pick up on verse 18.
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Consider the people of Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar.
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He's used our table as an example.
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He said our table, the body and blood of Christ, when we participate in it, we're participating with Christ.
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He says when the people of Israel, before Christ came, sacrificed animals on the altar, they were participating with Jehovah or Yahweh by doing that.
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They were participating as members of that group.
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They were participating as members, as one body surrounding that one sacrifice, that one altar.
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Again, to participate in the religious observance is to participate with that which it represents.
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This is why we tell unbelievers, don't eat the bread and don't drink the cup.
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You realize we do that, right? We have communion every week.
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You guys who are visiting with us today, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are welcome to take of this bread.
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You are welcome to take of this cup because we are all one body in Christ.
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If you are not a believer, don't take it.
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We don't say that to be ugly or ominous or ugly to you, we say because this bread and this cup is for believers to participate in it is to participate in the body of Christ and what he did.
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And if you're not participating by faith, then you're participating and you're eating and drinking damnation unto yourself.
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The Bible says that in chapter 11, which we're going to get to in a few weeks.
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So we don't offer communion to everybody.
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We offer communion to believers only.
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In the Old Testament, they didn't make sacrifices for the other nations.
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They didn't sacrifice on behalf of the of the priests of Baal or any of those other false gods.
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They were participating in the altar of Israel for Israel, for the God of Israel.
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Right now, verse 19.
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What do I imply, then, that food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God.
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I do not want you to be participants with demons.
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So here's the point Paul's making.
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If you go into that temple and you sit at their table and they have sacrificed that animal to a false god, that false god doesn't exist.
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We already talked about that.
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But there is a demonic influence over this whole thing.
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There's demonic leadership over this whole temple.
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And when you participate in that meal, you're participating with what it represents.
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You are drinking the cup of demons.
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You are eating at the table of demons.
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That's what he says, verse 21, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.
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You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
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Some might say, well, it's not really that dangerous.
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It's not that big of a deal.
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I have the right to do this.
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One of the most dangerous things that has come into the church, particularly in the last few generations, is the licentiousness that abounds because of a misunderstanding of the doctrine of grace, not the doctrines of grace.
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That's an entirely different conversation, but just grace itself.
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I've told this story before, I remember very specifically a young man who used to watch TBN all the time, which itself can be dangerous, but he considered himself somewhat of a Bible aficionado and he considered himself to be a believer of sorts.
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But he used to go online and he would find women that would have rendezvous with him and he would go out and he would have these rendezvous and and have illicit affairs with them multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day, as much as it took to satisfy his desires.
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And he was living with a man who knew that he claimed to be a Christian and knew that he spent his time, you know, sometimes studying the Bible, sometimes watching the TBN television show or whatever.
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And the man finally couldn't take it anymore.
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And he said, dude, what are you doing? And he said, I'm going to sin so that grace can abound.
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I'm going to sin so that grace can abound.
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And that just taking a scripture verse and just just turning it into mush and spitting it out.
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And I think that's the attitude of the Corinthians here.
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What does it matter what I do? Grace is going to cover it.
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What does it matter what I do? I'm not under law, but under grace.
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Is it true we're no longer under law, but under grace? Yes.
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But what does Paul say? Just because we're under law and under grace, does that mean that what we do doesn't matter? No, in fact, we're more responsible for what we do now.
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Verse 13 tells us that because verse 13 tells us that every time we're tempted to sin, God provides a way of escape.
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And he tells us to flee immorality, to flee sin, to flee idolatry, to run from these things, to say that it doesn't matter and how we live doesn't matter is to spit in the face of the God who has given us his Holy Spirit, whereby we have the power to say no.
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I'm not saying that Christians don't battle the flesh, and I'm certainly not preaching sinless perfection.
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And if you came here looking for a perfect church, you have missed it.
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And if you find the perfect church, don't join it because you will ruin it.
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That's the truth.
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But our call is to holiness.
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Our call is to sanctification.
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Our call is to avoid sin and flee from it.
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And so in the rest of the chapter, Paul gives a practical what does this look like practically, pastor? He gives a practical sense.
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He says, eat whatever's sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
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In fact, I'll make it simple.
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What he says is this.
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He says, if you go into the meat market where they sell this, I don't meet and you don't know what's I don't meet and what's not.
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He said, buy it, eat it.
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Don't worry about it because you're not participating in it in that sense because you're doing it in ignorance.
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He said, and if you get invited to the table of an unbeliever and they come and invite you in, go if it's if you want to.
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He actually says, I said, if you want to go, go.
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I don't believe he's talking about in the temple, he said, in their homes.
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If you want to go to their home and eat, you ever had an unbeliever invite you to dinner? Take advantage of that, man.
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If an unbeliever invites you to dinner, go and take Christ with you.
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So he's saying you can go.
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And if they sent me before you don't say, hey, hey, has this been sacrificed to Diana? Don't do that because you're going to miss out on a good steak.
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You know, it's OK to eat it in ignorance, and that sounds kind of weird, but it's true because his point is this meat isn't really hurt.
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But he said, but if they sit in front of you and said this is in honor of Diana, that's when you might want to say, OK, listen.
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I'm not interested in participating in this because of what it represents and because of who it's tied to.
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And then you have an opportunity for a conversation about the gospel.
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You say, well, I might offend them.
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That's OK, you know, we don't have to be offensive, but we don't we don't we don't worry about being offensive to the point that we can't preach the gospel.
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In fact, John MacArthur said it best, he said, people have been so worried about offending one another, we've forgotten that we don't need to offend God.
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He said we need to start by thinking, does this offend God first before we worry about whether or not it offends someone else? And ultimately, he gets down to the point, he says, whether you eat or drink, this is verse thirty one, whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
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If you can't eat and drink what you're doing to the glory of God, then don't do it.
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If this is something that violates your conscience or violates your faith, then don't do it.
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Obviously, you want to be able to do whatever you do to the glory of God.
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In fact, that's going to be my message for next week.
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We're going to focus on living to the glory of God, living life to the glory of God.
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So I'm not you might seem like I'm jumping down pretty quickly.
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I am because I'm going to go back into this next week.
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But how it all ties together is this.
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Paul says we've got this situation in Corinth.
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The situation is simple.
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You've got people who want to go in and eat this idle meat because they consider their freedom in Christ more important than their brothers who they are destroying with this and more important than their own sanctity, which is being tarnished by participating in the altar of demons.
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And I know that some of you are thinking, Pastor, I don't know how to apply this.
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It's it's historically good stuff.
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Appreciate the history lesson doesn't apply to me.
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I've never been invited to the mosque to eat at their table.
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I've never been invited to the Hindu worship center to eat at their table.
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I don't know how this applies to me.
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I got to tell you, in other parts of the world, it applies huge.
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Because like if you were a Christian who lived in India, this would you would you have any trouble applying this at all because you're living in the midst of that.
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If you were living in a Muslim run country where they're spray painting the letter N on your door because they want to identify you as a Christian.
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Yeah, you would understand maybe a little bit more how this would work.
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But in America, while these things certainly exist, there are mosques and temples here.
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We understand that the prominent the prominent flavor of religion in America is quote unquote Christianity, even though most churches are idol factories still.
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I mean, honestly, if I was invited to a Mormon church to eat, I wouldn't go.
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Mormons got the the Hindus beat on gods because they believe everybody is a god can become a god.
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I mean, they believe in God's infinitum.
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Their ideas, people say Hinduism is the most polytheistic.
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It's not.
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It's Mormonism.
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But I did come.
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I want to I want to give you three things to take away from this this this section that do apply to us directly and specifically and can be drawn from this text.
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Three application points.
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And really, this could be another sermon by itself.
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So I'm not going to let it be.
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I'm going to I want to I want to get through this today.
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I'm going to give you three points of application from this text to you directly to us directly where we sit, where we are right now.
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Three things.
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One, this passage provides a warning against ecumenism.
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You say, oh, now I use one of those words again.
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It provides a warning against ecumenism.
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What is ecumenism? Ecumenism is the idea that all churches and all religions need to unite because we're all teaching the same thing.
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That is false.
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In fact, you'll hear people say unity is more important than truth.
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That is a lie.
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That is a lie from the pit of hell.
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Pluralism and ecumenism is the idea that we're all just going up the mountain, different directions, and we're all going to eventually wind up at the same God.
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That is false.
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That is untrue.
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In fact, I pray for unity in the church and I believe there is unity in church.
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I believe there's more unity in the church than what people realize.
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The problem is I just don't think a lot of places that call themselves churches are churches.
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I think there's unity in the body of Christ, because last week I preached about those Chinese pastors at 116 who wrote that document of faith that said we will stand against the tyranny of the Chinese leadership and we will stand for the gospel.
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And they gave an outline of what the gospel is.
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It's the same thing I would have written.
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It was the same gospel, it was the same truth, it was the same Christ, it was the same triune God, it was the same scripture, it was my brothers in Christ.
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And there is unity with them all over the world.
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I don't need to be unified with Joseph Prince and Benny Hill, Benny Hinn, Benny Hill, Benny Hinn.
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I don't need to be unified with heretics.
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And they are.
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And we shouldn't name names.
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Alexander the coppersmith done me great harm and you should be watching for him.
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The Apostle Paul.
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He said the name shouldn't name names.
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Really? You are the flock that God has entrusted to the elders of this church.
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Should not the elders of this church be responsible to tell you watch out for Alexander the coppersmith? Watch out for Benny Hinn who wants your money and your soul.
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A place where I think there is a real issue on this is the divide between Roman Catholics and Protestants, because and again, this could be a whole other sermon.
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I mentioned earlier Roman Catholics believe that the bread becomes the body and the cup becomes the blood.
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But do you understand why they believe that? They believe it because they believe at the moment of consecration, that means when the priest prays for the bread and the cup, that he literally believes that Christ is being sacrificed afresh for the sins of the people.
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In fact, I want to read to you a quick quote.
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This is from the faith of millions.
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It's a book by a Catholic priest named John O'Brien.
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This is what he writes.
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When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from his throne and places him upon the altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man.
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It is a power greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of seraphim and cherubim.
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Indeed, it is greater than the power of the Virgin Mary.
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While the Blessed Virgin was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders him present on the altar as a victim for the sins of man, not once but a thousand times.
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The priest speaks in low Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command.
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Oh, what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest who is thus privileged to act as the ambassador and vicegerent of Christ on the earth? He continues the essential ministry of Christ.
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He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ.
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He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ.
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He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration and atonement which Christ offered on Calvary.
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No wonder the name which the spiritual writers are especially fond of applying to the priest is that of Alter Christus, for the priest is and should be another Christ.
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That's blasphemy, that's absolute blasphemy.
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And yet it's the faith of millions.
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It's the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that Christ is sacrificed again and again and again on the altar.
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That's why they call it an altar.
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The Bible says that Christ was sacrificed once and by that one sacrifice, he is perfected forever.
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All who draw nigh unto God through him.
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And I believe that sitting at the table of the Roman Catholic is sitting at the table of demons.
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Oh, that's so offensive.
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Guess what? They don't want me there anyway.
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I had to go to a Roman Catholic service one time for something and they said, if you're not a Roman Catholic, don't come to the table.
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So I didn't want to anyway.
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Not interested because we're not sharing in the same Christ, we're not sharing in the same cup, we're not sharing in the same table.
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It's not the table of the Lord.
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It is a false view of Christ.
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And I would say the same thing of a Mormon temple or a mosque or anywhere else.
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So I think this passage reminds us of the dangers of ecumenism or ecumenism, ecumenism.
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I can't even say it myself.
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Number two, it reminds us there is such a thing as demonic force in the world.
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This passage reminds us there is such a thing as demonic force in the world.
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Do you believe that? I ask you, brethren, beloved, those of you who believe in Christ, do you also believe that there is demonic forces in this world? People ask me sometimes, are you a conspiracy theorist? I say not in the traditional sense, but I believe that there is a conspirator who is the prince of the power of the air, whose purpose it is, is to try to thwart the plan of God.
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And he can't because God is sovereign, but he still makes it his mission to do so.
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And he hates me and he hates you and everything he can do to make our lives worse, he will, especially those who are seeking to follow Christ.
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People say, oh, become a Christian and your life will become better.
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Not always.
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The first Christians in the early church lost family, lost homes, lost jobs, lost lives for the following of Jesus Christ.
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That's why I would never go up to somebody and say, I want to introduce you to Jesus, he'll make your life better.
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Now, I want to introduce you to Jesus because you're a wretched sinner who has no hope outside of him.
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That's why I want to introduce you to Jesus.
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And so am I.
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Outside of Jesus Christ, I would have no hope and neither do you.
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There's demonic forces in this world, guys, people flirt with the devilish things all the time.
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People play with them like they're playing with fire, fascinated with haunting seances, psychics.
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Did you know there's an entire town in Florida that's devoted to the demonic or the psychic? Casadega, Florida.
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Casadega, Florida, is considered to be the the the psychic capital of the world.
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I want to go down there and just preach the gospel because all it is, it's a community of people that are enraptured in this nonsense of psychics and mysticism and energies and crystals and and all of this mystical garbage was founded in the late 1800s by George Colby, a New York native and medium who had instructed by his spiritual guide, a Native American named Seneca, to go to Florida and start a spiritual center.
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And he did.
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And it is the largest encapsulation of people who consider themselves to be supernaturally gifted in the United States.
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It's right here in Florida.
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It's a it's a short drive if y'all want to go.
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The scariest thing, I believe, is a demonic activity in some churches.
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I was I was watching the other day.
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There's a group out in California doing some real crazy stuff.
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They they're they're they're charismatic, but they're like really high, far out charismatic.
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NAR, New Apostolic Reformation, I think is part of what they're doing.
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And they had this person singing a song.
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She was sitting behind the piano and she was going, listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of heaven.
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Listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of heaven.
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Listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of heaven.
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Listen to the rhythm.
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And she's playing it on the piano.
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Right.
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She's just sitting there and everybody's, oh, they're freaking out.
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Right.
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Look like they were stabbed in the heart by a demon.
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And this is called a church.
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Now I ain't saying we shouldn't raise our hands and I'm not saying we shouldn't get expressive.
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And I think some of us maybe should be frozen, chosen, Calvinist.
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You need to stand up and praise.
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I believe that.
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But to bark like a dog and to laugh maniacally was never a sign of Christian faith.
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In the Bible, those who bark like dogs and scream maniacally were usually tied up to chains and graveyards.
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And Jesus had to come and cast the demons out.
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So there is a line in there.
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And I do think we have to be careful if what we're doing in worship is hypnotizing ourselves, because that's what that is.
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It's a hypnotic sound that creates a hypnotic ability to receive suggestion.
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And it's dangerous.
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Number three, and this is going to be the sermon for next week, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.
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The third thing we see in this passage, one, as I said, it reminds us that our goal is not unity with unbelief.
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Our goal is not unity at all costs.
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Our goal is not ecumenism.
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Two, demons exist.
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They're dangerous.
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We need to avoid that, which is demonic.
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But number three, this passage compels us to seek the glory of God in everything that we do.
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And as I said, that's my passage next week.
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That's what we're going to focus on.
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Is our life being lived to the glory of God? Is our life being lived for the purpose of glorifying God? And that means it's more than what we do here an hour a week on Sunday.
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That means it's more than what we do here when we gather together for Sunday school or Wednesday night Bible study.
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That means our life.
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Our life is lived in sacrifice to Christ.
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Now, I want to say this, I hope you don't leave today thinking that this was a sermon on legalism and say, well, today all pastor talked about is what you can do and what you can't do.
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Christianity is more than rules.
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Yeah, this isn't about a set of rules.
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This message is about faithfulness to Christ.
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Paul is talking about faithfulness to Christ.
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He calls the church of Corinth to be faithful to Christ.
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We're not saved by what we do, but when we get saved, it changes what we do.
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We're not saved by what we've done, but the Bible tells us we are a new creation in Christ.
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And if our lives are dabbling in the demonic, we need to repent.
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How can we come around the table of the Lord every Sunday while simultaneously drinking from the cup of demons the rest of the week? Paul says we simply can't.
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Where are our where are your idolatries, where are your compromises, where are you opening up the door for demonic influence in your life and in the lives of your family? Essentially, what I'm asking is where, oh, brethren, do you need to repent? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word, I thank you for your truth, and I thank you for the call, the repentance that you have given to us.
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You've told us to repent of those things which are demonic, repent of those things which would open the door for the demonic and to seek to glorify you in everything that we do.
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And if we can't do something in glorifying you, ask ourselves, why are we doing it? But Lord, most of all, may it never be said that anyone leaves this place thinking that it is by doing those things that we're saved.
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It's not.
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We are saved by one person and that person is Jesus Christ.
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We're saved by one work and that is the work of Jesus Christ.
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So, Lord, I come to you today and I ask for the believers that are here, those who trust in you, God, that you would that you would give them a sense of understanding of what they may need to repent of in their life and what areas of their life they need to submit to you and subject to you and bow the knee to you.
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And Lord, for those who are not yours yet, those who have not bowed the knee to you yet.
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For those who still live in rebellion to King Jesus.
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Father, I pray that you would break their heart over the anvil of their own sin, lay them bare.
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That they might recognize the need for a savior, father, take out their heart of stone.
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Give them a heart of flesh.
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Make it so that when they open their mouths, it will not be in repudiation, but in praise.
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To the triune God, thank you, Father, for what you have done and are going to do.
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In Christ's name, Amen.