- 00:00
- Thank you brother for leading the music.
- 00:02
- I appreciate it.
- 00:03
- And we're going to be this morning in the book of 1st Corinthians chapter 8 1st Corinthians chapter 8 now over the last few weeks.
- 00:15
- I've been taking larger swaths of text Not trying to rush, but I'm trying to develop an understanding of the consistency of Paul's argument So this morning we're going to be looking at all of the verses of chapter 8 now I will go back next week and I'm going to break down some parts of this But today we're going to be doing an overview.
- 00:35
- So we're going to read verses 1 through 13 as our lesson Paul says in verse 1 now concerning food offered to idols We know that all of us possess knowledge This knowledge puffs up but love builds up If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know But if anyone loves God, he is known by God Therefore as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and there is no God but one For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords yet for us there is one God the Lord the Father from whom all things and for whom we exist and One Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist However, not all possess this knowledge but some through former association with idols eat food as Really offered up to an idol and their conscience being weak is defiled 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 right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idols temple Will he not be discouraged? if his conscience is weak to eat will he not be encouraged rather 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 brother and wounding their conscience when it is weak you sin against Christ Therefore a food makes my brother stumble.
- 02:22
- I will never eat meat Lest I make my brother Stumble Father in heaven, I thank you for your word Come to you this morning in Jesus name And I ask that you be merciful to me as I seek to preach it and that you would keep me from error For I know Lord that I'm a fallible man I am capable of Preaching error and for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of their the hearts of your people I don't want to preach that which would be wrong So I pray that you would keep me from that that you would protect us all from that put a hedge of protection Around the message and around what we're going to learn this morning.
- 02:57
- I Pray for the hearts of those who hear me Lord first for the hearts of everyone here God that by mercy you would for the believers use this as a sanctifying influence in their heart and life and father for those who are not yet in The body of Christ by faith in Christ that this might point them to him Lord, let us never think that coming into the family of God is Simply adopting a set of rules and regulations But rather that coming into the family of God is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone Which gives birth to a heart that loves you and loves others So Lord, may it be that that be the proclamation Which comes today and it's in Christ's name we pray Amen Maybe seated Now I'm not normally given to making pop culture references in my sermons But this morning I'm going to make mention of a movie now the movie is 25 years old So to call it pop culture might be a little bit of a stretch, but it's a pretty popular movie.
- 04:20
- They've made several Made several sequels and the movie was Jurassic Park 1993 and Most of you are familiar with that movie Most of you have either seen it or heard about it.
- 04:35
- The story centers around a man named John Hammond who discovers a way to clone Extinct dinosaurs and bring them back and he uses that technology to create a theme park During one of the memorable scenes in the movie One of the main characters is sitting with Hammond and they're sitting around a meal and they're discussing the ethical implications of cloning And The man is dr.
- 05:02
- Ian Malcolm played by Jeff Goldblum.
- 05:03
- He says in the conversation He says your scientists were so concerned about whether or not they could clone a dinosaur That they didn't stop to think about whether or not they should They were so concerned with whether or not they could That they didn't stop to determine whether or not they should could versus should is Actually a very profound question in the context of moral conversation and It's certainly true when this question comes up in the church now, we don't talk about cloning dinosaurs here But many questions which arise among believers have to do with the questions of whether or not you can or cannot do something as a believer in Fact how many conversations have you been in if you're a Christian? How many conversations have you been in where the conversation centered around the question are? Christians allowed to blank and you fill in the blank Are Christians allowed to go to the movies? And if so, what kind are Christians allowed to dance we saw footloose You know dangerous that can be Our Christians, oh man, I'm making old pop culture reference.
- 06:24
- I am getting old Are Christians allowed to drink? you see The question are Christians allowed to blank Really is Something that we've all dealt with at some point whether it was Asking that question of ourselves because there's something that is going on and we don't know whether or not we should Participate or maybe it's a question of the larger scope of the church Should the should the church be engaged in this or that? Well in first Corinthians chapter 8 Paul is essentially dealing with the question of could versus should and It's regarding a moral issue Which has come up among the Corinthians and he's going to show us that it's not always enough simply to have the right to do something More often when we Consider whether something is or is not Lawful the question is not is it right to do or do we have the right to do it? But rather it's more the question of should we do it? Not can we? But should we and he's going to address the issue of whether or not the limitations of others can actually Limit us and here spoiler alert the answer is yes Sometimes the limitation of a brother can limit my own freedom We've been studying through first Corinthians for several months.
- 08:09
- We've been going verse by verse through the text and those of you who have been here will remember that Paul is Dealing with a correspondence that he has received from the Corinthians And we know this because if you go back to chapter 7 in verse 1 He says now concerning the things which you wrote So we know that he's gotten something from the Corinthians that they wrote to him.
- 08:34
- What we don't know is what it said We don't have a copy of the Corinthian letter that Paul received We have a letter that he sent back to them, which is scripture, but we don't know what they asked him We don't even know if it was questions.
- 08:49
- It could have been Assertions that were made in the letter not asking for permission or asking what was right or wrong They may have made proclamation in the letter We're doing this we're doing that and we're doing this and so and Paul is now addressing back to them about that which they wrote in Chapter 7 the questions were on the issue of marriage and singleness and intimacy And we dealt with those But in chapter 8 It's the question of eating meat that has been offered to idols Now I realize Just from a contextual perspective that this is not something that most of us care about today Most of us have never even seen the inside of a pagan house of worship maybe on the Internet Maybe you've gone traveling through the world and you've gone into a pagan temple somewhere But most of us don't live in a context.
- 09:58
- We're just down the street a few blocks There are people who gather regularly to slaughter animals and to feast on those animals in honor of Zeus or in honor of a Aphrodite or one of the other pagan gods or goddesses This is not the context in which we live and so it's hard for us I think to imagine I mean, you know, we we don't we don't think about this We don't go down to the Walmart and buy a rump roast and it says offered up in honor of Ishtar You know, it might it might change our context if we lived in this content we might understand it better but we don't The question can Christians eat meat offered to idols? Doesn't seem to matter much to us but what you have to understand is when you're going through this passage verse by verse and you're looking at it the Implications of this passage have a much wider broader base than just meat Offered to idols the meat offered to idols is it's just the placeholder for anything that may be a Christian liberty But is not something that we ought to participate in if it's something that is going to cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble So just keep that in mind when you're going through this don't allow the fact that he's talking about something that's outside of our context to allow your eyes to glaze over and for you to become lost in the sea of whether or not you should eat a t-bone steak It's not the issue The issue is love and we're going to see that in these verses.
- 11:38
- Let's look at verse 1 Paul says now concerning this is the same way he began chapter 7 verse 1 now concerning the things which you wrote was chapter 7 1 chapter 80 says now concerning food offered to idols I believe that the two connecting points there point to the fact that this is also something that they wrote.
- 11:56
- I think this was part of the letter He says concerning food offered to idols.
- 12:00
- We know that all of us possess knowledge.
- 12:04
- Now if you have an English Standard Version You are among the elect.
