1 Corinthians 10:23 - 11:1 Living on Purpose

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Vilsack preaches from his sermon series titled,

First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

As Linda said, I'm Don Vilsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm really glad for this gathering here in this place this morning.

We are made for community. We are made to be together from the most extroverted to the most introverted.

I'll say this frequently. We need other people in our lives to love and to serve. And then we need others in our lives who will hold us up and encourage us when we're going through difficult times.

And it only takes a little bit of a twist or turn in life to realize, man, I actually really do need others.

I actually really do need other people in my life. And I need others to help guide me and steer me in the right direction.

We're a church where we are all being encouraged to regularly grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service.

And this means that we gather together on Sunday mornings for the increase of our faith, taking in his word, believing it, trusting it, and then going out to live it.

Our church also offers community groups. Those are going to be kicking off again in January in the new year.

And I encourage you to keep your eyes open for when those sign -ups are going to be there.

Obviously, we still have Christmas ahead of us and the new year. And then boom, we're on into 2024, believe it or not.

When we talk about growing in community, though, we don't believe that community groups are the only possible way to grow in community.

We recognize that there's all different kinds of ways you can connect with other people. But I want to point out that that is the program that this church offers for you to be able to connect with others in community.

So if you've only ever attended here on a Sunday morning, you have not received and been a beneficiary of all the things that we're seeking and we believe that God desires in your life.

And so we'd encourage you to lean into community by signing up for a community group. That's why I'm saying that frequently up here is just simply that that is the thing that we offer in a simple format to grow in your faith, grow in community.

And then the last thing is grow in service. And that is just simply that everybody has a gift, some ability that's much more decentralized.

Everybody here has a different, unique gift to offer to the church in some way, shape, or form, something that you're able to do.

And we encourage you to pursue that. There's an online volunteer survey type thing that you can access and see that.

So with that model of simplicity, we're seeking to streamline our programming with an intention to encourage more margin in your life.

And that's to an end. That you might get to know your neighbors, you might get to know your coworkers better, you might get to know parents of other kids who play sports with your kids.

And the purpose of all of that simplicity is in the cause of the gospel ministry to the lost in the world out there.

Paul will end this very text that we're going to be looking at this morning with encouragement for us to imitate him as he has made it his life's goal to see that many will be saved.

That because he was here on planet earth, many will be connected to Jesus Christ because of his life. And he invites us to imitate him, to walk in the way that he did.

Our text this morning is going to lay down an ethical principle as well, an ethical principle that is bold in its assertion, comprehensive in its scope, and memorable in its simplicity.

I hope that it has an impact on all of us this morning and it is a very simple statement. Do all that you do for the glory of God.

Live on purpose, church. Live on purpose. Do all that you do for the glory of God.

It's bold, it's comprehensive, it's a memorable ethical principle, and it's put forward by the apostle

Paul in an argument about something that's a little bit strange to our ears, a little bit hard for us to grasp, something that we likely won't face in this life.

His concern has been, since chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians, his concern has been how the church ought to handle a major social issue of their time that is not a social issue hardly at all in our time, and that is namely pagan idol worship in the

Roman world. We don't deal with that quite like they did. So how do we navigate, and I think this is the kind of questions we must ask ourselves in light of this text this morning.

How do we navigate a world that becomes increasingly complex, at least in our minds as we get older?

You know, we can ask ourselves questions. What does God want from me during times and seasons of stress or times and seasons of confusion or grief or joy, or even how does he want me to navigate broken family relationships, which is a fairly common thing?

How does one even navigate a Christmas season, right? My hope is that this message grants everyone here a statement of reflection during the stressful times, during the joyful times, and in every time in between, and that is this statement, do all that we do for the glory of God.

So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians 10. Again, that's 1

Corinthians 10, and we will start in verse 23 and read through the end, and actually, you'll note, and I'll make mention of this later in the message too, that verse 1 of chapter 11, actually the guy just kind of cut that out and moved it over to chapter 11, and it belongs in our section, so it really goes through 11 verse 1.

But recast God's holy and precious word, a word that is designed to transform us and change us if we'll just believe it.

If we believe it, and we believe it enough to live it, our lives will be transformed. 1

Corinthians 10, 23, all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.

All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, for the earth is the

Lord's and the fullness thereof. If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to eat, to go rather, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.

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.

I do not mean your conscience, but his. 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 whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.

Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God. Just as I try to please everyone in 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.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your holy word that guides and directs, that does not just merely talk about history.

Doesn't just merely give us past events and tell us what happened, but is interested in the way that we live in the here and now, that Paul gives us an example of a life lived on purpose, a life lived with intention to seek your glory above all things.

And Father, I pray that would be a reality that settles on our hearts, especially as we enter a season that is annually a season of busyness, annually a season of all kinds of families getting together and all kinds of activities and just different time of the year.

Just those routines kind of have a tendency to go away and every weekend is packed and all of that.

At a time that we're supposed to be settling in on a reminder of your great love for us and the incarnation of your son, the sending forth of your son to redeem, to rescue.

And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to do what we do day in and day out for your honor and for your glory, that we would never tire of seeking you first, of seeking your blessing and your benefit and your glory and your honor and your majesty, that you would be lifted high.

And especially, especially, especially as we corporately gather and are about to sing some songs together.

We could do this, we could sing these songs without much thought in our hearts, without much effort in our minds of glorifying you.

So, Father, I pray that you would indeed be lifted high in each and every heart here and that in the corporate gathering of your people, we would be glad and rejoice together in how awesome and glorious you are in the sending forth of your son to redeem and to rescue us.

And I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Amen. Amen. And you can go ahead and be seated. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us in worship.

I'm really grateful for them and the way that they prepare for us each week. I do ask that you just do yourself a favor and reopen your device or your

Bibles or your scripture journals to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, starting in verse 23 is where we're at.

Make yourself at home, get up at any time, you're not going to distract me if you need to get up and take care of any business, so do that.

Our outline for this morning is simple, two points. It's to eat or not to eat, that's verses 23 through 30.

To eat or not to eat, that is the question, 23 through 30. And then the second point is the principles underlying that whole thing, verses 31 through 33.

So not very creative, I didn't quite alliterate it for you, but those are the things to eat or not to eat and the principles underlying the whole thing.

I'm going to spend the lion's share of our time in the second point, simply because the specifics of the cultural moment that leads

Paul to his conclusions are so far removed from our modern day context that I mean this sincerely,

I racked my brain and I worked hard at it this week and I have not been able to find a single situation in our current context that is quite parallel to the issue of meat sacrifice to idols in Corinth.

In other words, I just can't think of anything that's quite identical to that, what it meant in their culture, what

Paul is addressing to their context is not something that we're going to face or are likely to face in our lifetimes.

And what I mean is that if you think about it from another way, sometimes something happens in their culture that doesn't happen in our culture, it's used as an illustration and the principles underlying it are the point and that's why

I'm going to spend most of our time there. Jesus, to give you an illustration of this, Jesus tells us that if a soldier requires you, if a soldier requires you to go one mile with him, go two.

Now how many of you have ever had that happen? How many of you expect to have that happen? Is that going to happen in your lifetime?

Not likely. But that's where we get the principle or the adage, you've heard it, go the extra mile.

That's where that comes from. It comes from an illustration that was common in their culture, it was kind of like,

I mean you're out at the marketplace and you keep your head down, don't make eye contact with a soldier, he might be on a journey and might ask you to lump his bag the rest of the way and you're stuck, right?

Now you're going the mile with him and he can force you to. And Jesus says, well if he tells you to go one mile with him, go two.

So a narrow understanding of that passage is going to be confusing in our culture just like this one.

Nobody's ever forced me to go an extra mile, it's not likely to happen. We don't have soldiers roaming the streets enlisting civilians to do stuff and we also don't have pagan temples that are the sources of our meat.

That doesn't happen. That happened in their day and age, that's not a problem for us. Our meat comes from Meijer or Costco or locally sourced farm, maybe even from some hunting on the side or something like that.

So our first point, to eat or not to eat, we do need to dig into it a little bit because I want you to understand the issue at hand before you understand the principles that we're going to talk about that factor in.

We have to be quickly brought back into these underlying principles and those principles deserve the majority of our attention.

Spending a lot of time trying to figure out whether or not to eat meat sacrificed to idols is not a huge focus of our time but understanding how

Paul and the church navigates this issue is helpful to us. Paul begins in verse 23 by dismissing law as the fundamental concern.

What is he doing here when he says all things are lawful but not all things are helpful, all things are lawful but not all things build up.

He's going to dismiss law as the fundamental concern in decision making for us. This is helpful because there will always be and always have been people in the church who seek to resolve the hard and confusing issues with rules.

People who are very quick to just go, that's confusing, let's make a law. That's confusing, let's make a rule about it.

The church in America has had what I would say is an affair or a side fling for decades with the law.

Christ is our guy but a little law on the side won't hurt. Paul refuses to solve this issue with law, he says no, and he's refused to do so multiple times throughout the book of Corinthians in this letter to Corinth.

As a matter of fact, this entire letter could be a whole lot shorter if Paul was ready to resolve issues with law.

It would read like a checklist, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, do this, do this, do this, done, Corinth, just follow my instructions.

But no, he refuses to do so. If he thought that was the right way to keep a church in line, well, he would have done it.

He has gone over the top to get the church to rather think through deeper principles of love for one another while maintaining a strong, strong, strong push into freedom in Christ.

There's a lot of gray areas in our lives, church. There's a lot of areas that you're not going to agree 100 % with me on the way that you do this or this or this.

Do you know what I'm talking about? And a church has to know how to navigate the freedoms that we have in Christ, and there's been a lot of that throughout 1

Corinthians. This passage is just merely one sentence if it's settled by law. Don't eat meat that's sacrificed to idols.

That would be clean, that would be done, that would be shorter, that would be more efficient.

Laws clean things up. Laws seek to keep and create tidy and simplistic uniformity.

Real life with Christ is messy while keeping us free to honor Christ as we seek to glorify

God in the many, many gray areas of our everyday lives. This issue of eating meat from the market is a gray area issue according to Paul, and the topic at hand, unlike idolatry, if you go straight up and worship idols, that gets into the realm of sin.

That's not a gray area issue, but going to the market and just buying some meat and not asking a question, not knowing where it came from, that's a gray area issue,

Paul says. And the topic at hand and the way Corinth was processing it led him to downplay law here at the start.

Corinth was a church ready to strap every other person to their personal preferences.

They would have made a law against every single behavior that didn't match their preferences. They were fairly loose with those preferences, but they wanted everybody to do exactly as they did.

So likely being exaggerative, Paul says the question is not one of law, but it is more an issue of what is helpful and what builds up others, what builds you up, what builds up the body.

As Christians, hear me carefully, our ethical decisions can never end with the question, may

I or can I? But they must go on to say, should I?

Am I allowed to is not to be the final question that you ask over any behavior in your life.

Are you getting what I'm saying there? That's not the question. I mean, it is a good starting point, but it's not the ending point.

Am I allowed to? Let's look into Scripture and see if I'm allowed to. This is where you go to find out if you're allowed to.

Not somebody else's conscience, not somebody else's preference, not a blog post, not a podcast.

Go to Scripture to find out if I'm allowed to, now should I? And how many of you know that's more than half the battle in life is figuring out whether I should or shouldn't, right?

Instead of, the seeds of the principle comes out in verse 24. Seek the good of others is the idea here.

If you look at verse 24 with me, let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Be a giver, not a taker.

Don't live your life for yourself, but live in the service of others. I think many of us have realized and experienced the paradox that verse 24 represents.

If you've been around a few times around the sun, you've probably already are starting to get the seeds of this.

The more I seek to please myself, the more I pursue my own good as my highest end, the more miserable

I become. The more I strive after joy, the more I strive after delight, the more

I strive after pleasure, the more I seek to please myself, the more miserable I become. Amen?

Do you guys get that? That's a paradox of sorts. But the more

I lift up my eyes and see others around me and use these hands to serve and to help others, the more joy

I find in life, right? Paradox. The paradox that God's word conveys at every turn.

The one who seeks his life will lose it. The one who loses his own preferences, his own desires, will find it.

Doesn't come from worldly wisdom, it comes from the revelation of God that this is the real true way that things work.

It takes revelation to get there because everybody, everybody, everybody at least tries the other way.

Everybody, everybody tries to seek to please themselves. How's that working for you? Really happy?

Find a lot of joy after pursuing your own joy? Probably not. Our culture is one of increasingly serving yourselves.

We live in a day and an age of radical autonomy, radical independence, radical self -love, radical self -care.

Words that are buzzwords today. It's crept into the church and I would suggest to you just a word of warning, it's crept into Christian counseling and Christian therapy.

We are all told that we need to take care of ourselves second? No. No.

We're told we need to take care of ourselves first and then one day maybe, one day, we'll hold it out as a carrot, one day you'll be healthy enough to serve others.

Right? Isn't that what we're told? Take care of yourself first and then one day maybe you'll just be okay.

I would suggest to you, church, let's step up and be a place where we just give it a shot and see if God knows what he's talking about here.

Serving others is actually the starting point of a healthy life, of a life that is going to, looking out to the interest of others, not just your own, but looking out for them.

Finding somebody to care for, finding someone to love, finding someone in need and reaching that need.

Seek the good of others and see where that leads in your life. So with the law set aside and love for each other held higher, verses 25 through 31 can be summarized by, just as a nuanced discussion of whether or not the

Corinthians should or should not eat meat from the marketplace. Again, a little bit of a strange thing for our minds to wrap around.

Paul's not afraid to weigh in on specifics. I want to point that out. When sin is on the line, he will tell people what to do.

He is, he will never, never ever tell us to sin. Flee from idolatry, he said earlier.

Flee from sexual immorality, he said even earlier than that. But eating meat from the marketplace is a gray area issue over which good

Christians will disagree. And we have a lot of those kinds of issues that could apply in our modern times.

Paul addresses the side of eating meat in verses 25 through 27, the side that says it's okay to.

And he picks that same idea up in verses 29, really the second half of 29, 29b through 30.

And the reason I'm saying this is that verses 28 and the first half of verse 29 serve as a parenthetical exception to when he's saying it's okay to eat meat from the marketplace.

He gives a potential scenario in which he would discourage the eating of meat. By and large, he says it's okay, it's up to your conscience.

His policy is a don't ask, don't tell when it comes to the source of meat in Corinth. So the average person going about their daily business, going to the market, getting some vegetables, getting some food, going to the meat market, buying some meat.

He says all that comes from the Lord, all of it belongs to him. So don't ask a question that's going to bother your conscience if you know the answer to it.

Just go get your groceries. Verse 26 is a statement in support of those who feel free to eat meat from the marketplace.

The ultimate source of all food is God. The earth is his with all its abundance.

And here we're reminded of the goodness of creation and it's explicitly stated here.

God explicitly owns everything currently. He is in current ownership of the earth and all of its abundance.

You see, some think that the world has been turned over to Satan and his control. But Satan has, even today to this date, has a derivative authority.

What do I mean? He is a created being and even is shown to have to get permission from God in order to act in this world.

The book of Job is pretty emphatic about that. He has to go ask permission. Make no mistake, church, this is our

Father's world. It's his. And all that's in it, despite being corruptible by sin, it's all created good.

It all starts and has its origin in goodness. Sin warps to harmful purposes the good things that God has made in this world.

So Paul gives a specific case study in verse 27. If you're invited to the home of an unbeliever, he says, eat what's put in front of you.

And don't ask questions. Don't ask, where did this meat come from? Was this from a sacrifice? Don't ask.

Don't be a jerk. Paul's thought continues on in the rhetorical questions of verses 29 through 30.

So 28 skips, you kind of skip over that and he carries on the thought later that's parenthetical.

He says, I should be able to eat at the house of an unbeliever without being denounced by fellow Christians or my liberty being impinged by the conscience of another

Christian. He says, don't look around at the church. Don't look around at the church and go, is everybody else eating meat or not eating meat or what are they doing?

Just have your own conscience and do what you believe God is calling you to do and be okay with that. In these gray area issues, your conscience is not binding on me.

My conscience is not binding on you. To homeschool, to public school, to private school, to all the different kinds of gray area issues that we have that are current and moderate and don't look to somebody else to tell you what to do.

Be convinced in yourself and go and act upon the conscience that God has given to you.

So in the question, to eat or not to eat, on the side of eating is this, don't live by law.

We don't live by law. God is the true source of our food. The conscience and denunciation of fellow

Christians doesn't determine our ethics concerning gray area issues. We're not binding one another here.

The word of God binds us. How many of you know that? Amen. Word of God binds us. Where it weighs in, we better listen, but where it leaves us free, don't worry.

But Paul included an exception. He says if someone, an unbeliever is what he's implying here, if an unbeliever chooses to make a big deal about the idols, you're over at an unsaved friend's house in Corinth and they offer dinner and they're like, by the way, this is amazing, this is on behalf of such and such a goddess.

Now you have a tough choice. They choose to make a big deal about the idols to which the meat was offered in Corinth, Paul says.

Now we have a tough decision. Again, I don't think this is something that any one of us will face and I can't think of a modern day example of it, but I think we can understand the dilemma that this would cause in the life of a

Christian in that early church. When the host chooses to make an announcement, for example, all hail Artemis, her bounty has granted the steaks for the feast, what do you do?

Then he says, I'll weigh in on that, then don't eat it. For the sake of the conscience of the one who made the announcement, them knowing that you are a

Christian, if you eat, they will feel like God is okay with their idolatry and you will be making a statement to everybody in attendance,

Christ is okay with this. So now, now, now, don't eat.

To eat or not to eat? Eat in some situations, not in others, says

Paul. Navigate your lives, church, with wisdom, with love, and a heart for the unbelievers around you, is what

Paul is saying. I love this verse, by the way, about the eating in a household with an unbeliever because it, for several reasons, first, the first thing that I love about this is it presupposes that some

Christians will be close enough to an unbeliever to get invited into their home for a meal. Is that a good thing?

Oh, I hope that's happening. Is it happening here? Who are you close enough with that's an unbeliever that they would invite you into their home or are all your friends, do you just hang around in a

Christian bubble? Everybody that you spend time with a Christian, that's a problem in itself.

But here, the text presumes that you are open to that and that it's quite possible that many of us would get invited into an unbeliever's home for a meal.

That's an amazing thought. In our culture, maybe I should have said, out for dinner.

We don't get in each other's houses like we ought to. We don't invite as much anymore and a lot of it is just kind of fear of hospitality and things like that.

So anyways, that's another issue. Even as I'm looking around, I make eye contact with some of you that I know you're good at hospitality and you're taking that up.

So I commend some of you and others of you. You ought to step up on that and that's another thing. I didn't point anybody out.

That laughter sounded a little guilty. I don't know. So whatever. That's up to you. But it does.

It presupposes. Do you see that? Do you see the beauty in that? It presupposes that unbelievers would invite you to join them.

That's an amazing thing. The second thing is it acknowledges that we all have our own preferences. It's willing to admit that some of you are going to lean in and some of you are going to lean out and some of you are going to head this way and some of you are going to head this way.

On these gray area issues, we are diverse and that's a good thing. That's okay. We need to be ready for that.

We all have our own preferences and that's good. The third is it identifies that our scruples ought not to be the message we bring to the forefront.

He does not at all say, go in guns blazing. Go in ready to take down the idols, locked and loaded.

In other words, we are not looking for a chance to reform people's behavior surrounding our pet issues or regarding even what we might see as emphatically sinful behavior in Scripture.

An unbeliever is already likely an idolater. Do you know that? Such were all of us.

Paul doesn't recommend here that we all embark on a campaign against market meat. If he was ready to do, if he wanted to do that, this is the text that he would use to say so.

No, our mission, church, is very, very, very focused to proclaim good news of salvation through the

Son of God who loved us and gave his life for us. That's the message. Let the

Spirit convict unbelievers of their sin as he sees fit, but we, church, are called to be one -trick ponies.

You want to hear about the good news? I can do that. I can tell you the good news. I can tell you what Jesus Christ did for me.

Much beyond that is going to be the work of God. And here's what I'm pointing out. How does a society change?

How do things change? Well, I would contend that pagan idolatry fell in Western societies.

Why aren't there idols in Europe? Why aren't there idols in America? Why don't we actually carve things and bow to them and leave a little bowl of milk with rice in it?

Why are we not a physically idolatrous nation?

And I believe that it fell, pagan idolatry fell in Western society through the gospel taking root one heart at a time.

It happened with physical idols, and I believe it can happen again with our modern idols of the heart.

Trust God and proclaim truth one heart at a time. If you think about it, this is in my notes, and boy, it's a radical statement, but how in the world would

Christians take down the porn industry? How would that go away in our generation?

How would it go away in our generation? One heart at a time? One life at a time?

And get that thing dry. No income anymore because people are taking seriously their call to holiness, because people are understanding the gospel.

Are you getting what I'm saying? Is it going to be us going and doing some big legislation to get rid of it?

No, it's pretty entrenched, isn't it? I just say that as an illustration that wasn't in my notes. How do things change in our culture?

Through the message that we have to proclaim and live, the message we have to proclaim and the message we have to live, living it and proclaiming it.

But now the main point, the principles underlying the whole decision, verses 31 through 33.

To eat or not to eat, Paul even seems to barely care which one any given Christian would choose.

He has that one caveat in there. If they're making a big deal about the gods and goddesses, then maybe skip it.

But instead, verse 31, he gives us the core of our ethics, ethical and motivational movement in this

Christian life. Whatever you do, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. When you're making these decisions, when you're navigating this life, when you're walking through it, decision by decision, moment by moment, day by day, do all that you do with a mindset to glorify

God. Now, this is bold in its assertion. This is bold in its assertion, comprehensive in its scope, and memorable for its simplicity.

We'll start with it's bold in its assertion. It implies that all of our lives and actions are in some way related to God.

We don't have downtime. We don't have vacation. You can, like Jonah, try to get away from God and guess where he is?

Always with you. He's always there. You can't run from God. We don't have vacation or downtime.

Whatever we are doing is in some way relatable to his glory.

This means that the secular and sacred divide that many of us hold in our minds is not real.

We've made that up. That's a fiction. We don't have spiritual time, spiritual activity, and then all other activities.

We can fall into wrong -minded patterns of thinking that praying and reading the Bible and going to church, that's my spiritual time, and then all else is secular.

All else is, you know, me time or whatever. But if something is mundane, think about it.

What's the text saying? If something is mundane or routine as eating a steak or a burger, can be done for the glory of God, then whatever we do is opened up to opportunities to bring glory to God through it.

Verse 31 is then not only bold in its assertion, but it's also comprehensive in its scope.

Can you play video games for the glory of God? Can you troubleshoot a broken router for an hour and a half the other night while losing your temper for the glory of God?

Well, without the temper, and that sounded quite specific because that might be a confession, right,

Linda? That wasn't Linda. She got to see it. But don't worry, we have a new router.

Can you drive to His glory? Can you have a cup of coffee with a friend for His glory? Can you suffer hardship for His glory?

Write a report for your employer for His glory, deliver packages, teach kindergartners, change diapers. Whatever you do, whatever you do, whatever you do, do for His glory.

Do it all for His glory. Keep this as the foundation of your decisions.

Keep this in mind as you navigate your day in and day out. Keep this as the basis of your ethical decisions.

Should I do this or should I do that? Which one's better? Do you want to glorify God most in your life?

This motivation is more than half the battle. It's bold in its assertion, comprehensive in its scope, and finally, verse 31 is memorable for its simplicity.

This would be a great thought to meditate on throughout our days, to memorize it. It would be great to tape it to your mirror so you see it when you get up.

Do all that I do today for the glory of God. Put it on the screen of your phone, put it up somewhere in your office, in your cubicle, in your classroom, in the truck that you drive all day, in your car, wherever, you can memorize this verse.

I recommend that you memorize it even as Paul is here setting it forth as a baseline principle for the

Christian life. Whatever you do, do all things for the glory of God.

But this is not the only principle in this text that drives us, plural, the principles underlying it all.

We see in verse 31, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. Command.

Second, give no offense. It starts as a command. It's an imperative. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.

Verse 32 comes on the heels of glory to the glory of God. That's the foundation, but the next level is beautiful in the way that these two thoughts weave throughout

Scripture in a way that you might almost kind of begin to see that maybe there's one common author to this whole book.

Maybe there's one who wrote the whole thing because it matches together. Verse 31, love

God. Verse 32, love others. Love God and love others. It seems like I've heard that before somewhere else, not on Paul's lips.

Where? On the lips of Jesus, who told us the two greatest commandments. A student came to Jesus and said, what is the greatest commandment?

And Jesus says, I'm going to give you a bonus answer here. You get one and you get two for the price of one.

So you ask me which one is the greatest, but Jesus didn't, it's not that he couldn't have given one.

It's just that there's two that are highest. It's two that are greatest. It's these two are coupled together in such a way that he had to give them both together.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

Do everything with the glory of God in mind first. And if we just thought this way more, we would do whatever we do with less sin and more gladness.

But secondly, do what we do seeking to cause the least offense to believers and unbelievers alike.

You see that in verse 32, where he says, give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God. He has believers and unbelievers and unbelievers from whether you're a religious unbeliever or a completely pagan irreligious unbeliever, do all to not provide offense.

Glorify God first. Unfortunately, in the decades where the church has lost her focus on the good news, and we've gone off into all kinds of tangents of everything from social reform to moral majority to all kinds of things, we have specialized in offense to the

Greeks. Said it again, we've specialized in offense to the Greeks. We have sought to tell sinners just how bad they are.

And frequently we've told them just as a secondary kind of moralism, we've told them just how good we are.

You're really bad. I'm really good. Come to church and be like me.

That's not the message. Is that the message? I hope that's not the message that you're trying to get out.

Is it any wonder that the average unsaved person, at least I think this is true, the average unsaved person in America would think of a moral law -based religious police force when they think of a church instead of purveyors of love and grace and mercy and kindness and hope and the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.

Are those things that the world is receiving from us? Are those the things they're seeing in us? How do sinners experience

Jesus? Oh, life change, a call to change through love, through love.

We are being called here to walk an intentional road in life. One that seeks to glorify

God in all things. One that seeks to minimize intentional offense to unbelievers and believers alike. This is not meant to be a trap and some of you are already wrapping your mind around what feels like a catch -22.

And he's not trying to catch us in a catch -22. We are all well aware that we cannot please everyone, right?

Did you already know that? Raise your hand if you knew that you can't please everyone. Those of you that didn't raise your hand, you're going to learn that.

You're going to learn that. Or you're just like, I didn't want to please you, so I didn't raise my hand. Is this an impossible task that we're being called to?

And I just want to ask you a follow -up question. Who said it was a task? Who said this is a task? It's a life principle.

It's a way of living. It ought to be in our DNA. It's an attitude and a value of the heart that's meant to flavor our way in this world.

I believe that we've elevated the adage, you can't please everyone, into a central operating principle that excuses us to only ever serve ourselves.

Have you ever used it that way? You can't please everyone. What I mean by that is

I can only please myself. Is that what we mean when we say that? Oh, way too often.

Might as well just take care of myself because you can't please everyone. No, you can't please everyone, and that's true, yet it doesn't remove the calling to consider others as more important than ourselves.

Doesn't mean you don't try. When used by Christians as an excuse to serve ourselves over serving others, it's a dangerous lie that Satan can twist within fellowships and warp within the mission of the church.

We are not called to be people -pleasers. Of course not, but God -pleasers. And we serve a God who calls us to serve each other.

And so to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

To love him is to live his way. To love him is to live his way.

To live his way is to love your neighbor as yourself. Do you see it? Fairly logical.

Paul says in verse 33, just as he tried to please everyone in everything he did, just as he didn't go around demanding his own gain or advantage, but rather sought to serve others for the purpose that they may be saved, that they may be saved, that they may be saved.

Do you see it in the text? To what end is he living intentionally? To what end is he living on purpose?

For the purpose that some may be saved in connection with him. It says, imitate me in that.

Follow me in that, just as I'm following Christ, who didn't live to serve himself, but came to be a servant to all.

Paul was a man living on purpose. And verse 1 of chapter 11 belongs with this passage,

Paul inviting us to live on purpose too, imitating Paul's MO, which was,

Paul sought to glorify God in all things. Paul sacrificed his own principles, or rather, sacrificed his own preferences to avoid offense.

And Paul was living with an intentional mission to see more, rescued from darkness of sin and death.

The application cannot be to go do specific things this morning. I can't give you three things to go do, but it must be to adopt the principles of this passage in a way that alters the things that we value most, and the things that we're living for.

God is calling us into a life that looks like considering the glory of God first in all things, than living to avoid offense for the cause of the gospel.

And there is certainly a caveat needed here. I just want to point out that when it comes to pleasing people, how many of you know that that gets out of our control pretty quick anyways?

You know, that not causing offense, I can only go so far with that in making that happen, because how many of you ever had somebody offended by the message?

A few of us, you share the message, they get offended. Uh -oh, right? How does that work?

It's possible to ascribe to the principles given to us in this passage while experiencing all kinds of conflict with others.

Some will hate us, some will despise us for the message we bring, and for the Lord we serve. And I hope you can see the difference between living in an offensive way and proclaiming a message that many will reject.

Is there a difference there? Living in an offensive way versus letting the gospel offend, that's different.

We ought to live in a way that allows people to be offended by the word of God more than they're offended by us. I would say this, and you could write this down if you're into taking notes, but the worst kind of jerk is a

Christian jerk. Maybe that should be on some of our mirrors. The worst kind of jerk is a

Christian jerk. We who are called to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control are the antithesis of what

Christ calls us to do when we are out intentionally offending, when we are like a bull in a china shop, religiously speaking.

Paul sought to imitate Christ, and so should we. Were people offended by Christ ever?

They put him to death. Of course they were offended by him. They couldn't stand how righteous he was.

They couldn't stand his holiness. They couldn't stand the message that he came to bring because it implied and it went against their principles.

It went against their own values. It went against their own power, and they didn't like it. Paul sought to imitate

Christ, and so should we. We participate in communion every week as a reminder of what

Christ has done for us. He died for us, and it's said in the words of Christ, greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.

The death of Christ is, of course, not merely a point for us to imitate, not merely an example.

There on the cross, he paid the price for our sins. He died in our place, and yet this is also the most amazing and extreme examples of love that the world has ever known.

All here who have asked Jesus Christ to save us, and if you're here and you're at peace with the rest of the church, you're welcome to the tables.

He died to rescue us from our sins, and as we take communion this morning, I want you to consider the intentionality of our

Lord in loving and serving us in this way. The intentionality of then his follower, Paul, who says, follow me even in the way that I'm following Christ.

Remember that his body was broken for us, so we take that cracker to remember. His blood was shed for us, so we take that cup of juice to remember, and in light of his great sacrifice that has brought us peace with God, has brought us forgiveness of our sins, has brought us the promise of eternal joy, let's go out from here this week to live intentionally, to do all that we do for the glory of God, to give no intentional offense to believer or unbeliever, and to live for the salvation of others.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that cuts to the core of the way that we navigate this life.

It gets right down into the nuances of decisions that we make in these gray area issues. I pray that you might allow your word to saturate us in a way that the simple message of doing all that we do for your glory might have a dramatic impact on us, and might actually overflow into an impact of benefit and blessing to those that are in the sphere of influence, of those that are in this room, and not merely changing those in the room, but changing even maybe the eternal destiny of some who know people in this room, that we would be a people very quick to convey the glory of Jesus Christ, very quick to give thanks to him, very quick to elevate him in our conversations for the benefit and blessing of those that are left in darkness right now.

Father, I pray that over this holiday season, you would settle on our hearts, the great glory that is due your name, the incarnation, the sending forth of the rescuer, our savior, and I pray that you would help us, even now as we come to these tables, to reflect in love for what you have done for us, and what your son has done for us in his sacrifice.

Thank you. We love him, we love you, and we desire to honor you in our lives in Jesus' name.