Join us as we dive into 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, to explore these questions – What is idolatry? and, How do we, as Christians, support each other in a world that is full of it?
Discover what idolatry truly means and how it can subtly infiltrate our lives. As Christians, we can uplift and strengthen one another amidst the challenges of living in a culture saturated with false gods. Let's learn together how to do this, with our faith in our one true God, and our support for one another in the face of worldly challenges.
Join us as we dive into 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, to explore these questions – What is idolatry? and, How do we, as Christians, support each other in a world that is full of it?
Discover what idolatry truly means and how it can subtly infiltrate our lives. As Christians, we can uplift and strengthen one another amidst the challenges of living in a culture saturated with false gods. Let's learn together how to do this, with our faith in our one true God, and our support for one another in the face of worldly challenges.
Good morning. Hope everybody's doing good this morning. Happy Palm Sunday. I always love seeing that, with the kids waving the palms, waving the palm branches. Psalm 8 says out of the lips of babes and infants you have ordained praise. That gets quoted again by Jesus on Palm Sunday.
Speaker 1:If you go read the Gospels you know something interesting about Palm Sunday. It's the Sabbath, it's the day after the Sabbath of Holy Week in Jerusalem and Jesus rides in on a donkey coming from the east, coming from the Mount of Olives. From that direction would have been like you know I don't know exactly roughly a mile pattern that he would have ridden into the city and Jews from all over the empire would have returned to Jerusalem for the Passover there's three big feasts a year that Jews from the empire would have come back to it. Jews from all over the Roman empire would have returned to Jerusalem. The city would have been two or three times just swollen to its normal capacity. It would have been tens of thousands or maybe even a hundred thousand people out there on the road watching Jesus ride a donkey into Jerusalem and they're all shouting and celebrating Hosanna, hosanna to the Son of David, meaning save, son of David, you're the Messiah, save us, son of David. They're recognizing who he is, even if they don't know, and none of them knew exactly the fullness of that statement. But they're calling out Hosanna to the King is really what they're saying. And, as Morgan mentioned in his prayer, the Pharisees and the Jewish leadership are threatened by that. And they come to Jesus and they say Rabbi, control your people, man, get your people to settle down. What are you doing? Slow these people down, get them to shut up. What's wrong with you? And Jesus says man, if they're quiet, even a rocks are going to cry out. Creation is going to proclaim the glory of the Son of God coming in power. Right, even the rocks will come out. You think of that.
Speaker 1:And that day, 2,000 years ago, tens of thousands or 100,000 people proclaiming the Son of David, the King, the coming of the King. And you move forward 2,000 years. You know, jesus says he makes a statement in Matthew 16, talking to Peter, peter says you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus says you got it right. That's right, brother, you're right. He says, and you know what, on that rock, you are Peter. On that rock. He's not talking about Peter, he's talking about Peter's proclamation. He says I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And look, here we are, 2,000 years later. There might have been 100,000 people 2,000 years ago proclaiming the coming of the Son of David. And you know what? There's churches on every continent. How many millions of people this morning are proclaiming that the King has come. Praise God, he has come.
Speaker 1:So we're going to be in 1 Corinthians 8 today. If you would, let's go to the Lord before we get into it. Heavenly Father, lord, I thank you so much for all that you've given us. I thank you especially for your Son, jesus Christ, and the salvation we find in His name. I thank you for your Word, lord. I thank you for this time together. I thank you that we get to Jesus Christ and the salvation we find in his name. I thank you for your word, lord. I thank you for this time together. I thank you that we get to come together and worship you today. I thank you for the millions of other Christians throughout the world who are also or billions, maybe I don't even know all of the other Christians throughout the world that are celebrating you today and I pray that you would glorify yourself in this congregation today. I pray that you would glorify yourself in all congregations, everywhere, today as the King, as the coming King, for you are worthy of glory. I thank you for your word. Strengthen us in it. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So 1 Corinthians 8, we're going to start in verse 1, and we will go ahead and jump into it Now.
Speaker 1:Concerning things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies, and if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing, as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by him. Therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father of whom are all things, and we for Him, and one, lord, jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live. However, there is not in everyone that knowledge. For some, with consciousness of the idol until now, eat it as a thing offered to an idol and their conscience, being weak is defiled. But food does not commend us to God, for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse. But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak. For if anyone sees you, who have knowledge, eating in an idol's temple, will not the conscience of him, who is weak, be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died. But when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. This is the word of the Lord, written 2,000 years ago, intended for us this morning. Anybody eating meat offered to an idol this week, anybody.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about idolatry. Idolatry in its broadest sense is taking anything and putting it in the place of God. You know the Roman world and the majority of history throughout the world. The Roman world was polytheistic. They believed in many gods. There were gods in the hills. There were gods in the valleys. There were gods in the hills. There were gods in the valleys. There were gods in the seas, there were gods in Corinth, there were gods in Athens, gods that reigned over these various locations. There were also gods that controlled certain activities. Right, diana was a goddess of fertility, bacchus was a goddess of wine, it was a god of wine or agriculture. Cupid or Eros was the god of love and desire, hermes was, or Mercury was, the god of travelers and journeys and messages. So not only were there gods over all these various places, there are also gods that supervise certain activities, daily activities of human life.
Speaker 1:Right Now, the way idolatry kind of played itself out. Remember all these false gods. You can't see them. So how do you worship a God that you can't see? Well, what they would do is they would set up a little shrine with an image of what the God was, or set up a little statue that was meant to represent the God and in their understanding that God would then come and inhabit the statue, or come and inhabit the area in which the image was, and then they would bring a sacrifice to the idol. Right, they would bring meat or wine or some other type of sacrifice to it and hope that that would appease the spirit that dwelled within the statue, and then the spirit would then in turn, work for their benefit in the world, right, work for their economic growth or health or whatever it might be right. What you think of that? You think of that picture there and a spirit coming and inhabiting a statue and working in that capacity.
Speaker 1:Well, think of what's the image of the true God? The image of the true God is humanity, right? Look at Genesis 1. Adam is made in the image of God. Eve is made in the image of God. God comes to him and breathes into him, breathes his spirit into man, and man becomes the living being. He is actively carrying out God's will on earth. And even more so as a Christian who has the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell within us, we're the image of God walking about and carrying out His work in the world.
Speaker 1:You know this foolishness that was idolatry in the ancient world. Satan can't even come up with his own stuff. He just takes God's stuff and twists it so that we're deceived by it in some capacity. Satan never comes up with anything new. That's essentially the way idolatry worked in first century Rome. What does that look like today? How does that translate to Westchase in 2024? Well, in some ways it translates almost exactly the same way that it was back then.
Speaker 1:If you live in a neighborhood like mine that has about 25% of it being Hindu and you go into the houses of those people that are practicing Hinduism, you'll find a little shrine and you'll find a little image or a statue of some god, some Hindu god, shiva or Krishna or one of them other random names right, and they'll bring an offering to it. They'll bring a water, a cup of water, a cup of drink, or some other small high salt item, flowers or something, bringing an offering to the god and praying to the god and hoping the god is going to work in their favor. Exactly the same thing as what they had in first century Rome work in their favor. Exactly the same thing as what they had in first century Rome. If you're familiar with Santeria, that's also exactly the same thing, except Santeria actually sacrifices animals. I don't know any Hindus that have sacrificed animals in their homes. Santeria sacrifices chickens and things like that to their god.
Speaker 1:Anybody remember the movie Major League from you know whatever 20 years ago or longer now? Remember the one man One man's practicing Santeria. He's got Joe Boo in his locker. He wants to sacrifice a chicken to it. And then Tom Barringer's like no, we can't do that. There's a Buddhist in here, he's going to go crazy. So Tom Barringer gets him a bucket of KFC. He says here you go, just give this to him, this will do. And he had peace in the clubhouse and they went on and won.
Speaker 1:It might look like that. That is essentially biblical idolatry, taken 2,000 years ago and brought to today. It might look like that Another way that it looks. That's pretty blatant idolatry. A lot of times it doesn't look quite that blatantly. That's pretty blatant idolatry. A lot of times it doesn't look quite that blatantly.
Speaker 1:If you're familiar with the Catholic practice of praying to saints or interceding, having saints intercede with them, personally I'd say that's just pagan idolatry, repackaged in a different format for people to receive. What do they do? They pray to Mary for all sorts of different things. They pray to Saint Christopher If they're going to travel somewhere. They pray to Saint Anthony If they're trying to find something that was lost. They pray to Saint Michael If you're going to war, which that one's kind of funny like. Not only Michael, michael's an angel. So not only are you praying to dead Christians, now you're praying to an angel. It's clearly not biblical.
Speaker 1:Paul tells us in 1 Timothy he says there is one God and one mediator between God and man, and that's the man Christ Jesus. That's really just a pagan practice that's been repackaged for people to receive in a different fashion. But most of us are probably not Hindu and most of us are probably not Catholic because we go to Presbyterian church, right, probably neither one of those things are things we encounter very often. A lot of the ways we encounter this stuff more often is not through a specific being that might be a god. It's got to be repackaged, to be delivered into a secular society like we live in. So the idolatry that we typically interact with is through ideologies, isms right, feminism and abortion or transgenderism or LGBTism or environmentalism all this stuff that is repackaged for us to receive, which really replaces God in some sense. That's more often the way in which we interact with idolatry.
Speaker 1:But you know, this passage isn't really about idolatry at all. This passage is about Christians interacting with each other in a world that is full of idolatry, in a society that is full of it. Verse 8, I'm sorry, chapter 8, verse 1, he says this now concerning things offered to idols. We know that, we all have knowledge. You know, in this chapter and also if you go to Romans 14 and 15, you see Paul talking about the strong and the weak. He's talking about, in faith, people of strong faith and people of weak faith. He says the people of the strong faith. Your job really is to assist those who have weak faith.
Speaker 1:Now, the Roman society, right, if they were going to go out into the marketplace, out into the public square, almost every place they went to would have had some sort of idolatrous connection. Right Now, what's Paul talking about? The example he gives in here is food right. Food is neither good or bad. Right, food is a necessity, right. But you're going to go out into the marketplace, a place that is associated with idolatry, and you're going to try and get a necessity of life. He's not talking about blatant sinful stuff. You know, you go back to 1 Corinthians 6, there's a whole list of some blatant sinful stuff. He's not talking about interacting with that stuff. He's talking about getting a necessity of daily life in places that are surrounded by idolatry. So if you lived in first century Rome and you wanted to go get a steak, probably the place you went to had sacrificed that cow to Zeus or something like that. If you wanted to go pick up a bottle of wine to take home to your wife, probably the wine had been dedicated to Bacchus, who was the god of wine. Right? If your cousin was going to get married, they probably had the ceremony in a temple to Diana, who was the fertility goddess, so the marriage would be blessed, right? So how does a Christian go and interact with these places that are so steep in idolatry?
Speaker 1:Now the strong Christians right, he says, we know that, we all have knowledge. The strong Christians say we know that there's only one God. Right, there's really only one true God and it doesn't matter if we're going about and interacting in some of these places. Really, only one true God. And it doesn't matter if we're going about and interacting in some of these places. And this statement that he makes is probably a reiteration of how the strong Christians said, kind of flippantly so probably we know there's only one God. I can go eat the steak that was sacrificed to Zeus. I can go get a bottle of wine that was dedicated to a false God. That's okay, we know that. Everybody knows the truth. Anyway. What does Paul say right after that? He says knowledge puffs up. Knowledge just makes you prideful.
Speaker 1:And you go a little bit further down into verse 7, he responds to that flippant statement that the strong Christians have been making and he says however, there is not in everyone that knowledge. Everybody doesn't have the same understanding that you do. Hopefully everybody does understand the truth of the Creator and the truth of God and the truth of Christ, if we're in a church, but people have come out of different backgrounds. This is the first generation of the church in Corinth. Probably every Gentile in Corinth had come out of some sort of idol worship before coming to Christ. So they had probably spent years going into these places and believing in the sacrifice and worshiping Zeus and Diana and all these other false gods and to them it was hard for them to do. They think, oh my, I'm going back to doing idol worship again, like I can't be doing this. So it's causing them to stumble right.
Speaker 1:You know, a note on strength and weakness biblically, if you guys remember Charlie Ward, who played for FSU back in the 90s. He was the quarterback. He won the Heisman one year. They won the national title one year and he also played. He played not only football but he played basketball at FSU and, of course, he waited until football season was over to start going to basketball. Especially for FSU they had a good team, so it would be January before he started playing basketball and all the other guys on the team had had, you know, a couple of months of basketball conditioning prior to him getting there.
Speaker 1:And I remember him making a statement one time, right after he started basketball again, and he says man, I'm out of shape. Right after he started basketball again and he says man, I'm out of shape. I thought out of shape, man, you've been playing football for four months. How are you out of shape? Because football shape isn't football strength and football conditioning is not the same as basketball strength and conditioning. Football. You might be running through people and sprinting, but it lasts 10 seconds at the most and then you're done. You get a breather Basketball. You spend 30 minutes running up and down the court. It's a different type of strength, a different type of conditioning.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, christians are the same right. An area that I might be strong in, you might be weak in, but you know what An area that you're strong in I'm probably weak in. So we shouldn't have. You know what he says here. He says, knowledge puffs up. We shouldn't have pride against another Christian. Feel like, oh, I'm so much a better Christian than you. You're offended by these kind of things. You just need to read a Bible more pray, more, right. We shouldn't have pride at another Christian who is convicted by things that we are not convicted of. Right, we all come from a little bit different background. God called us out of a little bit different background. Christ has walked with us in a little bit different place. He has emphasized different things to us that we are called to emphasize in our own ministry. We're going to have different convictions over what we should do and what we shouldn't. Right, our job is to love each other in those convictions.
Speaker 1:And you know, when a strong Christian defers to a weak Christian over some of these debated things, at least two things happen. First of all, the weak Christian grows in their ability to abstain from sin. It might not be a sinful thing that they're abstaining from, but they think it is because they're convicted of it. And so when they abstain from it, they've what They've grown in their ability to abstain from sin. You want to abstain from sin? You want to learn how to be good at abstaining from sin. Well, just abstain from sin. Practice right, and it's not an easy task, obviously, but you want to grow in your ability to do that? Then continue to do it right Through prayer. That Christian, the weaker Christian, has grown in their faith by doing that. What about the strong Christian? How has the strong Christian benefited? Well, the strong Christian, who was freely not partaking of something that they could partake of for the benefit of another, the strong Christian has just become a little bit more like Jesus.
Speaker 1:Philippians 2, what's it say? It says Christ, who did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, instead took on the form of a servant and was obedient, even to the point of death. Christ could have stayed up in heaven and received worship and glory and honor and all those things as the eternal Son of God freely, but he didn't, because he was concerned about us, for our benefits I mean, in that case, it's our necessity he came down and gave up what he freely could have held on to. Same thing's true with a strong Christian. When we freely give up what we could have in favor of another, we've grown a little bit more, grown to be a little bit more like Jesus. So good things happen. Right when we're willing to do this.
Speaker 1:Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. You know, jesus says they will know you by your love particularly. I mean that's love toward everybody, but particularly that's love within the church, showing the way we interact with each other as a family. That's one of the ways that we're known. I can think of a man I think about this all the time because that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1:I can think of a man in prison. He was a Muslim and he's not a Muslim anymore, because there was a group of Christians that came in and he was like wow, you guys are like praying for each other and encouraging each other and, you know, having fellowship together and all this stuff. And, man, my Muslim brothers, they don't do none of that stuff. My mother just died and nobody even said nothing to me, but Christians came in and prayed for him and Christians came in and showed love to him and he recognized the truth of the gospel because there was love there, not because there was people partaking of freedom. Right, we're called, we are called to recognize the truth, the doctrinal truth that there is only one God. Of course we should understand that, but the love of each other should take priority in our actions, right? All right. So idolatry is kind of all over the place. We should love each other in the midst of that idolatry and support each other in the midst of that. If you're a strong Christian, our job is to help support those who are weaker in that area.
Speaker 1:So what does that look like exactly in West Chase in 2024? Well, most of y'all are probably familiar with Target and the fact that Target has been pro-LGBTQ for years. I guess right Last year, they had some guy who was a self-avowed Satanist design a whole bunch of transgender kids' clothing, right? Something that's clearly not biblical. Right, designed a whole bunch of transgender kids' clothing, right? You might be super convicted about Target because of some of the things they do.
Speaker 1:They're associating themselves with something that is idolatrous, right? What about Bud Light? Everybody remember what Bud Light did last year? Put a picture of that transgender fellow in her can. Everybody got all ticked off at him. Kid Rock shot a bunch of bottles off the back fence. Grandpa's, angry, started shooting them all. Right? What is it? It's a company that is associating with something that is idolatrous. Remember it's food? We're talking about Daily necessities of life, right? Maybe it's Starbucks, if you remember Starbucks seven years ago or something like that I forget exactly when it was Starbucks decided they weren't going to put out holiday cups anymore. It was December, you know. It was Christmas time. And they said, nope, we ain't saying happy holidays on our cups anymore. And everybody got all ticked off. And then, like two weeks later, dunkin' Donuts put Merry Christmas on all their cups. Everybody's like, oh, drink Dunkin' Donuts, man, they're praising the Lord. I'm sure that Dunkin' Donuts has the glorifying of Christ as really the foundation of everything they do. I'm sure they do so.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're strongly convicted about some of these things. There's a hundred other ways in which this takes place, right? Maybe you're strongly convicted. Maybe you look at Target and you say, man, I'm not going there anymore. I'm not putting my money into a place that is supporting some kind of false ideology, some kind of harmful ideology. Good for you, don't go, and I'll support you in that. Maybe you're not overly convicted about Target. Maybe you think, man, target's like right on my way home. Man, I got to like get home and get dinner started and you know, get my kids to practice and you know all this other stuff, and if I'm going to go to Walmart, it's like 30 minutes out of the way, I just ain't got time. And you're not convicted by Target? Good, go to Target.
Speaker 1:And when we have issues, when one person is convicted and one person isn't, we defer to the person who is, we defer to each other. Right, maybe it's Bud Light. Maybe you'll never buy Bud Light again. Oh, I'm only buying Coors Light from here on out. Coors Light uses John Wayne in their ads. At least they used to. They're American. They're better than having some transgender fellow on there. Right, you never want to buy Bud Light again. All right, don't ever buy one. But maybe you're not convicted. We should defer to the brother or the sister who is right. Maybe Starbucks? Maybe you only buy Dunkin' Donuts. Now, same thing. What are we called?
Speaker 1:We're called to support each other in our convictions, right, and be more concerned with the good of the family. You know we're in here for this meeting. You know the meeting between services and Morgan's up here doing his thing and Phil's down there saying, nope, you gotta do this and nope, you gotta do this. And Morgan's like, well, I'll just tell some jokes. And somebody said oh, you forgot about the jokes and we're a family man, we're supposed to be a family and we should show love for each other, as a family shows love for each other. That's what we should be making our priority loving each other and our convictions and supporting each other and our convictions, unless we think that idolatry is going to overrun the world, all those isms and all those other causes are going to overwhelm the world, and Christ is not going to be victorious and the church is not going to be victorious over that stuff. We certainly should not worry about that.
Speaker 1:If you have read Galatians, god says through Paul, he says A few regulations. God says through Paul, he says don't be deceived, god has not mocked what you reap. What a man sows, he will also reap. What happened to Target after they started selling all that transgender stuff? They tanked, didn't they? What happened to Bud Light after they put that fella on there? They tanked, didn't they? I read some article like a week ago, bud Light still hasn't recovered from that. What happened to Starbucks when they took away all the Happy Holidays stuff on their cups? Everybody went to Dunkin' Donuts.
Speaker 1:Right, you're going to be blatant and purposeful in your idolatry. The more blatant and purposeful the idolatry is, the bigger the consequences are going to be. Eventually, god's not concerned with idolatry, because he's the king and he's sovereign over all that stuff. That stuff's never going to take the place of the Lord and he will handle it appropriately when the time comes. So let us be strong in our convictions. Let us love each other in those convictions. Let us glorify Christ in our convictions. Let's do so as a family with love for each other in those convictions. Let us glorify Christ in our convictions. Let's do so as a family with love for each other. Let's go to the Lord.