Well, tonight I invite you to turn in the Scriptures to the book of 1 Corinthians. After some time, we're returning back to our study in 1 Corinthians, and tonight we're in chapter 8, chapter 8. And we'll consider the entirety of the chapter, 13 verses tonight of 1 Corinthians chapter 8. We went through the long chapter 7 last time and looked at a large section of that, challenging section tonight we're looking at another particular issue that had happened in the church of corinth and we'll see how this is so important for us today again first corinthians chapter 8 let us give our attention tonight to the word of the lord now concerning food offered to idols we know that all of us possess knowledge this knowledge puffs up that 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's known by god therefore as to the eating of food offered to idols we know that an idol has no real existence and that 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's one god the father from whom are 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 to an idol and their conscience being weak is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We're no worse off if we do not eat or 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 idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols and so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed the brother for whom christ died thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak you sin against christ therefore if food makes my brother stumble i will never eat meat lest i make my brother stumble may the lord bless the hearing of his word These six things the Lord hates. Yes, seven are an abomination to Him. A proud look. Hands that shed innocent blood. A heart that devises evil plans. Feet that are swift in running to evil. A false witness who speaks lies and... one who sows discord among his brethren interesting that that last one gets the number seven spot isn't it one who sows discord among his brethren sowing of discord sowing of divisions what is something something so concerning about that it's easy to do it and not even realize that we do it That's what concerns me about that last one. And tonight I believe we come to one of the ways in the book of Corinthians that discord was being sown among the brothers and sisters. 1 Corinthians 8 is a passage dealing with Christian liberty and the abuse of it. You'll remember we dealt with this somewhat extensively in Romans chapter 14 and 15. But I don't believe that that is the heart of what he's going after. Notice I emphasize heart. It certainly is a problem. It's a big problem. He's going to use a particular problem. But Paul is striking tonight at the root of a problem that shows itself in how Christians treat one another when their convictions are different. And the root problem, getting down to the heart of it all, Paul says tonight to us, is the problem of pride. Pride. Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins. Did you catch that? And it's not interesting that at the very end of the seven deadly sins, you have one who sows discord among his brethren. That's what I want to explore with you tonight. There will always be differences among Christians. And as I study the scriptures on a host of different issues that came up in the early church on convictions, and you have a lot of this, convictions, It's interesting how the Apostle always dealt with this. When it came to these particular areas of freedom and liberty and disputes in the life of the body, he never really answered these problems by coming along and saying, well, this is the right position, this is the wrong position, end of discussion. He didn't quite do that. I've always been amazed by that. No, that wouldn't make a lot of sense because he told us in Romans chapter 14 that for some people, when they do certain things, it's sin where it may not be for others. It's a conscience issue and people have to work through conscience issues. What I find Paul doing in these discussions on Christian liberty, how I find him addressing these issues and dealing with these problems, is first and foremost to have the mind of a servant. A call to love one another. A call to fervently love and to demonstrate that in action. And if we accept that tonight, how Paul's dealing with these problems and going deeper than just even a liberty issue, we're going to be severely challenged. I was severely challenged to ask the question in my own convictions whether I'm dealing and demonstrating the mind of a servant in how I treat those who are what I believe are weaker brethren in their convictions. And that is what tonight is all about. That's 1 Corinthians 8. When we begin to look at this, that Paul introduced us to all these problems in Corinth, you'll remember at the beginning that this was a divided church after them following their own favorite super pastors. Boy, what a church for today, huh? And they were all dividing the church following the men i'm of paul i'm of apollos i'm of cephas but then paul exposed something right up front in corinthians that shocked us some were of that division and they were saying i'm of christ and i don't know if you remember how you felt or you remember the impact of that but that's a shocking statement because to be of christ is the right one to be of isn't it And even in that, you could be sinfully creating a division. I follow Jesus. I'm the one that preaches the cross. We're all about Jesus. And there's an awful spirit of pride there that comes out. And all those other people are following men. Well, now Paul turns to their position, some of their positions, and convictions that they had aligned with under their favorite pastor. And there were a host of different convictions in the early church, in the Christian faith, on certain matters. And we looked at this when we looked at the book of Romans, that there were matters of freedom. And one of those particular issues that kept coming up in the first century was the issue of food. Living in the Greco-Roman world, which is important to understand a bit of context here, It was normal to daily life and the interaction in the public realm, in social life, that Christians would be faced with coming into contact with food that was offered to idols. There was a pantheon of Roman gods. Gods were everywhere. They were depicted on stone. You would walk by, you would see this all the time in life, in Greco-Roman life. And what they would do is they would have meals. these meals were public and they were often associated with the trade guilds in other words if you were a merchant in corinth this was part and parcel to daily life to be involved in common business activities you'd have to enter these particular guilds and there would be their gods and they would have it's actually i think if you studied the history of the restaurant you'd trace it back right here that a public restaurant and you'd sit down at restaurants in these trade guilds and all the food would have been dedicated to the local patron the deity of that particular trade guild and so it created a real conundrum and a real problem for the christians so they would sit down and they would all begin by offering this food to an idol it was interesting in this history because there was a lot of access that would then happen to meats and foods that after this would be available in the marketplace at a lot less of a cost, so the poor would then come in. And a lot of these Christians were poor, and they couldn't afford the prime meats, so then they would have to buy the meats that was offered to the idols. You can imagine all the questions that came out in Christians' minds about this problem. So to be involved in business, you'd enter these trade guilds and there were dining halls and they were tied to merchants. What do you do? Do you partake? Do you sit there and eat meat that's been offered to a God that doesn't speak and a God that doesn't answer and a God that doesn't deliver? You take a stand and you say, no, that's a false God. What do you do? I told you, I used this example because I just, I had it happen. I went to this, remember I told you in a Comparatives Religion class, we went to this Buddhist temple and we went in there and there it was. I mean, they were all offering up the apples and the oranges to a little stone Buddha. I mean, it was so eye-opening for me. I couldn't believe it. And then they hauled us all into the giant cafeteria and here we are in the Comparatives Religion. We're sitting down to eat. Some of the brothers walked out. i ate well what do you do here's what happened many of the christians who understood their freedom understood their liberty started saying we can do this it's no big deal why they're not true gods not true gods at all they're false gods false gods everything belongs to our god that's not their god's food it's our god's food he made it he created it you know and and by the way we sanctify it when we give prayer over it don't we our food received is sanctified by the word of god in prayer so when we eat we cleanse it so to speak but then there were many in corinth who had a serious problem with that they were really troubled with that they didn't understand how they could not be defiled because of their past i mean they had come out of this stuff and couldn't be defiled and then they're thinking how is that a witness how is that a a witness that's a witness issue how could i sit there and eat that when it's been offered to that i don't want anything to do with that i don't want to touch that i'm not going to handle that consciences were really disturbed i want you to remember romans for a moment that somewhat addressed the principle of this that helped us initially tonight's a little bit different but romans started by dealing with a problem like this in chapter 14 by saying to the strong i want you to welcome the weak but not to quarrel over opinions one person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables so he agrees the strong are those who understand their significance of what christ did for them on the cross and they are free from these daily regulations and and they don't they didn't have a conscience issue with it they're free in this regard but many still had this conscience issue and paul then would go on and give instruction he said remember in romans 14 let not the one who eats despise the one who doesn't eat you see i'd have been able to sit there that day and say they don't get it because they walked out of the they just don't get it those fundamentalists i could have done that and the word is strong there past judgment disdain them in many respects the weak and strong are expressed here by the words that paul uses to describe the emotions that come into the midst of conflict and you know emotions go up at times like this when the strong who understand their liberty see someone doing something they feel that attacks their freedom in christ paul uses the word for disdain in romans but then you could hear the gentiles becoming prideful against the jews when they you know saw these jews who wouldn't touch the meats and they saw in their vegetarian status or however they were still following the old regulations that they were just tied to the old ways and these christians were weak and needed to be corrected and they just are stuck in their old traditions and they want no diversity they're doing what they've always done and paul then for them as he said let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eat so there was romans 14 answer to the problem the strong should not disdain the weak and the weak should not pass judgment on the strong that's Romans that's the summary of Romans 14 and 15 but in first Corinthians he goes a little bit deeper in dealing with the problem and exposes something that I believe is is really helpful for handling these kinds of things he's really concerned about the attitude of the strong It's not an issue-oriented thing so much as it is for Paul, a heart-oriented thing. And in the first thing he does here is, in the face of this particular food issue that was happening in Corinth and causing a division in the life of the church, he speaks to the strong, he speaks to the free, and he addresses the issue of knowledge. It's as if he says, here's what we who have this freedom, we who have this conviction to eat food offered to idols here's what we know i feel it's a little bit sarcastic here's what we know listen to verse 8 now concerning food offered to idols we know that all of us possess knowledge paul includes himself in this this knowledge puffs up but love builds up if anyone imagined that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know but if anyone loves god he's known by god what a fascinating verse to deal with this issue if you get this verse you'll get it tonight we have this knowledge that there's one god we know and understand that we've studied him we know him and it's just painfully obvious to us isn't it that idols are not real just painfully obvious there's only one true god verse 4 we know that an idol has no real existence and that there's no god but one for although there may be so-called gods in heaven and on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords so-called yet for us there's only one god we know that the father from whom are all things and for whom we exist and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are all things and through whom we exist. We know that. We get that. Here's the problem. For some tragic reason, says Paul, that knowledge that God's given you, it's puffed you up. It's puffed you up. You say, wait a minute, whoa. i thought the knowledge of god was good of course it is nothing wrong with the knowledge of god it's right there's only one true god all the rest are idols all food is his we're free to eat whatever we want but here's what paul was seeing here's what paul was dealing with that knowledge led to puffing them up and how did it lead to puffing them up paul is saying there's two kinds of ways that knowledge can be used it can either puff you up or it can be used to edify your brethren and loved them did you notice the contrast there what was going on you can imagine it this group in the church was correct and they took their righteous position with all their knowledge and all their wise understanding to the total disregard of their weaker brothers so that what filled them in their correct position was pride and not love paul is saying that knowledge that is guided by love if it's truly guided by love it's going to seek to edify the brethren so what paul is saying to them is just because you have this conviction and you have this knowledge even though you're correct you're free that doesn't mean that you should ever do something that would cause into the life of the church confusion or trouble your brothers who don't yet understand that you see how much the apostle really cares about the weak brethren and who did he get that from our lord who looked at sheep who didn't understand much of anything weak sheep so what was the problem this behavior had caused factions in the church and the fruit of it was separated behavior that was happening in the body this group doing this this group doing this and paul is saying when that's the kind of fruit that results from your convictions when your conviction is correct it has the kind of fruit of separating out in the body of christ or forming some kind of schism in the body of christ or doing something separate from the body of christ demonstrating nothing of the nothing of the fruits of the spirit that should follow the truth of the matter before god is you don't know anything in all your wise knowledge that's what he said you know why you don't know anything because there's no love there's no love if anyone loves god that one's known by him so you see what he's going after it's fascinating it's an attitude or spirit that fills the correct when the knowledge you have is not accompanied with humility and kindness and submission it's not of god however right you are listen to calvin i quote him because he's so right on true knowledge is acquaintance with god which produces humility and submission to god and elders it prostrates us entirely instead of elating us true knowledge listen to this no learning oh this is so good this is so good no learning is commendable that is not dipped in the love of god john calvin no learning is commendable that's not dipped in the love of god i believe that's so important for church life One of the things that I have grown to despise in the ministry is sectarian behavior. I've seen so much of it in my run as a pastor. And people with their convictions, they separate out and they separate out and they separate out, even when the conviction may be right. And nobody else gets it. Nobody else understands it. They're not there yet. They've not been taught in it. And if everyone pushed their convictions that way, Can you imagine what would happen in the life of the church? Can you imagine how many little true churches would splinter out until you end up with your own little true church in your own house and you're the pastor? I've seen that. You're the last one. No, it's not 5,000 that not bowed down the knee to bail. You're the last one that's not bowed down the knee to bail. There's one particular man I knew who did this up north. Divided out and divided out and divided. He's all over the blogs. Everyone sees him as a truly reformed person. he's not a truly reformed person he's a truly divisive person he's in no church and all of his convictions on the regulative principle of worship have left him alone have left him alone jesus was constantly dealing with this stuff remember the pharisees the fine matters of the law and i'm going to go to the law now woe to you scribes and pharisees hypocrites for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and you've neglected the weightier matters of the law justice mercy and faithfulness now i am puzzled by that because what they were doing was in the law it was correct they're tithing jesus says you should do that but in observing the law you're straining out gnats and you're swallowing camels why what does that mean they were beating everyone over the head with their convictions justifying themselves as the only right ones keeping everyone a little bit further away from the kingdom than them and in doing that they broke the weightier matters of the law there are weightier matters of the law i mean that's the only conclusion you draw they broke the summary of the law in loving people and demonstrated nothing by a love that edified it only produced produced alienation and fighting these guys would sit around having a beer and dissect the 613 commandments that's all they did and they argued about it they got it right there are things that people believe the law teaches that others in the history of the church haven't seen and there are things that are clear and there are things that aren't as clear and then there are the weightier matters of the law that typically when we get caught up in those things are often neglected when everyone's equally ultimate on every single issue dangerous dangerous calvin is so helpful no learning no law keeping is commendable before god if it's not dipped in the love of god so what i'm saying is are our convictions ask if the fruit of the conviction is actually a greater transgression of the law of love if that's the fruit then you're not learned you stop to learn no matter how much studying you've done so there needs to be what i'm saying an accommodation to the weakness of our brethren as god has accommodated us to our weaknesses just as god has accommodated to the plethora of weaknesses that we daily commit and sins before him and helped us in our weaknesses and woes so we need to love our brethren and come alongside them and their weaknesses not run away and separate from them because if anyone really thinks they're keeping the law to a t you are arrogant no one keeps the law to a t you're the arrogance and thinking that you have come to the right understanding i understand the law i understand the law do you is there a fruit of love they were pleased with their position they came to their position and it led to the despising of others and that demonstrated no love and god wanted them to know in their correct position their application stunk before him because he desires mercy and not sacrifice mercy it's interesting that this kind of law was laid down at the jerusalem council over this issue the weak were not being considered and therefore the Jerusalem council said this therefore I judge that we should not trouble those among the Gentiles who are turning to God but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted to idols what? they're free what are you laying a law on them for? you see how sensitive they were to the consciences of the Jews who would see them eating polluted foods. So think of the divided body in Corinth for a moment. One pastor said, Kim Riddlebogger, you really aren't free to do what you want. We're part of a body. Love, he says, which does not seek its own interests and which truly considers the interests of others may be free to do something. but should we do it if it offends others? One of the things that I think is lost today is what James says. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle. I love this one. Willing to yield. Willing to yield. Full of mercy. good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy willing to yield let me say this clearly when knowledge is puffed up that quality of a willingness to yield absent and that's essentially what paul says here you may know this you may be correct but you're not considering that others don't get this you have no sense of how you're stumbling them in their weakness and paul says not all possess that knowledge that you have some through former association with idols eat food is really offered to an idol and their conscience being weak is defiled food doesn't commend you to god we're no worse off in this particular case if you eat or don't eat but you don't have to do it he says you're trampling their conscience underfoot when you stomp on someone's conscience, it leads to ruin. He uses strong language here. But I can't help but to think about how much care Paul has for those who aren't where he is. And this is what I've had to learn. I was like this. You asked Darcy when we first got married. I was out of control in my convictions. You didn't get me now. I'm calm, I think. But you know one thing I've learned is that where I am today is not where I was yesterday. and imagine if in all of your weakness some pompous arrogant christian comes along and stomped all over you in your new delicate christianity making you feel like you're sinning against god because you're not doing this or doing that something that's so far away from the simplicity of what you've just believed and heard i mean what three things must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort three things the greatness of my sin and misery what how I'm set free from all my sins and misery and how I'm to thank God for my deliverance. Well, you're not really being thankful because you're not doing this one thing. Whoa. Wait up. Here comes true knowledge doing that to you. What do you think that young Christian's going to say? You're scaring them. You're scaring them. You're not coming alongside of them. You're not loving them. You're hurting them. I did that stuff. That's what I'm saying. Imagine in all of your learned convictions today, if someone had done that to you when you were unlearned. And if we do that, we're really not learned. So what is this saying? We must all learn in our convictions to treat the weak with love and concern for them and their weakness. If you believe your brother or sister is sinning, you'll never win them by bashing them over the head. You'll never win them by separating out and acting like they're not Christians. while we never give away our liberties, I'm not promoting that, while we never give away our convictions about the commands of God, you have to be willing to embrace and help your, if you view them as that way, weaker brethren with the kind of love you've known from God. When it comes to liberty, one pastor said you should be willing to give it up for the sake of the weaker brother who's struggling with real convictions. You don't give it away, But you might give it up for a time. And that's what Paul says in verse 9. Take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you having knowledge and eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged 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's weak. You sin against Christ. That so alarms me. I don't want to sin against Christ. Therefore, food makes my brother stumble. I'll never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble. Well, it's much deeper tonight than just saying, well, I'm not going to have a glass of alcohol. It's the issue of pride. And that extends to how we deal with our brothers and sisters in every circumstance. Has the knowledge that we have and the wisdom that God has given to us produced and yielded the kind of fruits that are peaceable in our lives and gentle and long-suffering and willing to yield. When Christ came, He didn't assault weak sheep. He went after those Pharisees doing this stuff. And He loved the weak enough to go to the cross and pay for their sins. And He wants us in the kind of forbearance that we've known and patience to be imitators and share that mind That's what this is. Imitators and share that mind. Receive one who's weak in the faith. And in doing that, may your convictions demonstrate love that edifies and not tears down. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for instructing us in your word and I confess and we all confess that we do this and we've sinned against Christ this way. And a sermon like this is I'm passionate about as a pastor because I know I've done many of these things to people. And we ask for forgiveness that we have not demonstrated the kind of compassion, forbearance, patience, willing to yield spirit that is put on display all throughout the pages of Scripture. Help us in our weakness. Because the reality is we're all weak and we all have no knowledge apart from You. Whatever we have is a gift. and for that gift we praise and thank you tonight that we delight in you that we know you and that we understand you and in understanding you may then our love edify those made in your image in jesus name amen