Love Builds Up, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 (November 3, 2013)

Transcription

1 1 Love Builds Up, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 (November 3, 2013) Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. 4 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. 5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords 6 yet for us there is 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. 7 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. 8 Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9 But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 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? 11 And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. 12 Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. PRAY We have been working our way through the book of 1 Corinthians on Sunday mornings over the past several months, and if you re really alert you noticed something: we were in chapter six last week but we re in chapter eight this week. What happened to chapter seven? (Did anyone notice that?) The answer: several months ago the pastors of several local churches Pat Ward at the Orchard, Eric Hankins at First Baptist, Curt Presley at Christ Presbyterian, and the pastors here at Grace got together and said, What could we do to cooperate together as churches who agree on the foundational gospel issues to show this town and our own church members that we are all on the same team? What could we do? And the answer that we came up with was to preach on marriage, from the same part of the Bible, at the same time. So in February all four of our churches and some others I hope will all preach together on marriage from 1 Corinthians 7 we ll take four weeks on it. We ll work together to some degree on the sermons (but I m sure at the end of the day we ll all preach our own sermons), we re going to coordinate and have identical small group materials produced for that month, we re going to encourage some of our people each week to go and visit some of the other churches involved in this project, and then on the last Sunday night in February all the churches will come together and we ll have a Q&A time with all the pastors of the various churches on stage together taking your best shot. We may even have a potluck supper that last night.

2 2 And again, the reason for this is we want to communicate to Oxford and to the members of our churches that, while we have significant and important disagreements on various issues like baptism and church government, the pastors at least all agree that our churches are on the same team: we all believe in the inerrancy of the same Bible, we all believe in the same Gospel, the same Lord Jesus, the same faith. So, that s still to come in February, and that s why we re not in chapter seven today, but eight. And in chapter eight (actually, chapters eight, nine, and ten of 1 Corinthians), the issue isn t marriage. It s something else, and to have any hope of understanding what in the world Paul is writing about in these chapters I have to take 3-4 minutes and explain the cultural situation in the ancient city of Corinth. There s a lot of debate, actually, among the scholars as to what was happening, but I m satisfied that what I m about to tell you is accurate. In Corinth two thousand years ago, the dominant religious view was polytheistic. There were many, many gods in the Greco-Roman pantheon there was a god of war and a god of love and a god of wine and wisdom and youth on and on. And in the big cities of the Roman world many of these gods in the pantheon had their own temples, where the gods could be worshipped. The participants in these pagan religions would go to the temples to worship, and part of the worship involved a fellowship meal. And at each meal, the sacrifice, the meat of the animal that had been sacrificed, would be divided into three portions: one part burned on the altar as a form of worship, a second part given to the worshippers to eat, and a third part to the priests of the temple. But even if you didn t care anything about these pagan gods or the worship that took place there, if you grew up in Corinth you probably went to these temples on certain occasions your entire life. The temples were basically the restaurants; they were an integral part of the social life back then. So if you re having a wedding for your daughter and you need a place to have the reception, you d have it at the pagan temple. But even in that setting, not strictly a worship service but a party, the pagan gods were thought to be present at the meals. In fact, when you had some kind of function at a Corinthian temple, you were send invitations out in the name of the god of that temple. For example, archaeologists have a papyrus that was used as an invitation to one of the meals, and it reads like this: Antonius, the son of Ptolemais, invites you to dine with him at the table of our Lord Serapus, and Serapus was one of the gods of the Roman pantheon. Now you can imagine Paul going into Corinth, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, and a Corinthian businessman say his name is Crispus hears the gospel and believes it and is converted. Then, two weeks later, his business partner tells him, Crispus, great news

3 3 my daughter Athena just got engaged. The wedding is in a month, and the reception is going to be at the temple of Poseidon. Please come and celebrate with us. Crispus has a decision to make he is now a follower of Jesus Christ, but he s been invited to participate in this pagan, temple worship and he has to make a decision. His entire life he s gone to these temples, sometimes for worship, more often for social reasons, but now he doesn t serve the Lord Serapus or Lord Poseidon but the Lord Jesus! Is this appropriate anymore for a Christian? So, that s the big question being addressed in chapters eight, nine, and ten. Here s the question, though: what in the world does that have to do with us today? How do we apply this today? There is nothing in Oxford in the twenty-first century that I can think of that is directly parallel to an idol s temple in first century Corinth. But there are some principles that Paul teaches in these chapters that certainly apply to the Christian life today. 1 Corinthians 8:1a: Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that all of us possess knowledge. Then, verse 4: 4 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. What s going on in these verses? The quotation marks in the ESV are very helpful just like last week when we looked at the end of chapter six, Paul is quoting the arguments the Corinthians are making to him. The Corinthians are the ones saying, all of us possess knowledge, an idol has no real existence, and there is no God but one. But the main one, the argument from which all the others flow, is all of us possess knowledge. Knowledge is the key word. So you can just hear what the Corinthians are saying: Paul, we have the knowledge we need to make a good decision on this subject. And this is what we know: we know idols are nothing. We know who the one true God is. We know that when we go to temples and eat the meat, yes, technically, it s a pagan worship service. But it doesn t mean anything. We know that idols are nothing. So we can go and sit down and enjoy a good New York strip at Aphrodite s Steakhouse and it won t hurt anyone. The Corinthians are going to continue riding the Corinthian idol feast social circuit they don t want to have to give up the invitations to the various social events of the year. But according to Paul, basing your life, making decisions on what you know, is a horrible idea. Now, to be absolutely clear, Paul is not espousing some kind of anti-intellectual approach to life, where you don t learn anything and books are bad and where you don t study the Bible seriously but, instead, I m just going to let the Holy Spirit lead me no, that s not what Paul is saying. In fact, the way the Holy Spirit leads us is by our applying ourselves to the study of the Bible and knowing his word.

4 4 Paul was one of the towering intellects of the ancient world. He was a learned, brilliant man. When he was about to die, he s in prison and the executioner is basically on his way to see him, Paul writes to Timothy and say: When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. 2 Timothy 4:13. Bring the books, Paul said I m about to die, but I want to read the books and study them; that s not the cry of an anti-intellectual. Paul wants Christians to study the Bible, he wants us to handle the Word of God rightly. Paul isn t arguing for biblical ignorance here. Nor am I I devote a majority of my working life to studying and understanding the Bible so that you all can understand the Bible and have Bible knowledge. Paul s not arguing against that. Instead, Paul says that the Corinthian approach to decision-making is flawed and it s based on some really severe misunderstandings about knowledge. This sermon is really about how Christians should make decisions. That s what we ll look at this morning, under three headings: first, the nature of our knowledge. Second, what we can do with our knowledge (moderate it with love). 2 First, the nature of our knowledge (incomplete and biased). If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 1 Corinthians 8:2. What s Paul saying here? He s saying, Corinthians, you think you have all the knowledge you need to make good, accurate decisions about whatever life throws at you eating at idol feasts, and anything else. But you don t your knowledge is limited, it s fragile, it s tainted; you don t yet know as you ought to know, and it s causing you to make some foolish decisions. How was their knowledge corrupted? First, it was incomplete. See, these Corinthians thought, Everyone has the knowledge that an idol is nothing, that there is only one God, so going to the idol feasts is no big deal. Maybe it was true of them, but as Paul demonstrates later in chapter eight it was not true of everyone in Corinth some of the believers there really struggled with this concept, not everyone knew this, and we ll talk about that next week. First, their knowledge was incomplete. Second, it was biased. The Corinthians arguing for going to the idol feasts had an ulterior motive they wanted to go to the idol feasts. So they were going to come up with some kind of rationale that justified their going to idol feasts. And those two factors incomplete knowledge and bias hinder our decision-making ability as well. None of us, none of us, have the kind of comprehensive knowledge on any subject we need to guarantee we make the right decision every time, and on top of that we are all biased one way or the other, so that we re going to be predisposed to choose one way rather than the other not because of the facts but because of our prejudices.

5 5 I ve got to illustrate this or it won t make any sense: when Mimi and I first started having children, neither one of us really had been around babies, we were both the youngest siblings in our families and we had no clue basically what to do with babies. But we read this book about what to do with babies. One book. And almost certainly the book said way more than this but this was my take away: under no circumstances do you pick up a baby that s crying in her crib and comfort her to try and get her back to sleep. Under no circumstances. You let that baby cry herself to sleep no matter what! Again, I don t think that s what the book said, I haven t looked at it in a decade, but that was my take away. So, based on that one book, I had a parenting philosophy! I knew what you did with babies. And if you had asked me (and maybe even if you didn t ask me) I would tell you what you needed to do with your baby, because, after all, I was an expert I d read one book (and truth be told I didn t read the whole book but just a few chapters of it). I didn t ask my parents for advice, I didn t ask anyone who was twenty years older than me who had already raised children for advice, I didn t read the other books on the subject, the books recommended by the Amazon reviewers that gave my book a one-star review, for example. It was absolute foolishness. And on top of it I had an ulterior motive that I wasn t even aware of then I wanted the advice to be correct because I was desperate to not be viewed as one of those permissive parents. I wanted obedient children, so I had a bias that I wasn t even aware of at the time that made me more likely to choose to have this continuous clash of wills with all our children. Now, by God s grace, my children survived all that they ve had to go through hundreds of hours of psycho-therapy but it all worked out. The transition to the big boy and big girl bed was a nightmare for my older ones, but again, we re all here. But here s the point: we all do that! It is absolutely crazy how we base big life decisions, big life philosophies, on the slightest of information. One book, one conversation, one comment we once heard, one blog, one Supernanny episode. I once had a guy tell me that he doesn t trust any women. Why? Because fifteen years earlier, his first wife left him. So, that s it because that one woman left him, his approach to all the rest of the women he might ever meet was don t trust em. Never mind that maybe his first wife was crazy, and she was crazy because he was mean as a snake to her, that was going to be his philosophy the rest of his days. We all do this I challenge you; you want to apply this sermon? Think about what your most deeply held convictions and philosophies are in this life when it comes to sex, money, child rearing practices, business, etc., and then think back to exactly why you have some of them, and I ll guarantee you that many of your convictions are based on similarly flimsy evidence and experience.

6 6 But some of you might be thinking: okay, J.D., I ll admit, when I first started having children, I didn t know anything. When we first got married, I didn t know anything. When I started my first business, I knew nothing. But now, ten, twenty, thirty years in, I ve got a lot of experience. Why can t I just count on my knowledge now? Two reasons. First, no matter how extensive your practical or theoretical knowledge of any given field might be, if you re going to be successful in that field you can t just know the theory, can you? You ve got to know people. If you re going to be a good dad, you can t just know child-rearing theories, you ve got to know your kids, what they need, what s important to them, what they re scared of, what they re hopes are. You can t love your children in abstract; you must love them. And every child is different. If you re going to be a good wife, you can t just know good marriage theory, you ve got to know your husband. If you re going to be a good business owner, you can t just have an MBA, you ve got to know your clients, your employees, what they want, what they need. And human beings cannot be completely known by any other human being. We don t even know ourselves. Jeremiah 17:9: 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 5 The purpose in a man s heart is like deep water Proverbs 20:5a. Friends, each and every person you come into contact with is made in the image of the invisible God. They are precious in his sight. But they, like their Creator, are incredibly, almost infinitely, complicated. You will never completely figure out any other person their hearts are like deep water. And while we can have categories for people and that is often helpful, it is foolish to think that we ever have anyone s number and we know exactly how they tick. We can perfectly know theory, but not people. Second, as Hamlet said, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Act I, Scene IV, Hamlet. Friends, there is more going on in the world than you could possibly know, more going on than you could possibly factor into knowledge. My favorite example of this from Scripture is from the book of 2 Kings 6 in that part of the book of the kings, we read that the king of Aram is after the prophet Elisha the king wants Elisha dead. So he sends an army to the city of Dothan to capture Elisha. And Elisha s servant becomes distraught how in the world will we escape: 16 Don t be afraid, the prophet answered. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them. 17 And Elisha prayed, O LORD, open his eyes so he may see. Then the LORD opened the servant s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. Forget about the education and pedagogical and business theories, forget even about the complexities of interpersonal human relationships Christians, we must remember that

7 7 there are powers and forces that exert themselves on every decision we face, that these are spiritual forces, and we can t even see them! How in the world could we possibly make good decisions in our lives if we cannot even begin to account for this variable? When I say spiritual forces, mind you, I don t just mean how individual angels and demons might influence a given situation (though I m not discounting that). Mainly I m talking about God how do you factor God s plans and God s will into your decision making? Elisabeth Elliot is a Christian teacher and author, and in the 1950 s she and her husband Jim Elliot and four other missionary couples went to Ecuador to take the gospel to a tribe still living in the Stone Age the Auca and they d had practically no contact ever with the modern world. Jim Eliot and the four other men were within a few weeks of their first contact killed by that tribe as they tried to share the gospel with them. A few years later Elisabeth Elliot wrote an outstanding book about those events, Through Gates of Splendor, and in 1996 (forty years later) she wrote an appendix to it. And she said that over those forty years she d had time to reflect on all that had happened. Over the years many people had come up to her wanting a neat and clean explanation for why things happened the way they did. She said that a lot of Christians basically took the point of view that because x number of missionaries died, therefore x number of Aucans got saved. But others who were not sympathetic to their work in Ecuador, who would basically call it cultural imperialism, would say that it had been a failure, because the tribe and their way of life basically ceased to exist because they couldn t go back after coming into contact with the western world, and many of them died from polio and other diseases to which they had no immunity. But people from both groups wanted a neat and clean answer from her. So how did Elisabeth Elliot evaluate their work? This is what she wrote: God is God I will find rest in nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to God is the God of human history, and He is at work continuously, mysteriously, accomplishing His eternal purposes in us, through us, for us, and in spite of us. She says, I don t know I don t even know what to think of it, because I just don t have enough knowledge. Basically she s quoting Paul, Romans 11:33-34: 33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Our knowledge is incomplete, it s biased, and we ll never have enough of it to make good decisions. So what can we do? Second, what we can do with our knowledge (moderate it with love). Look at verses 1-3: Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone imagines that he knows something,

8 8 he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. What s Paul saying here? He s saying, Your understanding of the world around you and all the different factors that go into any particular relationship or decision you must make is very, very limited and flawed, and if you don t know that then you don t yet really know anything. So don t let what you know be the foundation of how you interact with the world and the people around you. Instead, moderate your knowledge with love knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Put it another way: Christians shouldn t primarily concern themselves with what their next move should be to accomplish some goal. I m not saying don t do that, but it shouldn t be primary. Instead, Christians should primarily concern themselves with how they can best love and serve the people around you. There are all these one another commands in the New Testament, dozens and dozens, of them, and here are just a few samples: John 13:34: 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Romans 12:9-10: 9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Ephesians 4:32: 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. 1 Peter 1:22: 22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8. I gave you five; I could give you fifty. But you know what the Bible never says? You better not make a false move. You ve got to make sure you get this done. If you don t get that done just right you re in trouble. Not once; the Bible is not ambiguous on this point. Don t worry about being right; worry about being loving. Here s the question: in your relationships with other people and in all the decisions you have to make in this life what to major in in college, who to marry, how to raise your kids, which job to take, where to live, what to do with your money, what to do with your weekend, when to retire, how to deal with aging parents, how to deal with rebellious children, how to deal with an ungrateful wife, on and on and on are you more concerned with being right or being loving? That s what it comes down to.

9 9 When your desire is to be right you re going to mess up you re going to overlook factors you could have no way of knowing, you re going to hurt other people, you re going to grieve the Holy Spirit. But you cannot go wrong if you are determined to love the people around you. And you ll be humble. Micah read about Moses earlier in the service the most humble man who ever lived. That s the kind of thing Christians should aspire to. You may think, OK, J.D., you say I don t have to be right just loving. But if that s true am I going to wind up some loser who doesn t have a successful business? Who just does whatever his wife says? Who doesn t have any nice things a nice truck, a nice house, nice places to go on vacation? How am I going to build my life on that? My career, my family, my retirement? I ve known men who have said that. If that s you, here s the Bible s response: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:1-3. The Bible says, Stop worrying about your life you don t have one anymore. In your life, you were headed straight to hell, because you were consumed more with being right than with loving other people, and you ran over people and you misused and abused people along the way. But Jesus came down and died for your sins he paid the penalty for your sins. Your life is not your own anymore; you were bought with a price. And now your Lord Jesus says your only job is to live a life filled with love and good works. You don t have to worry about your life anymore, your reputation, your family, your retirement, your money you died to all that, now just live for him. Hebrews 10:24-25: 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. One of the hardest things about being a Christian is learning not to worry about your life. That s of the toughest things learning to let go. But the longer you are a Christian you see that he beauty of being a Christian is that you don t have to worry your life! All you re called to do is to think and pray and reflect on how you can stir the people around you up to love and good deeds. We have this knowledge, and in Jesus Christ Paul says we can moderate it with love for our good and God s glory. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Amen. Father, we acknowledge that so many times we have wanted to be right in our relationship, we wanted to trust in our knowledge and do things that might harm other people just for the pleasure of doing them. Forgive us of our sins, and by your grace in the power of your Spirit enable us to realize that we are dead, and are lives are now

10 10 hidden in Christ. Empower us, I pray, to live a life of love and service to one another, to build each other up. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.