1 Corinthians 8
Turn in your copy of God’s holy word to 1 Corinthians chapter eight. Chapter eight has 13 verses. We’ll take up the whole thing today. We’re gonna find a little respite from all the hard topics. Food offered to idols, probably something you don’t think of and think this is gonna have nothing to do with us.
But remember, in our Southern church context, we do have idols. Right, we may not have the struggle with food offered to idols, but we have the, what’s the little saying, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t cuss, I don’t chew and dance and go with girls that do and all the rest. We have our taboos as well. And sometimes those taboos, as Paul would call them, rise up to human traditions that can rule and even divide a church. So this, I think, gives us some guiding principles for those sorts of things. So, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, and let’s ask for God’s help and blessing. Pray with me.
Lord, without eyes that see, without ears that hear, without hearts that perceive, these words may not penetrate to our very joints and marrow and do the work. So open our eyes, unstop our ears, soften our hearts. This is not the word of man, but it’s the word of the living and true God.
And so help us to see it as such, receive it as such. May we treasure it. May we tremble at its threatenings. May we embrace the promises and may we yield our lives to the commands of your holy word as Jesus has done for us. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.
Now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and 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 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. However, not all possess this knowledge, but some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol in their conscience.
Being weak is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do, but take care. that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an 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 consciences 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.
Amen. This is God’s word. Well, it’s Friday night in Corinth. Dinner out. Where are we going to go? Steak. Right. Hard week. Steak. We’re going to go to the house of Apollo. We’re going to go to Hermes Grill. We’re going to go to La Chateau Venus Fortuna or the Bistro Isis. Temples in Corinth and other places around the Greco Roman world. would take the meat that was offered to idols, but not consumed by fire, and they would repurpose it. They had a little temple restaurant. They had a temple dining hall.
Some of you probably have been to Sin City, Las Vegas, and it’s all about the gambling, right? So the food is cheap, at least it used to be. So you go out to Vegas and you can get a, you know, back in the day, you could get a $5 steak. The hope is you go in their place and bet all your money and lose it and they get to keep it. So they made the money back off of the cheap stakes. But you get the idea. There’s an association, a stake in Las Vegas, in a casino. Ooh, can’t do that.
What about meat offered to idols in a temple? and you’re a Christian, you believe in the one true and living God. You’ve been taught Deuteronomy chapter six from the great Old Testament scholar, the apostle Paul. Here, O Israel, the Lord, our God is one. And then you’ve been taught the commandments. You shall not have any other gods. You shall not make graven images, yet the stake is so good. The price is so cheap. And so it’s Friday night. What do you do? What if people from church see us? Right.
Y’all know the difference between a Presbyterian minister and a Baptist minister? There’s a lot of differences, aren’t there? The Presbyterian minister will walk up to you in the liquor store and say, I haven’t seen you in church in two weeks. Right, you get the cultural connection between Paul’s day in Corinth and our day now.
We make connections and then we say there’s a taboo, there’s a big no-no. Well, what about picking up a little meat at the market? And the Temple of Artemis is having a big sale on ribeyes. Yes, they were offered at the Temple of Artemis. not consumed, not burned, still good. And so it’s the 4th of July or whatever they have for Independence Day in Rome, Patromana Day, something like that. And so we got to have some steaks to go along with our fireworks. And so we’ll pick up some meat at the market for our weekend celebration or worse, the Sunday church picnic. And your wife says to you, did you see the Smiths at church last week?
They were over in the corner because they wouldn’t eat the meat because it had been offered in the idols. You can see how quickly this would create an uproar in the church at Corinth. You can see how this issue would really matter to the health and to the unity of the congregation.
So Paul across the ocean at Ephesus gets word of all their issues. He’s dealt with prostitutes. He’s dealt with marriage and asceticism. Now he’s going to deal with meat. He’s going to get on the issue of idolatry. He’s going to get on the issue of you know, who has superior spiritual gifts, those sorts of things.
But today we want to think about this issue in the life of the church at Corinth. And we really want to see a connection to, for our sakes, because while it may not bother us, We live in a culture where lots of people from lots of nations are living in our country and they may come to faith in Jesus. And this could be an issue for them. Food offered to idols.
And of course, we live in the South with all the do’s and all the don’ts. And believe it or not, we have split churches in the South. over, was it, teetotalism or other issues, social issues, playing cards. I remember as a freshman in college, there were a group of guys on our hallway that played poker.
And one of them said his grandmother really got upset with him for playing poker on Saturday night. And he said, don’t worry, Grandma. If I win, I’ll tithe. And then he scandalized her and he says, if I lose, I’ll sneak a little out of the offering plate when it goes by to make up for the loss.
But you can see how these issues in our own day can scandalize the church. So Paul here in the section on Christian living, speaking largely to new converts, either converts from Judaism who now believe in Messiah or converts from Roman paganism to Jesus Christ have lots of cleaning up or sanctification. We don’t come to faith in Jesus neat and squeaky clean. Perhaps if we grew up in the church, we grew up in a Christian home, Christian family, there’s lots less for the spirit to work at in us. But someone who comes just from rank paganism, these might be bigger issues.
And so what’s the issue at stake? Is it the meat? Or is it the conscience? What can a person’s conscience allow him or her to do based on their past experiences, their present growth in grace, and the context of the world around them? There will be people with weak consciences who will say, this meat has really been offered to an idol. And even though they believe in God, the living and true God, and they should believe idols are nothing. And so the meat is just meat. They still see it as meat offered to idols. And it wounds their conscience. It crushes their spirit. And Paul will use a word, it even destroys them.
Or there’s the strong. We know stuff. We know who God is. We know what this meat is. And we just munch away, no care and no concern. Well, you see how that can cause division and disunity. Now I’m old enough. I have to make stupid jokes and I’m kind of tipping you off. There’s a lot at stake here, right? Y’all got it. Good. Very good. All right.
So we want to think today about head and heart. It’s one thing to know knowledge, scripture, theology in our head. It’s another for it to sink to our heart and for us to be able to put it into practice in our lives. Another way to say this is we want to think today about truth and relationships. Yes, there are biblical and theological truths which we must iron out, straighten out, and we must get them right in our head. But how do we maintain relationships when truth is very clear? And that’s always the rub, isn’t it? Do we sacrifice truth for relationships? Do we sacrifice relationships for black and white truth?
And what God teaches in this passage is that if we know God and God knows and loves us, his spirit will work in us and we’ll take the true truth that we know and learn And as we put it into practice in our lives, we will share the love of that truth with others for whom Christ died. And we will serve them and not our pride.
He’s gonna say, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Well, let’s think for a moment about the food offered to idols. Paul makes a statement in verse four. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, We know, okay, knowledge is going to be a big word here.
We know that an idol has no real existence. If you believe in the one true and living God, you understand that every other little G God does not exist. There is no such thing. And so we know an idol has no real existence and that there is no capital G God, but one.
For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom we are all things and for whom we exist, one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
And then he gives the however in verse seven. However, not all possess this knowledge. He just gave a very rich and robust theological statement, didn’t he? That God exists and all things exist from God. And even names the second person of the Trinity in a very equal way, creator God, glory back to God, both God the Father, God the Son.
And so what’s behind the meat? It’s an idol. What’s behind the meat? It’s a little G God. What’s wrong with eating it? Well, if you know things, what’s the answer? Nothing. But what if you have a weak conscience? What if you are in the church? and there are people with weak consciences and they don’t know what you know. They don’t draw the same conclusions that you draw. And so you scandalize the weak. You don’t spare the weak, but you cause them, by example, to wonder and to do something they don’t feel like they ought to be doing.
So the food that is offered to the pagan idol, so-called gods, so-called idols, are not real. There’s just one true God. You’re causing difficulties. in the church. And so you might have all your theology wrapped up, right? Nice and neat and with a bow. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in sin and salvation. I believe in the freedom to make choices in my own conscience and no one can persuade me, no one can change my mind. And you can believe that and you can live that in such a way that it causes great harm to the church.
And that’s where we come to the second point that Paul makes, knowledge puffs up. Did you notice in verse one, knowledge puffs up, love builds up. We’ll think of love in a moment, but in the first portion of verse one, in the topic being the idols, can we eat the food, not eat the food? Knowledge puffs up. Now, Paul’s not saying don’t have knowledge.
It’s going to lead to bad things. And he also doesn’t say don’t have money because that, that leads to bad things, right? Love of money is the root of all evil, not money itself. But sometimes we can say, oh, you shouldn’t have money, lead to evil. You shouldn’t have knowledge. Don’t study the Bible too much because then you’ll get all puffed up.
No, we want to have knowledge. We want to know the one true and living God. We want to know who he is, what he’s done and what he requires. We want to have that exact in our mind, but it should seek to our hearts and it should lead forth to a life that is loving and serving to others. But here’s a question.
If knowledge puffs up, does your knowledge of the Bible, does your knowledge of theology and doctrine lead others to love God more? Or do you turn them off? Does it cause others to seek to know what you know because they can’t help but know that God? Or does your knowledge of God, the Bible doctrine, give you a desire to serve others where they are, in their weak conscience, in their lack of knowledge or understanding?
Would it lead you to say, you know, this is a person with a tender conscience. I’m vegetarian for the moment. That’s the question. So knowledge puffs up. And he’s speaking here of pride, isn’t he? He’s speaking here of having the big head, being arrogant.
We call this in the reform tradition, cage stage Christianity, right? You come to faith in Jesus. You start learning that God is sovereign and Jesus died for the sins of his elect. And you start getting all this good Bible doctrine, theology, and you’re just a big jerk. Cage stage, you’re gonna fight everybody, right?
You’re gonna be walking around church, eavesdropping on a conversation, and you’re gonna swoop in, right? I heard you say something that sounded really Arminian. And you know we can’t do that because that was the heresy of, you know, and then you just launch into this, and everybody’s looking at you like, would you buzz off? Would you go away? We become unloving, we become critical. We become the Bible police, right? We become the theological Gestapo.
We do this until we grow out of it. We do this until our hearts melt. We do this until the reality of the knowledge and the reality of the heart actually mix. The Puritans said something like this, we have to experience our knowledge of God. We have to live experientially or even experimentally the truths that we confess, the truths that we know. It’s one thing to say, I believe this. And it’s another to have experienced the goodness of God and to live it.
And often that takes time. Probably as a, as a new Christian, you ought to kind of be quiet and listen for a couple of years. Right. When I was in seminary, this was a big problem. Oh, I’m at the seminary. I’m learning all this good stuff. And I remember one of our teachers saying, keep your mouth shut till you’re about 50. Yes, go to a church and study and preach. Go to a church, study and teach. But you better not be writing anything dogmatic till you’re 50.
Well, look at today. You go read the blogosphere and if you have a twinkle in your eye, a dream in your heart and an internet account, you can post all kinds of things and you feel like you have to pipe in on everything. And you’ve got to pipe in on every social issue. You’ve got to pipe in on every other issue because you know stuff and people need to know you know stuff. And so there’s that.
And this can cause division in the church. This can cause us to do things that we can justify in our brain. It’s just offered idols. It doesn’t matter. And we can justify our behavior at the expense of others. And it creates a sort of elitism. We can have a church. of meat eaters and this isn’t the whole carnivore, herbivore thing, vegetarian, non-vegetarian thing.
This is a conscience issue, an idolatry, or food offered to idol issue. And what happens is we can become so swollen in our head filled with knowledge that our eyes can hardly see. We don’t see people, we just see nails. And what do we do when we get a hammer and we see nails? Everything’s gotta be hit. That’s right.
So knowledge puffs up, but love, verse one also tells us, builds up. Think about the buildup word in the scripture. We don’t want to tear down the church. What is it in the scripture we want to tear down? We want to tear down strongholds, taking every thought captive and making them obedient to Jesus. But what do we want to build up in the church? We want to build up one another. We want to build up the body of Jesus.
Paul will say, all scripture, is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching and rebuking and for correcting and for training in righteousness. So yes, there’s knowledge. And there’s a time and place to use it to fix things that aren’t correct. It’s just probably not for the cage stage, you know, type people to be doing. But Scripture will fix what is broken. The Spirit with the Word will pick up what’s been knocked over. It will fix what is cracked and broken. And it will fully furnish. every believer to live a life that is pleasing to God and in service to others. It takes a long time for that to happen. The Christian life is a long haul. It’s not instantaneous. Sanctification is a lifelong process.
And so when we have weaker brothers and sisters in the church, if you have knowledge of God and God has knowledge of you, the love of God, the love of the knowledge of God and the Holy Spirit in you will seek will cause you to seek to unselfishly care for others and to build up the church using scripture. Ephesians 4 to 9, this is a verse we had to memorize as kids when we talked ugly to each other. Now I can’t remember it. Let no unwholesome talk come from your mouth except that which edifies.
And one of the synonyms, Bible synonyms for edification is build up. What, edifice, right? Is that a building? Edify, build up. And so do we want to get puffed up and tear down? Or do we want to love and build up? And how do we do that? Yes, we need knowledge. Yes, we need it to sink into our hearts. But we need to look to the example of Christ and his humility and our confession of sin today and assurance of pardon.
I forget exactly what’s going on, but I think we had a couple of disciples and maybe one of their mothers said, One on the right, one on the left. When you go to heaven, Jesus, that’d be just perfect. And Jesus says this, this is not about seats. It’s about serving. This isn’t about degrees on the wall. It’s about serving. Yes, we need knowledge. but it gives you a jumping off platform to serve others.
And so we consider the humility of Christ. He did not come to be served, but came to serve and to give his life as a ransom. When Paul is writing Philippians, he says, consider yourselves or consider others better than yourselves. If you need an example of humility, look to Jesus. He left the riches of heaven. For our sakes, he became poor. And why did he do that? In order that we might be rich. How can you enrich others in the Christian community? Is it by getting your Bible gavel and beating everybody on the head with justice? You’re wrong.
Or do we Do we dwell with people for a time, a season, a lifelong in the church and in the way of Jesus we serve others, leading them to a knowledge of truth? Well, we consider the humility of the Lord Jesus. We know things, yes, but we use those things to serve others so that they might stand firm in Jesus with no longer a weak conscience, but a strong conscience. and they can go on in grace.
Remember, Paul here is speaking to the church. He’s speaking to the whole group. Yes, it’s made up of individuals, some of them apparently knuckleheads, but he wants the whole church as well as individuals to grow in the stature and the knowledge of Jesus.
That won’t happen if knowledge puffs up, but it will happen if love builds up. Now, one thing we wanna think of here, we’ve got food offered to idols, knowledge puffs up, love builds up. We wanna think of the conclusion Paul has, which is love limits our liberty. There is this statement in our confession of faith called on the freedom or the liberty of Christians. And it tells us God alone is Lord of the conscience. God alone is Lord of the conscience and he has left each of our consciences free from the tyranny of men.
You think about all the tyranny that we live under. Ooh, I saw them out dancing. Ooh, I saw them at the ABC store. Ooh, I saw them at the Temple of Artemis eating steak on Friday night. Ooh, you know, we tattle on each other. We judge one another. And this freedom of consciousness says God alone is Lord of the conscience. Each man, as they read the word and are convinced and convicted by the Holy Spirit, makes up his own mind and his own choice.
And you think about it in the Christian communities, what divides us? Oh, do we homeschool? Or do we send the kids to Christian school or heaven government schools, right? You got to call it government schools because that’s kind of a pejorative. But then there’s the skirt length or the hair length or the, you know, are we a Dave Ramseyite? Or do we have debt, you know, or Are you on the keto diet? On and on it goes and we load up and lord. things on each other. And then it gets into theology. Oh, you’re not a superlapsarianism. So you don’t know what that is, do you? What’s the opposite of infralapsarianism? You don’t know what that is either. And that doesn’t edify you a bit. But we love to weigh each other down with stuff, whether it’s little social things or great big doctrines.
And so when we’re told God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it free, from the tyranny of men, we need to remember our consciences must be guided by the scripture. While our consciences are free from men, they are not free from God and His revealed will. So whatever God requires, we must do. Whatever God says we should believe about Him, we should adhere to that. Otherwise, we are idolaters. Otherwise, we are disobedient. And so each of us has a conscience before God, and He is our Lord. He is our truth giver, and He is our judge. And so we wanna be careful living in the Christian community to remember that not all have arrived at that place. Verse seven says, not all know about gods, right? Some are weak and they associate the meat that was offered to idols, not consumed, but sold in the temple dining room or marketplace. They believe that’s just defiled meat and if I eat it, I’m defiled.
In verse nine, Paul says, we need to take care. As the mature, maybe the ones with some knowledge, we need to take care not to encourage someone with a weak conscience to violate their own conscience. And so there are times in the church where someone may hold to something we consider silly. We consider petty. We consider an old social construct that has no place in God’s word. We need to be careful not to lead them. or to destroy their conscience. There’s a little saying I was taught years ago, we need to spare the weak, but scandalize the hypocrite.
We had a teacher in our seminary who was known as, you know, he was the guy to go to for answers, a great teacher, and he, if you had a question for him, he’d often say, come to lunch with me. Well, he goes to lunch with this one guy who, Dr. Kelly, I got a big question, and this may be apocryphal, I don’t know if it’s true, I think it was. Dr. Kelly, I got a big question for you. All right, you know, let’s go to lunch. And so they get to lunch, and Dr. Kelly orders a shot of something, And he lights up a cigarette.
And he says, what was it you wanted to ask me? And the question was, what’s the liberty of conscience? Can a Christian drink or not drink? Well, I think he answered that. But there may be times and places you, as the apostle Paul will say here, you keep that to yourself. Not that it makes you a hypocrite, but you may be in a place where there are weaker brothers, weaker sisters, and your love for them limits your liberty. You see, the problem here is you could say, I know stuff, I know my liberty, and I’m not going to let anyone stop me. from my freedoms in Jesus.
See, that’s not love. That’s knowledge puffing up. That’s not wisdom. And so what Paul is saying is skip it. It’s not worth it. Food will not commend you to God. Drink will not commend you to God. You have weak brothers. And if you love them, well, that will commend you to God.
It’s easy for the strong of conscience to wound the weak of conscience. And so we have to be careful. When I was in seminary, we had to write this paper. And it was it was a. I forget it was called something funny like your existential journey to reform theology. Okay. So I wrote it my senior year and we had to tell how we grew up. Did we grow up in a Christian home or not? When did we hear about Jesus? When did we come to faith in Christ? You know, what, what brought you to ministry and what brought you to this particular seminary to study?
So here I am three years in writing this paper and I wrote in there how when I was in college, uh, there were a large number of people in the reform tradition who turned me off. And they turned me off because they rattled on and on about their freedoms in Christ.
They could drink, they could smoke, they could do all these things. And what it appeared to me was they were justifying licentiousness. And that was a big turn off me, so much so that I didn’t go to the school I graduated from right off. Now, I went to this other school and figured out I was going to be really confused if I stayed there. So I transferred to the seminary I went to.
Thankfully, what is their motto? A mind for truth and a heart for God, kind of from our passage. It was a big blessing to me. So I wrote this paper that said I almost didn’t come here. And my teacher, when he read the paper, just wrote, wow. Where would you be if these people won? if they had to flaunt their freedoms in Jesus for alcohol or meat offered to idols. And it made you so uneasy that you didn’t stick with your Christian tradition.
That’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? When our rights Maybe they’re based on truth. Lead us to destroy other people or to set them off on a different path for a while. Well, what does Paul say? What is the conclusion we should leave with? It is this. We should take care. We should be careful. Thinking of others, we should not lay a stumbling block before them.
Remember when you’re in middle school and one of you crouches down behind a friend and the other comes up and scares them and they fall back over you? All right, that’s falling backwards. But what about a stumbling block in front of you? And you just fall forward flat on your face.
Take care that you do not trip someone up. Take care that you do not put a stumbling block in front of them that would keep them from the true faith, the true walk with the Lord. And what does Paul say his conclusion is? I will never for the sake of love. That’s a great conclusion, isn’t it? Let’s do pray together. Lord, we thank you that a passage like this can jolt our minds to think about how we care for others. Lord, do give us knowledge, but let it lead to service, we ask in the name of Christ, our great savior, amen.