The brother for whose sake Christ died
1 Corinthians 8 · Vern Peterman · Oct 4, 2009
1 & 2 Corinthians, No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492614451239

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We are indeed going to move into this passage. I apologize for not having the bulletin today. It's actually my fault. In fact, if you find anything that's not quite right around here, it usually is my fault. But anyway, as we go into this passage, there are a few important kind of preliminary things to kind of get the context, get the big picture.

This concerning things offered to idols, or sacrifice to idols, that Courtney read the first half dozen verses of for us. To get the context, the people in Corinth Here they had, you see in the picture, the Temple of Apollo in this kind of panoramic view. Right below it were the shops for the Temple of Apollo. So here's this temple and then here's the things to sell. Well in those little shops, one of the things that they sold was, guess what? Meat offered to idols.

And so we'll get into some of the details there. It was indeed a real issue, not just in Corinth, but a number of other places throughout the Roman Empire. We'll soon step into more on that. As we talked about before, the church at Corinth had written to Paul, and as he writes this, what we find is the second letter, we call it 1 Corinthians, because it's the first one we have. It's the second letter. He had sent to them, or rather they had sent to him, a list of here's some questions or topics or issues that we're dealing with. And so Paul's first Corinthians letter to him is a combination of an alternating, here's what I heard as the message was given to me about what's going on with the church, and then here's what you wrote.

In this case, he's responding to what they wrote. And so this is the next question on the list of the things that they had written. He's going to give the believers some key principles for dealing with the issue, this meat-offered-to-idols issue. He's also going to provide some other, I think, valuable insights that we'll find helpful.

Something else, remember when we started in this book, he goes from 1 Corinthians 1.10 on into chapter 4, dealing with the divisions between the believers. I mean, he goes for several chapters. dealing with the divisions between the believers there at Corinth. He is going to go from here, from beginning with the passage that Courtney read for us, all the way into the first verse of chapter 11, dealing with this question of the meat offered to idols. Now, one of the things that's important to look at, if he spent a lot of time on it, my guess is, it's probably a big issue.

And it's one that at first we might look at and say, well, I don't have a problem with meat offered to idols, so I'm not sure how that's relevant. We'll find out how it's relevant here. Certainly we don't go into our butcher shops and look for certified non-idol meat, right? That just doesn't happen.

Some of you are aware, however, that my grandmother on my mom's side was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji. And one of the things that the cannibals had was a temple there. where they offered human meat to an idol. So an interesting twist on this meat offered to idols issue. My grandmother actually had to deal with it, only it was a little different because you'd go into the marketplace and there was pig meat and cow meat and chicken meat and people meat. And it was pretty easy to tell which had been offered to the idols. Anyway. You might say, but I don't buy meat offered to idols. And that's fine. You probably don't have your hair that way either. While things offered to idols may be rare in our own culture, we do have actually a number of similar kinds of issues. This gets into the realm of what's called doubtful things.

Things about which Christians, there's some kind of argument or contention among Christians. And it's interesting, it'll vary among different Christians as to what the issues might be. One group of Christians be real concerned about, oh, we don't do this. Or the other group of Christians is real concerned about, we don't do that.

As a matter of fact, I heard one instance, there was an international gathering of Christians in Jerusalem one year. This was some years back. But at this international gathering, the Christians from Italy went over to the group of American Christians and challenged them. They were greatly offended that the Christians were drinking coffee! Anyway, so different issues can come up among Christians, being, you know, this is bad, that's questionable, watch out for this. So anyway, we do have issues like this, and even an American Idol show, just to make sure that we've got the category.

In order for us to have the fullest and best understanding of what Paul was saying and how this applies to us, we need to understand what this meat-offered-to-idol issue was all about. Why would Paul spend several chapters on this issue? Why is it so important? He wants us to have a light bulb moment.

Something else we have to understand as we step through this, we're not going to see it so much in today's passage, but their question came across in such a way that it was combative. Now, it wasn't, Paul, we'd like to humbly receive your answer on this. It was like, Paul, we already know all this stuff, and we're not so sure you're qualified as an apostle, but give us an answer and we'll let you know what we think. It was more combative, testy, that kind of thing.

That was the character of it. Now one of the things that was also true, everybody's doing it. I'm not sure what everybody here in this picture is doing with a golf ball head. But everybody in Corinth was doing this, at least all the unbelievers were, and a number of the believers were as well. And I think it's helpful for us to understand it.

Worship for idols representing pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans and the Egyptians and occasionally a few other religions. were very common in the Roman Empire. See, it was sort of a mix-and-match spirituality in the Roman Empire. In fact, there was religious freedom, sort of. Anybody could have any gods they wanted, as many as they wanted. You can mix and match, do your own style, as long as you also worship the emperor. As long as you do that, because that's kind of the expression of loyalty, right? It's the expression of patriotism. to worship the Emperor. After you do that, you can add on as many gods as you want, or goddesses, and there was no problem with that. So they had, in that sense, religious freedom.

The pagan idol worship of New Testament times involved both seasonal, they had annual and seasonal feasts, and then periodic gatherings, like regular gatherings, at these pagan temples. Meat was first offered to the idols and then eaten at the temple and then offered for sale. As a matter of fact, one of the ways you could characterize these pagan temples was they were roughly the equivalent of today's restaurant. You go to the pagan temple and everybody pays their dues and you come in and you just feast and eat and everybody has a grand time, so to speak. Eating the meat that had been offered to the idols was just fine. After all, the idols didn't eat them, right? So everybody was doing it and it was just a normal sort of thing, just like going to the restaurant. What's the big deal?

The idols were typically made of metal or stone. Wooden idols were thought of as being rather kind of low quality, not something you'd want. You want a real quality idol, so metal or stone. Sometimes a wooden shape with metal around it would be sort of okay. But it would represent a god or a goddess from the Greek or Roman or Egyptian or other pagan pantheons. Any of them was fine. And while the idols were made with human hands, they were powerless in themselves. The idols couldn't do anything. They just sat there. They couldn't do anything.

But the spiritual being behind the idol, not really a god, not even with lowercase g, but actually a demon. We'll see that described in 1 Corinthians, but also other passages as well. So when people went to worship the idols, it wasn't just a stupid idol. Oh yeah, it was a dumb piece of wood or metal or stone or whatever it was. But it also had a spiritual being, a demon, behind the idol. That was the power of the idol. The instance where we find in the Gospels where Jesus casts the demons, legion, out of the demoniac is one of those instances. These demons are fallen angels and they were capable of inhabiting even human beings or animals.

The Bible teaches, and this starts all the way back in the Old Testament and some of the earliest books, there in Leviticus 17.7 is one of the first references, that what's really behind the idols is these demons. People are not really worshipping the dumb idol. Oh yeah, it's dumb. but they're ultimately worshipping the demon behind the idol.

This goes on all the way into Revelation 9.20, which is a future time yet to take place. We'll see it when we get to 1 Corinthians 10, 20 and 21. So there would be some idol, perhaps attractive on the face of it, but behind it would be a demon. Behind it would be a fallen angel, some being with ill intent.

Over the centuries, and this goes all the way back to the earliest times that are recorded in scripture, idol worship was associated with a variety of sexual immoralities. That was something that the Canaanites carried out. Matter of fact, what the Canaanites carried out was considered so disgusting by the other pagan cultures that none of them could stomach how gross the Canaanites were. That continued on to the time of the Corinthians, where sexual immorality was involved with the idol worship.

The Jews were cautioned not to fall into the worship of Molech, which involved infant sacrifice. The parents were to take their firstborn child and have it dropped into the red-hot hands of this heated-up God and sacrifice their first child by burning to this God. The Jews were said, do not do this. Do not do this. This is vile. Another thing was cutting the human body. The instance we find that is in 1 Kings 18.

Elijah, remember, opposing the 450 prophets of Baal. And what are the prophets doing? Screaming and hollering and yelling and cutting themselves. And of course, Elijah teases them. What's the matter? Your God can't hear you? But cutting themselves was another thing.

Offering the god idol food and other various gifts of produce and things of that sort was also typically a part of it. So this is the idol worship that is being addressed here. A long-standing history in the Middle East and on into what was then the Roman Empire. You have on page one of your handout, a chart similar to this.

It says the God of the Bible versus the gods of paganism. And what we have there on the first column are aspects of the character of God or of the gods, as the case may be. And it says, for example, infinite knowledge. The God of the Bible has infinite knowledge. Scripture makes that clear. Infinite wisdom, including knowledge of the future and wisdom about the future.

He is infallible, without error. He doesn't go, oops. An unchangeable character. Jesus Christ, the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Not shadow of changing, as James puts it. He doesn't change his or her mind because he doesn't go, oops. He doesn't say, I didn't know that. He isn't subject to the physical world except to the extent that he determines to be subject.

For example, Christ, at the right time, was born of Mary. But other than instances like that, where God determines to be subject to the physical world, He is not. He has infinite holiness. He is the one and only true God. The gods of paganism are the opposite in each one of those instances.

What's interesting is in our own culture, in our own time, we've got this thing showing up in Christendom called Open Theism or Open View. It's the idea, to put it in summary, that God changes and God does not know the future. That's become popular. As a matter of fact, at a meeting just south of here in Colorado Springs earlier in this decade that we're about done with, Earlier in this decade, roughly 30% of the Christians participating in that believed in open theism, so it's not a minor item. Anyway, we've got a six-page handout available on that if you want to take a look at that. The reason for pointing that out is because open theism has a number of things that are in common with the gods of paganism, but not Christianity, not Scripture.

God does not, in open theism, and some say that the Bible teaches this, I'm quite certain it's an error, that God has finite knowledge. God doesn't know what's happening next. Even the statement, God likes surprises. God is surprised to find that people do this or that.

Of course, one of the things that calls into question If He says you are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, if He doesn't know the future and control it absolutely, how can He say that? If you are going to be called home one day to be with the Lord, but He doesn't know the future and doesn't have absolute control, how does that happen? So the issue is actually impacting Christianity right now.

So, all of you who say that you never worship idols, take one step back. Not so fast. Since we don't seem to have idols of that kind, metal, stone, in our own culture, we can often tend to say, well, that's an irrelevant issue. I don't have that problem. I'm just going to forget about this. It doesn't matter.

The truth is Anything that we carry in our hearts about feeling or thought or action that has an equal or greater command on our lives than the God of Scripture is an idol. I've made it no secret that in the earlier years of my marriage, about 15 years, that work called the shots. I'll call it what it is. It was an idol.

And there are people who have those kinds of things that they're wrestling with in the church, and I'm speaking in general today. There might be issues with substance abuse of various kinds. There might be issues with pornography. There might be issues of all kinds and sorts.

Anything that calls the shots in our lives, apart from God himself, is an idol. Our culture tends to idolize people and things, materialism, and even feelings. Along with that, in fact, I would say that's the short list. Along with that, we have in our culture an idolizing of experiences.

I had this experience. We use feelings often in our culture to determine what is true and what is right. It feels right. to use the song from decades back but not that long ago. How can it be wrong if it feels so right? Or the movie lyrics, the movie words, trust your feelings Luke.

So what happened to the meat that was offered to the idols? Important thing for us to take a look at. The meat that was offered to the idols was some of the best meat that was available. After all, you can offer it to the idol. And by the way, you've got to remember, the pagan gods and goddesses were of a character. They didn't love the people. We'd say the God of Scripture loves you unconditionally. The pagan gods don't love the people.

So what you wanted to do, if you were one of these folks, was to buy the God off. What have I got to do to buy the God off? It's kind of like Christians, some of them have that idea. If I just give God a tithe, will He leave me alone? If I go to church every Sunday morning and sit there and endure the pastor teaching for an hour, will He leave me alone? Will God just let me do what I want to do then? What does it take to buy God off?

And that was their idea. And it had no connection As we've tended to look at Christianity, and rightfully so, it had no connection to morality. They would pray to steal and cheat better. They would pray to carry out their immoralities better. So it had no connection to morality.

But still, the pagan idea has crept over into Christianity. in this, that people often are wondering, how do I buy God off? Or people get mad at God. I'm mad because I did this and this and this and God didn't make my life easy street. I'm not on the highway to heaven. Everything is so difficult. What does it take to buy God off? I don't understand.

Here's what happened to the meat. Some of it was consumed by burning. Oh, not a great deal. After all, why waste so much good meat? So, some of it was consumed by burning. Some was eaten by the pagan priests, after all, the food's right there. Some was eaten by temple goers at the feasts. And of course, as we said, it was sort of the restaurant of the era. Hey, I think I'll stop by the temple, you know. You deserve a break today, right? We do it all for you, right?

And some was sold at the meat market. You go in there and they just have meat. Now, they didn't offer this meat out there in market. This has been offered to the idol. They just put it with the rest of them. But it was, after all, some of the best meat. And so those four things happened to the meat.

So what was their question to Paul? What was the issue? The believers in Corinth had all come from this idolatrous culture. They were believers. And they had questions. How do I deal with this cultural issue? Here's this meat being offered to idols. Do I just say, well, it doesn't matter. It's meat. I'll eat it. Do I say, I know what that was all about before. I can't go near that. I think I better not touch it. And you better not either. So they had these issues among them.

Now, there are some things about culture that are morally neutral, and it can make it difficult on the outside to tell a Christian apart from the non-Christian. In some ways, they might look identical. It can be tough to separate out those things. But there are other things that aren't morally neutral. Some of the things, by the way, they may be perfectly legal to do. but still are not right and moral for the Christian to do. So being legal doesn't make it moral. Important principle, by the way. Mead offered to idols was their big cultural issue. We have ours. What as a Christian should I do and not do? And what's something that I ought to consider so far as its impact on other believers?

One of the things he says there in verse 1, all have knowledge. We all have knowledge. That may be a quote from Moses and Corinth, perhaps even drawn from a common proverb. We have proverbs. Some of them we think come from the Bible, but they don't. Ever notice that? Proverbs. Things like, God helps those who help themselves. What chapter and verse is that in? I can never find that, you know? Those kinds of things. So this would be a proverb.

Oh, we all have knowledge. The people would go around saying. In one sense, Paul could agree with it. Everybody knows something about something. Yes. Everybody knows something about something. But, Paul cautions that just knowing about things has a potential spiritual hazard. Human knowledge alone especially just that by itself, is arrogant idolatry. If we say, boy, I just know everything.

Man, I'm smart. Especially after I've had my coffee. The tendency for us human beings is to just pack our head with stuff. See, some Christians grow, others just swell. So he tells them to try to get this thing straightened out. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.

If we have human knowledge and it just simply is about what human beings know and it sets aside and ignores what God's revealed. What's God's perspective on this? What does God think? What has God told us? And if we put human knowledge above that, that does indeed tend to make one arrogant with regards to God and even other people.

People can get pretty big-headed about it. This verse, along with others, has been wrongly used by some Christians to set aside knowledge of God's Word as unspiritual. Oh, you know all that stuff about the Bible, but remember, knowledge makes arrogant. Love edifies. Just forget about knowing anything about the Bible. Just love people. And it's sort of an ignorant mysticism. If I'm ignorant and mystical, then that's really spiritual. But knowing stuff, that's not good. So some have misunderstood Paul's point here.

Love that comes from God, who is the truth, got that? Has to do with knowledge, who is the truth, builds the body. It is love, it is knowledge, it is truth, together. Notice here in Ephesians 4, the end of verse 12 and end of verse 13, to the building up of the body of Christ, that's the passage theme there, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, not just miscellaneous beliefs, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

When we teach doctrine, it is not to have some dry, dusty doctrinal statement sitting on the shelf. and say, see, we all agree with it, even though it's been five years since we read it. It is to be lived out. And doctrine is personal. Ultimately, everything that we're teaching here needs to lead us to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. That's why we gather. It's a knowledge of Jesus Christ. That's what's building each other up. It's not knowledge just about Him. Will you learn things about Him? Yes. But it's ultimately not knowledge just about Him, but knowing Him personally. That's going to be what counts.

Here, later on, that same passage, Ephesians 4.15, but speaking the truth of love. It's literally in the Greek, truthing in love. Truth as a verb. Truthing in love. So it's not you pick truth or you pick love. It's not one or the other. They are not at tension. He says, both. Both.

That's exactly what he was looking for. We will get to 1 Corinthians 13, if the Lord wills. And notice here in the first six verses, this knowing is critical. And it's connected with love. Knowing is connected with love. Matter of fact, in verse 6, love rejoices with the truth. It's knowing, it's truth, and it's love, and they're combined, not at tension and not at odds between each other. We are not asked to pick love or pick truth with a preference for love, but both. Knowledge that leads, as Paul makes clear in the second and third verses, that leads to a responsive love for God is what counts.

1 John 4.12, we love because why? He first loved us. We have a responsive love. That's the character of love that we have.

That's the kind of knowing that he wants. But assuming and presuming is not the kind of knowledge that he's looking for. Knowledge that assumes and presumes actually hinders. In the end, it's God knowing us. It's His knowledge of us based on our having a relationship with Him that matters ultimately. Why do I say ultimately? If you're a believer here this morning, you are saved eternally because God knows you.

What does Jesus say in Matthew 7.23?

I never knew them. Oh, they said, Lord, Lord. Not just Lord. Lord, Lord. So their claim, even doubly so, to know Him and to have some kind of relationship with Him, is not going to do it. It's God knowing you, simply by faith. One of the things that Paul does here in verses 4-6, He starts by making clear the truth about the pagan gods and the true God of the Bible and the idols made in worship by these human beings. The idols were man-made images of various materials backed by a fallen angelic creature, these demons, the worship of which was senseless and false, evil. Only God is worthy of worship, and He is the basis, the only sound basis, for truth, for knowledge, and for authority.

In 4 and 6, one of the other things he makes clear, and this is consistent with the rest of Scripture, all material and spiritual beings and things were created and exist from God the Father. He is the source. That's the way Paul writes it. God the Father is the source of all material and spiritual beings and things. And Jesus Christ is the means of all material and spiritual created beings and things. Jesus Christ the Lord, by Him all things were created. Things were created by Him and for Him and from Him.

In verses 7 and 8, one of the things Paul makes clear is food is not the real issue. It's not forks and knives either. Food is not the issue. One believer looks at the meat and he says, it's just meat to me. I don't care what they've done with it. Put it in front of the idol. The idol can't eat it. I will. And he says, it's just meat to be thankful for.

And its history is not an issue. He says, it doesn't bother me where it's been. You ever hear that? You don't know where that's been, right? Well, this believer says, I don't care where it's been, right? But here another believer sees the food and his mind gets all tied in with going back to its offering for idols. I remember that. I remember going there. We used to go and eat there all the time. It was all mixed up with all these things. I can't eat this without getting all messed up in my head. I get all twisted around. This isn't going to work for me. And so they would wrestle with it. One believer struggles and the other says, I have no problem. Though Paul sees the second believer as the weaker, he doesn't say, just ignore him.

He's the weaker brother, just kiss it off and forget that guy. Who cares about him? No, that's not what he says. Instead he says, the freedom of the other is self-limited by love for the sake of the weaker brother. That one says, I could eat this and it really isn't a problem. But it is a problem for him and so I am not going to eat it if it creates a problem for him.

Now, love the weaker brother but do not knuckle under to legalism. There's a distinction to be made here. Under God's grace, we may have the liberty to eat this and drink that, and that's fine. But grace calls us to refrain where it would cause our weaker brother to stumble into sin. Now, love is certainly not license, that is, open field.

But love is also not legalism. See, legalism loves to make extra rules and laws. In order that you not break this law, we've got six others to go around it. The Jews were told, don't boil a kid in its mother's milk. And by kid, I don't mean child. I mean, you know, talking goat kind of things. Don't boil a kid in its mother's milk. So then they said, well, in order to make sure you don't do that, we make sure we don't have milk and meat in the same meal. So they created extra rules to make sure you didn't break the rule that was given by God. Lots of extra rules.

I understand that in places where the observant Jews have control of the elevators on the Sabbath, the elevator stops at every floor because the pushing of the elevator buttons is work. And the toilet paper on the Sabbath is already broken off in sections and stacked up because breaking it off the roll is work. Extra rules in order to make sure you don't break the law. That's the way the law is. It likes to come up with extra rules and let's make some up. You say, no, that's not the answer either. But one of the key things, grace, this is curious, grace may hold back from what the law allows. You look in the Law of Moses, wait a minute, it doesn't say I can't eat this meat that's been offered to idols. It doesn't say that in there, as long as it's kosher meat, right?

No. What does he do? He says, you refrain out of love for your brother under grace. Not because it's a law that you refrained, but out of love for the brother you refrained. Grace may hold back what the law allows. Isn't that interesting? I have the freedom for all sorts of things, but out of love, under grace. I say, no, I shouldn't do that. Out of love for my brother. We've looked at it in 1 Corinthians 6 and chapter 7 as well. These verses here.

He says that you are not your own for you have been bought with a price. In chapter 7, he tells them again. You have been bought with a price. You see, we are not our own to choose as we like and as our own whim and will would tell us. We're not our own. In chapter 8, he says, that brother is not yours to violate either.

The Lord bought him. That's the brother for whose sake Christ died. You're not your own, and he's not your own either. Love your brother. Out of grace, out of grace, refrain from what even the law would allow. Because you love him. for the one for whom Christ died.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that as we look at these passages here, you have indeed bought us. You paid the price for every single one of us. And Lord, as we look at these too, we just are in awe at the love that you showed toward us. Amazing love, immense love. Thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen.