First Corinthians 8:5-8 Food does not commend us to the Only True God

So we're going to look at chapter 8 again. We're going to move into the center part of chapter 8, verses 5 through 8. And this, I've titled this, Food Does Not Commend Us to the Only True God. So the outline I've been working with, there's kind of two parts. There's the first part we started last week talking about knowledge, love and knowledge. We talked a lot about last week. And this week we're going to kind of continue on with knowledge.

And this is the information that the Corinthians need to understand. They were wrapped up in idols or had been wrapped up in idols, but they're to understand there's only one true God. and that all the claims of deity are false, and there's just a multitude of verses that talk about that, and that God is the source and object and means of our lives. And then as we drop down into starting with verse 7, we're going to see about the problem of, quote, the problem of knowledge, and the problem doesn't lie in the knowledge itself, it lies in appropriating that knowledge. And I think there's a parallel in our lives. God puts forth his truth. We read it.

Do we accept it and believe it and act upon it? And that's exactly what the Corinthians had a problem with. They had heard the truth about the one true God, but they still had their past to deal with. Their time they spent in temple sacrifices. sacrifice to idols. And they still had a conscience and their conscience bothered them, tormented them if you will.

And I was trying to think of some examples of that and hopefully as I get through going through this I'll give some examples in our current lives here. And then we're going to talk about starting this discussion about the weak and the strong brother. And that comes up toward the end of this message. Okay, so let's go and start with the verses for today. Verses five through eight.

For even if there are our so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, and indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things. We exist for him, one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things. We exist through him.

However, not all men have this knowledge, but some, being accustomed to idols until now, eat food as if it were a sacrifice to idols, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. But food will not commend us to God. We are neither the worse if we do not eat it, or the better if we do eat it." That last verse kind of sums up all of today's message. Food's not gonna help you in coming to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So now, I wanted to kind of, as I usually like to do, I like to go back and put in context. Actually, verses four, five, and six are kind of like a package, if you will. They talk about a one true God, and so that's why I wanted to go back to chapter, verse four, and talk about that. So verse four says, therefore, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, We know that there is no such thing as an idol in this world and that there is no God but one. It sounds very similar to the other verses that we just read.

So Paul says, therefore, he's stating conclusion here. And what I did was I, what I like to do, I like to look at how it looks if you diagrammed it. And the subject verb would be we know. A modifier and direct object here. The modifier is concerning things, concerning the eating of things, sacrifice to idols. And then the direct object is there is no such thing as an idol in this world.

So using that as a template, just and then and there's actually it's a compound direct object and the second part of that compound direct object is there is no there is no God but one okay no no is Oida in the sense of to understand to receive to be aware of So Paul, as we did last week, he talked a lot about the superiority of love over knowledge.

Remember that neat thing that I kind of shared with you? Love is intelligent, but knowledge is emotional. Remember I said, Roger, you got that wrong. No, that's a paraphrase of the verse that says, we read it earlier, that said, I hope I find it here. knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. So Paul, we talked a lot about that last week.

So now he's going to kind of go in here and talk about the one true God and eating things sacrificed to idols. Concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, I mentioned before that in my study, I kind of found out that there were places to have food or to eat together. They weren't exactly restaurants. They were places that they ate in the perimeter of the temple, it seemed like. And that's where people might see you kind of hanging out with people or just being with your neighbor or whatever.

And that seemed to be where the issue came along. If a weaker brother saw his brother, if I saw Courtney, they were chowing down a T-bone steak, and I had a problem with that. you know, that might cause me to stumble. And that's kind of the issue here. So Paul will give God's view. What's God's view of this? And God's view is there's no such thing as an idol in the world. Wiest has it. It's a non-entity in the world. The word is, I'm not sure, odin, I guess. Odin. It's nothing, no one. And the footnote in the NASB is an idol has no real existence.

And then we have a couple verses that use that word in 1 Corinthians 10, 19. What do I mean then? The things that are sacrificed to idol is anything or that the idol is anything. So the things sacrificed to it are nothing and the idol is nothing. Then in Galatians it talks about when you did not know God, you were slaves to those things which by nature are no gods. So Macaulay kind of sums it up here. Paul means there's no true existence. They are pieces of wood, stone, nothing more.

And you would think that, you know, for us, if you don't have a problem with that, it seems, oh, that's easy, you don't get that. But I think as we think about that, there are many brothers and sisters that have problems with certain issues in their life, and if you just can't say, well, here's a verse, brother, read that verse, and it's all fixed. Well, it's not fixed. And Paul spends a lot of time showing that just having the knowledge and not having the love and concern for your brother can be a problem. So now let's go on to the last part of the verse.

And there is no God but one. And boy, you look in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was unique, right? They had only one God. All the other nations had all these other gods. So I don't think there's a verse that said, well, Lord, we only got one, but they got a bunch. We won a bunch. And that's what man is. If you got more than me, we got more gods than I got. But he said no, over and over and over again in the Old Testament. Here's one of many verses.

To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord, that was a special name for God, Yahweh or Adonai, He is God and there's no one, no other beside Him. Then shortly after that, the Lord, He is God in the heaven above and on earth below, there is no other. And then here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. So just repeatedly, And then as I mentioned, I kind of, and Macaulay mentioned this so I thought it was appropriate too.

The scriptures, you know, yes there is one true God, but that's not the whole picture of God. We don't see the whole picture of God until we come to the New Testament. And scripture talks about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And a word that we use is the word Trinity. It doesn't occur in scripture, but it describes this amazing thing of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So I borrowed a chart, another chart from, let me get a drink here before I, I borrowed a chart from major Bible themes, talking about God the Trinity. So here's some points from major Bible themes. The doctrine of the Trinity is a central fact of the Christian faith.

It's actually beyond comprehension, has no parallels in human experience. We just can't, we just can't fathom in some ways how that's, you know, it's a truth. Some have said in a way that Trinity shows us that we have a divine book because man, you know, if we have a human book, then human logic should be able to figure it out. We should be able to figure it out. But this blows our mind. Lows our gases.

We say, how can there be three but one? But that's what the Bible teaches. There are three but one. It's best defined as holding that while we exist in three persons, the Father, God is one existing in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons are equal and have the same attributes. Remember last week I had that chart that showed the attributes of God. You can go through that and you can find the attributes apply to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

And they're equally worthy of adoration and worship and faith. They're not separate gods, they're one God. As someone said, the mathematics of heaven is that one plus one plus one equals one. I'm not sure that's totally satisfying, but anyway, it does boggle the mind, because we know in mathematics that's an impossibility, but never mind. Okay. But here's an interesting fact.

Scripture shows us that the Father sent the Son and the Son sent the Holy Spirit and we've kind of labeled that the procession of the Godhead. Remember we see in the Old Testament you know all about Adonai the Lord God and then we see at the beginning of the New Testament foretold in the Old Testament that his son came as a babe in a manger and died on a cross. And when Christ was going before that, said, I'm going to leave you another one, a helper who will be with you forever. So there's a procession of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And then lastly, the Trinity is essential to the being of God. If you try to chop it up, if you try to make God less than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you got a problem. Or if you say, well, I only can believe God, but I can't believe Christ, then you got a problem there. No, you have to believe the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They all have different functions, but one God.

So hopefully that's a short, you know. But I think it's important, and we'll see it kind of show up in some of the other verses, that this is part of the struggle, believing that God is one and believing that idols are not the true God. Okay, so we start in verse five.

For even if there are so-called gods, so it could be for although, and so the verb here is a me, the state in which something continuously exists, The so-called gods, ones being called gods, they're so-called gods, so taking the verb tense, it'd be the one being called gods, continuously exist, and they're not gonna change that, they're not gonna become gods, they're only a name, gods. They still remain false gods. So here's this word used other places. in 2 Thessalonians, who oppose and exalt himself, I think this is the Antichrist, above the so-called gods, or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. So the so-called gods in name only, they only have a name of God, they are not God, nothing more.

And so he, Paul kind of says, well, they're, whether in heaven or on earth, and I kind of, I struggled with this for a little bit and I thought, well, you know, it seems like that this is, they're said to be in heaven, they're said to be in earth. And I want to kind of just list a couple of things here in a minute. And again, we have the verb amy showing up here. So we have many gods, theos, and many lords, kurios, So Constable, I found this kind of helpful, the gods designated, the gods designated, the traditional deities who are regularly given appellation in literature but are seldom referred to as lords, the term Kyrios, on the other hand, is normal title for deities of mystic cults.

So I was thinking about this, you know, are you guys are you guys Jeopardy fans? I know we actually we're kind of see Alex has gone has left. I don't think he knew the Lord. I hope he did, but I don't know. Anyway, one of the categories on Jeopardy, one of the many categories is the Roman and Greek gods. Well, Vani and I do terrible on that because we don't read any of the literature about the Roman and Greek gods. I didn't have to in college, so I never read it.

But all these gods, they're just, they're idols. But they're in the heavens, they're all over the place. We got, you know, Eros, we got, I don't know, I had a list of them. There's 12 of them here. Ares, Zeus, Poseidon, and they all have powers over certain parts of the universe. And I said, that kind of fits in. They're called gods.

Now, with a little more research, the lords, that's another whole bag of worms. I started looking at that and said, I don't want to go any farther. This is ridiculous. I'm not going to spend my time searching out the mystery cult lords. And I remember, help me if I'm wrong here, if you guys are Star Wars fans, don't they call Darth Vader Lord, Lord Vader? And that always kind of bothered me. I don't know what it was, it's kind of, even though I like the series, it's a fun series, but just Lord Vader just kind of got to me there, so anyway.

Anyway, so we see there's plenty of so-called gods out there in the heavens, claim to be in the heavens and on the earth. Okay, verse six. So now it's sort of like, Paul's trying to contrast. He says, well, there are many lords and gods out there, and there are no real gods, but yet for us, the believer, in contrast with Scripture, there is one God. So this word one is cardinal number one. It's one in contrast to many.

And repeats the statement we saw in verse 4C, there is no God but one. And so here he says, you look at the way the verse flows, it says, yet for us, there is but one God, the Father. So here we have one God, the Father, and we have one God, the Son, and we'll see in a second, we'll have the Lord Jesus as the Son. The Holy Spirit's not mentioned here, but anyway, so we see the Trinity showing up here.

So it says, so it's gonna describe about the father, the father's part in this. It says, the father from whom are all things. It's ek, out of is a source. Couple of verses that highlight that. For from him and through him and to him are all things. And all things originate from God. And it says, and secondly, we exist for Him. The verb ice shows ownership. So I just, I love this verse, this passage, I should say, this verse. In the Old Testament, this to me demonstrates God's ownership and care for us. So let me just read, I took parts out, I probably took the wrong parts out. I had to shrink it down, it wouldn't all fit. So here are the parts that struck me when I did this.

Psalm 139 verse 1, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thoughts from afar. You scrutinize my paths and my lying down and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. And it goes on about our talking and speaking. Then it picks up in 13.

For you form my inward parts, you wove me my mother's womb, I will give you thanks, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. Just a wonderful passage that speaks about how God knows us, and he's our father, he knows us. So let's go on.

It says, Jesus Christ, one Lord, By whom are all things. So several verses kind of speak to that. Well, at least I have one here. Colossians 1, 16. For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. And it goes on. And we exist through him or by means of him.

A bunch of verses here. And in Him, all things hold together. He's the atomic force, if you will. He holds all things together. And He was able to do that. Think about that. In His humanness, He died on the cross, maintaining that. It's another impossible thing to understand.

Then Colossians 3, 4, When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. So Consul points out here, kind of combining the thought, looking at the roles of the father and the son. The point of difference is this, the father is the source and the goal of all things, whereas the son is the agent through whom all things have come from God and will return to him, return to God. Okay, so now we go on to verse seven. However, not all men have this knowledge. So basically that little phrase says or clause says the knowledge is not in all men. So I struggle with this. I thought, well, wait a minute. who's he talking about here?

And some translations have believers in here and I believe that's the case. So the question is, if they're a believer, how could they not have that knowledge in them? So it seems like from the context, the fact of knowing about the one true God, they know it but they haven't made it real in their lives, as we like to say. They haven't appropriated it. They haven't trusted it to truly be true.

So they say, yes, I believe that, brother. And we see that many times. And Mike was sharing about, you know, people he talks to sometimes will say, they'll shake their heads. And then eventually they stop shaking their heads and they want to change the subject. Well, you know, they aren't truly believing what Mike or what the scripture has been shared with them. So I think that's the case here. However, not all men have this knowledge. They haven't appropriated that knowledge. They haven't made it, they're there. They're not operating based upon that knowledge. Okay.

So here, now we're going to start in the section about, but some being accustomed to idols up until now. So they're accustomed to the interfacing with these idols, giving sacrifices, and there's all kinds of awful things that happen there, the least of which was sacrificing the meat to the idols, it seems like. So I like the Weiss translation of this next section, eating the things that have been previously sacrificed to idols as an idol sacrifice. So just breaking this down here, we have some, the Corinthians, believers, still did this, eat food previously sacrificed to idols. And so the modifier of that verb, being accustomed to the idols until now, the second modifier as an idol sacrifice.

So that was their way of life, that was their custom. And I was thinking about this, I was trying to, there's a brother that used to be part of our body here, and he came out of a denomination that was strongly, legalistic, ritualistic. He came here and joined us. He even taught Bible studies here. But then eventually over time he drifted away and went back to his old legalistic religion. And actually, I had a person at work say to me, don't you know so-and-so? He's a great brother in our denomination. And I just shook my head and said, wow, he's gone back.

He was here. He loved our brother Hal. He thought he was the greatest ever. Who could deny that? But he drifted away over time. He was accustomed to his ritual, and he went back to that ritual. I think he's a believer, but he wanted that ritual. And you can see that. These are believers here, but they're accustomed to the ritual that they had in the temple, apparently.

Okay, so here's, and their conscience being weak is defiled. So kind of breaking this down. Their conscience is defiled. This word besmeared, I haven't, actually I wasn't familiar with that word. It has a similar meaning to soiled or kind of smeared or whatever. with mutter filth. It's in the passive voice. So their conscience was just eating at them.

So being weak. So McCauley had a really cool thing here. I kind of jammed it into this last part of this chart, so bear with me here. So he gives a definition of a weak conscience. It's a conscience that has great difficulty in isolating the past. And I would say, I'm not sure I would choose that word. Isolating seems like you're going to put it in a box and then cross it. I don't think we can do that necessarily. I think we have to accept the past and move on. Anyway, I have a different definition possibly. But here's his approach to moving on.

Knowledge that the past is forgiven. Think about brothers and sisters you might know that haven't forgiven themselves over some issue. They can't, you know, God has forgiven them. It's interesting, God has forgiven every sin, right? Past, present, and future. But many times, I'm not going to say I'm excluded from this, many times we say, I have this standard, and I'm going to grieve over that. And God says, don't do that. I've paid for it, and move on.

Well, they were, you know, Macaulay's suggestion here is to believe that knowledge of the past is forgiven. It takes time to be appropriate, and that's true, I think. It takes time to come to grips with that. Then lastly, having a fellow brother or sister can be a huge help. just to talk with, and Paul's giving instructions, if you will, as we're gonna see in the rest of this chapter, how a brother or sister can give help to a weak brother, the Corinthians in this case, about their problem with idol sacrifices.

Okay. So this kind of wraps up his thought here. But food will not commend us to God. We are neither the worse if we do eat it. will not commend us. The idea of commend is basically a kind of place before, a set before, present, exhibit. So this is the details of why food has no value. We are neither the worse if we do not eat it.

Worse is the idea to fall short, like in Romans 3.23, to fall short of the glory of God. We're not worse off if we don't If we don't eat the meat, and this is what you could argue that a brother in that time or a sister might have, well, if I go to the temple, I'm just gonna make sure.

I'm gonna make sure I'm okay. You hear that logic? Well, I hear what you're saying, Roger, Mike, I hear what you're saying, but I'm gonna make sure, I'm gonna cover my bases. I'll go back to my old religion, and I'll do that too. I'll do both of them.

Well, that's not what the Lord wants us. It's, you know, You're no worse off. You're no worse off by eating meat sacrificed to idols. Neither do we become short or become any worse if we do eat it, the meat. The last part is we're not better off. We don't gain anything. We don't get any benefits. So a brother or sister who wants to go back to his old religion, his old ways, he's not gaining anything.

He's hurting his walk with the Lord. to be superior, you're not superior by doing that. Eating food, sacrifice to idols, gives us no advantage. So a couple quotes here, one from Macaulay, both of them from Macaulay actually. Food has nothing whatsoever to do with our standing before God. Whether we eat is neither here nor there from that standpoint.

And then the next one is, the truth of verse eight should help keep the weaker brother, help a weaker believer become strong. It will not immediately cure a weak conscience. It takes time. Maybe a lifetime. Maybe it never gets resolved. Fortunately, if you're a believer, you're saved. You're secure. But you're spinning your wheel.

So you're spending all this time trying to please God by doing this other thing that you think from your past will please him. Okay, to kind of close up here, I wanted to kind of just share this, and this is gonna be, you know, pretty familiar to all you guys.

So, you know, we saw that food itself does not cause our acceptance by God or commend us to God. So the question comes up, so what does, what does make us acceptable to God? And so I have it in two categories, for the unbeliever and for the believer. You know, basic stuff. You guys can put this up here, too. So, hopefully you can do it. I mean, you know, it's good. It's basic stuff.

For the unbeliever, Scripture tells us, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. We are to believe in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God. He died for our sins, he was buried, and he rose on the third day. That's what the unbeliever needs to understand and believe to be acceptable to God. No food, no religious activity will not satisfy. This is what God wants from every person, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, for the believer, he's already believed on him. This is a verse, one of my favorite verses. I kind of took the verse out and put it in here.

Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. If you think about it, you received him by faith, therefore you're to walk by faith. Walk is how you conduct your life, condition of your life. And then it says in another verse, and without faith, it's impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and he is the rewarder of those who seek him. So that's what is acceptable to God, for the believer to walk in faith, and for the unbeliever to come to know Christ as his Savior.

So I'll close in prayer, and then we'll have our songs. Dear Father, we thank you for our time today, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have. Thank you for your word that's so clear about idols and the one true God. We thank you that you've made it abundantly clear that our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is to be our focus. We ask it in his name. Amen.