Things sacrificed to Idols & the weaker brother 2

So last week, Bob taught on the first half of chapter 8. Who wants to summarize chapter 8? The first half. 1 through 6. What did you walk away with? Being sensitive to other believers. That's good. Because of our liberty. So the second half of this chapter is going to carry on with that very, very consistently with what you got last week.

So you're not going to find that there's a shocking variance in content here, but Paul is going to use some literary exaggeration to emphasize to us this message. One of the things that we need to keep in mind here is that the Corinthians were often surrounded by cultural attitudes of selfishness. You gotta be better than the next person and better than everybody else because then you have social clout, right? So none of that cares about other people unless they're people that you can put under yourself, but otherwise it's really not a biblical attitude that we think of today, but that would have been normative.

So Paul is going to kind of go along with this message so that there's no question. So there's confidence in what he's trying to say and clarity. Okay, so we want to want to pick up. I'm going to kind of review a few of the vocabulary words that we're going to go over here because I always feel like that's valuable. Bob went over some of this last week so this would be a review. I'm aware of that and I'm not trying to beat a dead horse.

But it is important for us to have the same working definition. So let's talk about worship. What does it mean to worship? I happen to have spent far too much time leading music thinking that the music was worship. As it turns out, the music isn't really the deal, it's the words and it's your heart. So worship is an expression of reverence and adoration to a deity. In our case, we definitely want to focus that on the God of the Bible. And our English word for worship comes from a compound word with the idea of worth-ship, the ascription of worth. So that's my working definition of worship and you get to carry that with me even if you disagree. I'm just kidding, I don't think there's anything radical about that.

Idolatry is the worship of a thing as a God instead of worshiping the God of the Bible. And it's rooted in a worldview that is against the scripture. Fleshly thinking is not the same as idolatry, but there may be an overlap. And the reason why I want to say fleshly thinking is different from idolatry is when people were talking about idols here, they were seeking outcomes from the idols. They were not just entertaining themselves.

I've heard it said many times that football can be an idol, but we don't generally go and pray and worship to football with the hoped outcome that our crops will be good, or that we'll steal better, which would be things that would have actually happened in the Corinthian culture. So I want to identify idolatry that way just because I think it's valuable to have a concise definition.

And then as well, conscience, a personal conviction about rightness and wrongness of one's own behavior and possibly others' behavior. I've heard it said before, that we judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions. And I think that's actually not uncommon. It's very easy for my intention to be good, but my actions to fall far short of that. But I knew that I intended to be good.

So when we talk about conscience, we have to realize that sometimes even our own conscience is severely tainted or polluted. And we'll get into causes for that in a little bit. So Paul emphasizes here, let's go ahead and we'll read the text. I suppose that's probably a valuable thing to do. It is the Bible.

We're not here to hear me talk, we're here to study God's words. So he says in verse 7, However, not all men have this knowledge, but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol, 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, nor the better if we do eat.

But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And so by sinning against the brethren, and wounding their conscience, when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again. so that I will not cause my brother to stumble." Paul is telling us we should all be vegetarian, right? Is that the purpose of this? No, I don't think so.

Paul emphasizes the as-if nature of the so-called sacrifice. Let's take a look at that in verse 7. He says, "...as if it were sacrifice to an idol, and their conscience being weak, is defiled. Why is he saying, as if? Because he already stated in a different verse that we know that God is one and these idols are all just nothing. Correct. Verse 4, 8-4, Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no god but one. So Paul says, as if. He's basically emphasizing for us this idea of potentiality being false. There is no idol.

But the culture doesn't know the biblical truth, do they? What does the culture know? The culture knows the process that you do to hopefully get the outcome you want, which involves some deity that if we look at Greco-Roman mythology, those deities were morally and ethically sketchy at best.

Weird adultery and trans-relationship behaviors and different species and all kinds of sickness and perversity. And that's the kind of God you're trying to manipulate into a result. So you can see how that might be a little disconcerting for somebody who is watching the ceremony, even if it's true there is only one God and there are no idols. Their conscience may not bear that. So we want to ask an important question. What is a weak conscience? What does it mean to have a weak conscience? Does it make you a lesser Christian? Are you maybe not saved?

Any concerns about that? I'm getting head shakes. And they're negative head shakes, which is good, but they don't show up on the tape recording, so I'm not going to say that. So let's talk about a weaker conscience here. The conscience is a personal objection and their sense of fellowship is inhibited by some behavior. So they have a sensitivity to some behavior that bothers them.

And as it turns out, there's not a shortage of those. Even today, we have all kinds of things. How many of you have ever been involved with a church split? I've unfortunately been part of a few of them. Church splits happen over all kinds of things that are not biblical. They're cultural.

And people's consciences just can't bear the color of the carpet, or the style of the music, or whatever else that might be a distraction. And so people can't handle that very well. So I've got it on page two here. some biblical statements about what we should see as a strong conscience and then look at some things that might cause the weakness. So our conscience is directed by the spirit when we abide. Our conscience is not directed by the spirit when we're not abiding. So let's make sure we emphasize that. If you're not abiding, your conscience is weak because your conscience is fleshly.

And he, the spirit, often works in tandem with what we've grown to understand from the scriptures by clearly stated doctrinal truth. Weakness may come from a lack of abiding, deception and errant theology. There are bad teachers out there that teach all kinds of things. One of my least favorite teachers right now that's running the popular circuit is Joel Osteen. And one of the reasons why I think he's a heretic is he says Christians should eat bacon. And I love bacon.

But God says to Peter in Acts, he says, don't call holy or unholy what I have called holy. And he tells him to kill the animals that were supposed to be unholy and eat them in this vision. That's pork. That's okay. God forced Peter, at God's finger point I guess, to eat of the animals that were previously unholy, but because of the end of the covenant with Israel and that being put on hold until the Millennial Kingdom. We have this opportunity to eat certain kinds of meat. So here's this meat pattern again where God's holiness and the meat overlap there.

Deception and errant theology, which would impact our understanding, and a lack of understanding overall. We haven't studied the Bible enough. We're babes in Christ. Or maybe we're not babes in Christ, but we still haven't studied the Bible enough. Addictions can be an issue.

That's a personal one. And then culture, as well as bad reasoning and correlation. Sometimes as human beings, we like to deduce things. We will come to a conclusion. Maybe Joel Osteen doesn't want you to eat bacon because it could be unhealthy in certain diets or with certain health conditions. Well, that's correlative. It's not doctrinal. So we have to be careful about those things. So Paul refers to flesh sacrifice in this passage. The flesh sacrifice to idolatry. But there's lots of modern equivalents. Today there are believers who consume alcohol and those who don't.

Today there are people who do yoga as exercise and those who don't. Now when I say yoga as exercise, I'm talking about the stretching part. Yoga not as exercise does involve spiritual things. There are some believers who say, I'm just getting exercise, I don't care about your mumbo-jumbo.

For those folks, I usually, it makes me laugh, I think, we just do Pilates. They're slightly different, but they look a lot the same to most men who have no idea. And then you can get away from the spiritual nonsense. Clothing choices. When this class started, there was some discussion of purple. I don't know if that's spiritual or not. But sometimes people ask, what clothes are you wearing? Especially for ladies, how modest are you dressed? Hairstyles? Would Jesus like your hair that way? Jesus would definitely not like your hair that way unless people get locked in on that. Tattoos and piercings? Smoking? Which movies you watch, which TV shows you watch, what kind of music you listen to, anything that's entertainment based. How about political affiliation?

I know that can be pretty divisive. How about career aspirations? There's people who think that certain career choices are really not fruitful or godly, and those can be things that are divisive. Now, there's some obvious low-hanging fruit, right? We can say, well, probably God doesn't want somebody to become a prostitute or something like that.

But all of these things can be divisive, and they can cause people to stumble. But who's stumbling from them? The weak brother. The weak brother is stumbling from them. So we take those things into consideration. As a believer, if I look to the scriptures for guidance, I find that any number of things might be permissible.

So let's take a quick look at 1 Corinthians 6.12. We were just there not too long ago. So we'll flip back.

In 1 Corinthians 6.12, he says, "...all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable." All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. So when we talk about liberty and we talk about these opportunities that we have, if it masters us, it's no longer liberty, right? Liberty doesn't have a master. And if there's permission to it, but then there's this opportunity for weakness, then Paul continues on to kind of give us the reiteration of what was said earlier.

And he says, food will not commend us to God. So what commends the believer to God? Faith, Christ. Faith or Christ? Do you have faith in Christ? Okay, our faith commends us to God. And the believer's own merit does not draw us close to God. How much merit do we bring into the equation?

Let's say we're vegan. We're going to go way past vegetarianism. We don't even eat meat sacrificed to animals. We don't have any foods that come from animals. And you're vegan. First of all, I have a problem with veganism because bacteria lives on there and if you don't want to kill anything, you're forced to because of bacteria. And the plant dies. But for the sake of exaggeration, we're vegan.

Would veganism commend us to God? Veganism wouldn't commend us to God, nor would being purely carnivorous commend us to God. If you raised your own animals and then only ate the animals that you raised, it would not commend you to God. The point is not the food, right? The flesh sacrificed is not the concern, because the food is not what commends us to God.

So what commends us to God? Our faith. And what commends us to God after that is our state of abiding. When we're abiding, we have the fruit of the Spirit. I'm a huge fan of the fruit of the Spirit. Put your finger in your Bible there, and let's flip over to the fruit of the Spirit.

Let's think about the weaker brother in parallel. We're going to use both sides of our brain, and we're going to have our fingers in two places. We're going to do this together. It'll be safe. Galatians 5. Galatians 5.22 and 23. We're abiding and there's a weaker brother. He's worried about the meat sacrifice by idols.

Let's see what happens with the fruit of the Spirit in parallel with that. But the fruit of the Spirit is love. Love is not going to be a stumbling block to the weaker brother. In fact, Love is going to be the anti-stumbling block. It's going to draw you together. Joy, well that's not going to be a stumbling block.

Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law and your weaker brother is not going to be caught up So, this fruit of the Spirit is a critical element of what's happening that we believed and were commended to God by that faith. And that faith produces works of the Spirit. And there's no offense in it. If I come to you and I'm abiding and I engage with you and I'm abiding and you're abiding, there will be peace and unity and growth together. And that's a powerful place to be. So eating food or abstaining from food will not save us, nor will it make us more sanctified. But abiding will. Abiding won't save us. Believing in the gospel saves us. But abiding will sanctify us conditionally.

So here's an example from music. So here at Holly Hills, we have yet to have very much percussion as part of our worship service. Some people would be just outright offended if we had a drum set up there. They would say, I can't go to this church, they're rocking for Jesus. Or they're rocking so they can't be rocking for Jesus.

I happen to be a drummer, so I have some opinions about that. But the truth of the matter is that there's two sides to that coin. Because I have often sat in the back of the church, and I sit in the back of the church because my wife likes to sit in the back of the church, and I love my wife, so I sit by my wife in the back of the church. And I watch people as they come in, and I watch people as they go out. And on more than one occasion, the organ has started up in front of the church, and I've watched young people stand up and walk out of the church.

Because Jesus does not play the organ. Just like he doesn't play the drums. But apparently he does play the piano and the guitar. Those are safe. But they're stumbling blocks because of an instrument. It's a tool. But we said this at the beginning, where does worship come from? Worship comes from the Spirit. moving in us to exalt our Heavenly Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It's not the instrument. But the stumbling block, it doesn't matter what it is. If we went over to visit Hassan in Uganda, guess what the music would be? Drums.

There would be drums, and a piano, and a guitar, and it would mostly be reggae style music, as it turns out. My dad went over there and he said, these people are all worshipping the Lord and the music is not what mattered. They were worshipping the Lord. They knew who their Savior was. So his music was cultural. Oh, okay. Those are things that are cultural, but they're stumbling blocks. Did the music commend us?

No. So we can, as believers, hopefully not being weak, we as believers can say, OK, Lord, use the instruments you have. Use them. I'm going to worship you because I love you, not because there is or isn't an organ, or there is or isn't a drum set, or a guitar, or a piano, or a kazoo.

Part of why I have the kids come up and play shakers, it's one of the few instruments all of them can consistently maneuver at the same time. And that's percussion. And I have yet to hear anyone complain. Because they love to see the joy in the hearts of the kids. And it's not about the drums or the percussion. But that's an example that I've watched.

The hearts and the minds of the saints are conditioned to culture. And that can be a stumbling block. That being said, I would love to have a drum set, but not so that we could have rock and roll. I'd love to have a drum set because it helps with timing. It's like a metronome. And everybody can clap at the same time and sing at the right place. I need it. I need worship. So percussion and music as an example there. But Paul doesn't stop there. He's not done reminding us of these things. But he says to take care.

Liberty should not lead to causing stumbling inside of the body. So if we have to take care and we have to be observing one another, take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak, how are you going to do it? How are you going to take care? How am I going to take care? This is really important if we're going to follow Paul's instruction.

Be sensitive to the other person, for sure. Okay, be sensitive. That's really important. For sure. How are you going to know that somebody is weak in an area? If they get up and walk out, you know. If they get up and walk out, for sure, that's a weakness. You know what really is a really powerful way to find out where people's sensitivities and weaknesses are? Getting to know them. Come over to my house. Let's have dinner or lunch. If you're really lucky you can have breakfast. Jessica makes amazing cinnamon rolls. Come over and let me get to know you. And we'll talk.

And when I come over to your house and you offer me something to drink and you just offer me water and iced tea or just water or just iced tea or milk I'll probably get the general idea that you probably are not wanting to have a beer with me. Right? We've got no beer in this house.

Okay, fine. And I know this. That's your choice. You walk by the Spirit and you do that. If I go to another person's house and they have mostly vegetables, great. That might be a thing. Or it might be summertime and I'll just ask, You good? Can I bring some bacon? No, we don't do bacon here. Alright, good. But we have those relationships and we have that fellowship and that interaction and then we know. If I come over to your house and you're listening to classical music and that's playing in the background, well, let's talk about music. What styles of music do you like to listen to? Oh, I love polka. Oh, not polka. Jesus doesn't love polka. Or whatever it is.

But that intimacy is a requirement of what allows us to be aware of those weaknesses. If I don't know you, I can't know what your weakness is. So functionally, Paul wants us to take care, and that taking care requires intimacy, and knowledge, and familiarity. So I'm sorry about that, but it's come down to us having to get to know one another just a little bit better. I have some weird jokes and a strange sense of humor, but you already know that. Tell me about yourself. So getting to know one another and having that intimacy is an important part of not putting stumbling blocks together or in front of one another. But what's the other side benefit of getting to know one another besides just the stumbling blocks? We can be praying for one another. And that's a powerful, powerful thing.

Every morning when I get in my car, I turn on the car and I carefully back out because I have a blind spot in my driveway. Once I successfully maneuver the exit, I start praying all the way to the light rail. I start with my family and I spiral out to the body. If I know that there are needs, I pray for them, but if you don't tell me, I can't pray for you. I can just be like, Lord, I pray for the body of Holly Hills.

So we get two benefits. One, we know if there's a weakness so that we can be considerate. And two, we can pray. So there's no downside. Have each other over for a meal. Or at least, like what we used to do in Texas, at least go for a meal at a restaurant. That was a happy medium. Because not everybody wanted to get their house cleaned up, but everybody wanted to put food in their face. Those are important.

The other thing I want to point out as this part with taking care of liberty is human judgment of behaviors is not always impartial. We do think sometimes with ignorance or carnality where the discernment and discrimination of God is perfect, or are perfect. God judges the heart of mankind, or God judges the heart and mankind often judges the actions, similar to that quote earlier. So we want to take care and take consideration but we also want to evaluate in our own hearts and minds what we're looking at.

I'll speak for myself, we all see ourselves as the stronger brother and someone else as the weaker brother. But I think what's important, what Paul wants us to realize, that there may be weaknesses that we have. And this is to help us to identify our weaknesses. That's part of the understanding of this, that we have weaknesses too. And we may be a weaker brother in some instances. It may flip-flop on different issues and different things. So it's just not... this group of strong believers and the weak believers. We all can be in either camp at different time periods. One of the things, I'll just throw myself under the bus so to speak. One of my own weaknesses is I really, really, really tend to be overly sensitive to how one believer might talk to another believer.

And if I can conceive of any sort of offense happening, I get all worked up. And I get emotionally distracted. because I don't want anybody to ever be offended ever anywhere and so I will go to great lengths to wrap everybody in bubble wrap and make sure that nobody hurts anybody else when that's not my problem and sometimes those offenses come for growth and the Lord would use it but I know that's a weakness that I have and I know that might seem mild but you have no idea how creative my mind has gone to great lengths to try to conceive of ways to produce all harmony all the time.

But that's not my problem. It's not for me to control. At best, it's something that we're going to have happen as a result of abiding, and worst, as I get involved. So I have to be careful that the weakness that I have by my personality doesn't become a carnal outpouring of the flesh in the church, even though the desire that I had was peace for everybody.

So there we go. There's one of my weaknesses, although I'm sure the list is long. We'll keep going there unless anybody has any other thoughts. Anybody want to share their weakness? It'll be recorded on the Internet for posterity. So I do want to take a moment to do more vocabulary discussion because I think it's valuable for us to have this distinction.

Let's talk about the difference between grace, liberty, and license. Often the words grace and liberty are thrown around as synonyms as well as liberty and license. but they're not synonyms, and it's valuable for us to understand them in a biblical context.

So, grace, what's our working definition of grace? Who can remember what was in the grace class? Grace is the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. Not just the covering for sin. Well, when we sin, there's grace. That was my old working definition. but the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God, due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. Grace motivates us as a response and is not merely a covering for sin.

So that's our working definition for grace. Now let's look at liberty. Liberty is the optional, conscientious ability for the believer to engage in certain activities, both personally and publicly, because we are not under the law. I had to think about that one for a while, because that's my definition. I was like, alright, what are we working with here? What's the big picture? But do you see the difference between grace? Grace enables liberty. But grace is not just liberty, and liberty is not just grace.

And license is the permission to do things, and often comes paired with the encouragement to do them, without deference to one another. I can, therefore I will, and I don't care if it bothers you. I have license. So license and liberty and grace are three different things. And the reason why these three terms need to be differentiated biblically is that we need to make sure that we don't engage one another with legalism or selfishness. Both of those are wrong. And so Paul wants to emphasize those things. The last sentence in that section there I think is worth saying, we operate in the realm of grace, we live with liberty, and we love by living without license. License is entitlement.

We don't want entitlement in the Church. What we want is the fruit of the Spirit. What we want is a manifestation in the body and outside of the body of who God is. we're identified with Christ, prove it. And I don't mean that in a legalistic work sort of way, I mean that's just what's going to happen because of the Spirit.

Alright, so Paul says, if someone sees you, for if someone sees you who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple. So, let's stop for a minute. This is weird for us, because we don't have temples, per se, where they slaughter animals in sacrifices, where you might be able to go get meat and eat right there. So the equivalency of that is a little hard for us to put ourselves in the shoes of a person. So what I want us to do is actually just literally imagine ourselves in this situation.

You are, for whatever reason, in Corinth, in Apollo's temple. You're in Apollo's temple, and they're sacrificing, and you're going, boy, I hope I get I want the filet mignon. Will they give me the filet mignon? I love that. So the sacrifices happen, the animal's been offered and you're there, and someone sees you.

We have the liberty, but they're going to stumble. Paul's example, oh dude I spelled meat wrong. That's terrible, the second sentence there. Paul's example of meat, that's the wrong meat, being offered to idols goes to the extreme exaggeration of dining at the temple of the idol. Now, I want to take a moment, why would you be offering a sacrifice to the idols?

So here's the process that you would do, and actually the funny thing is I found this process, I was trying to do research, and I found this process and there are people who literally still today worship these pagan gods. on the off chance that they worked. So this is my re-wording of... they had a longer, verbose description. But this is worshipping prayer at the following liturgy within the pagan practices, and there are people who do today. It says, greet the God in as many of his or her names as you can, especially those relevant for the task.

Now if your brother, who's weaker, comes by and he sees you in the temple and there's sacrificed meat, he's going to say, wait a minute, I thought I thought Jack was a Christian, but now Jack is over at Apollo's temple and he's looking like he's going to get some filet mignon. Did he greet Apollo as the god of string instruments or whatever else?

Because he wants Winnie to get a harp. So we don't know, but now the Weeger brothers' imagination has taken off. Then you need to remind the God of all the things that you've done for them. Well, then I've got to wonder, how many things has Jack done for Apollos over the years? Because he's in there hoping he gets a filet mignon. And then, you've got to request the favor of the God in a way relevant to what you're after.

So, geez, Apollo, I hope that when he gets a harp, Amazon Prime makes a mistake and we get a harp. Sorry Jack, I'm picking on you. I know you don't worship Apollo. And then after you get it, then you worship and thank the God. Well that's why you do the sacrifice. You go in there and you lay out the sacrifice in thanks to the God for their generosity to you.

So if I walk by and Jack's having a filet mignon at Apollo's place, and I'm the weaker brother, I've now imagined all of these things about Jack which are not true at all. Jack is just wanting a filet mignon and he knows the best price is over at the Apollo meat market. He's thrifty like that. He doesn't care about the harp. He likes when he's piano playing fine enough. Okay?

So after you've worshipped the God, you offer the sacrifice, and the Uyghur brother has already gone off the deep end and is freaking out. The Uyghur brother is already out of time. So if you are seen in the temple and you find yourself eating the meat that has been offered up to the pagan deity for something you should have thanked the father for, from the Uyghur brother's perspective, offense is correlated. Guilty by association. So Paul is asking us to put ourselves in the situation so that we can understand what's going on. And then he says, won't they be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols?

Maybe. Maybe not. It's possible. There's a possibility of that. But maybe not. And so now, you've got a good cut of meat for a great price. And now stuff is going on at church. Everybody's talking about Jack over at Paul's place because he wanted a filet mignon. I saw him eating there. He was licking his lips. I'm pretty sure he's praying to Apollo.

No, that's absurd. But the weak brother doesn't understand. And you may have caused him deep offense or deep stumbling. And that's not OK with Paul. In verse 11, for through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined. The brother for whose sake Christ died. What's the trade-off? That's what Paul's asking. What's the trade-off for the idolatry? Ignoring the idolatry, but causing your brother to stumble.

If we're going to step outside of meat, for example, and we say, we're going to talk about music. That was our example earlier, we'll continue on with that vein. If you come into church, and I, having been given the stewardship of worship leader, have procured an electronic drum set, and we've got the volume turned to zero and a half, not even one, so you can barely hear it.

And one of you, one of you, would leave the church because of that. Because it's just too much. You can't handle it. Your conscience won't bear it. That's a problem. Because Christ died for you. My relationship with you is infinitely more important, and your relationship with Christ and my relationship with Christ is infinitely more important than 0.5 volume on a drum set. So you have my word that if I thought I could offend you with a drum set, that I wouldn't bring a drum set in here. And if you've noticed, there's not a drum set in here. I'm a drummer.

I want one bad. But guess what? I know there's people here that might be offended by that. And they won't understand that's not where their strength is. And Jesus died for you. And guess what? That makes you infinitely valuable and that drum set worthless. So Paul emphasizes here this principle of value in Christ's death. What is more valuable than Christ's death to the believer? Nothing. Nothing is more valuable.

Not my facial hair, not my... Morgan Hill does my hair, so I always feel like I look more handsome, because she does a good job, she's thorough, she takes her time. But at no point in time does my hair make me more valuable. It doesn't matter how handsome or good looking I am, I could buy a car tomorrow or a bus, go home to be with the Lord, but my value comes in Christ. And Paul doesn't want the believer to be distracted by any of these things. So if we put ourselves in front of any other believer for whatever the purpose is, drums or hair or whatever else it is, it's wrong. Now when we say meat, I want to emphasize something really quick. The word for meat here has to do with flesh, and it was almost always used to denote the sacrifice element. So we want to just emphasize that. So their observation of us.

Walking in liberty has caused them to stumble, and that's not okay. We don't need to be thinking that way selfishly. In verse 12, and so by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience, when it is weak, you sin against Christ. You have the liberty. Because of grace, you have the liberty. We've already established that. Bob reiterated that last week. Because of Christ, you have grace and you have the liberty.

But you don't have the permission or the license to sin against your brother. So we want to make sure that when we recognize that that's happened, that we would respond with apologies and forgiveness and seek reconciliation, right? We want to start there. It's better if we don't do it in the first place. That's what Paul's emphasizing here. Don't do it. Don't do it in the first place. If you did do it, he doesn't say it here, but I think we can prove from other passages that we'd want to seek reconciliation.

Because What we're doing is sinning against Christ. This is really, really important. When we sin against Christ, is our salvation impacted? No, our salvation is not impacted. Salvation is once and for all, and it's because of what Christ did, not because of what we bring to the table. We've established that. So given that salvation is secure, the impact here is inside of and outside of the body.

We are to come to one another with care and concern and esteeming others more highly than ourselves. It's not a healthy outcome for the body for there to be harm or damage to take place. And furthermore, outside of the body, our testimony in the world would be impacted because it is possible that someone is a friend of someone who's weak and they hear, oh man, so-and-so at this church did something and it really hurt so-and-so's feeling and those Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. So the impact is internal to the body and also can spread outside of the body as well and have an impact on evangelism and our testimony. We definitely want to keep that in mind.

So, this last verse, verse 13, he says, Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble. Who has a King James Version today? Anyone have a King James? Would you mind reading chapter 8, verse 13 for us?

Wherefore, if food make my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend. OK. So while the world stands or while the world is, I will eat no meat. OK. That's a slightly modernized King James there. What does the New American Standard say? I will not eat meat again. I will never. I will never eat again. My brother King James says, I will never again eat meat. Never again eat meat.

Okay. So the Greek there actually does carry with it the sense that the King James translates. And that is the idea that it's until the end of the world or until the end of the age, I would never eat meat sacrificed to idols. But Paul is using this exaggeration to help us understand how serious of a deal this is, because our concern should be our brothers and sisters in Christ, and their well-being, and our relationship with them, and their growth. They may not stay weak there forever, but just in case they do, I won't eat meat sacrificed to an idol. until this age or this world comes to an end.

That's OK. That's how he wants to operate. And it's the subjunctive tense there, which is the potential tense. It's not an absolute statement of fact. There's this potential for this thing to happen. So we have this liberty, but that liberty gets trumped by love within the body. So I've got this last here on page 5, this conclusion section here.

For our own personal edification, we need to consider our own liberties and weaknesses with great care. Notice I said our own weaknesses in there. Consider your own weaknesses. How often do we sit and reflect on what the Lord is doing in our lives? And I ask that because more recently in my own life, the Lord just kind of shined a spotlight on the fact that I was so good at being busy and filling my schedule that I wasn't taking time to reflect on my walk with the Lord and come before Him and say, Okay Lord, where are you growing me? What's here? Your word says this is true of me. Is that reflected? Where am I growing? What are these things? Where am I weak? Because I got a bunch of those, right? And it's not just in how I worry about people. We'll talk to one another.

We're not called to openly sin, but we should not walk in fear of offense and give up our liberty as well. We're to abide, love, and manifest the life of Christ within and without the body. And when I say without, that's actually archaic English, but it means outside the body. We preach the gospel and live our lives in front of them.

So mapping to Romans 12 and 13, the very beginning there, we see the way that the believer should start seeing concentric circles that spread out within the world around us. This is a visualization I like. I'm going to share it with you, and if you don't like it, that's fine. My feelings won't be hurt.

But in the very middle, it starts with Romans 12, verse 1, where he basically says that we should be walking in the Spirit, or abiding, and offering our lives as a living sacrifice. And then in 12-3 we're manifesting the life of Christ and our mind is being renewed and our lives are reflecting what is true and what is right, just in our own personal behavior. So our conscience is not seared and we're representing God, not just to the body or ourselves or our families, but to the whole world. And then in 4-13 he talks about spiritual gifts and the way that we have love within the body, well, this offense and this weaker brother situation fits right in there.

But if we're not abiding, then we can't manifest those things. And we can't manifest those things within the body. And then in 14-18, peace with all men, as best as is up to you. If there are warriors coming at you, you can only be peaceful in one half of that direction. And then 1219 through 1307, we have obedience to the government, whether it's local or national. But I think Romans 12 and the first half of 13 really give us a model for what this looks like when it's applied. It starts here with me, and it spreads out. And it starts with each one of us, and it spreads out. And those interactions come together. But let's say we blow it. It just brings up the worst of the worst. I really blow it.

The reality is that Romans 8.38-39 is still true.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So this offense, this weaker brother, if I blow it badly, and the weaker brother just careens off. Even Matt can't separate them from the love of God. And it won't separate me from the love of God. We should be encouraged by this. Instead of thinking, oh no, I've got to walk on eggshells. They should be awesome. I get to be part of the body. And I just want to be aware because I love my brothers and sisters in Christ.

So Paul has to be strongly worried because the Corinthians were not so culturally sensitive or interpersonally sensitive as we Americans are. We like to make everybody happy. I joke a little bit about that, sorry. If you go to international business meetings, you'll find out how crass Americans are. But let's close in prayer.

But before that, any questions, Pat? On this verse 8-11, And because of your knowledge, shall the weak brother perish? And this is New King James. I'm just wondering, because it almost sounds like it's a salvation issue, but perish. It sounds pretty strong, the damage that has been done. So verse 7, is that what you're talking about? No, it's 11. Verse 11, chapter 8. Okay, so the translation I have is ruined. I think that's probably a safer, better one.

But the thing that is important there is to recognize the idea that their walk with the Lord has been severely hampered. And that's why my last example was this careening off. I've seen that happen on multiple occasions in the body where somebody's doing great, they're doing fine, and then something happens and they just get burned out. A lot of that has to do with that knowing one another intimately so that we don't have this burnout.

I'll use the example of drum sets just because it's an easy example. I have intentionally not brought that into the church because the idea that any one of us would get offended and leave the church is too much. Just one. And so the idea that somebody would get thrown out because of one thing I thought was neutral, and I have a biblical foundation for it, makes it unacceptable.

And if you left the church and you went somewhere else, people would say, oh, where have you gone to church before? And you'd say, well, I went to Holly Hills. And they'd be like, oh, tell me about Holly Hills. Well, they did really good. They used to love to teach, but then they started to rock for Jesus.

And then now Holly Hills looks like a bunch of crazy loons because of that. And so the whole body gets tainted. And so this being ruined or the consequence of that, it's very real, and we want to take the name of Christ in the representation of Christianity seriously. That's my answer on that, sorry. I was long-winded. Somebody warned I was long-winded this morning before we even started. Any other questions?

Alright, let's go to the Lord. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the truth of your word. We thank you so much for the opportunities that we have to grow together, to go from weak to strong as we are conformed to the image of Christ. We do pray that your name would not be slandered, but instead the fruit of the Spirit would be born. In Jesus' name, Amen.