1 Corinthians 8-9 | Pastor Drew

And so with that, we are looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

If I had a title for it, it would be Freedom That Builds, Knowledge, Love, and the Body of Christ.

Freedom that builds knowledge, love, and the body.

Let us open up in prayer.

Lord, we thank you and love you, God.

We thank you for this day.

We thank you for this time to encounter your word and to encounter your spirit, God, as you are pressing us more and more into conforming into the image of Jesus.

And so now, Lord, we ask that you would help us, that you would guide us, that your spirit would be present with us, that you would speak to us, speak to our body, and may we glorify you in all of our ways.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

If you have your Bibles, open your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians chapter 8.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

I will read from the New American Standard Bible.

1 Corinthians chapter 8.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

And it reads as follows: hear the word of the Lord.

Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge.

Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.

If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know.

But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

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.

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

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 else, 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.

All right, y'all.

Whenever you eat steaks, it causes me to stumble, so stop eating steaks.

Whenever you eat chicken fajitas, it causes me to stumble, so I need you to stop eating them because I don't want to sin.

Now I think it's important for us to understand that context matters.

We don't have a situation like this happening in our church, but there are some things that we can draw from this text to help us to understand what was going on.

Now, is anybody here part of a new convert who was previously part of idol worship at a temple somewhere else in town where they made sacrifices and people went in there, the elite went in there to eat the meat because the poor didn't have access to that.

And so is anybody here still going back and eating meat sacrificed to idols at the temple, at the local temple?

Okay, so that didn't, that's not that doesn't apply to Marion.

Okay.

Different context.

So the danger in just reading the Bible and then just saying this, this, this, this, is that it's a different context, different time, different story in history.

It's the same thing with, we'll get there where it talks about head coverings.

Oh man, I grew up where there were some head coverings, there's some still folks, head coverings, right?

We'll get there when we get there, but these are the kinds of things that we gotta navigate because if we just open the Bible and say, this is what the Bible said, this is what I do, it's a different context 2,000 years ago in a different part of the world.

We gotta understand some of the setting and background.

If not, we're gonna do a lot of harm to a lot of people in the name of God.

Y'all don't hear me.

Y'all don't hear me.

What do we do with our freedom?

Church, in the past few weeks we've been talking about holiness in the community, holiness in conflict, holiness in the body, holiness in relationships.

And now Paul shifting the conversation.

He moves from what is permissible, what is beneficial for others, to what is beneficial for others.

Now the question is not, can I do this?

The question is, what does love require of me?

And anything that we do, we ought to ask the question in this moment, what does love require of me?

This is why when we get to 1 Corinthians 13, they had to deal with a lot of things before Paul actually helps them to understand what a loving community looks like under the authority of Jesus.

It's not about a wedding, it's about a church that has some dysfunction.

Right?

So this is not just about food.

1 Corinthians 8, 1 through 3 says, Paul says, knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.

Or knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

This is not just about food.

It's about the way we're formed, formation, discipleship.

It's about power, it's about status.

In Corinth, meat offered to idols showed up in several places.

Temple dining halls, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, marketplace meat, and private homes.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

For Jewish believers, food tied to idols was a violation of covenant loyalty.

Exodus 34.

For Gentile believers, these meals were tied to their former life.

These meals were tied to who they used to be.

1 Corinthians chapter 6 talks about this, who you used to be.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

They're talking about the trade guilds.

The trade guilds are what we know as labor unions today.

In order to be part of a labor union back then, you had to also participate in idol worship to be part of the labor union.

You didn't know that, did you?

That you have to play the games of the culture, that you had to sacrifice.

Sometimes it took, it was, it was participating in sacrifice by offering your body to temple prostitution, having sexual relations as part of wanting to maintain your status in the labor union or the union.

So this is anybody been part of the union?

Raise your hand, you've been part of the union.

Okay.

One of the first things you go to the union to do, you sign over your rights.

Here, I'm signing over my rights.

I'm going to give my rights to you to represent me.

Right?

But back then, some of you might be able to argue some of this and say, man, ain't much changed, right?

They got me doing this and this, and I gotta pay into this, and then I gotta be silenced on these things, this labor union president who's supposed to represent me, actually playing games with them, taking the buyout on the backside, and coming back here and saying, Look, I got a sweet deal for y'all.

No, you just took$500,000, and now you're gonna put you gonna force us to take this deal.

Am I speaking to anybody?

Yeah.

There's corruption in labor unions too.

Family obligations.

These these meals were also tied to family obligations.

So if you ate this meal and you came from a status, you had obligations to your family over Jesus.

So this is part of the problem.

They're going to church, they're trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus, and then they're still going back to the labor union or the trade guilds, or they're going back to their family who actually causes them to make decisions that are antichrist.

And so then you, if you eat the meat, then you're also saying, I agree to maintain this status and this power and this honor in the culture, which means you gotta be more loyal to your family than to Jesus.

That's still happening today, too, isn't it?

Family members want to follow Jesus, you come to know Jesus, then you gotta go back home to mama and daddy who might be sexist, racist, classist, or whatever else.

Say some crazy stuff.

We live in a country that says that being an American is Christian.

And what happens then is people are more loyal to what they pledge allegiance to than the crucified, risen Jesus Christ.

So what kind of loyalties have our lives?

Are you sure you're able to follow Jesus?

Or are you taking the meat?

I had a cousin who uh is in the policy, he's in the politics and he had an opportunity to go to Washington, D.C.

And we talked about it a few months ago before he went.

I said, listen, don't eat the king's meat.

Go out there if you want to, but just don't eat the king's meat because when you eat the king's meat, what you're saying is, is I'm going to be more loyal to the king than I am to King Jesus.

This is why Christianity in our country right now is so discombobulated, and people don't know what to do.

I can tell you what to do.

Follow Jesus and forsake everything else.

Family, politics, your tribe, your people, repent and follow Jesus into his kingdom, which is global and eternal.

So if you wanted these meals, you had to participate in trade guilds, family, and it applied to family obligations and also social belonging.

In any context, any culture, any ethnic group, any tribe, it pertains to all of these things.

Where do you find your social identity?

And guess what?

There's meat being fed there too.

And so then what happens is you got to do what they say, even though Jesus might call you to something more.

So the deeper question is can I participate in spaces that formed my old life?

Romans 12, 2.

And this was also about class and status.

The wealthy, they had regular access to meat.

The poor didn't.

They were invited to banquets.

They maintained social networks through these meals.

The poor, they rarely ate meat.

They were poor.

They couldn't buy no meat.

They were excluded from those spaces.

They associated meat with idol worship.

So these meals were not just about food.

They were public performances of status, church.

To sit at those tables meant honor, belonging, and access.

And as long as you continue to play the game, you would still benefit from the meat.

Their freedom was not neutral, church.

It was tied to their social standing or their social position.

Paul is not just asking them to give up meat.

He is asking them to give up access, status, and a certain kind of belonging.

Yes.

So the first point here is knowledge without love, it puffs up.

Paul says that knowledge makes arrogance, but love builds up.

Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.

Puffed up, it means that you're elevated, that you're lifted above others.

That's what he's talking about.

This language shows up in Corinth multiple times, chapter 4, multiple times it shows up, right?

So here's the challenge here.

You can be right theologically and wrong relationally, right?

John 5 kind of points us to this.

Knowledge without love, it inflates our egos, it creates hierarchy, and it distances us from other people.

That's what it does.

It lifts us out while also participating in a larger system that pushes others down.

Paul is saying, if we're going to be this kind of community, then we gotta follow the Jesus who rejects these things.

Uh-oh.

I want to say this too.

When Paul writes this letter, every message someone can learn something from.

All of us.

But not every letter was written for everybody.

Let me say it again.

Every letter that Paul writes, we can learn something from.

But he's being very direct about who he's talking to in this letter.

Paul is addressing the wealthy, status-seeking elites in the church who consider themselves strong while there are poor people in the same congregation.

Paul is not talking to the people in the congregation who are weak, who are struggling, who are oppressed, who are marginalized.

He is not talking to them here.

He's being very clear about who he's talking to.

He says that love here, what it does when you don't have when you have knowledge and low love, it inflates your ego.

It creates this hierarchy in these systems, and it distances us from other people.

Oftentimes, a lot of the people who are weighing in on situations that they do not understand are distanced from the community that they're talking about.

I talked about immigration earlier.

I can talk about black communities, Latino communities, Asian communities.

I can talk about white communities, poor white communities.

People speak on people on these situations, poor folks, period.

People often speak about poverty from over here and they've never ever experienced it, been around it, or sometimes it was a couple generations ago and they forgot where they come from, and so they start acting a little different.

Y'all seen some of them folks, right?

I'm just saying, you used to see some of them folks, right?

We grew up together, and and all of a sudden we we struggled together.

Excuse I got some friends I grew up with, family members I grew up with.

Uh uh.

We struggled, we helped each other, we we gave to each other, uh, we we shared each other's clothes, and then all of a sudden you get a little older, somebody comes out of financial poverty, but you still got some of the social and emotional challenges of it.

You come out of it, and then all of a sudden you're moving on up, you're moving on up, right?

You move on up, and then you start looking back at the people that you left as if something's wrong with them, and the reality is there's something wrong with the whole daggone system.

Then you start saying, I don't know why they can't get their stuff together.

You know, you start, you're gonna get you some education now, now you're educated, right?

Now you're educated, and now you're moving on out to the really nice.

I ain't knocking no nice neighborhoods.

God desires all people to have access to nice neighborhoods.

That's the problem.

Ask people now who are still living in Appalachia, Kentucky, West Virginia.

Ask people who are living in the bodyos, Latino communities throughout America.

Right?

In the inner cities, in the hoods.

Folks in Cleveland, I bet you, I bet you there's folks in Cleveland who got access to all kinds of money and wealth, and they speak on folks in Cleveland who don't as if they're the experts.

This happens in every community throughout America.

Marion, Indianapolis, Chicago, New York.

It does not matter.

And what happens is we begin to learn, oh man, if I want to access that status, I better start playing that game.

And so then all of a sudden, a little bit here, I don't see no racism.

Uh-uh.

I don't see no classism.

No, women, women ain't mistreated.

Women have more power than men in this society, right?

All of a sudden, no, we don't treat disabled people differently.

No, not at all, right?

Now everybody's got the same amount of access, but do we really?

And I would beg to differ if you have not had the experience, or if you have not been intentionally present with people who are not like you in different circumstances for a long period of time, then you ought to shut up.

Just say, I don't know.

Just say, I don't know enough information to even speak on this.

That would be good for all of us.

But then don't stop there, go and learn.

Go and seek people out and say, I just want to befriend you.

Right?

And listen.

And when people tell you what they're experiencing, believe them.

Believe them.

Believe them.

Believe them.

Because you can have all the right theology.

Theology is just a big word for saying knowledge of God.

You can have all the knowledge of God, but still be wrong in your relationships.

Right.

Knowledge buffs up, but love builds up.

Building up means to construct from the ground up.

Love does not stand over top of people, it starts low and it builds up.

Paul is not calling the wounded to lower themselves, he is calling the strong to come down.

Philippians 2, 3 through 4.

Paul reframes identity.

If anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Not if anybody has a knowledge about God, but if anyone loves God, loving God shows up in the way we treat people.

Love is action.

It ain't just talk, it ain't thoughts and prayers.

It's action, it's presence, it's serving, it's loving, it's listening, it's being present with people that you don't fully understand.

And that's what he's saying to this congregation.

The goal is not that you know more.

The problem in the American church is not knowledge.

It is not more information.

It ain't even more prayer.

It's actually doing what you say you read.

And what you realize is then another challenge opens up, is that we don't have the emotional health or the relational wisdom to know how to navigate these challenges.

So what happens is people get anxiety, they get fear.

Sometimes there's trauma responses and triggers that happen, and it causes people to run away from the real problems, right?

And they go back over here into this place.

We have to understand that the discipleship of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit, causes us to be able to enter into situations with some emotional health and some relational wisdom to listen to people and to love people and to learn from them and to see them as our neighbor, no matter what your grandma, grandpa, great-grandma, grandpa, what you see on TV or your political party says about them, that you need to experience this.

But what you realize is emotions oftentimes trump faithfulness to Jesus.

This is why some folks they they come out of poverty, they come out of the struggle, get make a little money, and they're afraid to go back.

They haven't learned how to heal in their emotions.

That trauma has created a fear and an anxiety that when you talk about it, so they want to run from it.

Read the book of Acts.

Over again.

The power of the Holy Ghost empowers people to enter into difficult spaces and to be with people that previously they did not like.

Jews, Samaritans, Jews, Gentiles, it's them being sent to the people.

Guess what happens?

The Holy Spirit opens us up to accepting people where they are and loving them through it.

If you ever want to ask me about who I think is spiritual, it's probably people we're not talking about.

It's because it's the people who don't even need status, they don't need a post, they don't need none of that.

They're just showing up in communities and neighborhoods and in places throughout the world, loving people, oftentimes who are not like them.

But that's not sexy.

That ain't sexy for media.

That don't sell nothing.

Read the book of Acts again, and you'll see that the Holy Spirit does more than just send people out to mission to save people's souls.

The power of the Holy Spirit is embodied in human beings that draws and invites people and moves them to people and places that they previously did not like.

The key question is do you love your enemy?

I can tell how spiritual you are by how you love your enemy.

All right, church, I'm gonna start preaching now.

The part two here, part two.

The goal is now again, not that you know more, is that you are known by God and that you're shaped by his love.

Point two, right theology, wrong formation.

Paul affirms one God from Deuteronomy 6.4, one Lord Jesus Christ, Philippians 2.

Christians don't just believe in one God.

We belong to one Lord together.

But they had the right theology, they just had the wrong way of living it out.

They were still shaped by the status and the recognition and social hierarchy of the culture that they lived in.

You think you're free, but you are still being shaped by the need for status.

You're not free.

You're in bondage, and yet you're professing that you're free in Christ.

And yet you're still playing the Roman wrangling games of the Corinthian culture.

That's about competition.

It's about winning, it's about powering up, it's about showing that I got that bag.

I'm going to get that bag.

That's fool's gold, y'all.

Fool's gold.

Point three.

Not everyone is at the same place.

Not all have this knowledge.

Not everyone has the same access, the same background, or the same freedom.

Some believers came out of idol worship.

They associated meat with sin.

They were shaped by marginalization.

What feels like freedom to you may feel like bondage to someone else.

This is why it's important not to exercise our freedoms, because what you think is freedom is actually somebody else's bondage, right?

This is more than just, okay, is it okay to drink alcohol?

Am I free to drink alcohol?

Yes.

But is it beneficial to your neighbor?

It's much more than that, but it includes that.

Does your brother or sister have a stumbling block with drinking alcohol?

Then maybe you ought to love your neighbor well, even though you know that there's freedom.

You can choose not to exercise it.

See, what Paul is saying is Christian liberation is when you exercise your right not to exercise your right.

That's what this is all about.

That you actually exercise your right not to exercise your right.

That's freedom.

Because if you're just exercising your right because you want to be liberated, that's dangerous too.

Now, this stuff can be co-opted in culture and these cultural wars and all of that stuff.

I want to say that, but the reality is, is if we are one in Christ, it requires all of us to discern the things that we're doing, how we're living our lives, how we're talking, how we're treating each other, what are the things that are okay for public uh uh discourse and talking.

This is why I've also pulled back on some of my most social media.

I realize it's just not helpful sometimes.

Folks ain't changing, anyways.

I'm gonna give all my time to the abstract technological world.

I can't even talk, see, look at people, but I'm just typing and giving them all, and then folks wonder why they stressed out, they got all this anxiety, or then they say they when it comes to the church, they exhausted, they can't serve not what it is, and you're spending too much time in a world that doesn't exist.

And then when you get over here, you exhausted.

Do you tell your boss or your employees that you're exhausted too?

No, you don't.

But when it comes to the matters regarding the church or following Jesus, I ain't got no energy.

I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I'm worn out, I'm stressed, and you're stressed because you're over there living a delusional lie.

All them likes, loves, and shares, and all that time you give into a virtual world, it ain't even a world you can touch.

But somehow that that world is touching you.

And that world is touching me too because it's touching you, because I feel the impact, and you feel the impact when I'm engaging in something more than I'm engaging in the real people that I say I love, that I say I'm here to serve and pastor, right?

You feel it.

If I'm giving all my attention to that, you feel it, right?

This is for all of us to reckon with.

So for some, this is not about preference, this is about conscience.

And for many others on the margins, the issue is not being puffed up, it is being held down.

These are the things that we have to grapple with.

Here's a picture.

We did a poverty simulator last weekend, and I'll talk more.

Debbie and Andrew will talk more about this later, but we did this thing in the parking lot where we addressed people.

You've probably seen this on TV.

Look it up on the internet up at some point in time, where you see different people come together on a football field.

All right, take a step forward if your parents have a college degree.

Take a step forward, right?

And then before you know it, you got people way forward, people way back, and people navigating in between, right?

This is important for all of us to understand.

Because we all do not start in the same place, and we don't end up in the same place either.

But if we think of ourselves as a body, the body of Jesus, the physical body of Jesus, the physical body that we all have individually and the body of Christ, when we don't understand that we hurt Jesus, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt the church.

We hurt each other.

And sometimes we do it perpetually and continually without ever stopping to pause to say, Lord, help me.

Help me with my ignorance.

Help me with my arrogance.

Right?

I'm again, anytime I preach something, let me tell you, it's me, oh Lord.

Me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

This is me too.

I'm preaching to myself, y'all.

Fourth point.

Our freedom can destroy.

He says, take care in verses 9 through 12.

Take care.

Why?

Because freedom can wound, it can mislead, and it can destroy the faith of other people.

You know, a lot of folks have been hurt in the church, but the church as a whole would do better to ask some questions about why people are hurting.

Instead of just dismissing people or saying, just get over it, you know, everybody gets hurt, which is both are true.

We actually might be faithful if we would step out of this individualistic landscape that we live in and understand ourselves together as a collective body to where if you're hurting, I'm hurting.

And because of my love for you, I just don't do that anymore because I love you more than exercising my freedom.

This is something that we need to think about.

We need to listen.

Your freedom is not just about you, it affects the body.

This is Romans 12.

Freedom always impacts and affects the body.

Paul says that you sin against Christ to wound your brother or sister is to wound Christ Himself.

When we do things and make decisions, or we think about moving.

Do we think about how we might be wounding other people?

Or are we just gonna get ours?

We're gonna keep playing the games of the culture.

Or are we willing to slow down and say, okay, I don't want to wound my brother and sister because I love them, and I don't want to wound Jesus.

We cannot separate these things, church.

What we do to the least of these, we do unto Jesus.

We cannot separate these things.

I know our culture and this American Christianity shows us otherwise, but I'm not following the cultural Christianity.

I want to find, I want to follow the crucified, buried, and resurrected Jesus above everything else.

The last point love, it limits our freedom.

If we really love people, it will limit our freedom.

I will never eat meat again, Paul says.

This is a radical self-limitation.

Love is willing to lay down its own rights for the sake of other people, for the sake of the brethren in the cistern.

I like that word cistern.

Love causes us to lay down our own rights, and I haven't always done that well.

Sometimes I felt like my own life there were some things I was shortchanged of, and as I get older, I'm like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, ain't nobody gonna tell me nothing.

I'm pushing back against some of this stuff.

Right?

I'm not, and sometimes we have to discern these things, but one of the things I can tell you, I'm not doing it.

I ain't wearing suits every Sunday.

I'll tell you that right now.

You might get one suit a year out of me.

And if you want to wear a suit, praise the Lord.

I ain't knocking you at all.

Just don't impose that upon me.

I didn't sign no thing to say I had to wear a suit every Sunday to church, and that don't make you more holier than me either.

As a matter of fact, it might show that you got a little more money than me.

I'm just saying, we don't think about these things, right?

So then we make people feel bad for coming to church and they ain't got no suit.

Paul says something about that.

Who are you playing?

Who are you placating to?

The powers of the age, the status, the spirit of the air, this thing that's out here in the world, it's like the air that we breathe.

It talks about the spirit of the air.

The book of Revelation, there's hell that comes down and purifies the air.

Why?

It's because the air is about these ideologies that are floating around in the world and society that cause us to follow the beast and not Jesus.

And when we follow the beast, we participate in beastly behavior towards other humans.

This is why it's important to understand this.

When we follow Jesus, the lamb that was slain, we are convicted and we do not want to participate in beastly behavior towards other human beings because we laid out our life.

We laid out our rights.

Why?

Because we follow a Jesus who did that for us.

And we are supposed to be showing that towards one another in the body of Christ.

In church, one of the biggest hangups is that we're too consumed with our own individual rights instead of faithfulness to Jesus.

Love limits our freedoms.

Christian freedom is not the freedom to do whatever you want, it is the freedom to love like Christ.

So, what is shaping you?

In Corinth, temples shape behavior, and status is shaped identity.

In our world, systems shape us.

Platforms can shape us.

It's not about what you believe, but it's about what is forming you, what is uh creating habits in you, what is influencing you.

I'm just gonna do my thing, you know.

Uh uh, you know, it is what it is.

Keep saying that.

And I promise you, your spiritual life will look like that.

Keep practicing that.

I promise you, whatever it is, it will show up in your life.

We still live in status systems church as a multi-ethnic, multi-class church.

We continually say this because it's important for us to understand.

We can be a multi-ethnic church and then assimilate into the dominant culture and start to play the games of the middle to upper class folks.

But part of what we continue to say is that we don't want to play them games.

If that means we struggle, we struggle for the Lord, right?

And we're gonna trust the Lord in this.

We are not as free as you think if we still need to be seen as important.

So, for you, Paul's not saying don't eat meat.

He's saying let go of your need for status.

He's not just asking them to give up meat, he's asking them to give up access, status, and the need to belong at the table of the powerful.

Some things, invitations we need to learn how to decline instead of showing.

Amen.

Christian maturity is not rising above others, others, it's moving towards them.

Why do we live like this?

Because of Jesus.

Jesus had all authority, status, and honor, and yet he lowered himself, became poor, and gave himself for the many.

The gospel is not about climbing the ladder, it's not about the bag, it's not about being need to be seen or showing that you are somebody.

The gospel says I'm already somebody because of what Jesus has already done.

He died for our sins, he was buried, he was raised on the third day.

And so we don't limit our freedom to earn love.

We limit our freedom because we have already been loved.

We are a body church.

Your freedom matters, your choices matter, your influence, it matters.

Mature faith is not measured by how much freedom you exercise, but how much love that you show others.

Knowledge alone builds ego, but love builds people.

Let us be a people who know truth, who love deeply, who lay down rights, who move toward the margins, and who reflect Christ.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.