The Priority of Love in the Jesus Community

Not my first time preaching.

I just got back from a winter retreat where I was the keynote speaker at this youth winter retreat and it was pretty fun.

We talked about really crazy stuff.

We talked about dragons and giants, and I had a lot of fun with the kids.

Something that was a little hard for me, though, as I was preparing to go out there, is that I didn't know the people I was speaking to.

I didn't know these kids, so it's hard to connect with people and say something to people who don't know that you care about them.

There's that kind of saying that goes like they won't care about what you say until they know that you care or whatnot, and so I'm really excited to be here in our own body, where you guys know me and I know you really well, and as I've thought about what I wanted to share for today, I've just thought about our year as a whole, and it hasn't exactly been a very fun or easy year for us as a church body.

I would say We've had a lot of really good things happen, but we also had some hard things this year, and so I wanted to acknowledge that and think about how we could speak to that here today.

If you don't know, I'm also started teaching at a Christian school and I'm a Bible teacher there, and I get a lot of questions from the kids about all sorts of different things related to the faith and some of the primary questions I get, some of the main questions I get are questions surrounding Christian freedoms Can you be a gay Christian?

Can you be a Christian who smokes?

And I get a lot of questions about how a Christian is supposed to look like in their life.

Why are Christians sometimes judgmental is a big one that I get, and so I've thought about those and I've had to talk about those a lot with my students, because, ultimately, our character displays who we are and what it is that we believe, and when our character doesn't match up with what we say we believe, it calls our entire faith into question and it paints something about Jesus that is not true.

We are marked by our love.

We are marked by our love.

Isn't that what Jesus says in John 13?

He says this as he washes his disciples' feet, and they're all shocked by this.

Because you're our teacher.

You're not supposed to be serving us in this way.

We're supposed to be serving you.

You're the king that's supposed to come.

And he tells them a new commandment I give to you that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

Verse 35,.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

Why is this love a mark that you are a disciple of Jesus?

Well, because, ultimately, jesus' kingdom is one that wins through love.

Jesus comes and defeats the enemy, but he doesn't defeat the enemy by fighting.

He defeats the enemy by sacrificing himself.

He defeats the enemy by putting the other's first and above himself.

This is what is to mark us as a people.

You might think of Matthew 25, where he has the whole section where he talks about the goats and the lambs and he says you know, you served me.

And the people will say how did we serve you?

When did we see you naked and clothed you?

And he said when you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.

When you did it for other people, you did it for me.

You might think of the great command to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and mind.

To love your neighbor as yourself.

And who can forget the strongest, most radical thing that Jesus has ever said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

In the Gospel of Luke.

When Luke presents these words in Luke, chapter six, he says he phrase it like this if you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you?

For even sinners love those who love them, and this is really what is supposed to make our love different than the love of everyone else, because love is something that everyone thinks is good.

No one thinks that love is a bad thing.

When I talk with my students about love and when I talk with them about freedoms and Christian freedoms, no one would say that these are bad things.

So even think about the way some of our languages used in debates.

Think about, for example, the abortion debate, and instead of it being an argument about pro-abortion versus anti-abortion, it's pro-love or pro-choice, pro-life, pro-choice, but no one is going to say that choice is bad.

No one's going to say having freedoms is bad.

No one is going to say that life is bad.

No one's going to make those statements.

The question is, how far will you go with that as your primary ethic?

How far do you take the pro-life or how far do you take pro-individual freedoms?

And it's clear that these concepts, which we would say are good concepts and we would say our Christian concepts, are believed in our society, but they're twisted and not understood in the same way that we understand them.

We would say that Christ died to set us free.

But when I think of how a lot of people think about freedoms, it conflates with our command to love others.

For some of my students it's a big issue that hey, well, shouldn't the other people be able to believe what they want to believe?

It's their choice, right?

Why should I step on that line and tell them what they should believe or what they should do?

Don't they have their own freedoms and shouldn't they be able to make their own choices?

I remember my first semester in seminary.

I was taking a class on pastoral ministry and I had to go interview some pastors and one pastor I talked to who's here in the front row?

I interviewed him and one of the questions was what do you think is going to be the most pressing issue for pastors and for the church in the next 10, 15 years?

And Bob shared with me radical individualism.

That is going to be something that we as a church have to address the desire to say I am an individual with my own autonomy.

My choice and my desires come first and foremost in how I live my life, and I've seen that in Christian circles.

I've seen that in non-Christian circles, where we are so so focused on being our own person, the world also stretches and misconstrues what love is too.

Love oftentimes just looks like tolerance, and tolerance is not the same thing as love.

I tolerate you, I'm going to let you do whatever it is you want and I'm going to do what I want, and we're just going to stay in our separate arenas.

If I love you, I will step past that boundary at times and I will challenge you and question you for more.

I'm going through 1 Corinthians with my students, and 1 Corinthians 5 was a little difficult for some of them, because you have this issue of this man who's with his stepmom and Paul says, hey, kick this guy out of your church.

You are to judge those within the body, not those outside the body, but you are to judge those within the body, and for some that those words are a little scary.

We're supposed to judge Isn't judging bad.

We're supposed to determine things about other people's lives within our church body.

But the thing is, our love for that person requires that you judge them.

Our love for that person requires that you draw a line in the sand and say we don't pass this line.

Our love is at the heart and at the foundation of why we judge and why we set a standard for each other and why we call each other to do more.

Yeah, I get it.

If we go and speak to people that we don't know and we pronounce judgment on them, it doesn't feel like love.

If I go into the street and I talk to a random person and I just tell them what to do and what not to do, that isn't going to feel like love.

But within the body, where we know each other, where we spend time with each other, then you can make those statements.

Only when there is a strong foundation of I love you Will you hear the words of someone who tells you you're in the wrong.

Love has to be at the foundation before we can pronounce a judgment, and that's why that love in the community requires judgment.

At times, even sinners love those who love them.

If you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you, for even sinners do the same.

Everyone understands that.

Nobody thinks that I should hate my friends, nobody thinks that I should hate my spouse.

But it's the extra step that Jesus takes where he says I'm not just loving the people that are easy to love.

There's nothing special about that.

The thing that shows that Jesus' way is different is this love that extends beyond, this love that extends to those who are difficult to love.

And I would say, and I would challenge us as a church, that we failed in this area a few months ago, when we had our church split.

I think it was maybe hard to listen to our pastors, maybe because there was a question of do my pastors love me?

And on the other end, I would say, when there was frustration with the pastors, were we loving them?

And I questioned my own heart and my own ethics.

And the word is not to be used as a sword to strike other people.

The word is used as a sword to cut and prune the own heart that God uses to prune us.

So I don't say this to say here were the good guys and here were the bad guys.

No, all of us stand under the same command.

All of us ought to be judged and sharpened by what Jesus commands us as a community to do to love others in this radical way.

We need this.

We need this.

The world needs to see us like this.

The world needs to see us as a people who are sacrificial in our love, who are humble in our love.

People are not one over to the faith primarily by me proving that Jesus is God.

People are primarily one over to the faith when they can see something desirable in this community that they desire, and that thing at the center of who we are is love.

Okay, so I want to turn us to this text in 1 Corinthians, chapter 8.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

First Corinthians, chapter 8, is where we're going to be spending our time today.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

It's not a super cryptic passage.

It's pretty straightforward.

The only thing that makes this passage really difficult is trying to determine the historical background behind which Paul is writing to and addressing.

The Corinthian church was a church that was living in a culture that they wanted to be like.

They were living in a Greek culture and in this Greek culture you had these teachers called Sophists and it comes from this Greek word, sophia, which is a name today, but it means wisdom and the Corinthians wanted to be like the Greeks, in that they wanted to be seen as a people that are wise and a people that are knowledgeable, and they wanted their teachers to have this fancy rhetoric and to appear as a good teacher.

And the reason why the Corinthians wanted this is because, ultimately, they were in a community in Corinth, in a culture that highly valued status and highly valued the way you appear before other people, and so they're constantly seeking wisdom, and Paul is showing them.

Hey, this is the wisdom of the world and this is the wisdom of the Jesus people, and this wisdom in Jesus does not look like that wisdom.

That wisdom is a wisdom that is being portrayed to appear wise, not because you're actually pursuing wisdom, but because you're pursuing the appearance of wisdom.

And so he addresses this.

And I would say, if I were to try to describe the Corinthian church in just a few words, I would say that they were a people who were status seeking and they were a people that were puffed up in arrogance.

And we're going to see that this comes up even in this chapter of 1 Corinthians, chapter eight, and how Paul addresses that throughout his letter is in the same way each and every time In chapters eight through 14,.

Paul really wants to emphasize that love has to be at the center and that a heart and motivation of love is what builds up the church.

Here's verse one of chapter eight Now, concerning food offered to idols.

Right, so we already know at this point we're going to have to think a little bit about this historical context, because I don't live in a place where I'm really tempted to go to a temple where there's people sacrificing meat to idols.

We know that all of us possess knowledge.

This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

And now again, he's trying to do this thing where he's attacking their idea of knowledge and wisdom.

They value knowledge, they value wisdom, but he's saying this type of knowledge that you guys have actually puffs up, and this is something that we see him address throughout the letter.

Up until this point, if you have your Bible open, you can flip over to chapter four, verse six.

And as he's addressing them, he tells them I've applied all these things to you, to myself and Apollos, for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.

And later in that chapter, in verse 18, again he tells them some of you are arrogant.

And in chapter five, when he's addressing this man who is living in sin, he tells them hey, why are you guys tolerating this?

You are arrogant.

Ought you rather to mourn, but instead you're boasting in this person in your community who is living in sin.

They have a problem with boasting, they have a problem with arrogance, and so Paul tries to turn them over to think differently about this.

Love builds up, and if you are to read from here all the way through the end of chapter 14, you would see that this is his answer time and time again.

In chapters eight through 10, he addresses this issue of food offered to idols, and his answer is very simply love, think about your brother when he addresses head coverings.

Love, think about those around you.

When he addresses the Lord's Supper, why are you guys eating the way you are?

Love those who are weaker in your community.

When he addresses spiritual gifts, you guys are boasting in your spiritual prowessness, but you ought to be using your gifts to love and build up the community.

This is how the Jesus people are supposed to function at their heart.

They are supposed to be a community that loves each other and thinks primarily about the other before the self.

So they have this issue in this community, where they live in a culture that is a very pagan culture, and they have these temples where the food is offered to the idols in this temple, and people would go to the temple, to these pagan temples, to eat this food.

And this is now what he's addressing in verse one right, concerning this food offered to idols.

You guys wrote to me about this particular question you guys had.

And there's the people in this Corinthian church who think to themselves, hey, shouldn't it be alright for us to eat this food, like we're not actually being idolatrous, we're not actually doing idolatry by eating this food, we're just eating the food.

And they know Paul's teachings, they know what Paul has to say that, hey, food doesn't make you better, right?

This is something that Jesus addressed, where he says it's not what you take in that defiles you, it's what comes out of you that defiles you.

And Peter has his vision in Acts right, where he sees this food being laid out and he says, okay, well, god is telling me to take and eat this food.

Food is not what makes us special.

And so they know this and so they're saying hey, don't we know this, don't we know that this food shouldn't change our spiritual status?

Don't we know that?

Don't?

We all possess this knowledge now?

And so he addresses this knowledge that they have, and they're probably expecting this.

They're probably expecting this, hey, paul, we think that this is okay.

And we have some in our community who think this isn't okay.

Can you tell them what we all already know?

We all already possess this knowledge.

Come on, this is like basic stuff.

Why don't you tell the people in our community who don't understand this what we already know that these idols are not real and the food doesn't make you better than another person.

It's okay to eat this food.

And what a shock they would have had when Paul responds back and he kind of rebukes them for this mindset and he says now wait a minute.

You're you need to change your attitude about this, because you're having the wrong approach.

Your attitude is one that says what is my right?

What privileges do we have?

What are my Christian liberties?

What are my Christian freedoms?

How far can we?

Can we step?

Are we stepping outside of Jesus's ethic?

Well, we know that this isn't actually wrong.

Right Other people who don't know their Bibles as well.

They don't understand this thing that we know.

We know this, though we know that this isn't actually a wrong or immoral practice.

So, paul, can you help straighten them out a little bit?

And he flips it on them and he says, yeah, it's not a question about whether it's right or wrong.

Think about this how is what you are doing affecting those that you claim to love?

Right, you're not doing this.

This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, and this is how he wants to turn his people to think.

He wants the Corinthian church to think primarily in terms of not what is right or what is wrong and what are we allowed to in the Christian faith.

They have a set boundary, but their attitude primarily needs to be this Is what I'm doing loving my neighbor.

If anyone imagines that he knows something, if you really think you know something, he doesn't yet know it, as he ought to, because if you really knew something, you would know that love is more important in the end.

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

The primary thing is not your own knowledge, the primary thing is love, and if you love God, you live different and you're known by God, because God initiates that relationship with you.

God is the initiator of our relationship that we have with him, and how is that relationship initiated?

By his love.

We are known by God because God primarily stepped into our lives in the name of love.

So love ought to be at the center of what we do.

And think about what John says about this in 1 John, where he says in 1 John, chapter 4, that if you do not love your brother, you do not love God.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

This is at the center of who we're supposed to be.

Verse 4, therefore, now I'm addressing it.

Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know, and then he quotes their own words here.

These are their words that they're saying to him and he repeats it back.

He's like okay, I'll grant you that, I'll agree.

We know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one.

For although there are many so-called gods in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many quote unquote gods and many lords yet for us, the Jesus followers, there is one, god, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one, lord, jesus Christ, through whom we are, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

And he's kind of alluding to an ancient prayer that the people would have prayed.

The people of God have prayed this prayer that that hero, israel, the Lord, your God, the Lord is one, right, this is a statement about God's oneness and it's something that theologically he agrees with them.

Yeah, great, I know that there's one God, but but there's something else in these words of the Shema that he's, that he's slightly alluding to.

He's not going to address it here, in chapter eight, so we're not going to address it here.

He addresses it in chapter 10 when he talks about idolatry.

But in the Shema prayer it's not just a statement about God's oneness, it's a statement about the people's affiliation and and and following of this God and this God.

Only you could translate that Shema prayer from Hebrew into English.

Instead of saying the Lord, our God, the Lord is one and it's a statement about his oneness, you can translate it as the Lord is your God, the Lord alone.

It's a statement about our devotion to this singular God.

And think about that in the context of food offered to idols, right, they're like well, it should be fine for us to eat this food because at the end of the day, we know these idols don't exist, but then he, he turns it for them and he reminds them of this statement that, well, yeah, we, we follow only one God.

But hidden in that Shema prayer is this idea that we are devoted to one God only, we are singularly devoted to one God.

So why the interest in going into the pagan temple to eat food?

Right, doesn't it kind of it kind of questions their whole motive in the first place?

Right, you're so focused on?

Well, we should be allowed to do this.

But he says, yeah, but like, what's what's the point about that?

Right, shouldn't we be devoted about to this one God only?

Now, eating this food isn't necessarily idolatrous, and he kind of addresses that, but it is a question that they should ask themselves.

And now he gets to this part in the second half of the chapter, and this is this is really where he wants them to turn their attention to.

It's not a question about your rights.

It's not a question about whether you should be allowed to do this or not.

This is really where their attention should rest.

However, not all possess this knowledge, right, their claim is that we all know this.

Right, all of the people should know this already.

This is like basic truth, that these gods don't exist, these idols don't exist.

And he actually does address that sort of and say, hey, no, when we do, when we do make offerings to idols, we are offering to demons.

And he repeats language that's found in Deuteronomy 32.

So he does sort of disagree with that statement slightly, but it's kind of besides the point, right, we think there is this one God and it's not a question about that.

It's a question about this knowledge that you claim that everyone has.

When you make a statement and say every smart person knows this fact, then you ostracize everyone who doesn't believe that thing.

And what you do is you play a cheap rhetoric trick.

You make anyone who thinks differently than you a fool.

If they don't agree with me, it's because they're an idiot.

That's kind of a cheap tactic, that's a cheap blow.

That doesn't really prove your point, but rhetorically it's very strong, but it ostracizes those who don't agree with you.

And he says, however, not all possess this knowledge, but some, through former association with idols, because this is the culture that they're a part of and they step out of that culture.

If my kids are to ask me straight up hey, is smoking a cigar wrong, I'm gonna say, no, there's some liberty there.

But to the people who come from a different background and have that as a background, I'm not gonna make that a point where I'm gonna say, oh no, it's okay, you can smoke all you want.

No, that's a culture that they don't wanna be a part of.

And anyone who has been a part of those types of cultures know smoking or drinking or whatever other indulgence you take in, it's not just about the act itself, it's about the community that surrounds that act.

Drinking is may not be a sin, but if you are a drinker and you're regularly hanging out in bars, you know that there's a setting there, there's a culture there, and maybe the act of drinking isn't itself sinful, but maybe that culture is.

That culture is a culture that doesn't primarily put Jesus first and foremost.

It's a different type of culture, and so these people come from this other culture.

They come from this world, where they are in a pagan world and he says look like, maybe the food isn't wrong.

But when you come from that world, to re-step into that world is not just to eat food, it's to step back into an anti-Christian culture, and this is really a hard line to draw.

How do we differentiate and place boundaries safe boundaries for our people between the culture and between our church?

Some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.

Food will not commend us to God.

We are no worse off if we do not eat, no better off if we do.

But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

Don't let your own freedoms as a Christian hurt your brother.

And probably what was happening in this community was something like this.

It wasn't just like hey, I am, you know, playing video games, and for my brother, playing video games is hard, so I need to not ever offend his conscience.

We'll get to that in a little second.

He says he used the word destroy, not just offend a person's conscience, but probably what it looked like was more like this right, I think it's okay to do this.

So and this shows the strength of my conscience Me going to the bar shows that I have a strong conscience and I have a strong foundation in Jesus, so I'm going to bring my brother along with me and say, hey, no, no, no, it's okay to do this.

In fact, if you do this, it'll strengthen your conscience.

It'll show that you have a true, strong conscience in Jesus, right, and you know what is right and wrong.

And he's saying don't, don't do that.

Why are you trying to get him to, to see what you claim to see, when that could be a stumbling block for him?

For if anyone sees you, who have knowledge, eating in an idols temple, will he not be encouraged, if his consciousness is weak, to eat food offered to idols?

And so, by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.

And here's, here's an here's an irony in this passage.

We'll look at it in a second.

But right, and this, this sort of ethic that Paul is proposing, needs to have some qualifications for sure.

Right, because you can use this passage to abuse the Christian community and say, hey, these things are somewhat questionable, we should never be allowed to do ever.

Because what if you happen to offend someone?

But he's not just making that statement, it's not just about offending your brother's conscience, because, truthfully, it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to offend somebody.

Right, I read philosophy, right, by reading, or I pick up the Quran and I read the Quran so that I can understand this other religion.

I'm going to offend someone by doing that, right, someone's going to call on to question my faith and someone's going to have their faith maybe called into question.

But but he's not just saying don't do things that are going to perhaps offend someone, because then you can't do anything.

Sorry, that doesn't make sense, that that can't be what he's saying here, because that that's a nonsensical conclusion and rather it's don't bring people into this right and like like what I was saying about about a bar culture.

I think the idea is not don't drink, but it's right If a person who came out of that culture struggles with that and that culture to them represents non-Christian right.

Don't drag them back into that world because they might fall from their faith because of their re um re, holding onto this old culture.

Right, if I bring you back into this world, into something that is really hard for you to maintain with your Christian faith, it's easy for me to maintain reading philosophy and reading my Bible at the same time.

That's not hard for me but for my brother who that is hard for.

I'm not going to force him to read philosophy textbooks If that's going to make him question his faith and really, perhaps, destroy his faith.

Right In the irony in this passage he says look, by your desire to eat this food, you're destroying your brother, for whom Christ did the exact opposite of what you're doing.

You are saying I want my food and I care about this more than I care about my brother's weak conscience.

Meanwhile, what does Jesus do?

He goes the full length and dies for those who are weak, right?

Do you catch the irony there?

In that second half of the verse, him, pointing to Christ, died for this person is not just saying don't, don't, you know, hurt the salvation of someone who?

Who is questioning?

But the irony is, jesus is ethic, is one where he sacrifices entirely of himself for the sake of the brother.

This is a brother for whom Christ has died, and when you compare those two things side by side, it's obvious that these people are not really thinking like Jesus in this way.

Jesus died for the sake of us, for the sake of the weak.

You are eating your food because you want to eat your food and you're willing to hurt your brother's faith and you're willing to drag your brother into a state of destroying their faith, even because you're so, so focused on exerting this knowledge and this freedom that you guys have in Christ.

Don't destroy the person for whom Christ has died, thus wounding, thus sinning against your brother and wounding their conscience when it is weak.

You sin against Christ.

Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble and knows he steps, he steps away from particular food offered in the pagan temples.

He's just as if any food, if any meat.

If eating apples makes my brother stumble, I will never eat it, lest I make my brother stumble.

This is the ethic that we are supposed to have is an ethic that says my freedoms are nothing compared to the love I have for my brother.

And I know what American culture is like.

I know we love rights and freedoms, but what Paul is saying here is forgo your rights, forgo your freedoms, forgo those things that are going to hurt your brother's faith.

Don't you see what's important here?

Your rights mean absolutely nothing.

Jesus gave up his life for us.

How dare we take our rights and say these are my rights as a citizen, these are my rights as an American, these are my rights as a Christian, these are my rights as a person in a relationship?

Don't I have a right to tell my spouse what I want.

Your rights are not what Jesus died for.

Jesus died to make a community that's like him, of people who give up their freedoms, of people who give up their life for the sake of others.

This is what he says in Philippians, chapter two that we are to put the interest of others above our own, that we are to be like Christ's mind in this way.

Who gave up?

He emptied himself of this thing that he had in God.

He didn't count that as something to be grasped, but instead he stepped into the form of a serpent, a form of a servant Sorry, not a serpent Into the form of a servant.

He took the likeness of human flesh.

He took the form of humanity to serve us.

This is how Jesus operates.

This is who Jesus is.

This is who we are supposed to be.

I don't care about my freedoms.

I care about my person next to me.

That matters more, and we're good at this.

Sometimes we know that when I'm playing with a little child, it doesn't matter what I want to play.

It matters what the kid wants to play.

This is how we're supposed to be minded in with each other, and Paul now addresses that.

This is his own.

This is his own heart he practices what he preaches.

So I'm not going to explain the rest of this passage that I'm going to read from.

I'm going to read through 1 Corinthians 9 and then the little end of his argument in 1 Corinthians 10.

But I just want to read it for us and I just want us to think about how Paul is trying to live out this ethic of others.

Come first.

Love for others takes a higher priority than my own freedoms, right?

So this is 1 Corinthians, chapter 9.

1 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

I'm not really going to explain it that much.

I've done enough explaining of chapter 8.

Am I not free?

I said I'm not going to explain, but notice the freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, not my freedom, not my rights.

Okay, am I not free?

Am I not an apostle?

Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord?

Are you not my workmanship in the Lord?

If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

This is my defense to those who would examine me.

Do we not have the right to eat and drink?

Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas, that's Peter.

Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?

Who serves as a soldier at his own expense?

Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit, but that's what I'm doing.

Who tends to flock without getting some of the milk?

Do I say these things on human authority?

Does not the law say the same?

Does not God's word agree with me?

For it is written in the law of Moses you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.

Is it for oxen that God is concerned?

Does he not certainly speak for our sake?

It was written for our sake because the plowmen should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop.

I have this right.

We have this right to it.

If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

If others share this rightful claim on you, do we even more, nevertheless, right, I have this right, but nevertheless we have not made use of this right.

But we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.

Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings.

In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel myself should get their living by the gospel.

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision, for I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting, for if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me.

Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel, for if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship.

What, then, is my reward?

That, in my preaching, I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them To the Jews.

I became as a Jew in order to win Jews To those under the law.

I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law.

To those outside of the law, to the Gentiles, I became as one outside of the law, not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ.

That I might win those outside of the law.

To the weak, I became weak.

That I might win the weak, I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some.

I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessings.

Paul practices what he preaches here.

I have this right, I have this freedom.

I have it more so.

But I would not want my rights and my freedoms to trump what could be if I were to choose to abandon those rights, to surrender over those rights, for the sake of winning over more people.

We have freedoms.

We have rights great.

Abandon them, give them up.

What's more important than that is following Jesus in this way that you put your brother over your own freedoms.

Then, in the beginning of chapter 10, he does come back to address the question of idolatry, and it's kind of a side point for my sermon today.

So I'm just going to step over that for now, and I want us to look at this end section, how he closes up this whole argument in the end of chapter 10.

So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do and the context for this eating and drinking is your pagan temple eating or your buying of this meat whatever you do in that, do it all to the glory of God.

Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I and look he's pointing to his own example, the example he just laid out in chapter 9, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

This is his own ethic that he has embodied, and he doesn't embody this ethic for no other reason other than the fact that this is God's own ethic, displayed through Jesus Christ.

Jesus was one who suffered for the sake of us.

This is how we're supposed to live, following in the example of Jesus' own life.

We are the Jesus community.

We are the Jesus people.

People look at you and, as long as you say that you proclaim him, they don't know the nuances of our theology.

They don't know the nuances of our tradition.

All they know is that person wears Jesus on them.

So whatever I see in them, that must be who Jesus is.

As we step into this new year, let's have this attitude that Paul displays that which is in Jesus and that which the Christian community was always intended to live like.

We destroy the works of Satan when we do not behave like he does.

We destroy the works of Satan when we step in humility and in love and in putting the needs of others above our own, protecting the conscience and faith of those around us, protecting the image of Christ by our actions.

Let us love this year.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, god, we thank you for your love for us, lord.

We thank you that you chose to die for those who are weak, those who could not die for themselves, those who could not pay their own price, those who cannot rule their own lives.

We are not good at being our own kings and queens.

We need you to lead for us, god.

We need you to save us.

We need you to guide our lives, corporately as a church, individually, in our private lives, with our spouses, with our children, with our parents, with our friends, with our coworkers, with our pastors, with our sheep.

You call us to live like you to sacrifice our desires, to sacrifice our rights.

For you, our Christian liberties are not more important than our Christian love.

We thank you, god, for displaying your goodness and showing us how we are to live now, and in your name we pray Amen.