Freedom with Purpose: Freedom, Food and Love

Good morning, everybody. You made it back from sunnier climates,

and then you brought the sun with you.

So I'm so glad to see you all. I'd be glad to see you all even if it were raining,

but less so. That was a joke.

Anyways, good morning. We are today, we're going to start off either three or four week series.

I'm not sure. We'll find out. We'll find out when we get there.

If we get to week four and we're still in it, it'll be a four week series.

But a short series is through a section of the book of 1 Corinthians.

So it's probably a book that you're familiar with if you've read the Bible,

because it's one of the big ones, one of these large letters that Paul has written

to the churches that he's planted, and particularly the church in Corinth.

And over the course of this either three or four-week series,

we're going to be focusing in on just three chapters, 1 Corinthians 8 through 10, 8, 9, and 10.

So if you've got a Bible, which they're They're in front of you,

so you can have one. Just go ahead and open it to 1 Corinthians 8.

But if you're familiar with the book of 1 Corinthians, if you're kind of like,

know the general lay of the land there, you're probably like,

huh, that's a sort of a strange set of, you know, set of chapters to be going through.

Maybe you're scratching your head because these are not exactly,

at least in my opinion, like if there were a greatest hits album of the New

Testament, I mean, it wouldn't be on there.

They're not like the most memorable, set of verses and chapters and stuff like that.

It's not 1 Corinthians 13. It's not like things that you hear a lot about.

But while there are, I think there are actually, we'll see, there are some memorable

verses in here and we'll look at them.

What we see in this section is a section of scripture I think that is often neglected.

And I think it's probably because it does not seem on first glance that it is

super immediately relevant to us because it's very much a section of scripture that is really...

Unique to the context of Corinthians, okay?

So Paul introduces this section, 1 Corinthians 8.1, and he narrows down on what

he's going to talk about.

He talks about the context, and he says this, now, about food to sacrifice to idols.

So he's saying this is three chapters on food sacrificed to idols.

And for three chapters, Paul instructs the Corinthians about how to handle this

issue of eating food that's been sacrificed to idols.

Now, you probably have a lot on your mind this morning.

Maybe you're worried about your family, you know, the relationships.

Maybe you're worried about your finances. Maybe you look at,

you've watched the news the last couple weeks and you're just like stressed out about that.

Maybe you saw, and I'm sorry, this is actually gonna be a little shocking to

some people, Snoqualmie ice cream burned down last night. I know, I know.

I was, I'm still kind of in shock about that. I'm sorry, I just put you all

in shock. I just did really not, I should have waited to the end.

The world we live in is a little crazy. That's probably in the forefront of

your mind, but you probably didn't walk in wondering, what do I do about the

food sacrifice to idols?

It's not something that is immediately important to you, probably.

So maybe you're wondering why we are going to read this text and spend time

in these chapters that deal with such an obscure and ancient problem.

And I'm glad you asked, because I've written it down. and otherwise we would just go nowhere.

As we read scripture, we find, this is the thing, we talked about this a little

bit last week. It is not a rule book. Scripture is not a rule book.

It's not just a set of rules.

And I think the first obstacle that each of us has to overcome when we're readers

of Scripture, when we decide to become readers of Scripture,

is that we need to understand what the Bible is for.

Last week, we gave a couple of quick reflections about missions,

and we interviewed a missionary couple.

And one of the points I made there, I borrowed from an and older pastor,

I. Howard Marshall, long since dead.

And he says this about scripture. I think I have the quote.

He says, scriptures are, it's not a set of rules. They are more like documents of mission.

And he says, they show how the church should be shaped for its mission.

And so if you're scratching your head and you're thinking, well,

how is this like long protracted argument about about food sacrifice to idols

in any way relevant to me.

I'll tell you this, it's because the scriptures are not a rule book.

They are documents of mission.

And this passage is relevant to you because it tells you something about being

a person who is shaped for mission.

We don't really need rules about food sacrifice to idols anymore because we

do not live in a culture where there is readily available food sacrifice to idols.

But what Paul is doing is not setting out a bunch of rules for them to observe.

What he's doing is having them think about the mission of God and what they're called to.

And so his instruction is rooted in that, in shaping them to be a missional

people who are shaped for their purpose and their goal, not about setting a

bunch of rules because certain things are icky and certain things are allowed.

He's trying to shape them. And in the same way that they needed to be shaped,

we continue to need to be shaped as people.

And so we come to scripture in that same spirit.

But how do we get there? How do we get to the point of application and making

this relevant and figuring out how these passages might shape us?

You might remember back in November, we did a short series through the book

of Malachi, which is an even older book. It's a part of the Old Testament.

And we discussed as kind of just basic framework of how to apply scripture and

hermeneutics, the interpretation and application of scripture is just,

I think, if we want to reduce it down to its simplest form is just a two-part thing.

Number one is interpretation, and in interpretation we ask this question,

what did it mean to them then?

And then the second step is application, what does it mean to us now?

Because we're dealing with texts, and we have these authoritative texts of scripture

that we believe continue to be binding and important and authoritative to us now,

but we can't always apply them immediately because we are not always in the

same sort of context that the original hearers, the original recipients of these letters were.

And so we have to ask ourselves two questions when we're figuring out how to

interpret and apply Scripture.

We have to ask the first question, what did it mean to them then?

Before we can start asking ourselves, how do we apply it to our own lives?

So let's ask the first question, what did this whole idea idea mean to them then?

What did the instruction on eating food sacrificed to idols mean to them then?

What is going on with food in Corinth and why are people sacrificing it to idols?

Well, I mean, the practice is what it sounds like.

There is, in Corinth, it is a major Roman city.

The Romans were known for having an extensive pantheon.

It was part of their plan as they built their empire, part of their plan of

co-opting nations into the Roman world was that they would, by force, come and take over.

They would take over the government, but they would give people something,

thing, which is they would allow them to keep their unique way of worshiping.

They would allow them to keep their gods. They didn't force the Roman gods on them.

What they did is they took whatever god it was of the people that they were

conquering, and they just said, okay, we'll worship that god too,

because we'll worship all the gods, right?

Roman religion was about worshiping all the gods. They didn't care.

They weren't particular about which gods should be worshiped.

And so in In Roman cities, what we find is that there is not just one god who's

worshipped, but multiple gods who are worshipped.

The Roman cities are full of places of worship, and it was true of Corinth as well.

And so all the gods of the Roman pantheon are being worshipped there in Rome,

and particularly through offering of sacrifices, animal sacrifice.

That was the way ancient religious people worshipped. And so they would sacrifice

a goat or a lamb or whatever, whatever the animal was, but they wouldn't just throw it away.

What they would do is then they would eat it.

They would either prepare it themselves or they would sell it in the markets.

And so when it came to meat in Corinth, that was sort of the sourcing of it.

There were not farms that were trying to just sell meat.

There were temples buying meat from farms, and then they would be the middlemen

for meat generally into the rest of the city.

And I think it's hard for us to appreciate how integrated Roman paganism was

with the culture. And I don't mean paganism like a dirty word.

That's just the word we use to define this kind of pantheon of Rome.

It's not like, ooh, those icky pagans. It's just they were pagans.

They would have called themselves pagans. They didn't have a problem with that word.

The thing is, like in Roman cities, paganism and Roman worship was just everywhere.

It was not the kind of place where it would be possible for Christians who reject

all these other gods, and they're unique in that, would have been able to avoid paganism.

It would have been very difficult to avoid paganism if you're still living in a place like Corinth.

While most people in the Roman world, especially the poor, didn't actually eat

much meat, the The meat that you could get was almost exclusively from these

idol-worshiping outlets.

So you could only really buy meat sacrificed to idols.

So imagine like you're going to Safeway, right? And you're just hungry.

You're having a little cookout later.

Probably maybe some of you guys are going to do this later today.

You're going to go look for a T-bone, right? And you've got a few options.

And you say, okay, there's a steak. Here's this one was sacrificed to Zeus.

Okay, I like Zeus. You know, this one was sacrificed to Aphrodite.

So you had lots of options, but they were all sacrificed to somebody,

right? So if you wanted meat, that's what you had to do.

It was just a part of life. And not only that, the New Testament scholar Ben

Witherington, which is a great name, says this.

He says, several temples in Corinth had dining rooms where feasts were held

on many occasions, including birthdays.

Temples were the restaurants of antiquity. Now, I'm a foodie,

and I like to go to restaurants. restaurants.

But imagine if I was in this position where the only restaurants I could go

to were all just like pagan temples of worship.

That would create a bit of a problem for me, like just a moral,

ethical, it would make me ask a lot of questions.

Because if you had like a well-to-do friend, right? And again,

meat eating is mostly something that the wealthy do, right?

And they're celebrating their anniversary or their birthday.

They'd be like, oh, come on, Come on over to, to come on over.

Like we're going all out. We're having a party at Apollo's house, right?

And there's going to be tons of meat and it's going to be great.

And everyone can come and we can celebrate me and Apollo at the same time. Isn't that awesome?

So that would be kind of the context in which this idol eating,

idol meat eating is going on.

So you can maybe understand that the context of life in the pagan world would

present some challenges for the early church.

You remember, we just have gone through the book of Acts, right?

We were thinking about how the mission was going forward.

And you'll remember in Acts, there's a lot of concern amongst the Jews, right?

Because Christianity begins as a Jewish movement and the Jews are unique in

the Roman world in that they are exclusively worshiping their God.

And the Romans have allowed it, but they don't really like the idea because

they think the Jews are a little bit, you know, prideful that they don't want

to worship the rest of the Roman God, but they tolerate it all the same.

And so like Christianity comes out of this movement in Jerusalem of followers of Jesus, right?

And then as the gospel, the good news of Jesus, starts to go outside of Jerusalem

and into the rest of the Roman world, there's a lot of debate within the church

in Jerusalem because that's where the leaders of the church are settled.

And there's a lot of debate going back and forth. And it's this question of

how could you possibly worship the one true God in a pagan world?

World how is it that these gentiles who

don't practice the exclusive kind of

restrictive rules around worship like like the

jews do how can they go ahead and worship god in a way that is pleasing to god

right because they're so seeped in paganism whereas we jews have sort of been

exclusive and dedicated ourselves to to the lord right and we've been allowed

to do that how can these non-jews What should they do?

And there's debate. Should Christian converts from Gentile people,

from non-Jewish people, should they start to take on all the Jewish rules and

regulations and purity laws so that they won't be so mixed up in paganism, right?

So there's this very live debate in the beginning of the book of Acts.

What are they to do? And you'll remember in Acts 15, right?

There's this debate and the apostles just get together and they say, we have to decide.

We have to decide what to tell these non-Jewish believers about how they should live.

And so they all get together and James basically is kind of the one who's more

or less in charge among the apostles there.

And he says this, he says, he writes a letter to these new churches of Gentile believers.

And he says this, it was the Holy Spirit's decision and ours not to place further

burdens on you beyond these requirements that you abstain from food offered

to idols, from blood, from anything,

from eating anything that's been strangled, and from sexual immorality.

You will do well if you keep yourselves from these things.

So, right, so you have this context where Christians are trying to figure out,

well, how do we live as Christians devoted to the one true God in a pagan world.

And the Jewish leaders of the church say, we're not going to take the option

to make these Christian converts get circumcised, and we're not going to make

them live according to all of our restrictive rules and our traditions of Judaism.

But they do say, if you could just do these couple things, like just some light

rules to sort of be observant, but they're not too heavy.

And one of of them, the first one, is to abstain from food sacrificed to idols.

And this is sort of the way of the church in Jerusalem to sort of accommodate

the fact that the Holy Spirit seems to have accepted these people,

and that they're called to something, but they're not called to become Jews.

They do need to practice some kind of distinctiveness, but they don't need to take on all of the rules.

And what we see here in 1 Corinthians 8 is that Paul is speaking into a conflict

within the church about these particular instructions.

Not everyone has heard what the apostles have been teaching the church in the

Gentile world to do, which is to abstain from food, sacrifice idols,

and to maintain sexual immorality, because that's what Paul has talked about

just before this section.

Not everyone heard that and say, yeah, definitely, we'll do that.

Some people thought, that's a dumb rule.

I don't like that. I don't get why we should have to do that.

And so Paul is coming into a conflict with the church and he's trying to mediate

because there's division in the church. The lines of division have been drawn.

Some are with the apostles and they say, of course we shouldn't eat food sacrificed to idols.

Idols are icky and gross and they're demonic.

And how could you even think about eating food sacrificed to idols?

And then there's another party in this division. They are Christians.

They're people who are practicing faith. faith and they are really not buying into it.

They think, no, why shouldn't we? What's really the big problem?

And it's not just because, well, they want to and it's convenient.

Not entirely. They actually have a rationale for why they should be allowed

to eat food sacrificed to idols.

We read about it in verse four. I'm skipping a couple of verses.

We'll come back to those later.

He says this, Paul basically gives it an expression to their argument.

This is what what they're arguing about. This is what those who want to eat

food sacrificed to idols are arguing in the church and to Paul.

He says, about eating food sacrificed to idols then, we know that an idol is

nothing in the world and that there is no God but one.

For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven and on earth,

as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God and Father.

All things are from him and we exist for him and there is one one Lord Jesus

Christ and all things are through him and we exist through him.

See, those who think it's okay for us to eat food sacrificed to idols, they have a good reason.

They say, hey, we know that all this pagan idolatry, this worshiping of the

pagan gods, it's all just made up. It's not real.

There is no Zeus. There's no Apollo. There's no God but one.

Roman religion is just a delusion.

So they say, we believe in God. We believe that God is the only real God.

And so what's the problem?

Deluded people think they're offering sacrifice to something that doesn't exist.

So why should I keep me from eating that meat and thanking God for it?

What's wrong with the meat? Just because other people believe something is happening

and I know it's not true, why should I stop myself from eating it?

So Paul is stepping into this very live conflict within the church.

On one side, there's people who are in the know, they're They're knowledgeable.

They see through the delusion of Roman religion. They have knowledge and understanding.

They have good theology. They can defend their theology. They're saying a lot of true things.

They have plenty of reasons why this hesitancy and not wanting to eat food sacrifice

idols, it's just too much. It's not necessary.

They have lots of reasons to believe that. But there are others in Corinth who

simply cannot understand why or how they could eat food that has been dedicated

to a false God or why they should go to a temple, the temple of a Roman God and have a meal.

They just cannot wrap their minds around it.

And so Paul is mediating this conflict and he goes on. He says this,

however, not everyone has this knowledge.

Some have been so used to idolatry up until now that when they eat food sacrificed

to an idol, their conscience being weak is defiled.

Food will not bring us close to God. We are not worse off if we don't eat,

and we are not better off if we do eat.

So for those, Paul is giving an expression to the other side,

for those that don't have a knowledge, the same kind of knowledge,

the same kind of freedom that these other people have,

for those who don't have that kind of knowledge, they don't have this theology,

they don't have this confidence that it's okay, they're in this difficult situation.

Because they see some believers going to these temples, and they seem to have

a clean conscience about it.

But if they go, they don't have a clean conscience about it.

They feel like they're doing something that's contrary to what God has asked them to do.

Their conscience doesn't sit right with eating food sacrificed to idols.

So there is, in short, a difference of conviction in the church about what God

asks of us, particularly with regards to our engagement in culture.

And that's not relevant to us at all, right?

Right? So here we have the same sort of shape of things going on here.

You have people with convictions, opposite sides, strong convictions,

and it's leading to conflict.

And Paul, at least at this point, again, it's a protracted argument.

In the beginning, he isn't going around and making very clear, he's not picking sides.

He's not picking apart the theology

of either side. He affirms that food doesn't bring us closer to God.

Closeness to God is not a matter of eating or drinking. He says that elsewhere in scripture.

And he acknowledges that it feels like a coin flip.

He says, you know, we're no worse off if we don't eat.

You're not better off if you do eat. So is there just unlimited freedom on either side?

Paul doesn't seem to want to get into it, at least for now. He doesn't want to pick a side.

He acknowledges that there are two viable options, but Paul doesn't just leave it there, right?

He doesn't enter into the argument, but that is not the only thing he has to say about the conflict.

He says this, but be careful that this right of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak.

Not entering into either sides of the argument, not trying to pick sides,

at least not at this point.

But he does say this one thing that must be true for those who are in the know,

these knowledgeable people with good theology who feel like they have freedom.

He says, the one thing you definitely need to know is that you be careful that

your rights don't become a stumbling block to those who are weaker.

And by weak, he just means those who don't have this knowledge,

who don't have this clean conscience.

And I think that is fascinating. And I think it's entirely relevant to your life and my life.

See, what was true then is true now. And that is that you, as a Christian,

you have rights. You have rights.

As a Christian, and we'll talk more about this next week. You have freedom in Christ.

This is like such a uniquely Christian thing. Christian maturity,

part of being a Christian is knowing that you have rights. Galatians 5.1,

I think is the clearest expression of this.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. You have rights, you have freedom.

You are not reading scripture and thinking, oh, these are the sets of laws and

rules that I have to follow.

What this book tells me is that because by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,

I am accepted into life with God, I'm a child of God, and I have the rights

and privileges of a child of God.

It's not, you're forgiven of sin. Don't you, you better watch out.

You don't sin again because then God's gonna get mad at you.

It's, you're forgiven of sin.

God sees, he's gonna see your very last day. He's gonna be able to quantify

all your sin on the day that you die.

And you can walk into your death with an assurance that he knows you and he

loves you and he's forgiven you.

And he's got a destiny, an eternal life with him waiting for you.

You have freedom in Christ from law, from all this rules.

And I'm preaching here and that's next week's sermon. So I'm not going to preach anymore.

I'm going to move on. Okay. We'll talk more about that later,

but I really want to assure you that Christianity is a matter of freedom.

We have freedom in Christ. We don't have more rules and more regulations and

more things to to worry about and more performance.

We have acceptance and forgiveness because of what Jesus has done.

But, right? And it's not, I'm sorry, it's not but, and that's what it is. It's and.

Just because the Bible is not a rule book and it is about our freedom doesn't

mean that the only thing that matters and that the only part of your purpose

in your life is to be free. Your freedom.

What the the Bible does is it's concerned with shaping the church in its mission, right?

It's concerned with shaping people into mature people who are able to be a part

of what God is doing right here and right now and glorify him and follow him

and have a relationship with him.

And what Paul is doing is he is affirming the freedom of the strong,

those who have understood, man, that this Bible is not a rule book,

but I actually am free to do all kinds of things, and yet reminding them that

they they also have a purpose.

And their purpose isn't just to be free people. Their purpose is to be free

people who are walking with God and used by God.

We are free people with a purpose.

We don't just have arbitrary freedom and so we can just go do whatever we want

with our lives. You can actually, but that's not your calling.

We're free people with a purpose.

See, the church is individuals. We're individuals and we make up the church.

We are free people, but we were with a purpose. And that purpose is meant to drive what we do.

That's the invitation. Jesus Christ sets you free, forgives your sin.

And he says, come and follow me.

And I'll give you a meaningful, purposeful, beautiful life. But you're free.

Freedom with purpose is the picture of a mature Christian.

Freedom with purpose. That's what we're calling this series.

We'll look further into that next week and how that works, theological underpinnings

of it and stuff like that.

But you'll probably notice as we went to 1 Corinthians 8, we skipped a few verses, right?

So let's roll back the tape a little bit. Go back to 1 Corinthians 8, 1 through 3.

He frames up his discussion. Paul frames up his discussion about food-sacrificed

idols. He says now about food-sacrificed idols.

And this is his sort of overarching thesis that's being applied to this situation.

We know that we all have knowledge.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know it.

But if anyone loves God, he's known by him.

What Paul is getting the church that is divided to know is that though there

are strong and weak among them, though some of them are in the know and And some of them are not.

The church does not depend on the knowledge of every person.

The church will not be successful in its mission simply through knowledge alone.

The fully mature person is not the person who has the most stuff in their brain.

Knowledge without love doesn't know much.

Knowledge alone, unguided by love, is futile.

Knowledge, rights, freedom, undirected by love are dysfunctional.

It does not serve the purpose for which God has called you and the church to

be filled in your head with knowledge, which may be true,

and yet never having that knowledge come out and be expressed in love.

Love perfects knowledge and freedom. him.

And without love, knowledge is just, it's puffed up.

It's puffed up, which just means like, you know, you take something like a balloon,

it's puffed up, looks big, could be really impressive, but just one little ping

prick, it comes to nothing.

But love, knowledge guided by love, that's going to build up.

That's going to be strong.

That's going to endure. That's going going to be something that is so necessary.

Love gives purpose and direction to knowledge.

See, for people to know stuff about God is good.

We need to know stuff about God. Part of our formation, part of being a disciple

is the study of God's Word, and we need to study God's Word, right?

We need to understand who He is. But that alone does not shape the church for its mission.

That plus love does in other words like we need to live out our calling to love

one another now i i think we could all say that this is like an uncontroversial

thing the bible is pretty,

unequivocal in its call to be people who love and we know we we're called to

love god and to love people we know what love is.

But I think it's worth saying, and acknowledging this fact, that sometimes love

in our culture is weaponized. You know what I'm saying?

We're told that if we love people, we can't disagree with them.

We're told that if we love people, we have to just cater to their preferences.

That's what love is. And so actually, the question is, what is love anyway?

Oh, what is love? No, I'm sorry.

Every church should have like a button in the back that the tech guy can, it's this place.

What is love? Because every now and then a pastor says that,

and it's just like a DJ. It'd be great.

Like, what is love? What is love really? I think what Paul is saying here,

he tells us something about what love is.

He says, if anyone loves God, he's known by him.

Love is not whatever I want it to be. Love is not whatever I want it to be.

The love that perfects my freedom, the love that it perfects my knowledge.

It's not whatever I want it to be. It's not good feelings.

It's not, you know, it's not like, it's not undefined.

Just like freedom needs to be guided by purpose, love is guided and it's guided by God.

Love is directed at, and it's about relationship with God.

The gravitational pull of love is towards God, towards relationship.

If we ask ourselves the question, how is it that we can love others?

We might as well ask this. This is the same question.

How do we help them know the Lord?

To love someone is to help them know God, because that's what they were created

for. That is the thing that they most need.

Love is about serving people to grow in and come into a knowledge and relationship with God.

There's lots of things that are nice, that are kind, but love,

biblical love, serves relationship.

And so if we have a call to love one another, it's a call to help one another

have a relationship with God and to grow in that relationship.

It's not just arbitrary. It's not whatever we want to call love.

Love, biblical love is this, to help people know God.

If anyone loves God, he's known by him.

It needs to be this connection with God where I have, he knows me,

he's called me his child, he's washed away my sin.

If we want to know God, it's this kind of love that's about relationship.

And so that is the guiding path for love.

So love isn't just whatever I get to call it. Love is about helping people grow in relationship.

Just like freedom needs to be guided, love needs to be guided.

So if you love someone one and you serve someone, you love and serve them in

their relationship with God. You help them grow. You care about their maturity.

And that is where the failure of love is happening right now.

If these knowledgeable people, they have rights,

they know they're free, but the failure to love is that they don't understand

that they need to help these people who are, Paul uses the word weaker,

and that's in the Greek what it is. It means weaker.

These people who don't have this this mature formation of freedom.

He says, don't you understand that you who know more need to help them grow,

not just shame them, not just make them feel like they're dumb.

Like your purpose, your calling to love one another is to help one another grow.

Worship team is going to come up here and I'm just going to get a little practical. and I don't want to.

I don't really want to because, I don't know, I don't like, I think I really

value this idea of freedom.

And so I'll just say this.

I have not grown up, it's not been my experience of churches and pastors that

pastors are very interested in my freedom.

Anyone else experience that? Just me? Yeah.

So I like don't want to get super practical, but I'm going to,

because I felt like the Lord wants me to, okay?

I don't want to get super practical because I don't want to put some burden

on you of guilt because the truth is you're a free person.

You can do whatever you want, but you shouldn't, right?

But this is the thing about Christian maturity is we have to sit into this place

where we totally understand we're loved and accepted by God.

He's washed us clean of our sin. So how could we err? error.

Like what bad could we do if we're, if we're totally secure in his love?

And yet, how do we hold that tension internally of also knowing that we have

a calling to serve and love other people?

And I think that sometimes in the American church, we think,

well, we just find a really bossy person to tell us what to do,

but that's not the vision of Christian maturity.

Paul's vision of Christian maturity. What I see so clearly is that he's like,

I could be super bossy, but I'm not going to do that.

I want you to understand and to grow into this maturity that wants to obey God,

not feels under some compulsion to do so.

Christian maturity is you're totally free. Do whatever you want,

but you could have something so much better if you'd love and obey and seek him first.

You're free. You do whatever you want. Okay. So I'm going going to apply this

situationally in a way that is a little meddlesome. Okay?

It is. It really is. It really is. Because you know what? It is a beautiful day out.

And if you're watching online later, I apologize. This isn't about you. It's about all of us.

Here's the thing. Do you have to go to church?

You don't. Now, I can show you

some scripture that says don't neglect fellowship Fellowship, for sure.

But is that a rule? No, the Bible isn't a rule book, but it's good advice for Christian maturity.

If you want to mature, if you want to enjoy the freedom you have in Christ,

don't neglect fellowship because it's in fellowship when we start to come alive

and we start to be of use, like not be of use.

It's that we start to find our purpose.

And here's the thing, we gather together for an hour and 15 minutes on a Sunday. And it's great.

You can miss church, but how much church is too much to miss?

I don't have a rule, but there probably is a certain amount that's too much. And...

The question is, it's not guided by rules. It's guided by the call I have to

love other people, which love is helping them mature, right?

So here's the thing, is a lot of us have, I think for the last 30 years or so,

there's been a predominant model of church in America, and some of you guys

have not experienced that, so it's great,

but it's like your purpose at church is to sit down in a seat and drink some coffee, right?

So when I think about a church attendance, I'm like, well, there's just one less butt in a seat.

It's not a big deal, right? Who's robbed?

What is dysfunctional if I'm not there?

But what is the New Testament picture of a church? The church is a fellowship

of people who are perfecting one another, who are caring for one another.

They're praying for one another.

The weaker, the younger, the less mature are being guided and encouraged by the more mature.

And so mature Christian who knows that you have have total freedom to show up

or not. And you can go on vacation and it's fine.

And sometimes you can go on a hike on a beautiful Sunday morning. And that's great.

That needs to be tempered by a question of, but what is the church for?

What's its purpose? And what is my role of loving those who are in the church?

Because the truth is that if I have a very young believer, what always happens

is this, like somebody gets saved and they're just like, I will be at church

whenever the doors are are open, and it's going to be awesome, right?

And then they do that, and it's good because that is actually right and good

because a person who comes to realize that God is real just wants to be around

the Lord all the time, and they have all this zeal, and it's a beautiful thing, right?

And slowly, they mature, which is okay, and the emotional high comes down a

little bit, which is okay.

I don't actually think Christian maturity is about being amped up all the time.

So they slowly start to cool down a little bit.

And here's the thing, I remember when I got saved, really just first came alive

in the Lord and in my relationship.

And when I showed up there, when I was in my 20s or so, I was excited and I

wanted to be at church all the time.

And there were people there who were more mature than me and they helped me grow.

And now think about this. What if my own story, you come in,

I came to faith And I just showed up and then all the mature people were just like, never there.

Would I grow as a Christian? Would I, would I, I think I would have suffered

had it not been that the mature people understood that they needed to come to

church really not for themselves.

Because honestly at some point you'll hear everything i have to say you might

already be there and that's okay right you're not here to just fill your ears

with with what i have to say,

you're here to love one another you're here to serve one another you're here

to use your spiritual gifts to build up other people who are less far along

than you and less if if the mature aren't like leaning into that purpose,

then the church isn't going to be growing.

It isn't going to be edified, built up in love.

So you're free, but you're called to some purpose. And I know, man.

Yeah, that's good. Thank you. That's appropriate.

It's like that Emmy is like, oh, speech is over.

No, but it's good. good. No, it's, look, I know it's funny, like,

being the pastor, because everybody looks at me and thinks, oh,

he must be in charge, and I'm like, I don't think I am, but, but.

I know we're not everything we should be, I-90 community church. I know we aren't.

And it won't be because I get super much better at my job. I hope I get better.

But like, there's a ceiling. We might be bumping up against it, right?

But the thing is, you don't have a ceiling because you guys are the church.

And the Holy Spirit doesn't have to only work through me. He's going to work through you. too.

If things really get popping, you know, I can't snap, so I have to do this. I can't do anything.

If things really start to be like, oh man, the Lord is showing up,

it's not going to be because I'm giving better sermons.

It's not going to be because of that. It's going to be because each and every

one of us starts to realize, shoot, we're totally free.

We have this great calling to be a part of a church where we are helping people

come into their maturity and to to know God. That's the only way.

I'm not going to get any better, but we are.

We are because the Holy Spirit's going to be calling us to purpose and calling

us to be a part of something that's bigger than our own selves.

And we're each going to be contributing with the gifts that the Spirit has given us.

So can I just invite you into that? Can I invite you into something to be people

who who are shaped into this mission and this calling to be a church,

a church that reaches those who don't know Jesus and that helps those who are immature to mature,

and for you to understand that you have a part to play in that.

It's not more Bible study. It's not more knowledge. It's knowledge guided by love and purpose.

So I am looking forward to that this year, guys. And I am confident that the Lord will do it.

So, hey, let's take some time to worship. All right, yeah.

You.