Good evening. If you would, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

1 Corinthians chapter 8.

We’re going to be walking through that whole chapter. It’s one whole unit of thought that Paul’s talking about, so I just want us to look at that together.

What we have been talking about is that if we want to really follow Jesus, it’s more than the bare minimum, right? If we want to really follow Jesus, I can’t just hang on to a few basic things and say that I know Jesus and try to just, you know, live by the seat of my pants. Being a follower of Jesus means, and again this is, all of Corinthians, I’m willing to think really deeply, I’m willing to think critically, I’m willing to learn, I’m willing to apply myself if I really want to grow up and be faithful in every aspect of the Christian life. So that’s the only kind of Christian there is. A thinking Christian, a thoughtful Christian, a passionate Christian. So if we’re chronically, you know, we’re chronically ignorant, we’re chronically… You know, in cruise control mode, something’s wrong.

Paul says if we’re going to really follow Jesus, we’ve got to consider deeply so many different things. And what we were talking about the last two weeks had to do with thinking deeply about self.

If you want to really, remember, flourish for Jesus, you’ve got to think about why and how God in all of His wisdom and sovereignty allowed for you to be you and the family you grew up in. And just kind of the way you came to faith and even past errors and mistakes, how God’s just weaving together your story and there you can know Christ. And we talked about if you’re going to flourish, you know, really well, you’ve got to think, you know, deeply about what it means for you to be as faithful as you can be exactly where you are. And we talked about that in the context of relationships and marriage and what that should and shouldn’t look like for different people. But here’s where the Christian life goes outside yourself. And here’s what Paul’s starting to talk about in chapter 8. And it’s this. If you really want to be a critical, meaningful Christian growing and thriving, you cannot only think about how well you’re thriving in the Christian life. You have to be thinking about how well the people around you in your body, the body of Christ you’re a part of, are they flourishing well and am I helping or hurting their flourishing?

So it’s really convenient to have a Lone Ranger mentality in the Christian life. You know, it’s convenient and it’s really easy. It’s real easy to be just mean Jesus. The problem is it’s unbiblical, right? You are a part of Christ’s body and following Jesus means you’re doing that with the body. So that’s what Paul’s kind of turning his attention to now and where, again, remember, if there’s any encouragement that providence can survive, as a church, it’s the fact that Paul wrote Corinthians after so much crazy, horrible stuff they did, he apparently has some hope that they can still be a church. So there’s hope for every church that we can love one another well and flourish even past some of our greatest failures and mistakes. And one of their great failures and mistakes, we’ll see here in chapter 8, and we’ll see it again in chapters to come, they’re really bad at loving one another, really bad at helping one another flourish in the faith. All right? So that’s what we’re looking at here. Starting in verse 1 in chapter 8.

He says, Now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. And this knowledge, it puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he’s known by God.

You know, everybody wants to be right. No one touts that they’re wrong, do they? We talked about husband and wives last week. Like, no one, like, loves to come to their spouse and be like, I was wrong about this, right? That’s not what you have to… We love to be right in arguments. We love to be right in conversations.

What do politicians always do? They always say that they’re right. And when they’re wrong, they make sure to let you know that they’re still right. Like, it’s just, it’s part of the game. The game is coming off right. There’s a certain air, you know, when you meet someone who comes, they were able to go to like an Ivy League school, like, oh, wow, you went to such and such. And it’s like, you must be really smart because you went to such and such. Or if someone’s a special, you know, they specialize in maybe a lofty field, like, you know, astrophysics, biology,

history, literature, different buffs. Oh, I’m a history buff. I’m a reader. You know, I really, I read a lot. I know a lot. It’s like, okay, wow, good for you. You know, you read a lot. And people just have a way of wanting to kind of find security, find purpose, kind of dominate other people, have a sense of importance based off of what they know, based off of knowledge. And I think it’s the illusion of control. And I think it’s the illusion of purpose. And what Paul draws out here in this text is it’s very possible for the following, the follower of Jesus, to do that same kind of thing in the category of spiritual knowledge and understanding. One’s intellectual grasp of theological, biblical concepts and truths can lead someone to think, it must mean, it must mean I’m more spiritual. If I have a body of knowledge about certain truths, it must mean, it must mean I’m farther along in the faith. And he’s saying, hold on a second, it doesn’t necessarily, it doesn’t necessarily mean that. The more doctrines I learn,

even if I can effectively argue for them, and if they increase my sense of both control and my sense of importance and value, it could be, Paul says, you’re just puffed up. It could be these pieces of knowledge, these doctrines, these things that in and of themselves are good, they’ve not been assimilated into your head and heart right. And all you are is this really swollen,

conceited Christian jerk. And it can happen. It can happen. Paul says imagines. He says imagines. If anyone imagines, which that’s the first problem when someone thinks about themselves too much, so that’s sign number one, something’s wrong. But if someone finds themselves daydreaming about themselves, they’re imagining that they know something, they don’t know the way they ought to know. They don’t know as much as they think they know. If you’re willing to hang your hat on strictly what you know, Paul’s saying it just may be you’re a lot dumber than you realize.

And it prevents you from being knowledgeable in the way that God would have you be knowledgeable, in a way that would please Him. He says He knows, but not as He ought to know. So I want to say knowing a bunch, a bunch of stuff about God will never ever compare with knowing God. Two different universes. Knowing about God and knowing God. And it’s really an amazing thing He says in verse 3, and it seems like He’s talking about something completely different. We were talking about knowledge and what we know, but then He says, but if anyone loves God, He is known by God. Known by God. In other words, friends, if I love God, it’s because the Scripture tells me God has loved me first. And I can’t really love someone if I don’t know them. Right? To really know, you know, your wife, or for a wife to know, you know, her husband, to really know and be known is to love and be loved. That’s what it means. And so to be able to say, I love God, means that I have, by His grace, become familiar, with His persons. I’m able to say, I know this God, and I love this God. And I think that’s an amazing thing, to know someone, and not just know about them. I think you could really hang the universe on that verse. I think you could hang heaven and earth. I think you could hang your own soul on verse 3. If anyone loves God, he’s known by God. Because it means something amazing. It means that God has given, you, a sinner, the ability to reciprocate. Not as well as God loves, but you still know God in such a way that you love Him back. The Creator of the universe has loved you and shown Himself to you, and you know God, and He knows you. And that’s amazing. That’s amazing. To know and be known, to love God, and be loved by God. He knows me, and He loves me. And so I am loved, and I am known. And if such a wonderful thing is true, why would I, and we do this in the Christian life, if I could gain a body of knowledge about God, if I could learn a whole bunch of stuff, it could somehow rival the wonderful joy of knowing God personally.

But it’s not true. It’s not true. If I could sit down and have, if I could sit down and have a cup of coffee with a Ph.D., and let’s say this Ph.D. has been to the best seminaries the world over, multiple, multiple Ph.D.s, and he’s got a Ph.D. in Greek grammar, and he’s got a Ph.D. in church history, and he’s got a Ph.D. in systematic theology, and he’s got a Ph.D. in Ph.D. I mean, he’s got it all, yet he could sit there, and he didn’t have the Holy Spirit. He knew the facts. He could weave in and out of verses. He could weave in and out of Greek and Hebrew grammar. I would no more touch heaven than if I had a conversation with an atheist.

If I could get on an airplane and I could fly to a third world country and I could sit in some little hut with some little old woman who came to faith in Jesus because some missionary told her about Jesus when she was a little girl, I could touch heaven if I sat in her little hut. I fully believe that.

This is not an anti-knowledge sermon. Because this is not an anti-knowledge passage.

Paul’s simply saying, you cannot know God if you do not also love God. If you want knowledge to grow upright, you better have the fertilizer of love in the soil. That’s what he’s saying.

And Jesus said it when one of the scribes came up to him in Mark 12.

Jesus said, what’s the most important commandment? He says, that is the most important is this, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with your mind. God wants you to love him with your mind. He gave you a mind and he wants you to grow in your knowledge of him. He wants you to grow in your knowledge of truth. And this is back to what I said at the beginning. You must do it. It’s not even, it’s for some Christians as much as you have, you know, capacity, as much as, you know, you should and could, you know, where you are in life, you should be pursuing truth. You should be pursuing Jesus. Knowledge about God is only good and useful when accompanied by love for God. And I want to say love for God burns brighter when knowledge is added to it. So truth and love then, they’re very appropriate and necessary friends for us in the Christian life. They’re very appropriate friends. You must have truth and you must have love and you must have love and you must have knowledge.

So if I want to really, I really want to love others well, I want to help other people flourish well. The first thing I think we have to do here is see the great treasure of knowledge. Have to believe that knowledge is a great treasure. Verse four.

He says, therefore to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist. And one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

So here is what Paul is saying to them in short. It is appropriate. It is a precious treasure if you have it, the knowledge of God. And not everybody has it. Not everybody has it today. Not everyone will have it in the future. And if we go back in world history, not everyone has the knowledge of the one true God.

When Moses is in the cave and he says, who should I say sent me? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know this Hebrew God. He didn’t know he was going to come upon this Hebrew God. And what did the one true God say to him? He says, tell them that I am. What did God do? He revealed himself to Moses. He said, this is who I am. He was just blessed with the knowledge of the Holy One in that cave. And then what did that one God do over the course of time to save his people out of Egypt? He one by one threw down all the falsehoods, the false gods of Egypt. He threw down the God of the river. And he threw down the God of insects. And he threw down the God of cattle. And he threw down the sun God. And when he turned it dark, God one by one smashed all their little so-called gods to pieces. And he left Egypt a mess. And the one true God took his people up out of Egypt as proof that he was the one true God. And what did the Hebrews have even though they didn’t fully love it and appreciate it? They had knowledge of God. Knowledge of God.

When Jesus is in his ministry and he’s asking his disciples, who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am? And they go, well, some people say you’re Elijah and some people you’re Satan. He said, no, no, no, no. I want to know, who do you say that I am?

And Peter says, well, you’re the son of God. You’re the Messiah. And what does Jesus say? Blessed are you. Blessed are you because flesh and blood didn’t reveal it to you. My father revealed it to you. You see, Peter in that moment, he had a knowledge of God. He had a very real experience for the first time that he didn’t deserve to know who the one true God is. And friends, so for you and me today, we don’t just, we don’t just come to church and we don’t just read the Bible. We don’t just, you know, represent some morals and ethics. You and I have this blessed privilege to say we, by God’s grace, have been shown God. It’s why Paul says in Romans,

beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. You know, you can’t get saved if somebody doesn’t bring. And what are they bringing? They’re bringing a message. They’re bringing a body of knowledge about who God is. It’s a beautiful thing when someone shares the gospel because they’re imparting to someone else who doesn’t have that knowledge. It could totally change their life. It’s the only thing that could change your life if they could hear this wonderful treasure of knowledge. And you know, the proof, the funny thing, the ironic thing, the proof is in the person writing this letter. The proof’s in Paul. Because Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. Paul had all the academic answers. Paul knew everything about the Bible. Paul was so sure he was dead right for God. Yet, when Jesus approaches Paul on the road to Damascus, what is the first thing that Saul says? Who are you, Lord? He doesn’t know who God is.

He says, it’s me, it’s Jesus, and you’re persecuting me. You see, all the study, all the knowledge, all the things you could know about God will never get you to knowing God until God reveals it to you. He reveals to you

himself through faith. And it’s a treasure. And I want you to treasure it. I want you to consider yourself

far greater than the man with all the money, far greater than the man with all fame, far greater because you are known and loved by God and you have been called to love and to know God. And that is a value beyond money, beyond knowledge, beyond accomplishment. And that is going to take you on into eternity from age to age to age. And you will have, because God gave you knowledge of himself, pure joy and glory in God forever. I hope knowledge of the gospel is everything to you. And God forgive us when we take it for granted or we assume it or it’s just something else we do in life.

So I want you then, with all that, I want you to apply it to the Corinthian context, okay? Because of the knowledge of the gospel, these Corinthian Christians were, for the first time ever, free from worshiping idols, free from false religion, free from superstition. And all those things abounded in Corinth.

Excavations have shown in Corinth and surrounding areas, there were dozens of temples and shrines dedicated to diverse deities such as Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter, Korah, Palamas, Sisyphus, as well as Egyptian deities, Isis, and Serapis. And the Isthmian games focused their attention on a temple dedicated to Poseidon. So who were these Corinthian Christians before the knowledge of the Holy One came to them? Well, they’re just like everybody else. They were worshiping their so-called gods.

False gods. Thinner than air. Not real gods. And you know, this is a tradition, a trap that God’s own people fell into in the Old Testament, even though they knew the one true God. Here’s how the prophet Habakkuk says it, and I think that it’s powerful the way he does. He says in Habakkuk chapter 2, what prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it? A metal image.

A teacher of lies.

For its maker trusts his own creation when he makes speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing awake, woe to him who says to a wooden thing awake, and to a silent stone arise. Can it teach?

Behold, it’s overlaid with gold and silver, but there’s no breath in it at all. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him.

Paul’s saying, see, you Corinthians, how silly and vain it was because you had all these little idols you’d carved and they represented all these deities and it wasn’t any more true, it wasn’t any more true than children’s, than children’s bedtime stories. And the only reason why you have the knowledge that you have as Corinthian Christians is because God gave it to you. It’s a blessed thing. It’s a blessed thing. So there’s knowledge in which I can know a great many things, but then there’s saving knowledge that changes my heart, that changes my life. Knowledge, knowledge is about me and what I know and what I can do for myself. Saving knowledge is about what God has shown to me and what God is doing. And what God is doing in me and through me. That’s all the difference in the world.

If I’ve been given this saving knowledge in Jesus, then what I am is set free. What did Jesus say in John chapter 8? He said, the truth will set you free. Knowledge of the gospel, it sets us free from our own sin. It sets us free from our inability to love God. It sets us free from the destruction that we deserve from God the Father. It sets, It sets us free from false religion. It sets us free from superstition. It sets us free from the lies of men. When Jonah went to Nineveh and he said, Repent! Repent! He was calling them for the first time ever to turn to the one and true living God, to be set free from the judgment of God and from their own sin.

Saving knowledge takes us to eternal life. Saving knowledge takes us to communion with the Father and the Son. And saving knowledge of the Gospel to joy and identity in Christ that cannot be taken away.

So God cannot be known without transfer of knowledge. Faith comes by hearing. Paul tells us in Romans. Faith comes by hearing. So I want you to put your feet down there real firm because you and I live in a time when religion and the very concept of God is very in flux. It’s very jellyfish like. You know, it’s very easy to meet people who think, well, God’s an idea. You know, God is, you know, a concept of something that we all have and it helps us get us through our day. God is, I’ve heard this one lately, we are all God collectively. We are like little gods and when we consider ourselves together as humanity, we’re all collectively God together. We’re all together. God is, I had this conversation recently. God is energy. He’s feeling. He’s feeling. You know, there is no God. That’s something else that you can hear. And I don’t want you to be a brute, you know, and I don’t want you to, you know, get out like a wooden bat and start attacking people. But if we really love the knowledge of the Gospel we’ve been given, you and I need to be able to like firmly plant our feet in the ground and say, no, here it is. Here’s knowledge. Here’s this treasure. It’s Jesus, God’s Son. He’s God and He came and He lived and He died and He rose again and He’s coming back to judge the living and the dead. And if you haven’t repented and given Him your life and you’re not following Him, the power of the Spirit, you will not be saved. Like that’s our Gospel message and we need to love it and we need to stand for it. And it’s something you need to stand for inside the walls of the church. It’s not, you know, again, it’s not hard to find churches that are starting to morph, the idea of what God is and they’re starting to try to, you know, you know, please the masses with, with, you know, dumbing down water and getting the truths of Scripture. So, so love the knowledge that you’ve been given if you believe it’s precious. The Corinthians had this blessed knowledge to be free from it. I think, so I think it’s the difference, knowledge versus saving knowledge. I think it’s the difference between a high resolution photo and being somewhere. I see impressive pictures. You probably, like, it’s like sometimes my,

my screensaver, you know, it’s like, oh, that’s such a beautiful place and you can sit there and you can stare at it and like, it’s just like, oh, that kind of just takes you maybe somewhere for a minute in your mind. It’s so beautiful. But then like, I’ve been beautiful places and it’s like, I don’t care what picture you show me. I don’t care if it’s four, five, six K, however many K’s they got now and pictures and stuff, whatever. Like, you can’t beat the thing of being there and knowing it. You can’t beat the thing of knowing it. In C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, fictional, of course, but there’s a man who’s taken his trip from hell to heaven to see if he’d prefer to live in heaven instead of hell. And he keeps painting pictures and the man’s trying to explain to him, stop painting the picture. You’re like, this is it. You’re done. You’re at the real thing now. Like, you’re here. Stop trying to grab it in a picture. And I think that’s what you, you do when you love knowledge. You see a picture of it, but you know it from afar. But knowing Christ is so much better, isn’t it? It’s so much more real and it’s so much more beautiful and you need to love it and you need to cherish it. We need to value it together. So praise God for saving knowledge.

I want to say to you, secondly, live to know that truth more and add to your truth. I say, I say word saturation on purpose all the time because I want us to be a church that’s saturated. Saturated in the Word. You know, like when it’s cold outside, but not cold enough to snow and it rains and you, like, run from your house to your car and you’re freezing and you’re, like, saturated and, like, you got blue jeans on and they’re heavier. Like, that’s an unpleasant illustration, but it’s pleasant to be saturated with the Word of God.

To know not just the basics of the Gospel, but to know all Gospel doctrines that go with them and to couple with this God you know and love, to know that God is with you. To know Him more and to know Him more and to know Him more. Someone emailed me this past week regarding my sermon last week and said, hey, can you point me in a direction where I could grow on this? I said, yeah, here’s a couple books. So grow in your knowledge. Have a conversation with the godly man. I think that’s the cool thing about Christian literature, good Christian literature, just bad Christian literature, is you can have a conversation with someone who clawed to know God, you know, from 200 years ago, 300 years ago. Like, you can sit down, have a conversation with John Bunyan. You can sit down and have a conversation with Henry Schugel. You can sit down and have a conversation with John Piper. Whatever. It’s right there for you to grow in knowledge of the Holy One. And the third thing on that is this. Live to proclaim the truth. Live to proclaim it. If it is so, friends, that the Gospel message is saving knowledge and it’s precious, what do we do with that? Is we share it. And we let the world know this is the most important message you could ever hear. And that’s why, you know, we’re talking about world missions and we want to make that a focus on Sundays, monthly, because it’s so important, whether it’s, you know, your next door neighbor or around the world. Like, I’ve got this message and I’ve just got to take it. I’ve just got to take it. I’ve just got to take it.

Next thing then, to love people well, to love well, I must guard against the great danger. The great danger of knowledge. Okay? The great danger of knowledge. Verse 7.

However, not all possess this knowledge,

but 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 and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not affect us. It does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak,

you sin against Christ. Therefore, therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. Lest I make my brother stumble. Now, what is Paul talking about when he says, you possess it and they don’t possess it? This is not like the Illuminati and there’s these people with special, you know, insights that none of us have. That’s not at all what Paul’s talking about. And Paul’s not making a comparison here between the kind of knowledge that is very well damning just because you know a bunch of stuff doesn’t save you. He’s not talking about that kind of knowledge. What Paul’s talking about is knowledge, saving knowledge in small degree and in big degree. That’s what he means.

When someone comes to faith in Jesus, right, they truly have come. They put their faith in Christ. They’ve been given enough knowledge. They’ve been given at least a full gospel presentation. To be saved, right? So they are in a very real sense Christians. They know God. Like they know Him. They love Him. They are known and they are loved, but they’re what? They’re infants in Christ. They’re babies in Christ. Okay, so for those of you who don’t have babies in your home anymore, let me, I want to remind you what a baby’s like, okay?

Babies make messes and babies don’t know as much as they’ll know in one day. One year, two years, three years.

Babies, toddlers, do a lot of silly things, to say it nicely. They break things. They don’t listen the first time. Babies simply don’t have the capacity right off the bat to learn how to count. I can’t teach a six-month-old how to count. There are just certain things that when you’re young, you don’t know yet you’re young. And there’s a license while you’re young. To make messes. There’s a license while you’re young to be a little messy. So what you can’t do, what you can’t do is say to someone who’s a new Christian in the faith, how come you don’t have everything figured out the way that I have it figured out?

I’ve been in the church my whole life. I’ve read the Bible through 15 times. I’ve thought hard and I’ve prayed hard. How come you don’t get it? How come you don’t get it? What’s wrong with you? How come you’re, you’re at degree one and I’m at degree 75?

That’s what Paul’s saying is happening here.

Contextually, again in Corinth, you could have bought meat from temples. It probably was a lot cheaper because you had so many people making these sacrifices to all these idols. So you had all this meat and hey, let’s sell it so you could go down to the temple and you could buy the meat and it was cheaper. Now here’s the problem. The problem was a lot of these Christian converts were thinking, I can’t go to the temple and buy that meat and eat it because that’s what I used to do when I worshipped Apollo or whoever and when I would go and I would worship them, I would then eat their meat and it was all part of this worship thing. Now here’s what Paul’s saying.

Hey, you’re not worshipping the false god. You’re buying the meat and you’re eating it. Remember, the God’s not real. They’re thinner than air. These little gods that they’re worshipping, they’re not real gods. They’re not worshipping anybody. You’re not participating in pagan worship when you buy meat from the thing and take it home. That’s what Paul’s saying. And he’s saying their conscience is weaker and they don’t see that. Your conscience is stronger and you know that. So here’s what you’re doing when you go to them and you say, hey, Christian, I don’t really care about your thoughts and your feelings. I know that you’re not right. But it’s convenient for me so I’m going to do it. Here’s what you’re doing. Your head’s in the right place because you know they’re false gods. They’re not real. Buying the meat’s not wrong. But you’re wrong in your heart because you don’t care about your brother and you’re doing something that’s going to wound his conscience. Now what’s his problem is the flip. His head’s in the wrong place. He’s thinking, if I buy that meat and I take it home and I eat it, that’s like idolatry and I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be a part of that anymore. His head’s in the wrong place. His heart’s in the right place. He’s got a lot of zeal and passion for Jesus. He just doesn’t know how it should work out.

True maturity then is found in bearing with people that don’t know as much as we know. Loving the weaker brother in the church. Can you think of a situation or a person, see if you can do it, if you can think of a person who had perfect knowledge about God, who knew everything there was, was to know about God, and he spent his whole life around a bunch of people who didn’t know half as much as he knew about God, yet he was kind and gentle and patient with them.

I can only think of one.

His name’s Jesus, okay? There, I’ll let it out. It’s Jesus.

Paul’s saying, you’re going and you’re saying, I’m a mature Christian. I’ve grown in my knowledge. I know that that’s not real, but it’s, it’s hugely inconvenient for me to not buy the meat I want. I’ve got to be somewhere or I just like the meat that, you know, the cook at the temple over here makes. And so I’m buying that. All the while, this brother over here is going, oh my gosh, he’s doing it. That’s wrong. Should I do it? I don’t know. I mean, he’s maturing the faith. I really think it’s wrong, but I guess I’ll do it because he’s doing it. But I kind of think it’s wrong. And what you’re doing is you’re wounding their conscience. Now we had to talk about the conscience. What is the conscience? The conscience is that part of you that determines what’s right and what’s wrong. We all have one. You’re born with one. People that aren’t Christians have one. We all have some sense of right and wrong. C.S. Lewis talks about it like, you know, I gave you a bit of my orange. Now, how come you’re not giving me a bit of yours? We all have this sense of, you know, right, wrong ethics. OK, and when someone comes to Christ, now their compass isn’t fixed, but it’s at least working again. We at least like are reoriented to, OK, there’s a God in heaven. He created everything. Jesus came like you’re doing better. But an immature Christian, guess what? Their compass still malfunctions and they don’t get it, you know, completely as they should get it. So Paul’s saying you got to be patient with that person because if not, even though and I know it sounds you got to think about it, even though it’s not wrong, it’s wrong for them if they think it’s wrong and they do it. You’re telling that thing that God’s given you to determine right and wrong. When you’re wrong, I’m still going to do what I want to do anyways. And you’re wounding that mechanism by which you obey God and do right. So it’s slightly confusing because you’re like, but it’s not wrong. But Paul’s saying if your conscience thinks it’s wrong, don’t do it. You need to pray about it longer and you need to believe you’re doing right in the sight of God. So Paul says this, would you really go ahead and serve yourself by buying that meat in the market, wounding your brother’s conscience? Oh, by the way, he’s your brother because Jesus decided to bleed and die on the cross for him. Oh, and by the way, because you chose to sin against your brother in that way, you’ve sinned against Christ.

See how big a deal it is that you and I are so careful to make sure that one another in the church are flourishing. I can’t just be all about me. I’m growing up. I’m mature. I’m doing good. Paul says, thumbs down on that. Care about the weaker brother around you. Love the whole body of Christ.

And it’s like, was there like an exact like modern application of that text? Like, what does that look like? I don’t know that there’s an exact, you know, application of that because we don’t live in the same context and I just go to Kroger or whatever and you know, you buy me. It’s not the same thing. Here’s what’s definitely true. The opportunity to be inconvenienced, and consider other people more significant than yourself, those opportunities abound. Those opportunities will always abound. There are things I think that people when they come to faith in Christ, they are sensitive to. Like, you could maybe meet someone that was like, I can’t play cards. Like, you know, King, Queen, Jack, Ace, because before, I was playing cards and I would gamble and I just think it’s wrong.

Now, is it wrong for me to play Go-Fix? With my kids or something? It’s not wrong, but their conscience is in a place where they feel like it’s wrong because it was associated with evil for them in the same way that, you know, the pagan, you know, temple and buying the meat would be. Or, Hollywood movies are all bad because there’s filth and smut in Hollywood movies and if I’m a Christian, I can’t possibly watch a Hollywood movie. Now, is it true that there’s smut in Hollywood movies? Absolutely. But I can’t say it’s definitely wrong for me to watch any and all movies, period. I can’t say that. I can’t do that. So it’s a weaker conscience that’s trying to force these rules and force these lines where they’re just not there biblically. It doesn’t mean I have to live by someone else’s rules when their conscience is weak. But Paul’s saying, you had better go out of your way to make sure you don’t offend them and wound their conscience and impair them from following Jesus.

You know, you have the opportunity a lot of times in a local church to deal with, to deal with people who perhaps are more immature emotionally.

Which we’re all, you know, can be immature emotionally. And you have the choice sometimes to say to someone or think, you know what? That’s their problem. I don’t want to talk to them. If someone’s offended or someone’s upset, I let them be on their own. I don’t want to take the time of day to talk to them. Because I know I’m right about something and I don’t feel like arguing and I’m right and they’re wrong.

Who’s that convenient? Who’s that convenient for?

You. It’s convenient for you. Paul says elsewhere, as much as it depends on you, what? Live at peace with everyone. So, relational issues. What if you’re sitting in Bible study with someone, okay, and they give you a weird answer? And that happens a lot. Like you’re sitting around in the living room and so what do y’all think about that? And someone gets just off the wall like, where did they think of that? Right? Now I have the opportunity in that situation to like, okay, thank you for your input and maybe correct that later in like a softer, gentler way. Or I have an opportunity right there to go like, that’s ridiculous. That’s unbiblical. That’s stupid. Now, again, what am I wrong about their stupid answer? No. Was I wrong in the way that I love them? Absolutely. Absolutely. So again, the ways in which we can apply this principle of caring about other people way… ahead of ourselves, it’s so multifaceted. It’s so multifaceted because it matters so much in so many different contexts for us as being Christians.

So, here’s what it boils down to. If I really am growing in my knowledge of God, I’m growing in my ability to love other people well.

Because the more knowledge, not I get, but God gives me, the more humility I have to realize, wow, this is who God is like. I’m unworthy to know Him. I’m unworthy to know anything about Him. And He keeps loving me and He keeps showing more of Himself to me. So who am I to go out and treat somebody like I’m superior when everything that I have in my hands has been given to me as a gift? My growth in knowledge of God, it drives me deeper in humility to love other people with the knowledge and love of God. The love of God that I have been given. That’s how you can know, am I really growing up in saving knowledge or do I think I’m awesome because I’ve read more of the Bible and I’ve been in the church longer and I know how to deal with people more and I know how to think better. Paul’s saying that’s not Christian love. He’s saying get down to the place where Jesus is and do what? Consider other people more significant than yourself.

So if you want to love well, love like Christ.

If you want to love well, know Christ and be known by Christ. And then you will be like Christ in the way that you love other people. Treasure the knowledge of the gospel. Watch out for the dangers of it because like, you know, I think even when you’re a mature Christian, like until you’re dead, like that old prideful man’s going to be like, hey, you know, you’re a lot smarter than most people in this room. Like, hey, you’ve thought this issue before. Like you’re sitting there in Bible study and no one had the answer and like you pulled out some random answer from the Old Testament. I was like, wow, how did he know that? And like you go home, like feeling really good about yourself. Like we’re so ready and willing to like look in a mirror and say like, you are awesome. You are so awesome.

But the gospel drops us all to say, Jesus is awesome. And man, he let me know him and he’s letting me grow in him. And he’s just calling me to just kind of share that with everybody else. And I go, go out of my way to die more to me so more people can know and more people can grow in Jesus. And that’s the best thing that we can do with our lives. Amen. All right. There is no improvement in us

that won’t be to the welfare of everyone else around us. There’s no improvement that God will do in you that will be to the hurt of those around you. So let us continue to grow up in Jesus. Other people can grow up in Jesus around us. All right. Okay, let’s pray.

Father, as we consider this word, we just think about

how often we just don’t love people well.

We think about how prone we are to think of self, how prone we are to consider our own wants, our own rights, our own desires.

Jesus, we just pray that we would just have a life and have a just crystal clear vision of you on a cross. You who know all, you who are Lord of all, there bleeding and suffering and dying for ignorant sinners like us. There you are hanging to show us that your way is love. It’s not domination.

You have shown us that glory is found in knowing you and being shaped by you. That’s where glory and that’s where life and that’s where true purpose and meaning is, is just being shaped by you, Jesus. So Lord, help us cast down the idols in our hearts. Help us cast down, Lord, our own pride that drives us to put ourselves on the throne of our lives, Lord, to be so concerned and worried for us. And Lord, let us with the love of Christ love one another well. Because Lord, we know when we love one another well, your word says that the world will know that we belong to you, Lord. So let us reach the world with the love and the truth of the gospel that’s found only in Jesus.

We pray all that in Christ’s name. Amen.