Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning friends.

As we do every week here at Shady Grove we are going to be looking at a text from the Christian Scriptures this morning, and we are continuing our study on the book of 1 Corinthians.

So you can go ahead and take out your Bibles or your apps and start opening them up to .

If you don’t own a Bible, we have blue paperback Bibles under your chair or in the seat in front of you that you can use.

Those are actually our gift to you, so if you do not own a Bible please take that one home with you.

We also have some out in the lobby that may be in better condition if you’d like to take one of those.

In our text this morning we are going see how Paul finishes an answer to an issue that was raised all the way back in chapter 8.

In this section Paul is summarizing some points he has already made, introduces some new points, and gives us a final exhortation, so this text is a bit difficult to give a neat preaching outline.

But if it’s helpful for you in your own mind, my points to tie this all together are the Closing Argument (23-30) and the Final Summons (31-11:1).

Our text this morning closes out the Apostle Paul’s 3 chapter answer, which began in 8:1, to the question of whether or not members of the Corinthian church could eat meat sacrificed to idols.

As we finish out the answer to this question this morning, what we will see is that for Paul, it wasn’t really just about idol meat; it was about living a life that was pleasing and glorifying to God.

Such a way of life can only happen when we have been transformed by the love of Christ.

I pray that this text humbles us, as we consider what it has to say, as we consider Paul’s example, for what it means to truly humble ourselves for the good of others and for God’s glory.

So let’s consider God’s Word together and then dig in.

Please give it your careful attention as this is God’s word.

This text is closing out a section of the letter that began in Chapter 8:1.

So I think it will actually be helpful for us to look at these verses in light of everything that has been said since 8:1.

So two points, hopefully easy to remember: 1) It’s about more than idols (summary), 2) It’s about glorifying God.

It’s About More Than Idols

When I became a Christian just over 8 years ago, I immediately had a sense in which I knew everything about my life had changed.

I knew deep down in my soul that my thoughts, my actions, my feelings, my life was not my own and that I now needed to live in submission to Christ.

And while I knew that to be true, there were areas of my life where I didn’t quite understand what that was supposed to look like.

There were a few areas for me where this was especially true.

The first was in my relationship to alcohol.

Now, prior to my conversion, much of my social life and entertainment revolved around excessive drinking.

It is the life that I, and many of my friends, enjoyed.

What did that mean now for me as a Christian?

Was I supposed to give up drinking altogether?

Was I supposed to stop going out with my friends, potentially ruining those friendships?

Could life resume as normal, in an effort to show my friends that Christianity wasn’t as weird as maybe they thought it was?

I was confused, and I wanted an easy answer, but I found none.

Another area of my life was entertainment.

I started hearing stories about people who supposedly converted to Christianity and burned all their Harry Potter books and Linkin Park CD’s, because that is what it means to be pure and unstained from the world.

And while that never seemed quite right to me, I also came to see that the shows I was watching that were saturated with nudity and sex were not pleasing to a Holy God.

Again, I was looking for easy answers, but I found none.

And of course, like most young men who are completely unable to figure women out, my new faith caused me to question how I related to women at all.

Is dating appropriate, or am I supposed to kiss it goodbye?

Do I need to commit to marrying a woman on the first date?

Can I still hug my female friends or do I need to learn the art of the awkward Christian side hug?

Those of you who converted to Christianity as an adult likely had to wrestle through questions of your own.

These experiences are common to every generation of the faith, in every century, in every place, all the way back to the early church.

The young converts in Corinth had questions of their own they were wrestling with as well.

These folks were the hip, young, cool church.

They drank their craft beer with thick-rimmed glasses, they were on the cutting edge of culture and society.

And they struggled with living their life in submission to Christ while still being present in the world, and not pulling away from it.

And while they struggled with many similar things that we do today, such as alcohol and entertainment, there was one issue that on first glance may seem completely foreign to us today, and that is the issue of food, specifically meat, sacrificed to idols.

That’s one of the issues that the Corinthian church originally wrote to Paul about, and to which he is now responding since chapter 8 verse 1:

That is the question which has been driving everything that Paul has been saying and that we have been covering for the last several sermons.

Now, I want us to take a step back and get a view of the whole forest for a second.

These 12 or so verses really come to life when we understand them as part of the whole.

And what I want you to see is how our text this morning really parallels everything that Paul has said up to this point, beginning in chapter 8.

You know what hit me this last week?

Many of you, much more alert than me, have probably already thought this.

But this question came to my mind: “Why didn’t Paul just give the clear, easy answer here?”

The answer seems so obvious.

Question: Paul, can we eat meat sacrificed to idols and false gods?

Answer: No. Next question.

Right?

I mean, isn’t one of the main lessons of the Old Testament, don’t mess with idols?

Don’t get near it, don’t be around it, don’t think about it, don’t mess with idolatry and false worship.

On top of that, the Jerusalem council in , when the apostles and pastors of the churches met to decide what special instructions to give to the new non-Jewish believers, this was one of the issues they ruled on!

When the early church struggled with instructions to give to new converts here’s what they said:

And this ruling, and the subsequent letters sent to the churches, happened long before 1 Corinthians.

So why didn’t Paul just remind the Corinthian church of what had already been decided?

Because he knew that life is too complicated for a simple list we can check off.

“here’s what to do when” doesn’t work.

But when we begin to see how the grace of God can transform our hearts, then no matter what kind of situation we find ourselves in, we might know how to live, love and obey like Jesus.

What we’re seeing in Paul is a real gentleness and an ability to even adapt his language and tone to the questions of these young Christians.

You see idol meat was one of the hot-button issues in Corinth.

It was ground zero for much of the conflict between Jewish and Gentile believers.

And that is because this issue dramatized three much larger concerns: the problem of boundaries between the church and the culture, the strained relationships between different social groups in the community, and the relationship between knowledge and love as the foundation of the Christian life.

The situation was complicated by two facts.

First, it was an accepted social practice to have meals in a temple or some place associated with idol worship.

Secondly, most if not all meat sold in the marketplace had been previously sacrificed to some kind of idol.

So if you take notice of our text this morning in light of the previous 3 chapters, there are really two separate questions: Can we partake in idol feasts in a temple, and can we eat meat bought in the marketplace if it has been previously sacrificed to an idol?

And the way Paul goes about answering these questions is by using this opportunity to teach the Corinthian church about far more than idol meat.

He shows us how to live a life of grace in a way that honors Jesus and draws more people to him.

So Paul begins in Chapter 8 , “I’ll tell you what you need to know.

Technically idols don’t really exist, so yeah, in one sense you’re free to eat whatever you want.

But please do not use this knowledge in a way that could harm another believer, in a way that could harm their conscience, because knowledge is nothing without love.

If you aren’t using this knowledge to love others well, then this is no good to you, because you’ll be harming someone else and sinning against Christ.”

In the beginning of Chapter 9 Paul uses his own life as an example.

Although he was both a pastor and an apostle who was entitled to compensation from the church in Corinth, he took no money from them because he didn’t want anyone to be able to accuse him of just being in it for the money like all the philosophers of his day.

He modeled for them in his own life an example, a life that had been transformed by grace.

He had rights, he lays down his rights for the good of others in the church.

And not just for those in the church but also for all kinds of people outside the church as well.

As he continues toward the end of chapter 9, we should be willing to sacrifice our preferences, our opinions, our rights, to the point that we endeavor to take on the burdens and needs of all kinds of people, so that they might hear the gospel and be won to Jesus Christ.

And then, coming into Chapter 10, Paul’s argument makes another turn.

For, he argues, that we should abstain from participating in idol feasts not only because it might be a temptation to “weaker” believers, not only because we should be willing to sacrifice our rights for others, but also because it puts ourselves in spiritual peril.

Don’t even entertain the thought of participating in false worship or temple feasts.

You will be lured away from the faith in ways you can’t even imagine.

Let’s pause to press this in for a moment.

Following Jesus means much more than keeping a list of do’s and dont’s.

It’s not less than that, but it is much more.

Following Jesus, imitating Jesus, means that we are governed in all things by his love and his faithfulness to us.

Why didn’t Paul just give the easy answer here?

Because life isn’t easy, and a simple list of do’s and don’ts aren’t enough to get us through the realities of life.

I was recently reading a historian who said that the Bible is about to go extinct, it’s no longer useful, because it doesn’t deal with all the new advancements in technology and science of the 21st century.

But that view is extremely naive.