Exercising your freedom

1) TV show wonderama had a song exercise exercise

2) We all need to exercise but what’s good for me may not be good for someone else

3) Two weeks ago I talked about how everything is permissible but not beneficial

4) Today’s sermon and scripture is sort of a continuation of that theme

5) Paul start out by talking about knowledge and love

a) Knowledge doesn’t bring us closer to God but love does

6) We have the knowledge of what we can do but when we exercise that freedom without consideration of our fellow believer’s position that it’s wrong

7) The Corinthians knew that eating meat sacrificed to idols wasn’t worshiping the idols. They knew that the idols were nothing.

8) The problem was when they did this around young believers that didn’t have that kind of assurance

9) Would you take an alcoholic to a bar for lunch? Would you take someone that is on a diet to a buffet?

10) Going to these places are not wrong unless they cause our brother to sin.

11) How we live our lives is important

12) Do we make the sacrifices so our brother can live the life that God wants them to live?

13) Grandmother and playing cards and Dad wouldn’t go into a bar.

14) When we think about how to live out our lives we need to think about our weaker brothers.

1 Corinthians 8:1-13 (NIV)
1 Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But the man who loves God is known by God. 4 So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. 7 But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. 9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, won’t he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.