Cecil, that was the father of the family. Cecil said to me, don't let the boogeyman get you. The boogeyman. I had never heard of the boogeyman before. I didn't know there was a boogeyman. I didn't know what he looked like. I didn't know what he sounded like. I didn't know where he lived. I had a quarter of a mile to get home. I want to tell you that the quarter mile record was set that night, back in about 1954 between those two houses. What's your boogeyman?
Maybe it was something that was said to you when you were a child, and that still echoes in the back of your mind. Or perhaps it was an experience that you had. Something you didn't ask for, something that you didn't look for, it just happened to you, and it has marked your life like a boogeyman all these years. Maybe it's something you've believed about yourself, that has kept you in bondage, held you. For the Corinthians, the boogeyman was idolatry.
You have to understand that back in those days, life was not compartmentalized like it is today. It's very easy for us in our Western mindset to set aside our religion here, and then we go about the rest of the parts of our lives. But for the Corinthians, idolatry was woven right into everything about them. It was their life. It was their culture. And they were held in fear and in bondage to what they believed about the boogeyman idols that were all around their city.
And then there came this apostle who was proclaiming the Gospel to them, a Gospel that said they could be freed from the boogeyman. And many of them believed and they were delivered. They no longer participated in the cultural kinds of things, the entrapments that were a part of the idolatry. They were free in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall what? Set you free. By the way, he can set you free from the boogeyman that haunts you.
Paul writes 1 Corinthians 8, which is our text for today, with that context. The Corinthians had been set free in Jesus Christ. And he reminds them of the truth that we want to look at once again this morning, and this is part two of the message, that your freedom in Christ is based on truth and then guided by love. You and I need to use our freedom in Jesus Christ to serve God's purposes and not our own purposes. And here's how this applies.
You see, the Corinthians were divided over a lot of issues, but including this one that said, should we eat meat that has been offered to idols? Some of them knew the truth. They knew it so deeply inside that they were set free from any concern about idolatry at all. Others of them knew the truth more tentatively, more immaturally, we might say, more weakly. As a result of that, they didn't want to do anything that was going to be associated with idols.
They didn't want to compromise themselves in any way. And so they were divided. Some said, it's fine to eat the meat. Others said, hey, stay away from that stuff, because people here in the city will think we're still worshiping idols. So Paul writes to them about God's truth. And last week we talked about God's truth, that your spiritual freedom is based upon what God says. And what we know, what Paul says we know about idolatry is this. The idols are what? They're nothing.
They're like the boogeyman. Idols are nothing. They do not hear. They do not speak. They cannot act. They're nothing. And secondly, we know there is only one God. One God. That is God's truth. And we learned that God's truth defines everything else for us. It defines the boogeyman for us. Now we can listen to the lies of the past. We can listen to the voices that still echo in our minds. We can listen to the experiences that we had that still are with us today producing guilt and shame.
Or we can listen to God's truth. God's truth defines all of that junk in our lives so that we can deal with it. Rejecting God's truth does not lead to freedom. Some people think it does. We live in a culture today that thinks that if you can reject God and flush away the truth, the standards, the absolutes that God states, then you'll be free. Free to be yourself. Free to fulfill all of your desires. But rejecting God's truth does not lead to freedom. In fact, it brings what?
It brings bondage, exactly. It brings bondage. What you know to be true, says Paul in this chapter, must be balanced with humility and loving concern for others. Because you see, the people who knew idols were nothing were running roughshod over those people who felt that we need to be very careful about idolatry and not compromise ourselves with it. Somebody has said, truth alone can be brutal. And that's true, isn't it? Truth alone can be brutal.
I think, for example, of a preacher from Topeka, Kansas, I'm ashamed to say, who goes to events like the burials of servicemen who have died, and there he protests America's acceptance of homosexuality. You know what I'm talking about? You've probably seen his picture on television. He's an embarrassment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Because he takes the truth and he beats people over the head with it. Truth can be brutal.
And when it comes to the doubtful things, that is the things about which God has not spoken certainly and clearly, it risks the abuse of using spiritual freedom for our own selfish ends. And so Paul says, your spiritual freedom is guided, it's not only based on truth, but it's guided then by what God says is paramount. What we know is true can make us arrogant and ugly people. Particularly if we think that we know more truth than somebody else.
We can become egotistical about that and make life decisions that are based upon a certain self-absorption. It's all about us. And so we need our freedom to be tempered. We need what we know to be channeled to the best outcome, not just for ourselves, but for others. What trumps freedom is love. What trumps freedom is love. Love that is self-sacrificial and others-oriented. Paul says, the greatest of these is love. Love is on top. And so he writes about that. Now let's look at the text.
I'm going to pick it up in the middle of the chapter this morning at verse 7. He says, we all know that idols are nothing, but not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food that's been offered to an idol, they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God. We are no worse if we do not eat and no better if we do.
Be careful, however, be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 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? So this weak brother for whom Christ died is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.
Therefore, Paul says, 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. Paul says what we know to be true needs to be tempered with concern for how our choices affect other people. So what does this mean to my life? Well, there are a number of things that even in our own culture that Christians are divided about. Is it okay to spend a weekend in Reno and enjoy the casinos?
Well, you'll find some who think that's a great way to relax. They limit themselves to a certain amount of money, and if they lose it, they lose it. If they win it, they win it, and it's just fun for them. It's recreation. No matter what you do, it's going to cost some money, isn't it? But then there are others who say, well, if you go to a casino, you're really compromising. You're a Christian. You're a bad steward of what God puts into your hands. You're risking it.
Is that a real issue or not? No, we can talk about others. We can talk about dancing. That's becoming less and less of an issue, but not when I grew up. Not when I grew up. We need to be careful that what we know to be the truth, because we understand what God says, doesn't cause us to run over other people who have a different opinion, because they may not understand the truth as we understand it. So Paul says love realizes some things. Love is not blind, nor is it ignorant of the truth.
Instead, love brings additional insight to Christians that joins with the truth to create a powerful balance, a mature balance in their lives. Paul says love realizes some things. Love realizes, number one, not everyone knows the truth about idols. Now, it's not that these believers he's talking about didn't know that the idols were nothing. It's just that it hadn't gotten down deep into their lives yet. Their belief was there, but it had not yet changed their behavior.
As you well know, knowledge can be merely intellectual and fail to get into our hearts where it changes who we are. And so Paul is talking about some believers here who knew the truth, but they didn't yet comprehend it. Or maybe we should say it hadn't comprehended them. You can tell a toddler, hot, it's hot. What's the toddler want to do? Touch it, of course. That's natural.
I can know in my mind that that Mac that I bought last fall that I really love is a powerful machine, but I also know that I'm only scratching the surface of what that machine can do because I haven't comprehended it yet. You see, you and I really only know the truth when we're able to act upon it, when we can use it to determine the choices of our lives.
And there were some believers here who were not yet free enough from the whole idolatrous system to be able to say, I can eat meat that has been offered to those idols. So Paul says not everybody knows the truth yet. Love realizes that. Secondly, because of that, love knows that eating meat defiles their weak conscience. Now, there's really nothing defiling about that meat, but because their conscience is weak, they become defiled. They aren't yet developed. They aren't yet mature.
They're overly tender, overly sensitive. And because of this, their conscience was like it was smeared with mud if they do eat. They feel guilty for it. They feel condemned about it. And Paul again says food doesn't make us better with God. It doesn't make us worse with God, but the conscience does. And he's concerned about the conscience of these weak believers that they may not be caused to stumble. And so Paul says, thirdly, that love realizes the strong have a responsibility for the weak.
The weak don't have the responsibility for the strong. It's the strong who have the responsibility for the weak. Those who are spiritually mature, in other words, who really comprehend the implications of the truth they know. Those who have been freed from their bondage, their rules, the voices, the expectations. Those who can enjoy liberty in Jesus Christ on these non-essential and doubtful things. They have a responsibility for those who have not yet grasped the depths of the truth of God.
Paul says in Romans chapter 14, one man considers one day more sacred than another. I've heard some people say, how can people go to church on Saturday night? That's not the Lord's day. Paul says one man considers one day more sacred than another. Another man considers every day alike. Every day is the Lord's day. Each should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special does so to the Lord. He who eats meat eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God.
He who abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Love realizes that. Love realizes that not all of God's children are on the same page of understanding. And so if I have full understanding of what my liberty in Jesus Christ really means, I still have a responsibility for the implications of my freedom on others.
Secondly, Paul says that love remembers some things. He says love is paramount to truth because love remembers some things. Verses 9 to 12. Love remembers my exercise of freedom must not become a stumbling block to another. A stumbling block. It means to stub the toe. Have you ever gotten up in the night and you hit something on the floor you forgot was there and you feel like your toe has been split all the way up to your knee? Oh man, that hurts.
Paul says be careful that you don't leave something out there that somebody is going to stumble over. You see the weaker brother may be emboldened to do what he thinks is wrong because of your example. And thus defile his conscience. Love remembers. Secondly, that to cause another to stumble is to cause him to perish. Now the word perish here is used in the figurative sense. The word is used elsewhere of perishing eternally and Christ died to keep this brother from perishing eternally.
So Paul says don't you therefore cause him to perish in another sense and that is to be ruined because his conscience has been smeared with mud. Defiled. You have ruined him from enjoying a free life, a joyful life, an effective service that will lead to his full reward because now he has stumbled. He has stopped making progress forward. He is back what? Back sliding. Because of you. Love remembers. Thirdly, love remembers that to cause another to stumble is also to sin against Christ.
Now that is strong language. Not only am I in danger of causing my brother to suffer loss of well-being spiritually or to perish, but I can also sin against Jesus Christ by carelessly forcing my liberty on others. When I focus on my rights and my strong opinion about this and not how all of that is going to impact my fellow believer, I can transgress the very basic law of liberty as James calls it which is what? Love. It's love. Love is the very character of Jesus Christ.
And when I don't exercise love as a balance to what I know to be the truth, then I can sin against Christ. And in light of what love realizes and love remembers, finally love resolves something. It resolves something. And Paul again uses strong language here. Verse 13, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat, that is meat offered to idols, I'll never eat it again so that I will not cause him to fall.
Paul is saying here, I will temper my spiritual freedom with love whenever necessary in order to prevent another person from falling. I will tone down what I know to be my liberty. I will lay aside what I know I have the right to do. I will moderate my life so that I don't set an example for someone who's not at the same point that I'm at. The bottom line is this, that liberty and love must be practiced in balance. Or to say it another way, they dance. They dance together.
Liberty says, oh, just go ahead. You know the truth about this. Well, you have a right to do it. You've been set free in Christ. And you know that doing this or going there is not going to harm you. Enjoy your liberty. You don't need to let somebody else squelch your freedom. But love asks another question. Love says, how will my choice influence my friend in Christ? Being theologically correct is good. But the fact is, as Paul said earlier, we don't all have perfect knowledge, right?
Now, we think we do. I heard somebody ask John MacArthur one time, are you wrong in anything that you believe? Now, if you've ever heard John preach, you know why he would be asked that question. Are you wrong in anything you believe? And he paused for a moment and he said, well, he said, I very well may be. But if I knew where it was, I would change it. That's an honest answer. We don't all have perfect knowledge, none of us. It's good to have convictions.
But having love in your heart for your brother, for another person, is even better. Love keeps me from becoming proud and serving myself with my freedom. Love motivates me to deny myself in order to build up somebody else. Love and liberty were perfected in Jesus. If you want to find one person who had it all right, who had every freedom, it is Jesus. So my encouragement to you and to me is this, grow to be like him. Remember that in Gethsemane he prayed, Father, everything is possible for you.
Take this cup, what? Take it away from me. Was he free to ask that? Of course. He didn't have to die. He could escape, but if he wanted to, it was his freedom, it was his right not to have to die. But he chose to limit his own freedom and to die out of love for you and for me. He said, yet not what I will, but what you want. What we know to be true sets us free, but we're not free to live selfishly. Are we free to neglect others, to hate our enemies, to neglect others or to hate our enemies?
We are free rather to demonstrate love like Jesus did. A man who is a little younger than me and who I greatly respect is named Ed Dobson. You probably don't know the name Ed Dobson, but Ed was on the staff of Liberty University for a period of time. He was the vice president of moral majority back in those days, 20 years ago. Went on to be the pastor of Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. About, I'm going to say six, eight years ago, he was diagnosed with ALS.
And eventually he had to resign the church or retire from the church. I've read recently Ed has been asked to be the vice president of spiritual formation at Cornerstone University there in Grand Rapids. And I understand why. Because God has done a lot of work on Ed's heart, forming him and maturing him over the last 20 years. I want to read you a statement that Ed made. I want to bring into a certain focus some of the things we've talked about recently. A balance between truth and love.
What we know is true. Being balanced by the love of Christ. He says, I haven't changed in the sense that I believe sexuality is a gift from God to be expressed exclusively within the commitment of heterosexual marriage. But all other expressions of that are outside the boundaries of God's creative intent as revealed in the scriptures. He says, I haven't changed about that. However, I do not believe that gives you or me a license to hate people. Including homosexuals.
And I think part of the struggle for people is that it's easy. It's easy to beat up what you don't understand. I have sat and listened to story after story after story from gay people of their journey and have cried with them and tried to listen to the awful pain they go through. It hasn't changed what I believe about the practice of homosexuality. But it has reminded me that whom you would change, you must first love. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that.
And he says, and in general, this is Ed Dobson now, and in general, Christians have not been very good about loving gay people. Oh, they'll tell you they hate the sin, but they love the sinner. But he says, I don't see much love for the sinner. We need to take a strong stand on what God says is true. And we're doing that as a church. But at the same time, as we stand strong on the truth, we must be filled with the love of God for those who are broken and hurting.
Whatever their sexual orientation. Whatever their lifestyle choice. We need to love them just as we need to love one another. Thank God we are free in Jesus Christ. Thank God we are free from the past and all the guilt and the wounds and the haunts and the boogeymen of the past. We are free from the legalism of religion and its rituals and its requirements. We're free from all of that in Jesus Christ.
But at the same time, I need to bring my freedom under the yoke of love so that I don't run over other people being right. Can you say amen to that? Lord, help us to live this way and to practice in the power of the Holy Spirit, the balance that Jesus exhibited so beautifully throughout his life. Help us to be like Jesus, I pray. To live like him and to treat others like him. To be filled with truth as best as we can understand it.
And at the same time, be guided by love in the way that we express that truth for the sake of others. In Jesus' name I pray this. Amen. Would you stand with me please?