Living for God's Glory: Unity, Liberty, and Love

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All right, 1 Corinthians is a letter that the Apostle Paul writes to this church that he treasured very much. He started the church in Corinth, and he was there 18 months working among the people. And so these pagan people were learning about Jesus Christ. Most of them were Gentiles, so non-Jewish people who were learning about Jesus and what it meant to believe in this man who died on the cross, but then he rose from the dead. And his disciples, his apostles were proclaiming this truth. Some of them were dying for it. And so these people became Christians because they believed in Jesus. [00:00:17] (38 seconds)


And so this church began to grow in Corinth. But as most churches experienced, there were issues in the church. There were problems in the church. There were factions that had developed, or cliques. And one clique didn't like another clique. One click thought that they were better than another group over here, and they were very divided. So in the first six chapters, the Apostle Paul writes to them about these divisions in the church. Also in the first six chapters, he writes to them about sexual immorality that was happening in the house, in the church. [00:00:38] (32 seconds)


And he addresses some of the religious Omarites. And I was on a youtube video of the church when I was at church, and I noticed that there was this issue in the church that they were dealing with. And some of the people in the church were kind of uncomfortable with the idea of eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. In this pagan culture, they had all these little gods, small g, and they had sacrifices to these gods, and then the meat that was sacrificed, it was still good meat. And so at the back side of the little temple, the priest would make some extra money by selling the pot roast and the filet mignon to the people who were there. [00:03:20] (30 seconds)


And the Corinthians were writing in the letter, and it seems as if they said to Apostle Paul, hey, Apostle Paul, we know that an idol is nothing. So we know that this meat sacrifice is fine to eat. Why don't you tell the other people in our church, the ones that are weaker, to get with the program and to eat the meat? And the Apostle Paul says, true, an idol is nothing. And true, you can eat the meat. You have liberty to do so. But for the sake of your brother and sister, you put parameters on your liberty. You put parameters on your freedom for their sake. [00:04:00] (32 seconds)


And then in chapter 10, he warns against idolatry that happens even though these idols are not real, that if you would go and participate, say there's a feast for a false god, and the Corinthians would say, well, I can go there because I'm of Christ, and that idol is nothing. I can go participate in the feast. I have freedom to do that. And the Apostle says, now wait, even though the idol is nothing, you got to realize that there are spiritually dark forces behind everything that we do. And so be careful that you're not falling into idolatry. [00:04:37] (34 seconds)


That's going to be the overarching theme for you and for me, for the Corinthian Christians. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God. Now, you might say at the beginning, well, what does it mean to do all for the glory of God? And so let me give you just a couple of brief things to help. I think it will help us. This is not in your notes, but here's the here's the big idea. To live for the glory of God means that you hate what God hates, and you love what God loves. [00:05:55] (31 seconds)

Living for the glory of God, hating what God hates, love what God loves. How about in the area of eating and drinking? Eating and drinking. You can have freedom for different things. You can go to a restaurant, and you can have freedom to have liberty to make the decisions about what you eat and what you drink, because there's freedom in it. And so you can go after church, if you'd like, you could go to Culver's down here, it's kind of a a new Culver's is good. You could go to Longhorn Steakhouse. [00:06:38] (24 seconds)


You could go to, there's another place I like, I can't remember the name of it, Beef Shack. Yeah, Beef Shack. You could go there, and it doesn't matter where you go, you have freedom to do it. Praise God for that. You have freedom to eat and to drink. You have freedom to drink. You can go out, have an adult beverage if you're an adult, and you can do that. But to do all for the glory of God means that you're thankful for the food and drink that you have, and you're mindful for those around you. [00:06:47] (30 seconds)


Living to glorify God doesn't mean that you're 24 -7 kneeling down in prayer, but it means that 24 -7, the Lord has his lordship in your life. So, let me give you three principles that will help us from the text as we use our Christian freedom or put parameters on it. The first one is this, the principle of profitability. Does it build up is the question that you should ask. Look at verse 23. [00:09:20] (37 seconds)


It seems as if the Corinthians had this slogan, and in my ESV translation, it has it in quotation marks, all things are lawful. And they probably got it from the Apostle Paul. It makes sense. Because the Apostle Paul, you could hear him saying something like that, because he wasn't a legalist. And so, he could hear him saying something like that. And so, he could hear him say, all things are lawful. [00:10:06] (24 seconds)


He could say to the Galatians, don't listen to the Judaizers, those Jewish Christians who say that you need to be circumcised in order to really be saved. You can have Jesus, that's good, but you got to follow the law. The Apostle Paul said, no, no, no, all things are lawful for me. I'm not bound under the law anymore. I can eat with a Gentile. I can have a bacon and egg sandwich. I'm not bound. All things are lawful. I'm not bound under the law anymore. All things are lawful for me. And so, the Corinthians, it seemed like they were taking that everywhere. [00:10:28] (31 seconds)


And then the last thing is service. When you volunteer, when you put in your time to serve the body of Christ, other believers, you are building up the church. Ephesians 4, verse 12, their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church. So when you build up the church, you're building up the church. So when you serve, you're not just depleting yourself of time and resources, you are actually investing in the kingdom work here. That's a beautiful thing. You're investing in it. [00:16:15] (32 seconds)


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