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- William Michael Albert Broad is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and actor who achieved fame in the 1970s
The Place of Love, Rights & Freedoms
Date: 22-12-19 849 Echuca
- William Michael Albert Broad is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and actor who achieved fame in the 1970s
- He is known professionally as Billy Idol
- People who are rock or pop stars are often called idols
- They are idols of the music scene
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- Young, good looking kids with fame are called “teen idols”
- Even on the TV you have shows like “American Idol” & “Australian Idol”
- Idol is used here for those who are not worshipped as such as a god, but as someone who is admired, adored & loved
- No doubt, some people have placed such emphasis on the talent of people & the experience they are given, that it runs close to worship in the religious sense
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- What we have in this passage of Scripture is about the evil of pagan idolatry which was very common in these times
- 2000 years of Christianity has all but removed this kind of worship from the western world, although, it is coming back in it’s various forms
1. Rights and Responsibilities vs. 1-3
- Although, this passage speaks about idolatry, the message here is far deeper than merely that
- It’s amazing how “self” often gets in the way of the higher & the more perfect way of the Lord, which is “love”
- In believing they are right, a person will forget love & do wrong
- It is more important for them to be right, than to live righteously
- A righteous person is a person who does right, but entrusts his life to God when wronged
- A righteous person does not pursue vengeance or a vendetta
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- This can happen, when a person believes they are in the right to pursue their agenda
- A person may believe that they have certain freedoms & rights as a Christian & that those freedoms & rights should be claimed
- This claim can be triggered by pride or by a self-first attitude
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- In our passage today, Paul says that it is triggered by knowledge & that knowledge in turn triggers pride & self
- Through their knowledge that idols are nothing, the Corinthians believe that they have the right to their freedoms regardless of the hurt that it may cause
- They are free – indeed have the right – to attend pagan idolatrous feasts regardless of who it hurts
- We have seen this attitude before in previous chapters
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- They have boasted of their so-called freedom from any restraints
- They have boasted over the freedom of the man who was in a relationship with his stepmother
- They have boasted over their freedom to use the body how they like & some have even attended brothels
- They boasted over certain leaders as opposed to others
- They boasted over their spiritual giftedness
- To top it off, they were taking each other to court, no doubt, over what they believed was their rights
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- The knowledge the apostle talks about here is the knowledge of the truth
- There is, no doubt, a power that comes with having knowledge
- In fact, knowledge can be very liberating
- But knowledge, in itself, is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself
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- The Corinthians boasted over the knowledge they had in Christ
- They knew that they were given freedom to know God & have access to God through Christ
- That idols were of no consequence & that nothing was behind them
- The only problem is that the freedom they supposedly “know” is the paganised version of freedom – freedom from restraint
- This meant the freedom to do whatever they like
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- Gospel freedom should never be placed in this category
- The apostle has to tell them that the knowledge they think they have is not really what they have
- In fact, their knowledge is not leading them to God, but away from Him
- If only they exercised love, their knowledge would be truly in accord with the truth
- With a play on words, the apostle puts it this way…
—2 If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; 3 but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.
- The charter of the Christian life is framed around love
- Knowledge is important, but it is the padding, not the frame
- Even faith, as important & necessary as it is, does not occupy the place that is given to love
– If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
– Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
- Love is the charter of the Christian life & it needs to be applied liberally to every area of our life
2. Knowledge Is Important vs.4-6
- In elevating love, the apostle is not disparaging knowledge
- To do that would be counter productive since it is through the knowledge of our Lord & Saviour is a person led to Christ ()
- It concerns me that some Christians set knowledge against their subjective experience of the Lord as if the latter can stand on its own without knowledge
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- I have heard people say that we should not be concerned about doctrine because all we need is love
Q.
So where does this person get the idea that all we need is love?
- Oh, that’s right, it’s a doctrine (a teaching) of Christ
- We may elevate one without devaluing the other & it is foolish in the extreme to do so
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- In vs. 4-6, Paul acknowledges that they are quite right about what they do know
- There is no such thing as an idol & there is no such thing as other gods – the likes of Zeus, Hermes, Baal, Ashtaroth & the like
- They are but figments of the imagination of men & women, but there is no reality behind them
- The Corinthians knew this & were happy to flaunt it
- Nothing wrong with that, except, that they forgot that some of their brothers in Christ had come out of that very idolatry & had not sufficiency distanced themselves from it, in the conscience
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- Every now & again, we get these gems from the apostles & Paul gives us one here
- v.6 is structured to show us the unity of the one God—Father & Son
—6 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.
- The Father from whom are all things
- The Son, Jesus, through whom are all things
- Jesus is the agent of creation & of the same substance as the Father
- Jesus is the Son of God & one with the Father, yet there is a functional subordination of the Son to the Father
- Further, we exist for the Father & we exist through the Son
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- The OT is full of the denial of the existence of other gods
- Jeremiah likens them to a scarecrow
—5 “Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, And they cannot speak; They must be carried, Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them, For they can do no harm, Nor can they do any good.”
- The Corinthians knew all these things & were greatly enriched by God to understand the truth
that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge,
- Let’s be impressed here – these, largely, ex-slaves or even current slaves had come from the background of idolatry & that would have been a hard thing to escape from
- Idolatry had it’s hold because it was associated with the activity of demons
- They were, in their pagan past lives, fellowshipping with demons says Paul in...
—19 What do I mean then?
That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?
20 No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons.
- So they truly were converted to Christ in escaping the trappings of idolatrous worship
— You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led.
— For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God,
- In the Corinthians minds, then, they were wondering how they could be faulted for eating meals at the temple feasts since the gods represented by idols do not, in fact, exist!
3. Our Brother Is More Important Than Our Rights vs. 7-8
- One thing that these Corinthians failed to understand was that not everyone was like them
- Some Christians who have come from certain backgrounds have certain weaknesses that are derived from their past
- An alcoholic that ditched the alcohol for Christ has a weakness there that could draw him back into his alcoholism
- The same can be said for any sort of sinful addiction a person had prior to coming to Christ
- The thing is, we all have different backgrounds, strengths & weaknesses
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- Some Christians can be told that idols are nothing at all, but if they were so accustomed to the idol, they may not have made the break in their conscience
- Sure, they may think an idol is nothing, but the conscience has trouble in accepting the new reality
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