biblestudy: Acts (Part Sixteen)

Acts 15:19-29 Sensitivity to Conscience and Scruples
John W. Ritenbaugh
Given 10-Jan-89; Sermon #BS-AC16; 80 minutes

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We are going to go into something here that at least touches the subject that we are going to be spending most of the time in this evening (in kind of an indirect way). It is a question that comes up from time to time regarding the hunting and killing of animals.

It seems from time to time there are those who feel that animals possess a quality that maybe almost approaches something like a human consciousness, and there are those who feel that to kill an animal would be something that we should not be involved in at all. And there is no doubt that, as I have mentioned in some previous message, an animal is something that a human being can have a relationship with. I know that many of you have probably had very close relations with a dog. Some of you seem to appreciate cats. There might have been other animals that you have had around that you feel very close to, and that feeling kind of extends out to other, well, let us just call them domesticated animals and even out to those that are wild.

Now there is no doubt that there are some people who are taking advantage of animals and just slaughter them with no basis at all for what they are doing except maybe for the making of money. I saw this past week on television some shots that were taken in Africa, I am not really sure exactly where it was, but at any rate, the rare black rhino lives in that area. And I believe that they said that in 1970, the population of those animals was somewhere around 30,000 or 40,000 and as of the time of the filming of this movie, there were only 3,000 left. They are being killed to get the horn because they are prized by Orientals as having aphrodisiac qualities. And so the people in Africa slaughter them wantonly. They cut off the horns, they grind it into a potter, and then they ship them off to India, China, Japan, those areas, and it is lucrative in the sense that it is very similar to what the Colombians and other South Americans are getting for drugs.

We are going to begin this in Genesis 1, verse 28. Very familiar scripture. It says,

Genesis 1:28 Then God blessed them [meaning Adam and Eve], and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

There are those who take the term dominion in the sense of having absolute authority over. Now, the word itself may extend that far. It is my understanding that the word more equates with our English word regulate or govern rather than it does to have absolute authority over. Certainly the authority is there. But the term govern and regulate is more indicative of what God intended. Authority might give a person to rape or abuse simply because one has authority. But if one is to regulate or to govern, it indicates a responsibility that is different from just the mere having authority over would indicate.

There are indications in the Psalms that David, who was certainly a servant of God and a man after God's own heart, hunted and he killed game. The disciples were fishermen and on at least one occasion in Luke the 5th chapter, it shows very clearly that Jesus aided them in making a very large catch. Now, even here we have sometimes those who will separate things, and that is, they would not have the same kind of a feeling for a fish as they would for an elk or a deer. And maybe they would think nothing of somebody else fishing and hooking a fish and reeling it in and eating it, but they would have discomforting feelings about the same thing being done to a caribou, an elk, or a moose.

Luke 5:4-9 When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." But Simon answered and said to Him, "Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at Your word, I will let down the net." And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken.

Now there is something that God very clearly was involved in and that was a miraculous event, and I am sure that they scaled the fish and cleaned it, and they sold it at the market, and they probably ate some of it as well.

Please turn to Deuteronomy 14 where God gives instructions (also in Leviticus 11) regarding the eating of flesh and what we can eat and what we should not eat.

Deuteronomy 14:4-5 [He says] "These are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat [all domesticated], the deer [which is not domesticated and is considered to be a game animal], the gazelle [certainly in the same category], the roe deer, the wild goat, the mountain goat, the antelope, and the mountain sheep."

Nobody domesticates those animals, at least I have not heard of them. One time I had a very skilled, accomplished, and experienced hunter, he had gone over a large part of the world hunting animals. And I asked him what was the most difficult animal of all to shoot. And his answer was very quick. He said it was a mountain goat and he told me some experiences that he had with it. You really have to know your stuff in order to get them. So it is a game animal. It is not domesticated in any way, and yet we are allowed to eat them.

Now that, to you and me, involves hunting them, tracking them down, using skill, and eventually, according to this man, he says, you are very lucky to get a good shot at them. That requires a rifle. I would imagine in the times of the bows and arrows, you had to really be extremely skilled in order to get close enough to one of those to take a shot at them with an arrow. Now if we are allowed to eat them, then does it not seem reasonable that God intends that they be killed? And there is enough, let us say, of a wild streak in them that it takes a bit of skill to get them.

Let us go to I Samuel 17. This is an experience of David's.

I Samuel 17:34-36 But David said to Saul, "Your servant used to keep his father's sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went after it and struck it and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard and struck and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing as he has defied the armies of the living God."

We can see here that there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that it is wrong to kill predators as well, in this case, a lion or a bear. Now, this is not to say that animals should be killed indiscriminately. I personally feel that it is repulsive to me for a man to kill an animal just for a trophy. That is, to get a big pair of horns or to get a head to mount up on his wall without making any use of the meat that is there. Really, the way I look at is that the trophy—the head, or the antlers—should be a byproduct of the killing of the animal for the meat. And those who kill an animal and then just leave the carcass to rot, they ought to be punished, I feel, in some way.

The conclusion of this is this: the idea that it is wrong to kill any animal is not supported by the Bible. Certainly mankind should be responsible to control their appetites in regard to the animals and control the indiscriminate killing of an animal. Now one final thing to add here and that is this. That if it was wrong to kill an animal, then why did God tell us that we can eat them? It is that simple. There is no difference between, in that sense, a game animal and a domesticated animal. If God did not want us to kill any animals at all, then He would have instructed us not to eat any. But He did tell us that we can eat them, therefore they have to be killed in order to eat them, and but they should be killed in a humane way.

Back to Acts the 15th chapter. I think in the recording of the history of the early church, Acts 15 records what must have been certainly one of the top, perhaps the most significant events that occurred during that period of time because it lays down a principle that has guided the church all the way down through the centuries since then and gives us a great deal more depth and understanding of the use of the laws of God. Everything that preceded this, especially in those chapters that involve the preaching of the gospel to Gentiles, has been leading up to this point. And so the stage was set all the way through Acts 1 and up to chapter 15 because the church is breaking out, I guess you might say, of the Judaistic mold and becoming a worldwide organization that has a spiritual purpose, not to be confined to one particular area and one particular people.

Now the basic question was, could a Gentile become a Christian without first keeping the whole law? And as I mentioned to you before, this is where the world jumps the track. It is sort of like they throw out the baby with the bathwater and throw out the whole law and say, well, it has no relevance to us at all. But it does have a great deal of relevance to us, and we need to use it. We will see when we get into chapter 16 how Paul showed that it was still relevant, even though it was not required for us to keep as a matter of salvation, yet it was still relevant to a Christian's life, and it is relevant to your life today.

I mentioned to you that the laws fall into three major categories. There is the spiritual, there is the civil law, and there is the ceremonial law. Now we are to live by every word of God, and that includes the laws that were set aside for a while because God is focusing on something else. Now what made it necessary for the laws to be set aside? There were two related causes that I gave you.

1. God was beginning in earnest His spiritual work through the church rather than Israel. And so the church becomes the Israel of God. He is not working through Israel in the same way that He was before. The church is the Israel of God. That is the Israel that belongs to Him, and it is a spiritual organism.

2. Related to this is that He was taking His work to the Gentiles, which means the other nations, and it was to become worldwide.

The combination of these two is that His people, the Israel of God, was not going to be located in one specific area ruling over a portion of land. In fact, we find it has no political authority at all. It is a spiritual body consisting of scattered individuals whose only commonality might be their relationship to God through Christ. So it called for not a different set of rules, but it called for a more specific set, and others had to be set aside only for their physical application. The spiritual application though still applied.

Because of this, the goals and purposes of life are radically altered. No longer are the goals and purposes national and physical, but now they are spiritual and eternal. So this alters the priorities in the law. The civil, that which pertains primarily to the physical nation, and the ceremonial, which primarily pertains to the religious aspect of that physical nation, those things slide right into the background as far as their actual physical application is concerned.

Now, in Acts 15, at the very beginning, we find that that council seemed to break out or begin with what might be considered a polite free-for-all. I do not think that they were actually punching one another, but I think the discussions were pretty heated, pretty pointed.

As I mentioned to you before there is much in the Old Testament that would indicate that the Jews who were arguing for the keeping of the law had a very solid footing to stand on. What they lacked was the understanding that God was embarking on something that they had not yet perceived or understood, and that was the church. And that the scriptures that they were applying were something that would apply later on. They indeed would apply perhaps in the Millennium, but they did not apply for this period of time until the work of the church was done between the time of the resurrection of Christ and the time of the return of Christ. They did not understand that.

And so when they would look at things that were stated, let us say, in Isaiah 2 where it says that all of the nations were going to come up to Jerusalem and learn the law, they would naturally think how in the world can we do away with circumcision and these other ceremonial laws whenever all nations are supposed to come here and learn it? Well, this is what they did not understand, and that is the work of the church, the church era, was going to be interspersed between when they were back there in the first century and its fulfillment, which would come later on beginning with the return of Jesus Christ, and so they had pretty solid footing to stand on.

And now Peter got up and he recounted then what had occurred to him. Now the emphasis of what he was recounting was how can we refute what God made so obvious, and that is that when I was sent to these Gentiles, God did not require that they get circumcised. He did not require the keeping of the law. He gave them His Spirit the same way He gave it to us: through faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, and so forth. Well, that is a pretty hard argument to go against, so he was talking about the personal experience which he believed, that is, it was his interpretation that God was showing them to go off in a different direction.

Then the apostle Paul got up and he confirmed how God had worked through Barnabas and himself and brought about the conversion of Gentiles and how God confirmed that through the miracles that were done. And so he says in verse 12 that "the multitude kept silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul, declaring how many miracles and wonders God had worked through them among the Gentiles." So the conclusion that Paul and Barnabas had was that the miracles validated the ministry and that Paul and Barnabas' interpretation of the application of the law was correct. Otherwise, God would not have validated their ministry by the wonders and signs.

So here is Paul and Barnabas, who are standing on the same side of the argument as Peter.

And James then summarizes it by showing that indeed this is what the Scriptures say. In other words, he was giving a correct interpretation of scriptures. Now there is only one that is actually quoted here. It comes out of Amos 9, but that does not mean that was the only one that he quoted, but it was the only one that Luke chose to put in. And so he put a cap on it, as it were.

I mentioned to you verse 18 is kind of interesting because it roughly means that God only knows what He is doing. In other words, it is sort of like James was saying that we are looking through a glass darkly. We cannot understand yet fully where God is headed and why He is doing the things He does, but God knows. God has known from the beginning exactly what He has been doing. See, "known to God from eternity." In any direction that you want to look in terms of time, God knows what He is doing, and we have to interpret what we see from His Word and from what we see being done within the work. And though we do not understand it fully, God knows, and we are going to follow in that direction.

Acts 15:19-21 [then comes the judgment] "Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood. For Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath."

Verse 21 seems to indicate that there was a great deal known by the Gentiles about the law of Moses. And therefore, there would be those who would be ignorant of its true intent but yet having just enough knowledge for it to be dangerous. That is one interpretation of it. In other words, there is just enough knowledge of it that they could misinterpret it very easily. And that these people would be coming into the church and bringing their misinterpretations in with them.

The other one is that if anybody wants to know more about the law of God, all they have to do is stop in at a synagogue and they can learn more about it. In other words, there is available to them more information on the law of Moses.

Going back to verse 20. These things appear for the most part in the book of Leviticus. Everybody knows the book of Leviticus is something that is primarily directed to the Levite, that is, to the priests, to those who would be working in the area of the Temple and Tabernacle. They would be the people in charge of the religious instruction of a nation.

Now the way God's Word is written it is very easy for one to become confused, especially if one only has enough knowledge to make it dangerous. And so it was kind of like a warning to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. One of the reasons that these four things are mentioned is that idol worship, pagan idolatry, was very prevalent. And that all four of these things were common practices of things that had to do with idolatry, but the laws appeared in what appears to be a ceremonial section. And people would think, well, they are done away. They are set aside. We do not have to have anything to do with them.

But what the apostles were doing here were establishing a principle to show that regardless of where a law appears, it may have direct application on a Christian's life. In this case, there are moral and spiritual issues involved here. Sexual immorality is a moral issue and it certainly might be spiritual as well. Eating something offered to an idol very definitely has spiritual issues involved with it. There is idolatry there. That breaks the first three commandments. And yet you see, these laws, these regulations appear [for the] most part in Leviticus 17 and 18 so it would have been easy to cast them aside.

In addition to that, there is one other issue and that is that there would be people who would have scruples about these things, even though they understood, that there were certain things here that they might be able to do lawfully. Now we are going to spend some time on this. In fact, we are going to spend most of the rest of the Bible study in the book of I Corinthians because the subject is addressed there in two chapters. I Corinthians 8 and I Corinthians 10. And we are going to see that offering or eating of meats offered to idols was no minor affair and their choice of singling these regulations out is extremely important.

Let us go to I Corinthians 8 and you can just turn there sort of permanently because it is going to be a good while before we get back to Acts 15.

I think that we can relate to the statement that I am going to make but maybe not as much as these people could. And that is that every area of their life was permeated by idolatry and pagan sacrifice. Now we can look at I John 2:15 where it says that all that is in the world is not of God. Our lives too are surrounded by it. Only today it has a Christian name attached to it or the title or the term Christian applied to it. But much of that also has come out of paganism and our lives too are surrounded by idolatry and pagan sacrifice.

You have probably never seen an animal sacrifice in your life. I mean, in honor of a deity. Yet spiritually, it is the same thing. Now for them it was virtually impossible for them to escape because almost every occasion in which there would be some kind of a festivity also involved the sacrifice of an animal. So, social occasions for a Christian became a time of sort of like living on the edge of a cliff as far as the conscience was concerned. Am I doing something that is idolatrous or am I not?

Now the sacrifices were divided three ways. When the animal was killed and it was skinned, part of the animal went on the fire and was burned, part of it went to the priest, and then part of it went to the offerer. And that part that went to the offerer, he usually used as an occasion to have fun. He would invite his friends. They would have a party. Now you have friends in the world, do you not? Sure you do. You work with them, some of them are your relatives, some of them are your neighbors. And there are occasions when you are invited to their homes to celebrate something. It could be an anniversary, it could be just a family reunion or whatever. That is what these people were faced with. Only unlike us, if they had one of those occasions, it was very likely that the animal that morning had been sacrificed to an idol.

Maybe the closest thing that we come to something like that today is Christmas and Easter, maybe Halloween, where it is not quite the same in that there is a statue down on the corner at the local church where they are slaughtering the animal that you are going to eat later on. It is about as close as we can get in this modern setting. But for them it was a very serious and very prevalent, very frequent occasion for them to face.

The part that the priest received, they got far more meat than they could ever eat. And so what they did is that they then sold it in the meat market. Now, you see, there is another twist here. Even if the Christian was not invited to a party, if he just wanted to have a roast for supper, it is very likely that when he went to the meat market that the meat that he was buying had been sacrificed that morning to an idol. He was surrounded by it. He could hardly have any fellowship or he could hardly eat a meal without wondering whether or not this thing had been sacrificed to an idol.

Now they knew what the conclusion that the council had reached there in Acts 15. They knew what it was because representatives had come out from Jerusalem to spread the word. So they wanted to obey God. They wanted to be careful. But an awful lot of consciences were being defiled. Was it right? Was it wrong? Was the meat contaminated because of its being offered to an idol? Did the pagan god have any effect on the meat? Now most Christians theoretically knew the right answer to that but there were some who felt that there was really something wrong with it.

So we are going to see in these two chapters how Paul reasoned this through (I Corinthians 8 and I Corinthians 10) and you are going to see that there are ramifications to this that it is very obvious that the Corinthians never thought of. So they needed to be instructed in regard to that because they were counting on their knowledge and their knowledge was that the idol was nothing, it was not alive, did not have any reality. There was no power there, and so they were free to eat it. The apostle Paul asked the question. Is it right for you to use that right if it offends your brother? If there is somebody there with a weak conscience? We are going to see the answer to that in I Corinthians 10. We will come back to I Corinthians 8 and we will go through it in a little bit more detail.

In the first 12 or 13 verses he uses the example of Israel and what they did in the wilderness in relation to God. Then beginning in verse 14, he really gets into the heart of the matter and its spiritual consequences. And he basically says that anyone who has sat at Christ's table, that is, at Passover, cannot sit at an idol's table as if the idol is nothing. You cannot synchronize Christ and an idol together, and if you do, Christ is the one that is going to suffer. We will see that in a little bit more detail.

Then he goes into the question of buying it in a meat market. And what do you do if you are invited to somebody else's house? You did not buy it, they did, and they invite you for a meal to their home. We will see the answer to that as well.

I Corinthians 8:1 Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.

Here is a warning. It is a warning that is just as valid today as it was when he gave it. And even though it may not apply directly to us in regard to things that are offered to an idol, the principle does apply, and the principle is this: That relying on knowledge alone is not very smart. We will get a little bit more of that in verse 2.

I Corinthians 8:1-2 Now concerning things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.

Now if a person is relying only on knowledge, what the apostle is saying here is that a man's knowledge is always incomplete. He does not know yet everything about the subject. So what he is doing here, he is telling people who happen to be maybe more intelligent than others, maybe they are not any more intelligent. But if you rely on your knowledge alone, it is very likely going to make you feel superior than others and that sense of superiority is going to have quite an effect on the way that you treat them. That is why the interjection about love. If a person is operating on the basis of knowledge only, then the superior attitude is going to downplay the quality and worth of others. Whereas love is going to temper knowledge, it is going to soften it and it will have a tendency toward concern and compassion.

The reason he is so concerned about this as we are going to see as we go on here, that what the person does in relation to his brother might have permanent effects. It may not, but then again it may, and so he is cautioning us to be very careful.

I Corinthians 8:3 But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.

What is important is that God knows us, not that we know God. We may have a certain knowledge about God, we may have a certain knowledge from having experience with God, and that is good. But it is more important that God knows us than that we know Him. He is putting things in the right perspective. He is trying to push these people toward a more humble opinion of themselves and their knowledge. You know that the Corinthians were quite puffed up. They were a church that for some reason God had blessed with a great number of gifts. And from the writing here in I Corinthians, it is very obvious that they were making a wrong use of those gifts. They were abusing their powers. And so Paul is pushing them back toward a more humble opinion.

I Corinthians 8:4 Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols. . .

Now you can see it is obvious from verse 4 when compared with verses 1 through 3, that he has been leading up to this subject and that they are all puffed up about their knowledge of idols in relationship to Christianity.

I Corinthians 8:4-6 Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is only one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

Let us put that in the right perspective there. Paul agrees with these people who are all puffed up, the people who have this knowledge, that the idol is nothing. That is, it is nothing as far as having any personal reality. And if we looked at it in a physical sense, it has no power. Hang on to that—because it does have power, but it does not have a physical power. But there is a power there and we will not get to that until we get to chapter 10.

Now, there are those that are called gods, which the idol was. It was called a god. But it was not really a God, and the Christian would know that. Now because he knew it, he might act in a certain way, and if he acted in a way that was based only upon knowledge without any tempering of love, then it was very likely that he was going to be in a position that he would cause a great deal of offense. Now, do you know why? Because what was happening here is that those who were with knowledge thought that the best way to strengthen the weak brother was to literally force them into doing something that their conscience was telling them had a reality and that they had a feeling about it. Paul was saying, do not do that.

This is why I said that anybody who bases what they are doing just on the mere fact of knowledge is in a position to cause damage, spiritual damage, real damage to a person by causing their conscience to be defiled. We will get to that a little bit more.

Now he said that there are gods many and lords many. You can go back into the Old Testament and there will be sections where so-and-so is called a lord. And as a matter of fact, the word elohim, which is used in Genesis 1:1, where it says that God created the heavens and the earth. The word God there is Elohim. Well, that same word is used in other cases where it obviously means a human being and in that case it means a judge or it means a governor. This is what Paul is referring to. There are gods many and lords many, but even those who in the Scriptures are called gods and lords but our human beings, are subservient to the one God, the one true God. Now we know that.

So what he is doing, he is trying to gather his pieces together here to, at first, show these people that he is in agreement with them theoretically. But we are going to see in chapter 10, he is not in agreement with them at all in a practical application. So that is why I said earlier that most of the Christians theoretically understood there is only one God, the Creator, the Father. Verse 6, "Yet for us [the Christian] there is only one God, the Father, of whom are all things." See, He is the Creator of everything that is. He created the animals that were killed and offered in sacrifice.

". . . of whom are all things, and we [Christians] for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things." He is tying everything together here. There is the great God who is the Father, and all of the creation was done through the Son Jesus Christ. You can see it very clearly stated in Colossians 1:15. And even we have come to the Father and have a relationship through the Son Jesus Christ, and he says, "through whom we live." In other words, we have our being only for one reason, and that is to serve that God.

Now hang on to that thought because it is very important to understanding this. The conclusion that he is going to reach is, if you really love God, then you cannot possibly exhibit yourself or conduct yourself or behave yourself in a way that is going to be in any way detrimental to your brother. We live for one reason, and that is to please God. And if you are really trying to please God, you are not going to injure your brother in any way. You are going to be very sensitive to him, and you are going to bend over backwards and try to do whatever has to be done. Do not defile that person's conscience.

I Corinthians 8:7 However, there is not in everyone that knowledge [no, not everyone in the church had that knowledge]; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol.

He is not talking about those out of the church. He is talking about those in the church because those who were out of the church thought it was God that they were offering to. Their conscience would not be defiled in offering it to an idol. He is talking about those in the church in whom there was not that certainty that these people who had knowledge had. So what they lacked was that everyone in the church did not know the reality of the one true God and the subordinate unreality of all other gods and lords.

What we are dealing with here is a hangover from their former pagan days. They had grown in their lifetime so accustomed to dealing with the idol that now they are in the church and that hangover remains with them. Now you have experienced this. Most of you who have had any contact at all with Christianity before you came in the church, you are familiar with the pictures of the so-called Christ—which is a lie—and you have a devil of a time getting that image out of your mind. I am talking about that long haired Christ with the aqualine nose and so forth. That is not what He looks like. That is a lie. We carry that with us.

With them, you see, they did not understand (these were Christians), but that hangover that they had grown accustomed to from their pagan days was still with them in their mind and though they were in the church, they still carried with them ideas that there was a reality there in the idol and that their was power there. Now they wanted to be good Christians. They wanted to do things right. But they could not really get the idol out of their mind. It was still there.

Now if a person like that would eat a piece of meat knowing that the church said you should not do that, and yet they would do it always wondering whether they were defiling their relationship with God. And so there they were walking around with a guilty conscience. Now what would be the real danger? The real danger would be that they would just accept it, not ever really proving it out, and maybe they would be permanently spiritually damaged as a result of it. So one has to be careful.

Let us go on a little further.

I Corinthians 8:7-8 However, there is not in everyone that knowledge, for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse. [There is nothing inherently righteous about food.]

So the practice of eating sacrificial meat is not to be insisted upon as a means of maintaining your Christian liberty, is what he is saying. They were trying to force it on these people. They were telling them, in effect, that if you did not eat it, then you were not really growing. Well, Paul was saying, "Nonsense. Meat doesn't commend us to God." In the words, it does not present us before God. It does not make us better or worse one way or the other.

Now some might have the same problem today with alcohol. God shows very clearly to you and me that the drinking of alcohol in a controlled and very moderate way is something that God says that we can do. But if somebody comes out of a religious background in which they have never drunk it and they feel that it is a terrible sin to to drink it, then they would be confronted in principle with exactly the same thing. Now would you then try to force the issue on them by setting them an example of how a real Christian ought to be? "Oh, have another drink." Or, "You've never had a drink? Oh, have one now." See, "You may as well get started sometime." No, that is not the thing to do. What Paul is saying here is, "Back off, buddy. And don't you dare drink in front of that person. Let him learn on his own without you trying to force the issue and make him conform to this way of righteousness." Does alcohol commend us to God? Absolutely not! It does not present us to God either way.

Okay, a little bit further.

I Corinthians 8:9 But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.

The word liberty is actually better translated authority or right. Liberty is not wrong, but I think we will understand it a little bit better if we translate the word right. We have the right to eat meat that has been offered to an idol. We have the right to drink alcohol. We have the right to go to movies or we have the right to dance, we have the right to play card games. There are a lot of rights that God gives us in His Word, but again, there are those who come from backgrounds that maybe that was not permitted. So if the use of their right was going to be causing offense, they have sinned.

Now the sin would be a double whammy because in one sense it would be a sin against the brother because of the offense that is there, but even more so. Matthew 25 makes it very clear that the sin against the brother is also a sin directly against Christ because it is part of His body. So it becomes a very serious proposition.

I Corinthians 8:10-11 For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? [Well, obviously the answer to that is, yes, they would be.] And because of your knowledge, shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?

Interesting thought there because the word perish might be better translated, be destroyed. Or, let us say, even better would be "set on a destructive course." Paul is seeing a process beginning. It begins with the brother being offended and it ends with them in the Lake of Fire. And it had a start because a brother in the church was not sensitive enough, did not love God enough, did not love the brother enough that he could not restrain himself from doing something that he had the right to do. We are talking about something here that is lawful. Not something that is sin, but it is leading to sin because of the offense of the brother and produces sin in that regard.

I Corinthians 8:12-13 But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

Well, that is quite a statement.

Let us jump to chapter 10 because in chapter 9, Paul shows how he denied himself in order to make sure that he did not cause offense. He gives us examples from his own life. He backs up the statement in verse 13 with a whole chapter's worth of examples of the things that he did in order to avoid offending people. Then in chapter 10, he gets back again a little bit more directly on the subject, but beginning in verse 1 and going through verse 13, he gives examples of Israel. Now the reason he did this is to show that 1), they really did not love God. And 2), in so doing they set a bad example that can be instructive to you and me.

Now we have not really addressed the real problem here yet. We have mentioned the word a number of times, but we have not really addressed the real problem. In chapter 10, he is going to address the real danger and what it leads to. So in verse 12, he says, "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." Now these things that were given as an example here showed how that Israel always wanted to push God as far as they could, push their rights as far as they could, as Mr. Armstrong used to say, get as close to the edge of the cliff as they possibly could. Now we know that Israel always fell over the edge of the cliff. They got so close they fell over the edge. That is why he says let him who thinks he stand take heed lest he fall.

Paul is saying, in effect again, do not get close to the edge of the cliff. Do not use your right, if you are at all sensitive enough to your brother's need to see that if you do that, it is very possibly going to offend him. So do not think that because you stand that your superior knowledge is going to hold you from falling over the edge, because if you sin against your brother, it is very likely you yourself are on a trajectory that is going to eventually take you out of the church.

Now we have got two people who are involved here in the course of a sin that might take them both out of the church, the one who did the sin by offending his brother and the one who is offended and went into something that he did not have a very good conscience about. The problem is building, but you see, we still have not gotten to the real problem yet.

In verse 14, he says it very plainly, very bluntly what the problem is.

I Corinthians 10:14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

Here is the issue. If there is an idol involved, there is idolatry involved. It is that clear, that plain. Now what Paul is saying here, this issue that we are talking about here, which you have apparently put in one corner of your mind, is nothing more than a theological discussion. I have this knowledge that the idol is nothing and therefore I can just go ahead and eat it and it does not bother me at all. He says this is not something that one should leisurely contemplate. We are talking about an issue that is going to take you and possibly the other person right into the Lake of Fire because in doing what you have done, you are sinning against your brother. That is pretty serious.

Let us carry it a little bit further.

I Corinthians 10:15-16 I speak to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

He is obviously talking here about Passover; the cup of blessing. Now the cup of blessing in Judaism was that third cup that they had set aside here. Now, in Christianity the cup of blessing had a little bit different connotation. And that is, that was the cup that held the wine which was prayed over by the minister during the Passover service. Now what happens is that when that wine is prayed over, the prayer consecrates it. This is a spiritual action that is taking place. The prayer consecrates it. That is, setting it apart for a special use.

Now at the Passover table, who is the host there? Well, Paul was telling you who the host is. It is Christ. And we are sharing with Him the symbol of His blood. That is all it is. It is a symbol of His blood. He is the host. That cup has been set apart, blessed, consecrated by the prayer for the use that it is put through, that is, the sharing, participating in, fellowshipping with, in communion with Jesus Christ. He is heading for something here that is very plain.

We do the same thing with the bread. It too is prayed over. It too is consecrated. It too is set apart. It too represents something that is the body of Christ. We eat that symbol of the body of Christ. We are fellowshipping with Christ. He is the host. We are sharing, as it were, a meal with Him. He is God.

I Corinthians 10:17-18 For we, being many [the church], are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread. Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat the sacrifices partakers of the altar?

The answer to that is yes. When an animal is offered on the altar, it pictures all involved as participating in a common meal. God's portion is burned on the altar. It symbolizes God eating it and accepting it. The priest's portion is consumed later on by the priest, but he also shares in the sacrifice and participates in it. The offerer also gets a part, and he eats it later on. He is also sharing in, participating in. He is in communion with God and the priest. They are all eating of a common meal. They are sharing the sacrifice. They are sharing life together.

I Corinthians 10:19 What am I saying then? That the idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything?

No, he understood the reality of it, the theoretical aspect of it, that the idol really was nothing, and we all know that.

I Corinthians 10:20 But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons.

There is a reality there. You see why idolatry is involved? That is a very serious thing. Are you beginning to understand why they said not to eat meats that are polluted by idols? Now he does not mean that the idol is actually anything at all. What he is saying is that anyone who participates in a sacrifice that has been made to an idol, that person is in communion with a demon. Now can you blend communion with Christ, fellowship with Christ, participating in Christ, can that be blended together with participation, fellowship, communion with a demon?

II Corinthians 6:12-17 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion [fellowship, participation] has light [truth] with darkness [evil and lies]? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." Therefore "Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord."

Back to I Corinthians 10.

I Corinthians 10:20 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 have fellowship [participation, sharing, communion] with demons.

Because the demon will take advantage of your yieldedness. Is this not the same thing that Israel did in the wilderness? That is why Paul quoted it down here. Verse 7, "Do not become idolaters as some of them. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." He is talking about what they did there in Exodus 32 when they made the Golden Calf. They tried to blend paganism together with the worship of the true God, and God would have nothing to do with it. They are mutually exclusive. And eating something sacrificed to an idol is playing with fire. You are right on the edge of the cliff. That is what he is talking about here.

I Corinthians 10:21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of demons.

What we can do today would be to try to blend aspects of paganism together with the truth. We would be partaking of demons and mixing it synchronizing it with the truth of God.

I Corinthians 10:22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?

Can we overcome Him? Verse 22 is saying is that would we willfully arouse God's anger against sin? Well, we do not want to do that.

Verse 23 begins the practical advice. He says,

I Corinthians 10:23 All things are lawful for me [that is among the things that he has been discussing here], but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify.

He is saying that all lawful conduct is not always wise because it may not build a person. It may not build you even though it is lawful, and it may not build somebody who is watching your example.

I Corinthians 10:24 Let no one seek his own [that is, his own will or his own well-being], but each one the other's well-being.

So here comes the practical advice. We have to be careful about something that is even technically lawful. God's advice is that we must do always what is in the best interest of others.

I Corinthians 10:25 Eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions for conscience' sake.

What he is saying here is that even if the meat has been offered to an idol, it does not defile it of and by itself. So he says, do not even ask any question about where it came from. Just consider that it came from God.

I Corinthians 10:26 For the earth is the Lord's and all its fullness.

If it is sold in the meat market, Paul is saying it has lost its spiritual significance. See, he is dividing this into different categories. On the one hand, he is saying, "Don't you dare participate in a pagan festival." The second category is if that meat is sold in a meat market, do not worry about it. Do not even ask a question about it.

I Corinthians 10:27 [here comes the third category] If any of those who do not believe [the unconverted] invites you to dinner, and you desire to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking no question for conscience' sake.

See, Paul was saying that if it is in a private home, you are invited to go there, just go ahead and eat. Do not even ask a question. It is not a festival that you are attending here, it is just a private dinner, that is all. Just go ahead and do it. I might interject here, we are not talking here about anything that is unclean by creation. It is not even in the context. The context has nothing to do with clean and unclean. The assumption here all the way through is what is offered to the idol is clean. That is the only thing that the Christians would be eating in the first place.

You might look at it this way. If you want to take this literally and include unclean meat, "if any of those who do not believe invite you to dinner, and you desire to go, eat whatever is set before you." Would that include cyanide, strychnine, razor blades, broken glass? No, you see, that is not in the context either. So we have to use a bit of common sense here. Clean and unclean has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with clean meat that has been offered to an idol.

So the first category is if a pagan festival is involved and the meat has been offered to an idol, Paul said, "Don't you dare have anything to do with it. That's idolatry. There is a demon involved in that." The second category: If the meat is in a meat market, do not even ask any questions. The meat has no spiritual significance. Just go ahead and buy it. Do not be fussy about it. The third category is if you are invited to a friend who is unconverted, do not ask any questions about that either. Just go ahead and eat the meat for conscience' sake.

I Corinthians 10:28 But if anyone says to you, "This was offered to idols," do not eat it for the sake of the one who told you, and for conscience' sake; for "the earth is the Lord's, and its fullness."

You have to ask, who would tell you that it was offered to an idol? Well, it would have to be a fellow Christian who is also at the same meal with you. They are the only ones who would have a conscience toward it. The pagan would not, so it has to be a fellow Christian who somehow knew that it was offered to an idol. Maybe he was being bothered by it and so he told you about it, and you had knowledge that it was nothing. Now we are entering into a different category. Here is category number 4.

I Corinthians 10:29-31 "Conscience," I say, not your own, but of the other. [In other words, because of him you stop eating it or you do not take it at all, and you go no further with it.] For why is my liberty judged by another man's conscience? [See, he has the right to do that, but his right should not be a means of offense to others.] But if I partake with thanks, why am I evil spoken of for the food over which I give thanks? [Now it would be the brother who would later speak evil of you. Therefore, he says, do not eat because I do not want to be evil spoken of at all.] Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

What he is saying there (he is beginning to conclude it) is that God and pleasing Him should ultimately be in view. And if that is in view, then you are going to be guided by the Spirit of God to follow the advice that the apostle Paul gave you. Because you want to please God, therefore, you know that it would please Him not to offend your brother. And so if you are going to please God, you will also please your brother in the long run by not eating that meat and setting him an example that is going to offend his conscience.

I Corinthians 10:32-33 Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God, that we should make every effort to not offend anybody, just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit [his own well-being], but the profit of many, that they may be saved.

The apostle Paul always had that in mind. How can I live? How can I conduct myself? How can I behave in a way that is ultimately going to prove to be beneficial to these people's salvation?

I Corinthians 11:1 Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.

So mimic me, follow me, do what I do, and he says that you will be on the right track.

Back to Acts the 15th chapter.

Acts 15:22 Then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas, who was also named Barsabas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren.

It is very likely that Silas and Judas were sent to lend authority to what Paul and Barnabas were going to say, and that is, the authority of the Jerusalem church. Now the effects of this were very far reaching because it freed those who would be going to the Gentiles to pursue evangelizing the Gentiles without requiring them first to go through the rigmarole of keeping the law. And secondly, this decision also undoubtedly clarified the apostle Paul's standing with the church. And made it very clear that the apostles in Jerusalem agreed with him, that he was a called and chosen servant of God and that he was right on the button, right on the beam when it came to interpreting the will of God regarding this thing.

Now there was one other effect that in a way was not so pleasant and that is that it kind of sealed the doom of the Jerusalem church because it permanently antagonized the Jews who lived in the area. I am not talking about the Jews who were in the church. I am talking about the Jews of Judea and Galilee. Now that is going to become increasingly clear as we go through around Acts 19, 20, 21, 22, in that area. When Paul comes back from one of his journeys and they are waiting for him to get back because they knew that he and Barnabas were the primary instigators of this, it made it very clear to the Jews in the area that Christianity was not a sect of the Jews. It just was not an outgrowth of the Jewish church and was going to kind of remain under the authority of Judaism at all, but it kind of set Judaism at odds against the Christian church and it led to an awful lot of persecution for those people. So that one was not so good.

But it had very far reaching effects and gradually the authority of the church slipped away from Jerusalem to Antioch, and Antioch became the leading congregation in the first century. So whenever that spiritual antagonism coalesced with the political zealotry of the Jews during the next 20 years, it proved to be fatal to the Jerusalem church. And so that church had to flee. Those people became scattered beginning about 66, 67, 68 AD. They fled, went to Pella, and became scattered over that area, but this was the major event that led to that. It began with Stephen's preaching, and it just continued right on through, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Acts 15:23 They wrote this letter by them: The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia.

There is one interesting thing that is missing there, and that is Galatia. Why did not they include Galatia? Nobody knows why Galatia was not included in that. It seems pretty obvious that the apostle Paul had already been there but it was not included.

Acts 15:23-29 Greetings. Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, "You must be circumcised and keep the law"—to whom we gave no such commandment—it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord [they were of one mind], to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.