To Eat, or Not to Eat?

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I enjoy travel channel documentaries, especially the ones where they go to places I’ve never heard of and eat food I can’t pronounce. And some of it looks good and some of it, I’m glad that’s them and not me. But I was watching some travel documentaries last weekend, and this man went to different countries.

There were a few episodes. He went to different countries, and in one, he went with some people to a festival where they lit these lanterns, these beautiful lanterns, and it was just, they set them loose on a river, and it was just, it was beautiful. There was another where they went and they laid flowers in front of these, I don’t even know what you’d call them, these stones, whatever they used them for.

There was another where they went to this riverside, and there was this ritual where everybody was bathing, and he was participating in all these things, because, you know, as a guest in that country, you want to honor them and their customs and their culture, and not be the rude American. so he’s joining in with them and at the end of each of these and he may have known this going into it but at the end of each of these somebody’s explaining the ritual that they just went through and always there was a religious dimension to what they had done they were honoring some spirit or some deity or they were making an offering to the ancestors and you watch something like that or at least I do and I think what a difficult situation that is now for this man probably not so much. I’ve heard him say he doesn’t have any religious beliefs.

Everybody’s got religious beliefs. They just don’t consider them religious beliefs. But you believe something about the universe.

But he certainly wouldn’t describe himself as a Christian. But for us, that should pose a problem according to what the scriptures say. If we were to know that, hey, I’m lighting this lantern in honor of this spirit, or I’m leaving this here as an offering to this ancestor, or I’m participating in a bathing ritual in honor of this deity.

But you don’t always know, because I’ve been to other countries, maybe not as exotic as he has. I’ve been to Mexico, and I’ve been to Canada. Not what we think of as exotic places, but still I’ve participated in things and then had them explain to me what they meant.

They were nothing religious, but didn’t always know what we were doing until we did it. And so you wonder, how do I as a Christian not offend God when faced with things that are unfamiliar to me? And I know probably most of you are not traveling the world like this man does, but we live in a society where even here there are things that are foreign to us that we have to wrestle with the questions of, do I participate, do I not?

What if I do something wrong? And Paul answers that in speaking to the church at Corinth and writing to the church at Corinth. Because they were dealing with this issue too, not necessarily about things that were completely foreign to them because it was a culture that they had been saved out of, but things certainly that were foreign to their Christian understanding of the world.

And so the question for them was, how do we live in this world and try to function and try to live life and not unnecessarily offend people, but at the same time not offend God? And I wanted to introduce the subject to you in that way, because when we look at what he’s talking about here today, eating meat offered to idols, we might be tempted to check out on that discussion because there’s not a whole lot of meat. Now, somebody did tell me that you can buy halal meat at Costco, where it’s being sacrificed to another deity.

But for the most part, you and I are not going down to Walmart and, oh, this was offered to bail. You know, it’s not stuff like that is not written on the package. And so we may not connect with that so much.

But what Paul is teaching us is really it goes beyond the food that’s offered to idols and deals with how we function in a pagan world in a practical way without offending God. And so we’re going to look at the last part of chapter 10 this morning. First Corinthians chapter 10 and see what Paul says here.

And there are some principles that we can take away from this discussion about meat sacrifice to idols. and apply to the way that we deal with circumstances in our lives. 1 Corinthians 10.

Once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find 1 Corinthians 10, that’s all right. It’ll be on the screen here for you.

1 Corinthians 10, and we’re going to start in verse 23 this morning, where we left off two weeks ago. Here’s what Paul says. All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.

All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own good but that of his neighbor. He’s giving this as the overall principle behind what he’s about to tell them.

Because if you remember back to what we’ve studied before, they’re dealing with the idea of idols and you can’t participate in idol worship. Don’t go to the feasts at the temple. Even if you think it’s just a cultural exercise, don’t do that because you’re showing that you support the worship of the idols.

Even if you just go to the feast, you’re participating in that. He says stop. So the next question then is, how can we even live in this world then?

Because there’s idolatry all around us. And folks, whether we recognize it or not, we live in a world where there is pagan idolatry all around us. It just doesn’t take the form of little statues.

And here’s what he says, verse 25. Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience sake. For the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains.

If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience sake. But if anyone says to you, this is meat sacrifice to idols, do not eat it for the sake of the one who informs you and for conscience sake. I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s.

For why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning that for which I give thanks? Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God. But just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved and you may be seated. Okay, so again, unless you go someplace where the meat is marked halal, or you go to a restaurant where they’ve got a statue of some deity and the entree they serve you is one that they picked up from in front of the statue and presented to you and said this was the offering, this is a special honor for you to have this.

I don’t even know if that happens. But outside of circumstances like that, you’re probably not going to run across this exact scenario. But the principle still applies because we live in a world where we are surrounded by pagan things, by idolatrous things.

So what is paganism? Because I use that word a lot. Paganism is the worship of any god or spirit other than the God of Israel.

Idolatry is giving a place in your heart and in your worship that belongs only to him to something else. So we can worship statues and them be idols. We can worship a job and that be an idol.

We can worship money. We can worship a concept and have that be an idol. And paganism is really just any kind of system that is worship of a God that’s not the true God as revealed in Scripture.

And they were inundated by this. As I’ve told you before, when he’s talking about not going to the temple and not going to the feasts, these were sort of the community centers of their day. This is where everybody gathered.

This was the center of life was the temples and the marketplaces. If you wanted to go to socialize with people and be part of the community and be part of the culture, you went to those two places. And now here he’s telling them, you cannot go and participate in the festivities at the temple because, number one, you were saved out of that pagan lifestyle.

God pulled you out of that, and you’re not supposed to go back to it. But also, you’re showing to your, yes, I know your friends are there, and your neighbors, and your family members. I know they’re participating in this, but you’re showing to them, by your attendance there, that you’re okay with what’s going on, that you support this.

You’re giving your stamp of approval as a Christian to these things, and you can’t do it. The other place that was the center of community life was the market. The problem was, when they would offer meat to these idols every day, a lot of that meat would find its way into the markets and would be sold.

And so now the question for some people becomes, wait a minute, if we can’t participate in idolatry at all, how do we go and buy stuff in the market? How do we feed our families? How do we live?

Because there’s idolatry all over this place. And Paul has just told them that when they go and participate in the pagan feasts, even if they’re not intending to worship the pagan deities, he says there’s demonic power behind this. I think some of them are taking the idea that there are demons attached to this meat.

What am I bringing into my house? And maybe there’s a little bit of panic going on here. And so some of them are on the hunt for, we’ve got to go and hunt out everything pagan.

We’ve got to find anything that’s even looked at an idol before. If you’ve ever lived in the same zip code as the temple, you might be tainted by paganism. And so you’ve got people on either extreme here.

You’ve got part of the church saying, we can eat whatever we want, we can go to the pagan feasts, as long as we’re not worshiping those gods, it’s fine. And Paul says, no, it’s not. You’ve got another faction of the church over here saying, oh no, we need to be on the hunt for this, like the first inquisition, and anything that’s ever even thought about coming in contact with paganism is unclean.

And Paul does tell them that there’s a difference between what we can do and what we should do. That was the first thing they needed to understand. These here on the extreme that said, if the pagan deities aren’t real in the first place, then just let me enjoy life.

Okay. I mean, you can eat meat sacrificed to idols, and if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, you’re not going to get demon-possessed by eating that meat. Because then the demon that Paul’s talking about would have to whoop up on the Holy Spirit who lives within you, and that’s just not happening.

So in a very real sense, yes, you can go eat that meat. Paul even says under certain circumstances you can go eat that meat, but we have to think about the difference between what we can do and what we should do. And Paul’s addressed that already here in 1 Corinthians.

Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we have to. Sometimes it doesn’t even mean that we should do those things. And he tells this to us in verses 23 and 24.

He says, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. So being Gentile Christians, they were not under the strict demands of the Jewish law.

There were a lot of things that for them, they said, hey, we can do this. Just because you’re allowed to doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. And the example I gave you, because it was all that would come into my mind the last time we talked about this, was I can paint myself blue and run up and down Gore Boulevard yelling slogans.

I can do that. Depending on the slogans, that’s not necessarily a sin, right? I can do that.

Does it mean I should do that? I think y’all would probably have some concerns about me, Especially if KSWO showed up to, you know, pastor at church downtown, running up and down Gore, painted blue, filmed at 11. You know, I think a lot of, that’s not going to go well.

There are things that I can do that I shouldn’t necessarily do. And that’s true for all of us. And especially as brothers and sisters in Christ, there are things that are perfectly acceptable for us to do, but they might offend somebody else.

You know, I have the right to do this, but we have to consider one another. He says here, all things are permissible, but not everything builds us up. And so instead of thinking as Christians about what we can do, what we’re allowed to do, really what Paul’s instructing us here to do is to think about what’s beneficial to the body.

What is it that builds me up in Christ? What is it that builds them up in Christ? Not just what can we do, what are we allowed to do, what are the rules, but what’s beneficial?

What is it that points us and others to Jesus Christ? Those are the things that we should focus on. And he says here, even to drive the point home even stronger, says in verse 24, let no one seek his own good but that of his neighbor.

Paul reminds the church that we have to consider how our choices affect other people spiritually. Another example I’ve given you here in 1 Corinthians was the steakhouse at the casino back when we lived in eastern Oklahoma. Have no interest in going to the casino, but I saw that 20-foot billboard of the steaks and wanted very much to go have a steak.

And then I thought about the man who was a member of my church, who had come from a lifestyle of gambling and rough living. And I knew from conversations that if he saw my truck, and my truck stands out a little bit, if he saw my truck out in front of that casino, that would just have devastated him. Now am I telling you that it’s a sin to go eat at the steakhouse at the casino?

I am specifically not telling you that. I don’t believe that it is. But I had to consider, yes, I’m allowed to go have a steak, just because it happens to be adjacent to this other building, doesn’t make it a sin.

I’m allowed to go have that stake. But because of that relationship with that man, and especially my role as a pastor, I had to think about just because I have the right to do it doesn’t mean I should. You’re supposed to seek the good of our neighbors.

So he says, think about the difference between what we can do and what we should do. And we have the opportunity in so many places in life to make choices that show in practical ways what we believe. It’s very easy to say that we believe certain things.

The harder part a lot of times is living in a way that shows that we believe those things. And there’s an example he deals with here with the church at Corinth. It is very easy to say Jesus is Lord.

It’s three words. Actually for them in Greek, I think it’s two words. Now in my opinion, the English is much easier to pronounce, but it’s still easy to say.

Jesus is Lord. As a matter of fact, nowadays you can get t-shirts that say it. You can get a bumper sticker.

You get stuff to go around your license plate. It’s easy to say Jesus is Lord. It’s often much more difficult and much more costly to live like it, to portray that belief.

And he reminds them in verse 26 about the Lordship of Christ when he says the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains. As they move in verse 25 into this discussion about what they can eat and what they can’t eat, he reminds them Jesus is Lord. Everything on earth belongs to him.

Yes, you had the discussion of the Old Testament law and there were specific reasons why that was given to Israel, but the scriptures also make it clear in God’s dealing with Peter that he had declared everything clean. And so if they wanted to go eat something somewhere that nobody could pronounce, they absolutely could. One of the things this man did was go to South Florida and went frog gigging.

I’m pretty sure those are not in keeping with the Old Testament dietary laws, but those frog legs looked good. As a matter of fact, I was watching that thinking, that is a Bob Hupp thing to do. Go gig those frogs out of the Everglades and fry them up right there.

I’m pretty sure those are not kosher, but God created them. He said they’re clean. If somebody wanted to eat those, they’re more than welcome to.

And that’s what he’s telling them. He’s speaking about the food here. He says, the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains.

So we can eat anything. Again, you and I are not really talking about eating. Eating is just the example because this is not as much of a controversy for us.

I can eat anything. And he even says that in verse 25, eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience sake. So if you see that brisket there and you suspect that it might be offered to an idol, but you don’t know, let’s go buy it and eat it if you want it.

Just don’t ask questions. And he says in verse 27, and in verse 26 right after that is where he gives the reasoning that everything belongs to the Lord. The Lord made it for food, so enjoy.

Don’t ask questions. Verse 27, he goes on, if one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, now he’s not talking about going to the temple, to the temple feasts, because he’s already said those are off limits. He’s talking about an unbeliever inviting you into their home.

If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, go. Eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience sake. He says, if the unbeliever asks you to their house, you don’t have to sit there and say, now where did this meat come from?

Who was this meat offered to? To you. I mean, it’s right here on the plate.

He says, go and eat. There was nothing to fear that that somehow these demons had infested the meat, and suddenly you’re infected by idol worship now. Because all throughout the New Testament, even into the Old Testament, God makes it clear that he’s far more concerned about the condition of the heart than exterior matters.

Exterior matters often show what the condition of the heart is, but he’s far more concerned with what’s going on here. So if there’s somebody that loves Jesus, and they go eat with a family member who worships Dionysius, And they don’t ask where the meat came from, and they just enjoy each other’s company, maybe have the opportunity to talk about Jesus. He says, go do that.

Go do that. But it’s not just the Apostle Paul saying, but it’s a free-for-all. Do whatever you want.

Because we should refuse anything that suggests sympathy with idols. I can eat anything, but I should refuse anything that suggests sympathy with idols. If anyone says to you, this meat is sacrificed to idols, do not eat it.

Because it’s going to create a problem for you? Because you’re in danger spiritually? No, he says, do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for conscience’s sake.

So if you’re shopping in the marketplace and you say, how much for the brisket? And they say, oh, it’s $5. You can’t find a $5 brisket anywhere.

But this was many years ago, right? It’s $5. Oh, that’s a good deal. Yeah, it’s on discount because it was offered to Bacchus.

no thank you doesn’t matter how good a deal it was or if you go to somebody’s house and they say the oh here here’s a here’s a roast oh it looks so good yes we we offered it to jupiter just this morning he blessed it for us I’m just going to stick to the mashed potatoes you know were those offered to anybody or are they pure are they good no no wait he says you’re not supposed to ask questions just eat the mashed potatoes until you find out otherwise see if we he’s saying if we don’t know, it’s not going to hurt us because the idols aren’t real. And if we don’t know and they know that we don’t know, there’s nothing about eating the meat that suggests that we’re worshiping idols. We just don’t know. And so when the question is, how do I live?

How do I function in this world? Paul is telling us as believers, just go on and live your life. Don’t hear from that that I mean live however you want to live your life walk with Jesus just do what you’re supposed to do and if it comes up that idolatry is involved then you take a step back and say no I can’t be a part of this and we move from verse 28 into verse 29 and Paul raises some questions that that some of them were probably wondering about why should I give up my rights just so just because somebody’s going to be bothered if I eat meat that was sacrificed to bail, why should I give up my rights?

Because really we’re talking about doing something that goes against our human nature. One of the earliest things we learn to get upset about as children is something was unfair to me. I have the right to do this.

I have the right to that toy. I have the right to play wherever I want to play. We get very upset about our rights being restricted.

And so why would we give that up? Paul asks those questions himself. He says, I’m not talking about your own conscience.

I’m assuming here your conscience is fine. But for the other man’s, why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience? Why should my freedom be limited because somebody else is offended?

If I’m being thankful, if I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning something that I gave thanks to the Lord for? These are rhetorical questions. And by the way, when I say offended, I don’t mean in the modern sense where we all wake up in the morning and look on Facebook and say, what are we all offended by today?

Right? I mean that somebody does something that really bothers us and makes us question what they believe. Have you ever known somebody to act in a way that seemed completely opposite from what they profess to believe?

Did that sit right with you or did it bother you? It bothers us when we see that. You know what?

It bothers me when I see it in myself. should bother each of us when we see it in ourselves, but it certainly bothers us when we see it in other people. That’s the kind of offense we’re talking about, that somebody was living in a way that was inconsistent with what they said they believed.

And so he says, I’m not telling you to limit these things for your own conscience if your conscience is fine, but I’m telling you because there may be others that see you or know of this, or even they are the idol worshipers themselves, and they know that you as a Christian are not supposed to be participating in the pagan system of this world, And yet they see you sitting down happily munching on food that you know was part of idol worship 30 minutes ago. Everybody’s going to see that and know that’s not right. And it’s going to call your testimony into question.

Let me tell you that the pagan world, not just then, but the pagan world in 2024, for all their confusion about what it is we actually believe, because so many of them think Christianity is just a religion of rules. They don’t understand that it’s all about Jesus paying the price for our sins. There are people in our world, there are people in our community who’ve never actually heard the real gospel.

But for all their confusion about the things that we actually believe, they have a lot of clarity on the way we’re supposed to live. They may not agree with it. They may complain that the things the scriptures teach us to do are oppressive, and they don’t want any part of it for themselves, but they know we’re supposed to be living up to it.

And when we don’t, they can spot a hypocrite from 15 miles away. The world hadn’t changed that much. And so to these early believers, he’s saying there are people around, not just in the church, but even the pagans in the market.

They know you say Jesus is Lord, and yet you’re willing to participate indirectly in the worship of Zeus because you got a good deal on it. That doesn’t scream Jesus is Lord to the people in the market. So why do we give up our rights?

It’s because love, love is the motivation for limiting our liberty. What does love have to do with any of these choices, not to eat particular meat or not to participate in particular things? And I tried to think of what are the parallels today to the eating the meat sacrificed to the idols.

And honestly, there are just too many scenarios in our world where we’re asked to be on board with something the pagan world is promoting that goes against God for me to even try to get into a list. Maybe y’all can discuss that tonight during the deep dive study into this. what some of the applications are here. But no matter what it is, what situation we’re talking about, love is the only reason why we would limit our liberty in any of these things is because of love.

Love for God, love for others. And we see this in the last three verses of this chapter. As he’s talking about the reasons why we choose not to do everything we can do.

And instead we try to limit ourselves to what we should do. He says in verse 31, Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Even in our small choices, we have opportunities to live out our love for God because we desire to bring Him glory.

Do we make choices because we think God is going to zap us or stomp us? We shouldn’t. I hope that’s not your motivation.

He can, but a better motivation is because we love Him and because we want to bring Him glory. And you can do that. Paul even says whether you eat or drink or whatever you do.

He’s not limiting it just to what you’re eating or drinking. That just happens to be the scenario he’s talking about here. But it seems to be such a little thing.

It’s a choice we make every day and sometimes dozens of times a day to eat or drink. But even in those little choices, there are times that we have the opportunity to make a choice that honors God or doesn’t. Now, am I saying that God is on the edge of his throne in heaven waiting to see whether you’re going to order the number three or the number six at lunch today.

I don’t think so. But I think here we need to realize that even sometimes small, what seem to us to be small decisions can be opportunities to give God glory. And this to them might seem like such a small decision.

Do I buy from the marketplace or do I move on to the next stall? It might be a small decision. Oh, that’s Zeus roast. Okay, I’m going to go over there.

You have a good day. That seems like such a small thing, especially once you’ve done it a few times. But even in a small decision, you’re taking the opportunity to give God glory.

And it’s love for God, it’s love for our brothers and sisters, the others in the church, where he says in verse 32, give no offense either to Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God. We need to be aware in the choices that we make of how we impact our brothers and sisters in Christ. And I understand that verses like this can be misused to give people a rigid code of conduct. We’ve all heard of churches like that.

Maybe some of us have been in churches like that. where there’s just this rigid legalistic code that you must do these things in order not to cause problems with others in the church. But this is motivated by love, thinking about, hey, if I make this choice, which is a totally legitimate choice, it might offend Bill or Rodney.

And so I need to consider that and consider sometimes that my love for my brothers and sisters is more important than than my right to do this or my right to do that. I mentioned this on a Wednesday night recently while my wife was here, so I’m not going behind her back by saying it now, but there are times when I have to remember that I love my wife more than I care about where things go in the refrigerator. I have every right to put that jar of pickles on that shelf if I want to.

You know what, I love my wife, so I’m going to put them on that shelf instead where she asks. I know that seems like a silly example, But we need to think about that with each other. That our love for one another is a good motivation at times for limiting our liberty.

And then I think this one is huge. I’m not putting them in order of importance. I’m putting them in the order they come in the text.

I think obviously not offending God, bringing God glory is the most important. But we have to consider our love for the non-believer. Because he says in verse 33, Just as I also please all men in all things, this doesn’t mean that he’s compromising with everything the world wants him to do.

He’s just trying to be a good citizen, a good neighbor. I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved. And there are times that we have to make choices that to the world don’t feel especially loving because the world has confused disagreement with hate and has confused affirmation with love.

They’re not the same thing. But if our motivation is to point the world around us to Jesus Christ, we have to consider how our choices are going to point others to Jesus Christ. That goes back to what I said earlier, where they may not agree with what we believe, but they know how we’re supposed to live. And there may be times where we have to say, I know I’m allowed to do this, but for the sake of that person over there who needs Jesus, I’m going to limit myself instead of what I can do to what I should do.

And we show our love for non-believers in that way. Because the most important thing here is that Jesus Christ would be glorified and that sinners would be brought to faith in Him. It’s so easy to take things like this and make it an us-versus-them scenario and say, we are going to live like this in here, and they out there.

But really, we used to be them, and we do well to remember that. All of our stories and all of our journeys don’t look exactly the same. God saved us out of different places and different lives and different ways of living.

God has brought and assembled this group of people from various corners. But one thing we have in common is that we were all sinners alienated from God, separated from Him, and with nothing we could do to earn our way back to Him, just like the people around us. And then Jesus Christ came to earth, God in human flesh, to live a sinless life, to take responsibility not for His own s