DANGER IN THE IDOL’S TEMPLE – 1 Corinthians 10:14-22

Posted by Angella Diehl, Webmaster on May 19, 2019 under 2019 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; May 19, 2019 from 1 Corinthians 10:14-22

Theme: We must be careful not to let a misuse of our Christian liberties lead us into fellowship with sin.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

I have come to believe that one of the things that I love the most about the Christian faith has the potential of also becoming one of the greatest dangers to my personal holiness before God—if I do not keep on the alert, and use this thing rightly.

This thing that I love is my liberty in the Lord Jesus. Because of what Jesus has done for me—because He has fully paid the debt for all my sin and has fulfilled all righteousness on my behalf before the Father—I am now set free from the burden of all religious regulations and ceremonies and ritualistic prohibitions. I am declared 100% righteous in the sight of God by faith in Jesus; and I will never be made more righteous by keeping any religious feasts, or by observing any holy days, or by making any pilgrimages, or by following any strict dietary laws. All the requirements for righteousness that were ever spelled-out in the Old Testament law have been completely accomplished for me by the Lord Jesus. I trust in His righteousness before God the Father by faith; and I now live in the complete acceptance of God my Father by virtue of what Jesus has done for me. I am free! I now follow the paths of righteousness, according to God’s word, under the leading of, and in the power of, the Holy Spirit who indwells me. As it says in Romans 8;

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1-4).

This means I can now eat whatever I wish, or go wherever I wish, or do whatever I wish—so long as I do it all in the name of my Lord Jesus and to the glory of God, with thanks to Him. The liberty that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ is truly a wonderful thing. It is something that I deeply cherish about the Christian life. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. And I hope that you have also placed all your trust in what the Lord Jesus has done for us, and that you too enjoy the wonderful liberty we have in Him. I hope you will always cherish this wonderful liberty in Christ; and that you will walk in it faithfully; and that you will never let anyone rob you of it, or try to place you under the burden of man-made religious rules and regulations. We are now set free in Jesus to enjoy all the good things of life that He has made for us to enjoy.

But dear brothers and sisters in Christ; this precious liberty of ours also has the potential of being turned by us into a very dangerous thing—if we’re not careful in how we use it. The same Bible that declares this wonderful liberty to us also warns us not to allow our liberty to become an opportunity for the flesh. We are free to eat what we want, go where we want, and do what we want—and all to the glory of God. But if we do not rightly use our freedom and liberty to serve God, and out of love for our Lord and for others, we can easily slide down into sin.

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That dangerous slide was what was happening to the Corinthian believers that the apostle Paul was writing to.

Many of them who thought of themselves as very mature and strong Christians felt the freedom to go to the local pagan temples, buy the meat that had been offered there to a false god, and eat it. And they truly had the freedom in Christ to do so. There was no such thing as an idol, after all; and the food that had been offered up to a false god—since an idol is really nothing at all—was perfectly good food that God had made to be enjoyed. But these more mature Christians had been exercising this freedom in a wrong way. For one thing, they were doing this thing thoughtlessly in front of younger, less-mature Christians who still struggled with the belief that it was sinful to each meat that had been offered to a pagan god. These more mature believers were not being sensitive to their weaker brothers and sisters in the way that they were exercising their liberty. Paul wrote all about this problem in Chapters 8-9 of 1 Corinthians.

But that was not the only problem. For another thing, these ‘more-mature’ Christians were actually going so far as to harm their own souls in the way that they exercised this liberty. And Paul took this particular problem up in Chapter 10. He told them about how the ancient people of Israel had great privileges before God, and yet they fell terribly down the slippery slope into sin. He warned that he who thinks he stands needs to take heed—lest he fall. He urged them to remember that, in every temptation, God provides a way of escape so that we might be able to bear it.

And then in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22—in the passage I ask us to consider this morning—he wrote this:

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as 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? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread. Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? (1 Corinthians 10:14-22).

Now; you and I might read those words from Paul, and then be a little bit tempted to dismiss them as irrelevant to ourselves. We might think, “Well; that certainly seems to have been a problem back in the ancient times in Corinth. But I don’t really see what that would have to do with me today. Living where I live—and in the times in which I live—I’m really not tempted at all to go down the road to the local pagan temple and by meat served to idols. There isn’t even one around for me to go to.” And although the fact is that ‘paganism’ is making something of a come-back in some place of our nation in our day, it’s probably still—for the most part—true that this specific issue isn’t much of an issue for the average follower of Jesus where we live today.

But there’s a broader principle involved in all this; and it’s very much a concern for us today. You and I have this great and wonderful liberty in the Lord Jesus. But while there may not be a pagan temple’s meat market down the road, it’s still true that all around us in this fallen world are places that we have the liberty to go—or things we have liberty to watch—or material we have liberty to read—or things we have liberty to eat and drink—or people we have liberty to rub shoulders with—that have just as much of a potential of leading us down the pathway to sin, if we’re not careful, as a pagan temple would.

I’m very hesitant to get too specific. After all, I want to avoid coming across as if I were on the one hand celebrating our liberty in Christ, and then on the other hand making-up a legalistic list of ‘dos and don’ts’. But dear brothers and sisters; you yourselves know perfectly well that there are things that we may have the freedom to do that are spiritually dangerous for us to get into. The enemy of our souls can easily ensnare us with such things, and persuade us into the kind of compromises with sin that lead us down the road to sinful addictions and habits and practices that dishonor our Lord, and that harm our witness for Him, and that destroy the purity of our devotion and service to Him.

The greater principle that the apostle Paul is teaching us in this passage, then, is that—out of love for our Lord Jesus and the holiness He has shared with us—we must be careful not to let a misuse of our Christian liberties lead us into fellowship with sin.

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So; let’s look a little closer at Paul’s words, and learn what he—under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—tells us about this danger. The first thing we find is …

1. THE SPECIFIC WARNING.

In verse 14, Paul writes, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” The word ‘therefore’ points us back to what he said in verse 13;

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it (v. 13).

And the best means of escape from temptation is to ‘flee’ from it. Don’t ever try to negotiate terms of peace with it. Just simply run from it! And you’ll notice that he doesn’t say, “Flee from the idol’s temple!” It was not a sin to go to the idol’s temple to buy meat. Nor is it necessarily sinful for us to go to the many places of this world in which we may have the freedom in Christ to go. Rather, it’s from the sin itself that is sometimes connected with those places that we must flee.

The apostle Paul already said something that relates to this in Chapter 5. The Corinthian church was dealing with someone within its midst that was caught up in sexual sin. Paul wrote;

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world (1 Corinthians 5:9-10).

It’s not God’s will for us to isolate ourselves from this world. It’s not His will that we flee from all the places that lost and sinful people might be; because if we did so, they’d never get to hear from us about God’s love through Jesus Christ. But we must be careful to flee from the sin itself! We must remain distinctively holy people of God as we walk around in this fallen world. As it is often said, we must be ‘in’ the world, but not ‘of’ the world.

And so; this is the specific warning that Paul gave to his brothers and sisters who were going into the pagan temples: “Flee from idolatry.” But notice how he stresses this to them. He doesn’t lay it down as a law for them. Rather, he appeals to their sense of good judgment. In verse 15 he writes, “I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say.” And that’s the best way to make the decisions about what to avoid in order to not fall into temptation to sin—that is, not by laying down a specific list of ‘dos and don’ts’, but rather by making use of sanctified reason on the basis of the principles of the Bible and our love for the Lord Jesus.

It’s much better for us to say—by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit and with careful obedience to God’s word, “I may have the freedom to do this or that; but I choose not to do so out of love for my Lord; and so that I might not sin against Him or harm my fellow believer.”

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So then; how does Paul appeal to the sanctified reason and judgment of his brothers and sisters? He does so by setting forth …

2. A GENERAL PRINCIPLE.

I believe that you can summarize this general principle in this way: Participation involves fellowship. I may have casual contact with the things of this world in one way or another and yet still end up having nothing personally to do with them. But when I actually ‘participate’ in things, I become a ‘partner’ in them and enter into ‘fellowship’ with them in a personal way. That principle can be applied in a lot of bad ways; but it can also be applied in a lot of good ways too. And Paul goes on to give us two illustrations to show how it is applied in a good way.

First, he speaks of something that you and I—and all Christians—are deeply familiar with; and that’s the Lord’s Supper. The Communion Meal in which we remember the sacrifice our Lord Jesus made for us on the cross. In verse 16, Paul writes, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?”

When we celebrate the Lord’s supper, we “bless” or “remember” our Lord’s shed blood for us through the cup. When we partake of it together, we do so in such a way as to say, “I believe in, and place my confident trust in, the shed blood of Jesus as the atonement for my sin.” And what Paul literally says in this verse is that when we do that, we enter into ‘fellowship’ or ‘partnership’ with the blood of Jesus. We together—as a church family—enter into ‘communion’ with His blood that was shed for us.

The same is also true of the bread. Paul goes on to say, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” When we partake of the bread together in the Communion Meal, we do so in such a way as to say, “I believe in, and place my confident trust in, the physical body of the Lord Jesus Christ that was broken upon the cross on my behalf. I identify myself with His death on the cross for me as the satisfaction of God’s just wrath for my sin.” And when we do this, Paul says that we enter into ‘fellowship’ or ‘partnership’ with the body of Jesus. We enter into ‘communion’ with His precious, sinless body upon the cross.

Isn’t this what Jesus Himself taught? Paul quotes the Lord Jesus in 1 Corinthians 11—in that passage that I so often read to you whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. He wrote;

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

In fact, we not only enter into ‘fellowship’ or ‘partnership’ with the body and blood of our Lord when we do this together; but we also enter into communion with one another through it. As Paul goes on to say in verse 17, “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” When we celebrate this marvelous and mysterious ordinance together, it results in our entering into partnership with one another. We don’t act as individuals any longer. We are a body—the body of Christ; and what you do impacts me, and what I do impacts you. That’s why we need to exercise our liberty in Christ with care!

And do you see the apostle Paul’s point? Participating in this important ordinance about the Lord Jesus—partaking of it together—involves an actual fellowship together with the Lord Jesus Himself. Participation involves fellowship.

Now; that’s what we might call a ‘New Covenant’ example. But Paul then goes on in verse 18 to give the Corinthian believers an ‘Old Covenant’ example. He speaks of ‘Israel according to the flesh’—that is, the people of the nation of Israel under the Mosaic law; along with the ceremonies and sacrifices they were given. And he writes, “Observe Israel after the flesh: Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?”

Back under that older covenant, when someone brought a peace offering to the Lord at the tabernacle, they were required not only to lay their hand upon the offering and slay it, but they were also required to eat of it. They were to eat of it that same day—and not leave any of it for the next day. They ‘partook’ of it. In doing this, they were identifying with the altar of God through the offering that they made upon it. They actually entered into ‘fellowship’ with the altar of God—where atonement was made; and they were joined into ‘partnership’ with it—and ultimately with the God of the altar.

So then; do you see this important principle? Participation involves fellowship. To participate in an ordinance of our Lord—to participate in a ceremony that He commanded with regard to Himself—is to actually enter into fellowship with the Lord Himself. Participation in a ceremony of a thing involves fellowship with the thing itself. And this principle was what made the thing that the Corinthians were doing so dangerous to their souls. They were going to the pagan temples, and eating of the meat in such a way as to actually ‘participate’ in the worship of the false gods of the temple. They were not being careful. They were not keeping distinct in their actions. They were sliding down the slippery slope. They were allowing their liberty to lead them down the road to sin against God.

Look at what Paul wrote to them in verses 19-20. He said, “What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons.” It must have surprised them to have been told that they were sacrificing to demons. They thought that they were only participating—however casually—in the worship of Aphrodite or Apollo who were gods that didn’t really exist. But no! They were actually entering into fellowship with something that was very diabolical. As it says in 1 John 5:19; “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” The devil and his demons are the ones who deceive people into worshiping false gods. And so, to participate in the worship of false gods is not a neutral thing; because if it is not worship to the one true God, then it is a bowing of the knee to a demon.

To go to the temple and buy meat was not a sinful thing in and of itself. But to go to the temple and buy and eat meat in such a way as to participate in the worship of the false god of the temple was idolatry—something to flee from. And to participate in the worship of a false god is to enter into fellowship with demons; because participation involves fellowship.

What a dangerous thing this liberty of ours can become—if we are not careful.

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And so; to help these Corinthian believers be more careful, Paul wrote to warn them about …

3. THE POTENTIAL JUDGMENT.

In verse 21, he wrote; “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.” We cannot have fellowship with sin and have fellowship with our Lord at the same time. He is a holy God; and He will not compromise His holiness in any way. And in verse 22, Paul puts it in an even more startling way. He asks, “Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?”

I appreciated how Dr. Harry Ironside once illustrated this:

A young man is engaged to a beautiful young woman. She does not know that his ways are very careless, and by-and-by she learns that while he comes to visit her and treats her with kindness and affection, on other nights he is out with other young women and is just as affectionate with them. He comes back to her as though nothing has happened. Do you think that she would accept him on the same good terms? No; she would say, “You cannot go with others if you expect me to be devoted to you alone.” And so our Lord has called us to proclaim our whole-hearted devotion to Himself and thus our separation from the world that has rejected our Saviour.¹

We must be careful with our liberty in our Lord that—in exercising it—we never allow it to slide us down the path into sin against the Lord Himself. We must never let our freedoms in Christ lead us to participate in the kind of things that put Him on the cross, thus provoking our holy Lord and Savior to jealousy.

He loves us so much that, if we ever do that, He’ll take action to preserve us to Himself!

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Now; I began by saying that this wonderful liberty in Jesus—which I love so much—can become one of the greatest dangers to my holiness before God if I do not keep on the alert. So then; how can you and I keep on the alert and make sure our liberty does not lead down the road to sin? How do we make sure that we do not participate in something that leads us into fellowship with wickedness?

I believe that the best way to do that is to keep our fellowship with Jesus Himself first in our hearts. Later on, in 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul wrote;

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And 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.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you.”

“I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the Lord Almighty.”

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1).

If we keep our fellowship with Jesus as our highest priority in our lives, then we will always guard our Christian liberties carefully—and never allow them to be turned into sin against Him.

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¹H.A. Ironside, Addresses on The First Epistle to The Corinthians (NY: Loizeauz Brothers, 1943), p. 301.

EA