Sermon Tone Analysis
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I am not much of a gardener.
We are almost halfway through October.
Normally, pastors do not talk about gardening in the Fall.
But, here we are...
I am not much of a gardener.
I know a lot of the theories of gardening, but I naturally kill things that are under my care.
The kids have been pestering us to have a garden, so next year, we are planning on doing a small garden, with some tomatoes, watermelons, potatoes.
Who knows what we will actually end up with.
The thing with gardens.
Everyone has a different way of preparing the ground, planting the seed, caring for the garden.
And those who have had a garden for years have some pretty strong ideas of what is the right way and what is the wrong way of planting.
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and they have started sharing some unsolicited advice about gardening?
And perhaps that advice went completely against the way you normally do things?
They insist that their way is the best, but you know, your way has been going well up to now.
I don’t have much room to talk.
I will take all the advice you want to give, for now.
Then, I will get set in my plant killing ways and politely ignore you.
That is my pride.
But, seriously, it is amazing how much we has humans want to insist on our way being right, on small insignificant things like gardening.
And some people get pretty uptight about it.
Well, take some people’s views on gardening, and amplify it 100%, you get what happens when someone’s theology rams into someone else’s theology.
Unfortunately, theology effects more than just our minds, it effects what we do in life.
So, sometimes, our convictions ram into someone else’s convictions.
And what normally happens?
Well, sometimes you get an exchange like this:
“Are you an idiot?
Don’t you know what the Bible says?
You are such a legalist!”
And on down the rabbit hole and into broken relationships.
Now, those exchanges do not happen as much in public as they do in private or on social media.
It’s amazing how many people who call themselves conservative Christians resort to name calling on social media when they are trying to make a theological point.
What do we do when our viewpoints on life and theology come face to face with someone else’s viewpoints on life and theology?
We introduced this topic last week.
Let’s read the passage again.
Before we dive in, will you pray with me.
1.
The Issue
So, the Corinthians had written about a disagreement about practical life, which was tied to their theology.
Meat sacrificed to idols.
What in the world are we talking about?
A. Biblically
At this time, most of the cities in the Roman empire had temples to other so-called gods.
In fact, if someone was a worshiper of only one God, like Christians do, that person was considered a pagan.
True religious people worshiped many gods.
Why limit yourselves to only one?
The city of Corinth worshiped mostly Aphrodite, but they had shrines for religions from throughout the empire there, as it was a multi-cultural center.
The worship of these so-called gods required a lot of different practices, which we won’t get into.
The one practice that is referred to here is sacrifice.
We are all familiar with the practice of sacrifice.
Someone brings an animal as a gift to the gods.
The animal is killed.
The blood is sprinkled on the altar.
Part of the meat is kept for the temple.
The rest of the meat is sold in the market to earn income for the temple.
This meat which has been dedicated to the false god is pretty cheap.
It isn’t the best cut, but it is cheap.
So, when you do not have enough money to feed your family, what do you do?
Do you buy a cut of meat that is in your budget, knowing that this meat has been dedicated to a false god?
Or do you go without meat for another week, because you cannot afford anything else?
Some in Corinth said:
They confessed that the only true God is the Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ His Son.
The other gods are nothing.
Therefore the sacrifice is nothing.
Therefore there is nothing special about the meat.
It is just cheap meat.
If we say that meat is something special, we are actually saying that those false gods are real.
Other’s in Corinth, who were saved out of that idolatrous lifestyle, said, “Wait a minute… that meat is a product of Satanic worship.
I don’t want to have anything to do with it, because I would be taking part in that Satanic worship.”
As Paul says:
1 Corinthians 8:7 (NIV)
Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god,
So, you have one side that says: If you were a Christian, you wouldn’t have any problem eating this meat.
And the other side says: If you were a Christian, you would have a huge problem eating this meat.
What do you do?
Which side is right?
It’s one thing to look at Corinth and consider the issue that they are faced with.
But, we don’t have the problem of walking through the grocery store and choosing whether to buy meat which has been sacrificed to idols or not.
B. Today
We still face these sorts of issues every day, though.
Spots where the Bible does not give us an explicit: you shall not, or you shall definitely do.
Spots where we can make theological judgements based upon different Scriptures, and arrive at two completely different perspectives.
Okay, time for me to start creating divisions.
When I was in high school, the church that I went to had a covenant which everyone who was a member of the church was expected to follow.
That covenant included a line that no one was to drink alcohol.
And, they had Scripture to support it.
When I was a senior, they revised that covenant and took that line out, and they used Scripture to show why drinking alcohol was okay.
People got pretty heated on both sides, saying if the other side was actually Biblical, actually a committed Christian, they would do or believe x,y,or z.
Alcohol is one of those issues like meat sacrificed to idols.
How about dress codes?
I have been to churches where women were expected to always were skirts, and in a select few, they went so far as to insist that women were to always have their heads covered.
That’s an extreme case.
But, the debate is in the middle and on the other extreme.
Can women wear two piece bathing suits?
Can men swim without a shirt?
What is appropriate formal attire for a prom?
People on both sides of the modesty discussion use Scripture to justify their own positions, and cannot believe that someone would disagree with them.
What is the right answer?
Can I keep going?
We could talk about smoking or chewing tobacco.
We could talk about movies we watch or music we listen to.
We could talk about playing games that sometimes but not necessarily involve gambling.
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