Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

1500 As Usual With Wesley

A lady once asked John Wesley that suppose he were to know that he would die at 12:00 midnight tomorrow, how would he spend the intervening time.

His reply: “Why madam, just as I intend to spend it now.

I would preach this evening at Gloucester, and again at five tomorrow morning; after that I would ride to Tewkesbury, preach in the afternoon, and meet the societies in the evening.

I would then go to Rev. Martin’s house, who expects to entertain me, talk and pray with the family as usual, retire to my room at 10 o’clock, commend myself to my heavenly Father, lie down to rest, and wake up in Glory.”

Review:

Review:

Remember: Believers are to flee idolatry!

Because God is faithful in his allowances and provisions for temptation, you are able to bear and flee from any idol that you encounter as a believer.

To drink the blood of Christ and to eat the body is to believe in the sufficient sacrifice of Christ for sins.

It is to confess the Lord Jesus.

To believe on the Lord Jesus is to be spiritually reborn - to be a new creation.

New life is brought about by God’s Holy Spirit.

To have this new life brought about by the Holy Spirit is also to be indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God.

That initial belief and confession is commemorated corporately in what is called the Lord’s Supper.

Corinthian Question:

Is it really a problem to participate in this worship, if the idols being worshipped are not real gods anyways?

Proposition:

Let’s imagine that you were born a woman to a servant/slave in the time of AD 50.

Because of this birth, you are immediately thrust into slavery within the owners home.

As part of the slavery, you are forced to do normal chores but you are also forced to do the unthinkable for your master.

As time progresses, an Emancipator comes to town.

His sole purpose is to free slaves by providing the exact amount of money necessary for each slave to be released.

He does so for you on a particular day that you will never forget.

You are set free:

* from the dominance of your slave-master

Though we are free in Jesus Christ, there is an absolute that must characterize the Christian church’s life.

In other words, you cannot be a Christian church and participate in some things!

* from having to perform the grotesque acts that you formerly had to perform

*

What would you commemorate?

Would you commemorate your slavery or would you commemorate your new, free life?

We are called to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and to each other in a way that would cause us to abstain from certain practices!

Illustration:

Maintaining faith or allegiance; showing a strong sense of duty or conscientiousness.

In biblical Hebrew, “faith” and “faithfulness” are grammatically related.

Although both concepts are important in the OT, there is no English word exactly equivalent to the Hebrew terms.

The most relevant Hebrew verbal root (related to our word “amen”) carries such meanings as “strengthen,” “support,” or “hold up.”

In a physical sense it is used of pillars that provide support for doors

Communion/Partakers (, ) Fellowship - koinonia (κοινωνία, 2842), “a having in common (koinos), partnership, fellowship” (see communicate), denotes (a) the share which one has in anything, a participation, fellowship recognized and enjoyed - Vine, W. E.

Communion/Partakers (, ) Fellowship

koinonia (κοινωνία, 2842), “a having in common (koinos), partnership, fellowship” (see communicate), denotes (a) the share which one has in anything, a participation, fellowship recognized and enjoyed;

Vine, W. E.

(1) You cannot partake of the the meat without participating in the worship (v.

18)

Paul asks a rhetorical question.

Israel after the flesh are the ethnic people of Israel

Paul’s implication is that when someone eats the meal associated with the sacrifice, they are expecting some kind of benefit or they have some kind of faith in the sacrifice itself.

Paul tells the Corinthians to CONSIDER Israel.

App: Be careful with the assumption: "That will never be me."

(v.

18)

Be careful with the assumption: "That will never be me."

(v.

18)

The initial deliverance of God in your life does not make you sinlessly perfect.

A 50 year salvation testimony does not make you immune to idolatrous practices.

(2) You must see your participation as the worship of devils (v.

19 - 20)

Paul makes an important qualification (see 8:4)

The image itself is nothing and the meat itself is nothing.

The sacrifice itself though is offered to demonic spirits.

Historical Illustration:

The cult of Isis

648 An Egyptian myth which took various forms was best described by Plutarch in his work entitled On Isis and Osiris, which told of Isis and her husband Osiris, a godly king of ancient Egypt; he was murdered by his brother Seth who hacked him into fourteen pieces and scattered them over the whole Egyptian countryside.

Isis goes out to search for the pieces, and when she has found them, she restores Osiris to life.

Because one of the pieces landed in the Nile, people believed that Osiris also entered the underworld.

Now he lives as ruler of the kingdom of the dead....

650 In the Hellenistic period, the Ptolemies allowed the name of Osiris to be changed to Sarapis, so that the new name would designate the highest deity Egyptians and Greeks should worship.

The god Sarapis was equated with Zeus, the father of the gods and of humans, and was praised and worshipped as the saviour and redeemer who helped everybody.

At his side stood Isis, the divine mother, who was venerated as a goddess.

De Villiers, J. L. (1998).

Religious life.

In A. B. du Toit (Ed.),

The New Testament Milieu (Vol.

2).

Halfway House: Orion Publishers.

App: Be clear and humbly accept how deep this unfaithfulness really is (v.

19 - 20)

Clear Application:

Wiccan & Witchcraft

Bahi Faith

The Baha’i Faith is a non-Christian cult of distinctly foreign origin that began in Iran in the nineteenth century with a young religious Iranian businessman known as Mírzá’ Ali Muhammad, who came to believe himself to be a divine manifestation projected into the world of time and space as a “Bab” (Gate) leading to a new era for mankind.

- Martin, Walter.

Kingdom of the Cults, The (p. 321).

Baker Book Group - A. Kindle Edition.

Martin, Walter.

Kingdom of the Cults, The (p. 321).

Baker Book Group - A. Kindle Edition.

Spiritism:

By far the oldest form of religious cult extant today, and certainly one of the deadliest where the certainty of divine judgment is concerned, is that of Spiritism, often erroneously referred to as “Spiritualism.”

However, in speaking of this cult, it is sometimes necessary to use that term in order to communicate in the vernacular of our day.

In 1949 Dr. Charles Braden wrote that in America, spiritist leaders “estimate [there are] from 500,000 to 700,000 spiritualists in the United States; and . . .

1,500,000 to 2,000,000 in the world” (These Also Believe, New York: Macmillan Company, 1960, 356).

This estimate today, as far as the United States is concerned, is difficult to substantiate.

In 1976 the International General Assembly of Spiritualists, the Nationalist Spiritualist Alliance of the United States of America, and the National Spiritualist Association of Churches reported more than two hundred churches, with a total membership of over ten thousand, and more than two hundred clergy.

~As of 2002 the National Spiritualist Association of Churches lists only eighty-nine churches on its Web site and does not put forward total membership numbers.

- Martin, Walter.

Kingdom of the Cults, The (p. 261).

Baker Book Group - A. Kindle Edition.

Martin, Walter.

Kingdom of the Cults, The (p. 261).

Baker Book Group - A. Kindle Edition.

* this means that demonic activity is closer than we often believe.

* unfaithfulness to Christ is also unfaithfulness to each other - Notice the plural “ye”

(3) You cannot participate in the worship of devils and worship of the Lord at the same time (v.