Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20070527.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
1 Corinthians: Discipling Believers With Very Sinful Backgrounds
VI. Relating Well To Others Regarding Liberty, License and Legalism
D. Fleeing From The License Of Idolatry
(1 Corinthians 10:14-22)

Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

Idolatry affects not only Third World pagans -- we face it here!

(1) We are very exposed to idolatrous syncretism in our culture: (a) the daily horoscopes in the media are idolatrous according to Isaiah 47:9, 13! (b) Modern psychotherapy arose directly from the influence of pagan medicine men according to T. A. McMahon, "Psychology and Doctrines of Devils," The Berean Call, 10/2006, p. 2. (c) Mary the Mother of Jesus is not only venerated in Catholicism, but Protestant Diane Cameron's May 14, 2007 article in the nationwide paper, USA TODAY promoted Catholicism's veneration of her. Yet, as Loraine Boettner's book, Roman Catholicism notes (p. 136), Mary was never venerated until pagans with their idol goddesses flooded the Church in Constantine's day, shifting their veneration for idol goddesses to Mary! (d) Helen Louise Herndon's article, "Allah Does Not Belong To Islam" in the Christian Research Journal, 25:1 claimed "Allah" is the generic name for "God", so Christians ". . . can join our Arab brothers and sisters in Christ who often say, Allah be praised!'" (The Berean Call, 4/2003, p. 4 of the "Q&A" section) Yet, the generic word for God in the Quran is " Ilah"; "Allah" is a contraction of Al-Ilah, the moon god and chief god of the ancient Ka'aba pagan temple at Mecca, Ibid.

(2) Yet, even evangelicals are into idolatrous syncretism: Andy Stanley, son of Bible teaching pastor Charles Stanley and himself a Bible teaching pastor and graduate of the Dallas Theological Seminary, produced a video, "You've Got Style" published by Multnomah Press that presents "nine sacred paths' to worship God". (The Berean Call, 10/2005, p. 8) The promotional material claims it was inspired by Gary Thomas' Sacred Pathways , the content of which book aligns with the Enneagram that Catholic Desert Fathers allegedly got from Islamic Sufis (Ibid.). The Sufis reportedly called the Enneagram the face of God' as they saw the nine energies manifested in the nine personality types as nine attributes of God . . .'" (Ibid., citing Robert Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, p. 232) Now, Sufism denies "the validity of rational judgment" in favor of "divine revelation", so Sufi Muslim "dervishes" use body movements to produce trances to gain such "revelation," Edward McNall Burns, Western Civ., 6th ed., p. 295; Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, s. v. "dervish."

So, we ask, "How are we to handle this idolatry, and why?"

(We turn to the sermon "Need" section . . . )

Need: "As not only Third World pagan peoples, but we Westerners face so much idolatry, how are we to handle it, and why?!"
  1. Having warned his Corinthian Christian readers that God had the will to cause premature physical death for Christians who commit sins of license, the Apostle Paul refocused their attention on the key sin of license in the context -- the sin of idolatry, 1 Cor. 10:14b:
    1. Some of Paul's Christian readers thought they were free in Christ to eat idol sacrifice meat right in the pagan temple services, 1 Cor. 8:10!
    2. After having shown the need to avoid even eating meat once offered to idols to avoid harming the conscience of the weak (8:13-10:13), Paul returned to the issue of eating meat at an idol service in an idol temple, a practice that was the sin of idolatry, cf. 1 Corinthians 10:14.
  2. Paul then URGED believers to FLEE this IDOLATRY lest they incur GOD'S ANGER and He SLAY them, 1 Cor. 10:12, 14!
  3. Paul then revealed WHY God is so ANGRY at idolatry, 10:15-22:
    1. The elements which believers ingest at the Lord's Table, like the food from the sacrifices of the altar in the Old Testament temple, identify the participant as one who worships God, 1 Corinthians 10:15-18.
    2. Then, though Paul had before stated in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 that there was no true god beside the God of Scripture, and he reminded his readers of this fact in 1 Corinthians 10:19-20a, he added that though the idol itself was nothing, the pagan Gentiles communed with demons that were associated with their pagan beliefs in their sacrificial meals to these idols, 1 Corinthians 10:20a.
    3. Paul was concerned that these Corinthian believers not commune with demons in eating meat at their sacrificial meals, 1 Cor. 10:20b-22:
      1. The Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978 footnote at 1 Corinthians 10:14-22 suggests "believers must not fellowship at pagan feasts since they may open themselves up to demonic attacks (v. 20)."
      2. Though one might be subject to demonic attack this way, Paul's stated reason for not participating in pagan worship was God's intolerance of a believer's interacting with demons, 10:21-22:
        1. Paul held that it was spiritually impossible to partake of the Lord's Table in communion with God while also communing with demons in pagan idol worship services: (1) The Greek text at the start of 1 Corinthians 10:21 includes the verb, dunasthe, meaning "to be able" to show how impossible it is for a believer to commune with God at the Lord's Table while having communed with demons in pagan temple sacrifices, cf. U. B. S. Grk. N. T., 1966 ed., p. 601; Theol. Dict. of the N. T., vol. II, p. 284. (2) Thus, eating in the pagan temple left the believer out of fellowship with God so that he did not commune with the Lord even if he later partook at the Lord's Table! (1 John 1:6)
        2. Indeed, fellowship with demons quickly shifts to a dependence on evil spirits in living, or blatant idolatry, a sin that infuriates God Who is jealous of our devotion to Him alone, Ex. 20:2-6.
        3. Thus, idolatry brings God's severe discipline on the believer, 1 Cor. 10:22 with 10:5-7, 12: (1) As we learned in the last message, Paul had written that though ancient Israel had been richly blessed of God in her exodus from Egypt, He had slain most of that generation due in part to its involvement in the license of idolatry, 1 Cor. 10:5-7. (2) Similarly, God-blessed believers in the Church dispensation will face God's severe discipline of premature death for idolatry, 1 Cor. 10:12, 14. (3) So, for his own safety from God's severe discipline [not to mention possible oppression by evil spirits via involvement in idolatry], a believer is to flee from idolatry, 1 Cor. 10:22, 14!
    4. Colossians 3:5 identifies even covetousness as idolatry, and 1 John 5:21 (cf. Ryrie's footnote there where idolatry is noted as "anything that substitutes for God") calls believers to keep themselves from idols though never referring to pagan idols in his epistle; thus, believers must avoid ALL dependency on ALL other sources of fulfillment aside from GOD. (Ibid., Ryrie, ftn. to 1 John 5:21).
Application: (1) May we trust in Christ as our Savior from sin to fellowship with Him, John 3:16; 1 John 1:1-4. (2) As a believer, may we FLEE from depending on ANYTHING that SHIFTS our DEPENDENCY away from GOD to something ELSE, and that lest we incur God's great anger and SEVERE discipline! (3) May we avoid even covetousness and all other subtle forms of accepting paganism in religious circles that we face not only in our culture, but increasingly in circles of professing Christians!

Lesson: Since the sin of IDOLATRY is the reliance on ANY entity that SUBSTITUTES for GOD as our ALL-SUFFICIENT Lord, a sin God can NOT tolerate, whether it be blatant pagan idolatry or its subtle, hidden, "cultured" forms, we must FLEE from it to avoid God's severe discipline!