January 28, 2024

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

By: Jan Simpson

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul, who was concerned about Christian conduct in churches, gives us a tutorial in each chapter about how we as a church can deal with different issues. He talks about immaturity, divisivness, jealousy, sexual immorality, misuse of spiritual gifts, among others. In Chapter 8 he addresses the misuse of knowledge. He says: don’t let knowledge just puff you up, use it for good and helping others to gain the true knowledge of God.  Knowledge shows up elsewhere in the bible as well. 

 From Proverbs: the knowledge of God’s word will build you and deliver your God-given inheritance into your hands. Here’s another from 2 Peter: but grow in the grace and knowledge of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. What I take from this is, knowledge of God helps us to discern the knowledge in our lives that is irrelevant and acknowledge what is true... as Paul writes: “there is but one God, the father from whom we live and there is but one lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live”. 

 None of us have anything against knowledge. We all have brains to soak up all of the knowledge we can. Knowledge made the world a better place, but has it made it worse as well? If we get too puffed up with knowledge, we become know it all’s, we become pretentious, and downright annoying! I know I am guilty of it more than I would like to admit. I am reminded of an incident when I was in English 101 in college. I got puffed up in my writing abilities that it cost me a friendship. We were to read our cohorts paper and write a critique for the instructor to read. I had become kind of a mentor to another much younger classmate and had helped her out a little with some of her papers. Well, thinking that I would make some points with my teacher I wrote a fairly scathing critique on one of her papers. It backfired spectacularly. My classmate was really hurt. My instructor told me to back off, and I learned my lesson the hard way. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Of course, I could have written a critique in a more loving and constructive way. Even to this day I regret and feel bad about the whole incident.  

  How many of you get annoyed when someone talks about your area of expertise as though you know nothing about it? I’m a retired dental hygienist and I can get pretty testy when someone else thinks they know more than me, when, in my opinion they don’t know much. I immediately think I need to let them know how knowledgeable I am in my field. As we gain knowledge, we want to let everyone know how knowledgeable we are. Knowledge puffs us up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. but the man who loves God is known by God. Even the most knowledgeable Christian has to realize that their knowledge is limited, and that God is the only one who knows all.   I certainly need to be reminded of this often!  

 Paul also talks about animal sacrifices and how they relate to idols.  I have always loathed the thought of animal sacrifices because I have in my mind that it was probably done in a very cruel way to the animals, so I haven’t thought a lot about the whole animal sacrifice thing. When I chose this scripture Pastor Mike had suggested to me I surprised myself that I did indeed decide to preach on it. But as I read the chapter more I realized the focus wasn’t on animal sacrifice, but more about why it was being done for idols. 

Let’s talk about idols. What are we sacrificing to idols these days? Are we sacrificing our minds and our children’s minds to today’s idols? And who are these idols? Actors, actresses, comedians, influencers? Or inanimate idols created by movies and games.  Are we worshipping these idols as we would God?  I asked my grandchildren who their idols were. Two of the boys said Christian Bryant, who is a major league baseball player, the other boy said, whomever invented Minecraft, and my granddaughter said Naya Nuke a Shoshoni girl she read about. Interesting picks for sure and I don’t begrudge them for any of their choices.  The point I think Paul is trying to make in this scripture is that we cannot confuse idols with God.

We cannot worship them. We can sacrifice our time, attention, money, or not, to these false idols but it means nothing either way because they mean nothing. Let’s not worship a sports team, an influencer, actor, fill in the blank. Let’s turn our time and attention to only God and then, we will be known by Him. That is the most important knowledge we need to learn. This is easier said than done, in my opinion for it’s much easier to relate to something tangible or something we can see. The hard part that we always have to work on is realizing how immaterial our idols are and at the same time reminding those we love, especially our children and grandchildren that God is the only one that matters and the only one worthy of worship. 

On to the tricky part of this scripture. Paul says that not everyone has it figured out and we don’t want our knowledge to backfire. He says; so, this weak brother for whom Christ died is destroyed by your knowledge. The weak believers may still think it is a sin against God to sacrifice to idols when it really doesn’t matter. But if they see us (the strong believers) doing it, maybe it is easier for them to assume it’s really ok and it could spoil their conscience. I had to read this verse over and over again because it was hard for me to sort out.  Let me say it again, we who have the knowledge that idols don’t matter, but still appear to sacrifice to them may blunt the conscience of a weak brother. Are we responsible for teaching others about sacrificing to idols, I believe so, what do you think?

Paul says: love builds up, this is my favorite part of the passage and what drew me in. He talks more about it in Corinthians 13, he says in part: if I have all of the knowledge, but have not love, then i have nothing. love is patient, love is kind, love is not proud, rude, or self-seeking.  Love doesn’t record wrongs, nor delight in evil. Love always protects, trusts, always hopes and perseveres. No wonder love appears almost 700 times in the Bible. What better word to promote? knowledge puffs up…love builds up. I read this actually on social media the other day and is attributed to Liam Neeson, who is an actor. he says in part “in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt. What more needs to be said? 

 What should be our action plan in response to Paul’s words? Here’s a few I came up with… use love to build people up. Don’t sacrifice so much time to our phones, social media etc. Don’t puff ourselves up with our knowledge, do more to encourage people to attend church and learn the good news, or how about this, be more proactive in preaching the good news ourselves?

 There, I just delivered on that one!!! 

 Back to idols for a minute, Carole King has been my musical idol since I was a teenager. The other day I heard this song on the radio, and I thought I needed to include it in my sermon today. Carole says in the refrain of her song “Only Love is Real.”  

Only love is real

everything else illusion

adding to the confusion of the way we connive

at being alive

tracing a line till we can define

the thing that allows us to feel

only love is real

Amen.