Third Presbyterian Sunday Morning Bible Study - June 21, 2020

Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on 1 Corinthians 8:1-13.

Food.  It is either our greatest pleasure or our greatest sin.  What is your favorite food?  For me it is crab cakes from Surf Rider or Crab legs from the Red Lobster.  Sounds like I’m a little crabby in my old age, doesn’t it?  Now, what is your favorite food that you know you shouldn’t eat?  For me, I don’t have the time to name all of them but maybe the first in line is southern butter pecan ice cream.  You see, the crab cakes are my greatest pleasure and southern butter pecan ice cream my greatest sin because if I keep eating it, I won’t be able to fit into my leisure suit.

Food has played a major part in my life.  Back on 27th Street, food was a religion and my grandmother was the high priestess.  The first tenant of the food religion was that God had made all things separately and what God had made separately, no man should try to mix together.  Therefore, pork chops had their place on my plate.  Mashed potatoes topped with pork chop gravy had it’s place.  And collard greens had it’s place.  You ate each by themselves savoring the distinct individual tastes.  My grandmother had brought that knowledge with her when she came to Virginia from the Holy Land - North Carolina.  So, for all of my formative years, food came to me with fixed plate locations and the command that it should be devoured with religious fervor.

My first conflict with the food religion came when I was in college.  I was on a basketball trip to Annapolis.  This was my first trip away from home cooking and there I was sitting in the mess hall and a bowl containing a big hunk of lettuce covered with an orange liquid was placed in front of me.  Now, I knew about lettuce.  My food religion dictated that it was that thing that separated a slice of baloney from a slice of bread.  But what I couldn’t figure out was how I going to get my mouth opened big enough to bite a sandwich made with this mountain of lettuce.  As I looked around for help, I noticed the other guys were actually eating that hunk of lettuce.  I wanted to yell, “Stop, guys.  The baloney and bread is on it’s way.”  As I watched, it looked like my team mates were enjoying eating the lettuce even though it was laying there naked on the plate.  Wanting to maintain team spirit and not force my food religion on my friends, I decided to copy them and try to swallow a chunk of the orange coated lettuce.  To my amazement, it was GOOD!  And salads were now introduced into my diet.  This was the first time I would question my food religion.

Even with the restrictions that my food religion imposed on my meals, eating became my favorite past time, but, it didn’t take long to recognize that eating too much leads to unwelcomed bulges. If those bulges bother you, what do you do?  Go on a diet.  Did you ever go on one of those diets that tells you to take one of their pills or eat their food and you loose mountains of fat?  I don’t care what Marie Osmond says, nobody can eat food delivered by UPS for the rest of their life.  What happens when you stop taking the pills or Marie Osmond stops leaving food on your porch?  The battle of the bulge resumes and the clothes immediately get tighter.

In today’s study, Paul deals with food.  In particular he paraphrases Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be” by asking “To eat or not to eat.”

Before we start, I think it would be helpful to have a little tour of Corinth.  For the last few weeks we have learned some things about the city, but it isn’t like living there.  I’ll be your guide.  So get on the bus and lets see what Corinth really looks like.  We start up here on the top of Acrocorinth, a large flat rock that overlooks the city.  Up here we are almost 2000 feet above sea level.  As we look down on the city we can see the walls that surround the city to protect the city from invasion.  They form a circle with a radius of six miles with open spaces ready for development at the walls.

We can see the two major roads that lead into the city.  Coming from the north is the Lechaion Road and that road leads right into the center of the city.  It’s a beautiful road about twenty five feet wide paved with limestone.   And look, there are even raised sidewalks beside the road..  Along the road inside the city are shops bustling with people taking advantage of the sales advertised in the Corinthian Pilot newspaper.  Leaving the city to the south is the second great highway, the road to Cenchreae.

If you look over here to your right you will see sitting on a hill, the Temple to Aphrodite, the goddess of love.  Everybody in the city thinks that it is because of Aphrodite that the city is so rich.  Like I told you a few weeks ago, the temple is served by 1,000 priestesses who at night walk down the hill to the city to walk the streets as prostitutes.  As you can imagine, with the money brought in by the priestesses, they don’t need to pass offering plates down the pews at their services.

Look over at the Lechairon Road, above the tops of the shops.  See that kind of rectangular building with two big rooms on each end and two rows of columns connecting the rooms.  That is where some religious celebrations take place and political meetings occur.  Over to the west you see that large beautiful building sparkling in the sun.  That’s the temple of Apollo.  It was built over six hundred years ago.  The building is 200 feet long with columns reaching up twenty four feet and each column is six feet in diameter.  It never fails to impress tourist like y’all.

Over there in the northwest is the theater.  See the semicircle seating and the stage down in the front.  Would you believe that it is over five hundred years old and plays and poetry readings still are scheduled there.  In fact, the Corinth Little Theater starts it’s new season there next week.  If you look closely and you can see some the actors rehearsing right now.  Beside the theater is a plaza paved with limestone.  This was built recently by a citizen named Erastus.  There are rumors that Erastus has became a Christian after hearing a traveling preacher named Paul speak.

Almost as far as you can see there are temples to both Greek and Roman Gods.  Some are grand buildings with gold and pink marble while others are small memorials dedicated to some lesser god.  Yep, you can sure see that Corinth is a very religious city. 

If you get a chance, you should visit the Agora.  It is at the end of the Lechaion Road, right in the center of the city.  It is our market place housing stores and a large colonnade where shoppers can catch up on the latest gossip or find out which stores have the best prices.  All around the building are other stores.  You can find local goods as well as religious cups and dishes decorated with your favorite god in those stores.  If you get hungry, there are plenty of restaurants catering to every taste.  If you get thirsty, there are bars serving beer and exotic drinks known all over the world.  There are a lot of houses mixed in with the stores.  One house belongs to a man named Titius Justus.  It’s right next to the Jewish synagogue over there.  That’s where that preacher I was telling you about, Paul, lived when he first came to Corinth. 

I hope you have enjoyed your tour and will take advantage of all that our city has to offer.  Y’all come back soon and make sure that you let your friends know that if we don’t have it in Corinth, it don’t exist.

With our tour complete, lets see what Paul’s idea of a good diet is.  The menu doesn’t have pork chops, but it does have meat sacrificed to pagan gods.

Animal sacrifice was an integral part of pagan worship in Corinth.  The worship might be either private or public. How do you think a pagan animal sacrifice was made?  An animal is put on the altar, killed and then burned to a crisp.  Actually, the whole animal was never consumed on the altar. In many cases the only part burned was a small token part. Sometimes the sacrifice consisted only of the hairs off of the forehead of the animal. In a private sacrifice, the animal was divided into three parts. First, a small token part was burned on the alter. Second, the priests were given the ribs, the leg and the left side of the face. The ribs and leg sound OK but I’m not sure about the left side of the face. If the priests had more food than they could eat, they either sold it to the butcher shops or, in some cases, there was a store in the back of the temple where the meat could be sold to the public.  Now the ribs and legs were choice meat and everybody knew it, so they sold out fast.  The third and larger part went to the guy offering the sacrifice. Generally, he took this portion and threw a party. Some times these parties were at his home - some times at the temple of the god being honored.  Assuming that there was a party given by your friend which included a pagan sacrifice, what problem would the Corinthian Christian face? Should he take part in a meal that included meat which had been sacrificed to a heathen god? If he could not bring himself to attend the party, what would be the result? He would certainly not get any future invites and it could impact on his social and business relationship with the party thrower and possibly others who attended.  If you worked in a trade, attending these parties were like paying your union dues, so you wouldn’t lose your job.  You can see a lot was at stake for the Christian if he got an invitation to one of these parties.

In a public sacrifice, which is a sacrifice which was offered by the government and not an individual, the meat was divided in three parts like before, except that the third portion went to the judges and political leaders.  Since this type of sacrifice was very common. The town leaders found themselves sometimes loaded up with more meat than they could eat.  So, they sold what they didn’t want to meat markets to be sold with all the other meats. You can see that even buying meat at the local butcher shop might involve you in eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol without you even knowing it. What was a Corinthian Christian to do? Become a vegetarian?

Another thing that complicated matters was that people at that time believed in demons and devils actively engaging with humans. They felt that the air was full of them.  In fact, you would be constantly bumping into them as you walked around.  The demons just waited for a chance to get into a man’s body and once in the body, it set about to destroy the man’s body and his mind. Kind of like a corona virus.  One of the special ways that demons gained access to the body was through food. These demons would float around and then settle on the food just before the man ate it and in this way got inside of the man. Now the way to counter this invasion of demons through the food was to dedicate the food to a god because the presence of the god inside of the food acted as a barrier to the demons. So, eating meat dedicated to a god, could be good for your health. This led to almost all animals being dedicated to a god before being slaughtered. The down side was that since the god actually became part of the meat, to eat the meat you were consuming the god. 

Now, put yourself in the place of a Corinthian Christian. You believe in the Lord but you have been brought up to believe in demons and how they enter the body. Even Paul who preached the Good News of salvation through the blood of Christ, believes in demons. So just to be on the safe side, shouldn’t you dedicate this animal to some god to protect you from demons? What to do? This was the dilemma facing the Corinthian Christians.  Let’s see how Paul handled it.

1 Corinthians 8:1 Now concerning food sacrificed to idols; we know that “all of us possess knowledge.”  Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; 3 but anyone who loves God is known by him.  4 Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.”  5 Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and lords — 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.  7 It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge.  Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.  8 “Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.

How does Paul start this verse?  “Now concerning...”  What does that tell us?  In the Paul is answering a letter he got that had a question about food sacrificed to pagan gods.  What does he mean when he says that we know that “all of us possess knowledge?”  Which knowledge is that? 

Not all Corinthians still held some baggage from their heathen days. Some now knew that these gods they had worshiped really didn’t exist. Since these gods were only imaginary beings, they couldn’t enter the food, so eating food dedicated to them meant nothing since they really weren’t there in the first place.  That is just being logical in light of the Gospel.  This was the knowledge that all Christians possessed.  Even knowing that gods aren’t real, some new Christians felt that since the food was dedicated to an idol it was not fit for consumption by a Christian.  It was tainted by the association with a god.  Most of the church believed that since the god didn’t exist, the food wasn’t spoiled by the dedication.  Another problem was that in a big meeting at the main church in Jerusalem approving Paul to bring in Gentiles into the church, it was only on the condition that the Gentiles not eat meat dedicated to a pagan god. Paul has to walk a fine line here.  He has to answer both concerns and not tick off the Jerusalem church.

Paul says that in Corinth there are men who up to a short while ago sincerely believed in these gods and the reality of their being. They can’t get over the fact that a very real sacrifice to these gods had taken place. What does this say about these people? They are still unconscionably hanging on to these old idols. How does Paul speak of them? Does he demand that these people be shown the error of their ways? That they be drummed out of the brotherhood? Is it a matter of shape up or ship out?

Paul is very sympathetic. He realizes that although they know in their hearts that Christ has saved them from idol worship and the gods are phony, they still have a little bit of the past lingering around that says that eating this meat from a sacrifice makes them a participant in the sacrifice and, thereby, a fellow worshipper of this phony god. It should be noted that at these parties, it was considered that the god dwelt in the sacrifice and in that way attended the party. Paul said that they can’t help it. It was a part of their growing up that still has some influence over them.  You see they were suffering from a guilt trip.  Just like me and pork chops having a special place on my plate.  While I have enthusiastically embraced casseroles, I still can’t get passed food not being separated on my plate.

1 Corinthians 8:9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.  10 For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols?  11 So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed.  12 But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.  13 Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

How many of you break a mirror and the first thing that comes to your mind is seven years of bad luck? Or spill salt and throw some over your right shoulder? Did you ever spend any time looking for a four leaf clover or buy a lucky rabbit’s foot charm? If I asked you if you really believed that a rabbit foot brings good luck (not much luck for the rabbit anyway) or if there is any thing to luck at all, you would answer in unison that as Christians there is no such thing as luck. But here we are, all of us, at one time or another knocking on wood, which bother way, is a means for awakening the god who dwells in the wood you knocked on to grant your wish.  Paul understands this heritage. Paul tells them that you who are enlightened, who know the truth, and go around saying that it is all right to eat food sacrificed to idols are hurting those among you who do not have your strong belief system.

Paul addresses three principles in this chapter: 

(1) What is safe for one man may be a stumbling block for another. We may be able to resist a temptation, but, others may not be as strong dealing with that temptation. In fact what may not be a temptation to me may be a strong temptation to others. Alcohol may not be a problem for you but for the alcoholic it is the great demon. My mother and father were alcoholics who went to AA to control their demon.  When my brother and I had grown up and had parties, we were careful not to have alcohol even though my parents had been sober for twenty or thirty years.  No need to tempt the beast.  Paul leaves us with the responsibility of not only thinking about what might effect us, but, what might effect a brother. 

This handling of alcohol has always presented problems with the church. Whether communion should use wine or grape juice.  Some churches use fermented wine in their Communion Service.  Some denominations like the Methodist who were big in the temperance movement grappled with whether fermented wine should be used.  In the nineteenth century a Methodist dentist discovered a way to pasteurize grape juice so that it would not ferment.  He started providing this unfermented grape juice to churches to use in their Communion service.  That dentist’s name was Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch, and we know that unfermented wine now as simply Welch’s Grape Juice.

(2) Knowledge isn’t the end all. Some Corinthians in their knowledge and logic came to a conclusion about food sacrificed to idols. These were the thinkers. The brain trust. These Corinthians were advanced Christians. Their knowledge of Christ had taken them past the point of considering an idol as anything other than the material matter from which it was made.  Paul points out that there can be a danger in knowledge.  Paul said that knowledge “puffs up”.  What does “puffs up” mean?  It can make a man arrogant. He can feel superior to others and look down his nose at them because they aren’t as advanced intellectually and spiritually as he is. Paul stresses that communication between Christians should have as it’s base - love. And this love is sensitive to the needs of the brother and sister and has consideration for their weaknesses.  It may be necessary for us to constrain our self in order that the person we are dealing with is not turned off of Christianity by what we say or do.

(3) No man has a right to do anything which may lead a brother to stumble even if we are not directly effected by the act. Taking one drink may not cause us any problem but if we take that drink in the presence of an alcoholic brother and by doing so encourage him to take a drink, then we have sinned. Any pleasure or indulgence which causes a brother to fall is a sin.  Years ago, I served on the board of Norfolk Christian Schools and in serving pledged not to drink alcohol.  One night I attended a professional meeting that served mixed drinks.  Not wanting to appear to be a prude, I got a glass of ginger ale over ice.  A Christian who was there and knew about my pledge, came up to me and said, “I thought you weren’t drinking alcohol.”  Then I realized that although I was honoring my pledge, I was doing it while giving the impression that I wasn’t.  Actions while not meant to violate my pledge, had led another to believe that I had.  My “puffed up” knowledge that I was doing something OK caused someone to believe I was sinning because I had not honored my word.

The bottom line for Paul is that even if you know that you are right, you still have the obligation not to do something that would lead to another person sinning.  Sometimes, to do the right thing requires you to sacrifice your rights.

So what are you going to eat when you get home?  Will it be something that will taste good and be good for you or will it make you fat?  You see, Paul tells us today that what was worrying the Corinthians went way past eating butter pecan ice cream.  It dealt with using the freedom we have in Christ to solve a problem and not cause a problem.  And to solve the problems facing us as Christians today, we have to use the weapon that even Satan can’t defend himself from.  The love that inspired the true God to give his son so that we may have everlasting life.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, lead us in the way that will strengthen our brothers and sisters and, together, we can bring everlasting glory to you.  In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.