SERMON NOTES: RAISING THE MIS-STEAK
The fifty-cent word: aidiaphoria
Why was meat controversial?
1. Knowledge P_uffs_____ up
a. Good Manners as a weapon
b. Pharisees & other Know-It-Alls
2. Love B_uilds____ up
a. Love doesn’t enable sin, it defeats it
b. If you love me, _you will keep my commandments_
3. Liberty risks k_nowledge_ for l_ove_____
a. God is all-knowing and all-loving
b. God risks in order that we can love
Title: Raising the Mis-steak
Text: 1 Cor 8:1 – 13
MP: Good morals are like Good morals: The purpose of good behavior is to lift one another up.
Outline:
1. Intro: Wedding Etiquette / A New Category / Aidiaphoria
2. Knowledge Puffs Up
a. Think about what knowledge does – at its best, it sets you up to best help another. At its worst, its sets up you in a position to lord it over someone.
b. The “Know-it-all”
3. Love Builds Up
4. Christian Liberty makes us Put Up or Shut Up
a. God’s attributes – He is all-knowing and all-loving, but which comes to mind first?
b. It’s always a risk – but that he’s taking the risk shows how much he loves us
Sometimes, I just don’t get Emily Post and all those books of etiquette. They seem like list of rules and regulations for a society that I will never know. I think in some ways, people want to think that God is nothing more than a cosmic Miss Manners, sitting up in the sky, with nothing better to do than tell me which kind of fork to use.
The truth is that our God loves us. He gives us rules not so we can argue how to lay out a table, but rather so that we can live out our lives better – more comfortably, more adventurously than we thought we could. Our God may spend his time talking about a society that doesn’t sound like it really exists – but in some ways, it’s the one you’re really destined for.
Ten years ago, I got to visit one of those societies that Emily Post had been warning me about. I was the Best Man at Nick Yassukovich’s wedding. He was my best friend at Coopers & Lybrand, but I had no idea that his father was the president of all European business of this little company called Merrill Lynch. His grandfather had been a Russian aristocrat, and they had money.
So, when it came time for his little boy to get married, Nick’s dad put on a reception like you’ve never seen. It was held in Bristol, England. They had a seven course meal. And sitting down to the table, the silverware was laid out as if some sadistic home economics teacher was going to give the killer final you feared all your life.
When the fish course came out, I noticed the Maid of Honor take her butter knife to cut it up. I leaned over and very politely said, “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I think that’s the butter knife.” She leaned back and said to me, “Actually, it is a fish knife. But you were being very gracious in how you handled that. Thank you.”
A fish knife. It was a whole new category of knife for me. I never realized that there was a society that needed a special kind of wimpy knife, just for cooked fish!
Well, in Paul’s day, he lived in a society that needed a whole new category too. Paul had taught his church in Corinth that they were children of God, and that they were completely forgiven. Everything and every sin that had ever kept them from God was gone. They were children of God, but sometimes they still needed rules to know how live that way. They needed knowledge, they needed love, and they needed the knowledge to love. But they also needed a whole new category to understand some kinds of sin.
I want to talk about that category this morning, and I want to teach you a fifty cent word to describe it. The word is aidaphoria. Aidaphoria is a complex word but it points to a simple concept. There are some things that aren’t good, but they aren’t really serious sin either. Picking your nose in public won’t get you put in jail, but I wouldn’t recommend it either.
There are some people who think that smoking tobacco will send you straight to hell. I guess they think that it’s nothing but practice Well, again, outside of this pulpit, I’d be more than happy to tell you why you shouldn’t smoke, but I’d be hard pressed to say your salvation depends on it either.
It’s more like bad manners than anything else. A grown-up doesn’t do certain things, a civilized person knows how to restrain himself. And that’s a good concept for a child of God to get a handle on.
Here in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul is going to bring up an issue that, frankly we don’t deal with any more. But the principle for how he solves it should be central to every action we take. You see, the big question in Corinth was about meat. The question was, should a Christian eat meat. I’d love to tell you that Paul’s answer was that militant veganism was nothing bit propaganda from of the Devil, but it has nothing to do with that.
You see, back in those days, if you wanted to get some meat, you didn’t go out to the local butcher – you went to the local Temple for some two-bit god, where the priests had figured out that they could sell all the leftovers from all the meat their dead idols never ate. So, if you’re going to buy meat, in some ways, you’re going to deal with some idols. And, if you’re Christian, you know a few things about idols: Chief among them is you stay away. But Paul has taught them something else about idols too: Idols aren’t real. They have no power in and of themselves. They’re about as powerful as the horoscope in your local paper. But that’s not to say a good Christian would be playing around with them either.
So, when it comes time to eat some meat, what are you going to do?
Well, Paul has a principle. Sometimes I call it ‘the eating of meats,’ sometimes I’ll say aidiaphoria. The point is not whether we categorize it as sin or not, but how we respond to it that’s important. Basically, he’s going to tell his church that it’s okay to eat the meat if you want. You have this thing called Christian liberty – and idol-infested meat has no effect on your salvation. But there’s something way more important than whether or not its sin – and that is whether or not you can use your liberty in love. By eating meat, are you building up or tearing your brother?
By refusing to practice good manners, is your fellow man helped or hurt by your actions.
Paul lays out in out perfectly in 1 Corinthians 8:1. He says just remember this – knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. That’s key. Love is more important than law. That’s not to say law isn’t an important part of love – but in the end, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
Knowledge Puffs Up
Now, if you’ve ever been to a cocktail party with someone who knows their Emily Post, you darn well that it is possible to use that knowledge to cut anyone down.
At that wedding reception I could have told that Maid of Honor, ‘That’s a butter knife!’ with the clear implication that she was just uncouth. That would have been using knowledge as a weapon, and people do it all the time. Of course, the Maid of Honor could have been equally mean back to me: ‘You can’t tell a fish knife from a butter knife? You stupid American!’
We all know the Know-It-All. I doubt it will come as a shock to anyone that I really had to fight the Know-It-All type in my own life, and I still fight with that. People become Know-It-All’s because they want to hold it over people. They want some power. People become Know-It-Alls for the same reason that some people in Jesus’ day became Pharisees and Scribes and Lawyers. They knew that knowledge was power. And they want it.
But you’ll remember Jesus said that in his kingdom, the rules were reversed. The person who thinks they’re first is really last. The Pharisee who thanks God for how perfect he is gets ignored. The publican who prays, “God forgive me – a sinner” he goes home justified. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up.
The Know-It-All Pharisee is the one who knows that you need to clean. But Jesus is the one who points out it’s more important that the inside is clean than the outside. He even makes a joke about it – He says Woe to you Pharisees. You strain out the gnat but you swallow the camel.
Paul is going to say this later. He says even if I could speak every language known to man and the angels, if I didn’t have love, I’d be nothing but a noisy gong, a clanging symbol. He says I could know everything there was to know about prophecies and theologies, I could understand everything and have so much faith – but if I didn’t have love, it would profit me nothing.
Like good manners, good morals are less about legal definitions and more about the spirit behind them. Good behavior is designed to make us all be able to get along better and build one another up. If it turns into a complex legal system, we’ve missed the whole point.
He’s not saying that knowledge is bad – just that love is better. It’s the difference between a bubble and a building. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds you up.
Love Builds Up
Love is a strong thing. It is a sure foundation, and it helps everyone inside. It stands up against fierce storms; it’s a shelter where you can grow. It isn’t something that you say ‘Oh and cute and sweet.’
If you’ve had kids, you know how hard and sometimes how tough you have to be to love. When your kid or your kid brother is doing something stupid, it takes a lot of love to step in and say, ‘hey – it may be permissible, but it’s not beneficial.’ Remember that from last week?
It means that real love doesn’t enable sin, it defeats it.
I’ll tell you that the hard thing about the understanding the idea of Christian liberty is that people think it means you do whatever you want. It buys into the lie that our culture teaches us that says, ‘Just don’t hurt anyone else.’
People want you to think that the only important question about behavior is “Does this hurt me?” True love means asking the question, “Does this hurt you?” And if it does, you help stop it.
Love doesn’t mean I’ll let you do what you want – it means I’ll help you to do what you need.
As always, it’s Jesus who says it so perfectly. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you ever need to understand the connection between how you live and who you love, just quote John 14:15 – If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. Eight simple words that you should really commit to heart – If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.
Liberty makes you put up or shut up
Understand how much love is in those words and in that thought. Jesus doesn’t say, “Obey me because I have the power to squash you – “ even though he does. He doesn’t even say, “Obey me, because I’m the daddy!” And he has every right to do so.
We know that our God is both all-knowing and all-loving. But think about it – what do we usually think of first? His love! His knowledge tells us he is worthy, but his love is what makes us desire him.
He loves you enough to give you free choice. That means free choice to love, and that means free choice not to love. Really simple knowledge would say, ‘I know what’s best for you, so just do it.’ But that’s just knowledge. God’s love says, “You need to learn what’s best for you, so choose to follow me.”
God knows that eating meat and drinking whatever, in and of themselves, these are just good manners or bad. The real question is, are you going to do it in love or in your own power?
Paul goes on to say, think about your Christian liberty. Of course you can do as you please. But if you really love your brother who doesn’t have knowledge, you’re going to think first about him. Is he going to be built up or are you going to be puffed up?
God grants us liberty – the freedom to be free to do pretty much whatever we want – because he loves us. God gives us the knowledge here in the Bible in the hopes that we’ll choose what’s best – but above all, he loves you and he trusts you. That takes a lot of love.
When we do stupid things that sin against him, it breaks his heart. Liberty is such an amazing risk – but if we are going to be built up properly he must take that risk in order that we will learn to glorify him and love him and follow him of our own free will – that we will learn to love him for who he is.
And, frankly, it’s just good manners to extend that same courtesy to others. Where we can build up with knowledge, that’s great. But if we’re just showing off our keen insight, it’s just puffery. We build one another up in the same love that God afforded us.
Every good behavior – every choice to choose God’s way over what seems right is really just good manners. And as Miss Manners herself will tell you, the point is love. Let me quote from Miss Manner’s Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, p.31
“Here is the major rule of etiquette you need to learn right now: The use of specialized knowledge of whatever kind to embarrass those who cannot be expected to know it is itself an etiquette violation. This why we have a rule that the lapses of newcomers who are making an honest effort – including young children, but the way – should not be an excuse to humiliate them.”
Paul wouldn’t have said it any better himself. Would you pray with me?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Every time I’m tempted to harp on somebody’s sin, it helps me to think about that fish knife. Often what I tend to recognize as bad behavior usually turns actually be perfectly fine when all the circumstances are known.
XXXXXXXX
Miss Manners scares me. Some people have that dream of showing up to an important speech naked – well, I have the fear that I’m going to show up to a party and Emily Post is going to use me as the class example of how not to act at an important dinner party. Sometimes, all the rules and the lists and the 32 pieces of silverware all properly laid out next to the various plates and bowls: they’re enough to make me want to hide…
Ten years ago, I had the privilege of being the Best Man at the wedding of my good friend, Nicholas Yassukovich. He flew me over to Bristol for the event, and his reception is still probably the poshest plate I’ve ever been too. He came from a very wealthy family – his father was the president of Merrill Lynch in Europe, so, he’d have fit in well in the Horse set around here.
Anyways, at this reception, the Maid of Honor and I are eating at this table that truly is decked out in full regalia. When the fish is served, she takes out a fork that looks like this, and begins to cut her fish with it. Maybe it was because I spooked by the all the class and ritz, but I leaned over, and very gently whispered – “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I think that’s a butter knife.”
She leaned over and whispered back, “Actually, it’s a fish knife. But you were very kind in trying to help me.”
Paul understood this, and so, in 1 Corinthians 8, has a few words of advice for the God Squad who might want to play Emily Post and “clarify” all the “rules” Paul been spending his time explaining. He’s going to bring up a subject that is sometimes called “the eating of meats,” or an even better fifty cent word – aidiaphora. It’s a big word but it represents an important concept – sometimes there are rules that are good but not essential. They are matters of refinement, but not matters of salvation. It’s less important that we know what each and every piece of silverware is, then it is to understand that the whole point of the silverware spread was actually to make guests feel more at home.
You will notice that I’ve skipped over 1 Corinthians 7 in this series. It’s a whole chapter on a lot of little rules that govern practices we tend not to deal with so much today.
…
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, October 14th, 2007
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Meditation Psalm 66: 1 – 6
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Opening Hymn #355
“O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer
*Hymn #347
“And Can It Be”
*Responsive Lesson [See Right]
*Hymn #492
“At Calvary”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow / Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise him above, ye heavenly host / Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*Scripture 1 Corinthians 8:1 – 13
Sermon
“Raising the Mis-steaks”
Invitation Hymn #352 (alt. tune #355)
“There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy”
*Benediction
*Congregational Response
May the grace of Christ our Savior / And the Father’s boundless love
With the Holy Spirit’s favor / Rest upon us from above. Amen.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE LESSON
If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,
‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
1 Cor 8:2; Luke 18:9-14; John 14:21;1 Cor 13:1-3, 8; John 14:23-24; 14:15
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Next Sunday, October 21st, Rich Goff will be preaching a trial sermon.
Deacon’s meeting next Sunday!
PRAYER LIST
Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; Lord, we pray grace for your church, that in the days to come it may be known not four our glory but for yours alone. Where is in error, correct it, where is right, strengthen and encourage it, and where it proclaims your name, give the increase that you might be glorified by it. through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Tonya & Sven, Martha Puryear, Susan Schulz, Warren Lee,
Brandi, Irene Griffith, Cory Keely, Debbie Grigsby, Larry Morrison,
Fred & Debbie Griffith, Jeff Coleman, Zane, Bruce, Steve
Long Branch Church, Bill Thigpen
1 CORINTHIANS 8:1 – 13
1 Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up.
2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
4 Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
7 However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8 Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.
9 But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? 11 And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. 12 Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
