Speaker 1: 0:01

We're almost finished with these longer passages, but this is 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, all the way to the first verse of chapter 11. Beginning in verse 1, the Word of God reads this way For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, god was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did, do not be idolaters, as some of them were, as it is written that people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say.

Speaker 1: 1:47

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread? We, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God.

Speaker 1: 2:21

I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, for the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you're disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience, but if someone says to you this has been offered in sacrifice, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience. I do not mean your conscience, but his, for why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God. Just as I try to please everyone in everything, I do not seeking my own advantage, but that of many. That they may be saved, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated, and may God bless this reading and preaching of His Word.

Speaker 1: 3:48

A storm blew in one afternoon when we were in Canada on our vacation recently and it arrived without much warning. It was sort of a normal day and then it blew in, but we could see it coming from across the lake. If I stood out on the dock, you could see it in the water coming our way. So, seeing it in the distance, I ran down to the dock and I wanted to make sure that the boat was secure and tied up tight and I wanted to more securely tie down this big inflatable water trampoline that they have up there. This huge trampoline, it's like 12 foot in diameter. The trampoline was both tied to the dock and it also was tied to a concrete weight that was just sitting in the bottom of the lake but it was sort of floating and drifting out in the water and I wanted this. This sense of the storm was coming in. I wanted to make sure that it was more secure. But all of this was very foolish of me, not a very experienced lakeman at least at least not yet I did not realize how quickly these storms could blow in it's. But I kind of understand now the story of the disciples on the boat and they're, and they get caught in these storms very quickly as soon as you see them in the distance, you have less than a minute before it's upon you and the situation changes dramatically.

Speaker 1: 5:13

So as I began pulling in the trampoline to get it secure, before I knew it the whole thing was in the air, yeah, from the storm. And again, it's pretty big, it's like 12 feet in diameter, and it gets flown into the air while I was on the dock and it bounces down right in front of me and then was caught by the wind and flew off into the wild blue yonder. Yeah, completely pulled off of its moorings on the dock, and I had assumed that the concrete weight was just. It was ripped free from that and that was sitting at the bottom of the lake. Only later did I discover how close I was to actually losing my head. That weight, that concrete weight, had been ripped out of the water with the trampoline, unbeknownst to me, launched into the air and landed innocently in a nearby paddle boat and no one was hurt. And we realized that in the aftermath of the storm.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Now what I learned from that is two things. I learned that I guess I still have some unfinished business here in this realm. The Lord doesn't want me dead just yet, but he did remind me that he could take me out at any time. And then I also learned that a storm on a lake is nothing to trifle with. It's something that should be taken seriously. I was not taking it seriously. I didn't get hurt, but I could have gotten hurt. If you do not respect it it can be deadly serious. It is nothing to trifle with, so I share that.

Speaker 1: 6:49

In order to try to capture the tone of what Paul is talking about today, he does. He ends his discussion of the question of eating food offered to idols on sort of a serious and a sober tone. We've been in a series in 1 Corinthians and we've recently been in this section in chapters 8 through 10, where Paul talks about a lot of things, but it's all surrounding this question of whether or not the Corinthians were free to participate in some of these pagan rituals and eat food sacrificed to idols, knowing that idols have no real existence. And that was that's what we've been talking about. And he ends that discussion on a sober and a serious note in saying this that though eating idol meat may seem harmless, and though it is harmless in and of itself, he says we have he's a little concerned about something that he's seeing in their hearts and he wants to tell, he wants to impress upon them how careful we have to be about little compromises that we make. That can escalate very quickly, because idolatry is nothing to trifle with. It can be deadly serious and it's something that we should take seriously.

Speaker 1: 8:08

There's a bigger issue. Look at verses 12 through 13. Paul says, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands, who thinks that he's safe, thinks that he's good, take heed lest he fall. And then, in 13, no temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. So what temptation is Paul talking about there? He's talking just about the general temptation to compromise our faith in various ways, to, little by little, to slowly give up little bits of ground, to yield boundaries here and there, to dabble in sin or to dabble in idolatry.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Just little compromises that might seem harmless or innocent, and Paul wants to impress upon them and us all that compromise is very serious. It's deadly serious because it can get out of hand very quickly. In the same way that I almost lost my head because the situation got out of hand very quickly. Compromise is the same what might seem under control one minute can quickly spiral out of control and we can lose our moorings and shipwreck our faith before we know it. So beware of compromise. And there's at least three kinds of compromise that I think we can identify from this passage that we'll look at Doctrinal compromise, moral compromise and finally social compromise. And all of them are dangerous and we need to take heed lest we fall, as Paul says. So let's look at all of those together. So, doctrinal compromise first. Doctrinal compromise seems innocent, but at the end of the day it destroys the gospel and it leaves us with a religion that has no power to save. Doctrinal compromise destroys the gospel and it leaves us with a religion that has no power to save. Doctrinal compromise destroys the gospel and leaves us with a religion that has no power to save. So let's go back to what Paul says about meat In Corinth much of the meat that you could get to eat came from pagan sacrifices, especially during something like the Isthmian Games, which in Corinth was.

Speaker 1: 10:27

It's a festival that happened every two years, a massive festival held in honor of Poseidon. Imagine something like our city's Blink Festival, that pagan festival that we celebrate here every two years. I guess When's the next Blink? Is it this year or is it next year? Well, anyway, I'll be there. But imagine something like the Blink Festival, you know, crowded, lots of stuff going on, but with athletic events, with music, with religious ceremonies woven together. That was the Isthmian Games. Before the games, animals were sacrificed at Poseidon's temple. Some of the meat was burned on the altar to Poseidon, some was served at banquets in the temple precinct that you could go to, and the rest was sold in the marketplace.

Speaker 1: 11:18

And Paul makes a careful distinction. He says, hey, eat whatever is sold in the marketplace, whether it was sacrificed to Poseidon or not, it doesn't matter. You know you don't need to raise any question on the ground of conscience. And he says if someone invites you to dinner, eat whatever is set before you. But if someone makes a point of saying this is given in honor to this God, or if it's at a temple banquet, actually participating in a temple banquet. Paul says that's a different story. That's not just dinner. That is beginning to participate in pagan worship.

Speaker 1: 11:53

And the issue is the issue of participation. Paul uses that word a few times and it's actually the Greek word koinonia, which is the word we translate as fellowship or communion. Paul says that when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, that we have koinonia in the body and blood of Christ. We have fellowship and communion in the body and blood of Christ. In the Old Testament, those who ate the sacrifices participated in the altar. They had koinonia in the altar. So to sit down in a pagan feast, paul says, is to share fellowship with the God that is being honored there and with the worshipers there. It is to participate and to share fellowship.

Speaker 1: 12:36

And Paul warns that this is very dangerous because behind the idol is not nothing, it's not just a pagan myth or an idea. There's actually a spiritual reality and it's a dark one. Paul says in verse 20,. He says what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. So why is this so doctrinally deadly In the ancient world? So doctrinally deadly?

Speaker 1: 13:04

In the ancient world, similar to the world that we live in, people often believed that all religions were basically the same. That's just a pervasive assumption in the ancient world. There's different gods, but they're just different names describing the same divine realities and the same divine people. The God that's worshipped as Zeus to the Greeks was worshipped as Jupiter to the Romans. And many thought you know, there's no difference between these gods. And is there really that big of a difference between Zeus and Yahweh? Or are they not just different images and names for the divine reality?

Speaker 1: 13:43

That's sometimes called syncretism, blending the worship of the true God with the worship of other gods, and that's where Paul draws a hard line. And Paul tells us that the various religions that exist are not equally legitimate approaches to the divine. Paul says, at the end of the day, there's only two realities, two spiritual realities. There is the religion of Jesus and the worship of Jesus, and then there is the worship of demons and demonic religion, and that's all that there is, paul says. And any attempt to blend them or to compromise between them completely, at the end of the day, completely undermines the gospel. So just to restate the point doctrinal compromise cuts the heart out of the gospel and replaces it with something powerless to save. And I'll just give you an example of what I mean. There's a guy from the early 20th century, a Presbyterian theologian and pastor and professor, a guy named J Gresham Machen, and in his day he was facing a cultural flood of modernism. We're beyond modernism now. We live in a postmodern world.

Speaker 1: 14:54

But modernism, which sort of came on the scene in the 17 and 1800s, held science and reason as the supreme authority, and as it overtook the universities, it eventually made its way into the seminaries and then into the pulpits. And a new movement arose in the early 20th century, the early 1900s, calling itself liberal Christianity, and that's something that you know, we've heard. That terminology it's very common in our day and it's come to mean something slightly different. But this was sort of a new term at the time and it's what these people were embracing for themselves. They said we want a liberal Christianity, meaning we want a Christianity that is open, that is, that's generous, that is magnanimous. That's what they meant by liberal.

Speaker 1: 15:48

But what it sought to do was to strike a compromise between the historic Christian faith and the modernism that was taking over the world and to ask how can these two blend together and how can people be both modern and Christians? And the way that it did this was keeping general Christian ethics, like the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule and things like that, but discarding Christian doctrine that modernists couldn't stomach, like the creation account or the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Those were dismissed as being unscientific, something that a rational person could not believe, and in their place came a much more social and moral gospel, a gospel of be like Jesus, follow in the way of Jesus, love your neighbor, stand for justice. This is the essence of Christianity. After all, it doesn't really matter whether or not Jesus literally died and rose again, and what matters is the teaching of Jesus, and that was liberal Christianity.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Machen wrote a book in response, and his response was bold, in his book Christianity and Liberalism, which I would recommend reading. It's not a long book, it was written in the 1920s and he argued that in that book that liberal Christianity was not a new form of Christianity or a new approach to Christianity, but that it was an entirely different religion. And, as a matter of fact, it is the most dangerous kind of false religion, because it looks like Christianity, it looks like the religion of Jesus, it uses Christian language, it uses Christian scripture, the preachers dress up in robes and preach from a pulpit and we sing the traditional hymns. And it looks so similar. It has all of the trappings of historic Orthodox Christianity, but its message is different. Its message has no cross, no resurrection and no saving power. It basically offers a Christian version of the same things that are being taught in the universities or on TV. That's what Machen was dealing with.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Around the same time, in the early 20th century, a young German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to study at Union Seminary in New York City and Union Seminary was one of the bastions of progressive Christianity at the time and what he encountered shocked him. He visited churches where the preaching had lost all of its theological weight, where the gospel had been replaced by social activism and spiritual platitudes. And he wrote this, he said in the place of the church as the congregation of believers in Christ, there stands the church as a social organization. The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical remarks about current events. And, bonhoeffer, he did not encounter Christ crucified. He encountered basically a religious social club with a Christian facade. That was actually a completely different religion.

Speaker 1: 19:01

The same temptation to compromise doctrine in order to fit in with the culture confronts us today, but it doesn't look exactly the same. Where's a different face Today? We no longer live in a modernist era. We're less obsessed with science and reason and we're more enthralled by personal experience, by therapeutic comfort, by spiritual pragmatism. These things have become the greatest authority. So the question for us today is not is it true or is it scientific or is it rational? We don't care about that. The question is does it work or how does it feel? Does it feel or does it fit my story? Does it fit my experience of the world? That's sort of the postmodern ethos.

Speaker 1: 19:52

A compromised Christianity will latch onto those things and baptize those instincts and build a theology around them where Christian faith becomes all about. Does it work, is it practical, does it feel right? Does it fit with my story? And those are the things that we make compromise with.

Speaker 1: 20:13

But the real Christianity, the real religion of Jesus, cannot be grounded in what works or in what feels good or what seems intuitive. It has to be grounded in what God has said. So what are we to do? Well, those questions what works, what makes sense, what matches my experience? They're not irrelevant, they're not unimportant, they're all interesting questions. But what we have to see here and what we have to commit ourselves to is that they are not ultimate. They're not ultimate.

Speaker 1: 20:48

The ultimate question, the most important question for the Christian is what does the Bible say? And what the Bible says will often challenge what works in the short term, what seems to work, or it may contradict how we feel about the world or ourselves or a situation. It may be offensive. It is offensive in all ways, in some way to all cultures. It is offensive in some way to all cultures. But that is precisely what gives it its saving power, because Christianity is not humanity's best guess or best attempt to reach God. It is the good news of how a transcendent God who is other than us, saves sinners through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, doctrinal compromise Keep the Bible as your highest authority. All of those other questions are important, but what does the Bible say is the only question that really has the trump card for us. Keep that as your highest authority, because compromise can only produce a religion that has no saving power. Well, good thing we're all part of the PCA church, right, and we're never tempted to compromise doctrinally. But there's more than one way to compromise. So let's look at moral compromise.

Speaker 1: 22:11

The point here, proximity to God is not the same as intimacy with God. It is possible to sit in the presence of God, to be close to God in one sense, to be proximate to him and yet be far from him and yet drift far from his heart. So Paul reminds them in the first four verses of the Old Testament, people of God. Look at verses one through four. Paul says I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers now he's speaking to Jews and Gentiles here, he's speaking to believers in Jesus and he says our fathers, this Israel in the wilderness, those are the fathers of our faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses, in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. So Paul is saying this when Israel came out of Egypt, he said think about all of the people that came out of Egypt.

Speaker 1: 23:21

Paul says they came out of Egypt. They were under the cloud, which means that God's presence was with them. They could see God. In some sense he was that close. He was hidden in the cloud and in the pillar of fire, but his presence was with them. His protection was with them. Paul says that they were baptized. They were baptized into Moses by passing through the Red Sea, and what that means there is that Israel was separated from Egypt by water. Israel was made separate from the nations by water. They had godly leadership. They had the best pastor ever other than Jesus. They had Moses. They had daily signs of God's presence. They were being fed by the spiritual food of the manna from heaven and drinking the water from the rock. We won't dive into that too deep, but they were sustained by spiritual food. The Lord Jesus was with them. It says that the rock was Christ. Jesus was there. They were out of Egypt, but Egypt was not quite out of them. God had brought them near. His cloud was over them, the sea was behind them, moses was before them, his provision was in their hands. And yet most of them never made it home.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Paul's point lands in verse 5. He says, nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. And the point there is that they were, though they were near to God in many ways in his presence. In many ways they were actually far from him in their hearts and so they fell in the wilderness. In verses 6 through 11, paul rehearses how it is that they were far from God. He says Some of them dabbled in idolatry when Moses was too long on the mountain and they demanded that a golden calf be made.

Speaker 1: 25:17

Some of them lusted after pagan women and went and married pagan women of the surrounding nations which God had said not to and committed sexual immorality. Some of them grumbled and complained. Others tested the Lord and said is the Lord really among us? And many of them suffered the consequences and fell because of this. But what's Paul's point? He says in verse six. He says now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.

Speaker 1: 25:49

So Paul is saying this. He says look, you're just like them. You can be part of a great church with great leadership. You can be part of the best church, like you are. You can have the best pastor or pastoral team. You can be baptized. You can be separated from your former life by water. You can have profound, you can have had profound experiences with the Lord, even in the past, five years ago, 10 years ago you can remember things that God has done for you. You can be surrounded by signs of his presence in his provision. You can look very buttoned up, very cleaned up on the outside. You can be near the Lord but at the same time be very far from him, just like Israel was in the desert. And how would you know? What would the litmus test be of whether or not you are near the Lord? Well, one of the litmus tests that Paul lays out here and I just want you to know this is the most important part of the sermon. So if you remember anything, remember this part.

Speaker 1: 26:51

One of the litmus tests is this humility in the face of temptation. Humility in the face of temptation. Look again at verses 12 through 14. Paul says, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands there's a little bit of an arrogance there for those who think that they stand Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved flee from idolatry.

Speaker 1: 27:30

Part of the problem in Corinth that we're seeing here was an arrogant overestimation of their own ability. They thought that they were mature enough, that they were smart enough, knowledgeable enough that they could dabble in idolatry and in pagan worship, knowing that these gods aren't real without being sucked into it. They're smart, they're capable. Some dabbled in sexual immorality, as we saw in previous chapters, having no concern for what consequences might come from that. For what consequences might come from that. The Corinthians were not fleeing from temptation and sin like it was a venomous snake that was able to bite them and kill them, but instead they were flirting with temptation and living in temptation and dabbling in temptation, thinking that they had it under control.

Speaker 1: 28:23

So here's what it comes down to when we think, when you think that your own sin is manageable, when we think that our sin is manageable and we allow ourselves to flirt with temptation or we allow some manageable amount of sin into our lives, when we do that, we are far from God. We are far from God no matter how near we seem to him. We're far from God and we're out of touch with reality, because the more that we draw near to God, the more we see clearly that sin is completely unmanageable. We do not have any ability to safely manage any amount of sin in our lives, and if we allow it any space in our lives without resisting it and fighting against it and fleeing from it, if we give it any foothold, we will lose control. If we give it any foothold, we will lose control. And so we desperately need to stick close to the Savior, because only by doing that can we make it home safely. He's our only hope. But the good news is that we have the Savior and we can stick close to him and he will stick close to us.

Speaker 1: 29:41

My daughter, lucy, is very adventurous and very brave and very trusting of the world around her and I love that about her and and she's you know that's. I hope that that never changes. But she needs to be very careful because she does not always understand how dangerous the at this point in her life. She likes to wander off on her own, whether it's wandering into the crowd at Ren Faire or walking out our front door we live in the city walking out our front door and walking down to the park or wandering off at the grocery store. She's very brave, she's not afraid of any of it, and I always try to have, I try to have a heart to heart with her. I love her innocence and her bravery.

Speaker 1: 30:30

But there's also just a little bit of arrogance there, a little bit of an overestimation of her own abilities. And I say, lucy, what if you were to wander in the street? And what if a car were to come? And she used to say she doesn't say this anymore but she'd say, dad, I would just jump over it. If a car came, I'd just jump over it. I say, lucy, what if someone were to grab you in the crowd and take you and throw you into a van and take you away? And she says, dad, I'm a dark green belt in Taekwondo, I'll just kick them. I'll just kick them and I'll run back to you. Dad, it's sweet and it's funny, but it's completely out of touch with reality. Right, it's out of touch with reality. So I say to her Lucy, it is my job to protect you and to make sure that you make it safely to adulthood, but I cannot protect you if you do not stay near me. I cannot, as much as I want to, I cannot protect you if you do not stay near me.

Speaker 1: 31:33

So for us, here now, do we struggle with a similar arrogance, a similar overestimation of our own abilities and of ourselves? Do we come to church on Sunday but throughout the week, allow ourselves to wander from the Lord, allow temptation and sin to have a place in our lives without any sort of resistance or any sort of repentance? So we just allow it to be there, foolishly, believing that if a lion shows up to devour us, that we'll just kick him in the teeth and run back to Jesus, that we'll just jump over him, kick him in the teeth and run back to Jesus, that we'll just jump over him, that we're a dark green belt in Taekwondo.

Speaker 1: 32:15

I was recently listening to a famous divorce lawyer talk about the reason that people get divorced, and this is a man who has seen and profited off of hundreds, if not thousands, of divorces and he actually has some interesting insight into relationships. And he said that every divorce, every divorce, happens as a result of some combination of two things. Two things some combination of negligence and recklessness. Negligence and recklessness Now, what did? What do those two things have in common?

Speaker 1: 32:54

Arrogance, believing that we can neglect to maintain a relationship and it can still be okay and nothing's going to happen to it and I can neglect to maintain my relationship with my wife. That's arrogant. Or believing that we can behave recklessly with no consequences, that I can do this or that behavior and nothing bad will ever come of it that's arrogant as well. And the same is true with our faith. We shipwreck our faith from some combination of negligence and recklessness. Negligence drifting in our walk with God because we think that the relationship will just take care of itself and there's nothing we need to do in order to abide in him. And then recklessness, playing with sin, allowing sin and temptation into our lives without any resistance, because we think that we can handle it. So examine yourself this morning. Let us all repent of our arrogance in return to the Lord, who's not hard to find. We're moving on to point three, but that was the most important part of the sermon, so I hope you got what you came for today. But here's point three.

Speaker 1: 34:07

Social compromise is a third form of compromise. Every time we cave to social pressure, we trade a gospel opportunity for social comfort. Every time we cave to social pressure, we trade a gospel opportunity for social comfort. Let's look again at sort of the end of the passage 27 through 29. Paul says if one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you're disposed to go eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you this has been offered in sacrifice, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience. I do not mean your conscience, but his. So Paul says if you're invited to a private dinner and if your host sets meat before you and doesn't say anything about it, then whether or not it's been sacrificed to an idol doesn't matter. It's meat that God made. Eat it, no problem. But if the host makes a point to say this was given in sacrifice and we eat this now in honor of some idol Poseidon, whoever it might be, paul says then the Christian should refrain, not for their sake but for the sake of their host, which is an interesting thing to say.

Speaker 1: 35:28

And there's two things to recognize here. Refusing a meal like that would have been socially costly. To do that they would risk embarrassment, they would risk awkwardness or offending their host or even losing the relationship. But refusing would also be spiritually clarifying where they have an opportunity to plant a little flag for Jesus and make the statement that their allegiance ultimately belongs to Jesus. Paul wants the Corinthians to occupy this difficult middle space that we all need to figure out how to occupy, where they're involved with unbelievers and pagan neighbors such that they get invited to dinner. I hope that some of your unbelieving friends and neighbors invite you to dinner now and again. They're also not obnoxious in going out of their way to offend people. Paul says I try to please everyone in everything that I do. I try to give no offense to Jews or Greeks, but there are lines that they won't cross, even if it becomes socially awkward.

Speaker 1: 36:40

You all know this story. I don't know if you know it in this detail, but on the evening of December 1st in 1955 in Montgomery, alabama, 42-year-old seamstress Rosa Parks boards the bus to be taken home. The bus was empty. She sat up front, which is normally reserved for white folks, but soon it began to fill with passengers and a few white men boarded the bus and there were no seats for them. So the bus driver instructed Rosa and a few other black folks to get up and stand on the back of the bus so the white people could have their seats. There was both immense social and legal pressure to comply with that, because bus segregation was enshrined in Alabama law. It wouldn't have been much simpler for Rosa simply to, and less painful just to go with the flow and just to not to resist the social pressure, just to do what's asked of her and to comply. It may have been simpler, but it never would have led to any kind of change. She quietly but firmly refused to do so. The police were called and she was arrested, but what that led to was the Montgomery bus boycott and then eventually to the Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional. So because this woman did not cave to social pressure, it led to an immense cultural change over a period of a few years.

Speaker 1: 38:15

It's always easier in the moment to cave to social pressure, but when we do, we do so at a price. We miss an opportunity to open a door to a conversation that could lead to some game-changing moments for that person or in that relationship. Today it might not be idle meat at dinner. It might be pressure to join in gossip at work. It might be the expectation to toast to something that you can't celebrate as a Christian. It might be the silence that comes when everyone else laughs at a crude joke or at someone else's expense and you can't join in that. The pressure is the same. The pressure is just fit in. Just avoid the awkwardness. Just keep the peace, and I want to encourage you to embrace the awkwardness. I decided to do that a long time ago. That's why I'm a very awkward person. I talk a lot about the need to minister to our long time ago. That's why I'm a very awkward person. I talk a lot about the need to minister to our neighbors and friends. But for some of us, the big next step that we need to take is simply that our neighbors and friends would know that we are Christians, and I wonder for many of us here sitting today if that's just the step that we need to take. An opportunity is just to plant little flags that people would know where our allegiances lie.

Speaker 1: 39:37

Compromise is always deadly and dangerous.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Doctrinal compromise threatens the gospel, moral compromise threatens our faith and our well-being, and social compromise threatens opportunities for the gospel. Let's leave that behind. Strive to do that and cling to the one who, thankfully, never compromised for our sake, who went to the cross, though it cost him everything, for the sake of our salvation. To that end, let us pray Our Father. We pray that you would strengthen our hearts and our minds in our resolve to follow you faithfully and without compromise. We confess, lord, that we are prone to compromise and that we are so imperfect, but we thank you that you save imperfect people and, jesus, that our salvation does not depend on our ability to not compromise and to be faithful, but it depends on your faithfulness, and you were perfectly faithful and you continue to be perfectly faithful, and the good work that you began in us you will see it through to its completion. So we pray that you would help us this morning to recommit ourselves to you in a fresh way and to walk with you this week. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen.