1 Corinthians 10
10
Chapter 10
Idols
1My Christian friends, remember what happened to our Israelite ancestors. Moses led them out of Egypt long ago. While they followed Moses, they all walked under the same cloud. All of them walked across the Red Sea. #10:1 See Exodus 14:19-22. 2It is like God baptized all of them in the cloud and in the sea. In that way, they became people who followed Moses. 3All our ancestors ate the same spiritual food. #10:3 See Exodus 16:4-30. 4All of them drank the same spiritual drink. They drank water from the spiritual rock that went with them. Christ was that rock. #10:4 See Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 20:2-13. God gave food and drink to the Jews in the wilderness. This was a miracle that God did for them. They could see that God himself was with them. 5They all received the same help from God, but most of them did not please God. God caused most of them to die in the wilderness. #10:5 See Numbers 14:22-23; Hebrews 3:8-11.
6We must learn from those things that happened to our ancestors. We must not want to do very bad things, like they did. 7Do not worship idols, as some of them did. The Bible says: ‘The people sat down to eat and to drink. After that, they got up from their meal and they danced.’ #10:7 The people danced to worship their false gods. See Exodus 32:6.
8Nor must we ever have sex in wrong ways. Some of our ancestors did that, and 23,000 of them died in one day as a result. #10:8 See Numbers 25:1-9.
9Nor must we do bad things to see whether the Lord will punish us. Some of our ancestors did that, and God sent snakes to destroy them. #10:9 See Numbers 21:4-7.
10Do not complain against God. Some of our ancestors spoke like that, and God sent an angel of death to kill them. #10:10 See Numbers 14:1-38; 16:41.
11All these things happened to our ancestors so that we would learn from them. They are written in the Bible to teach us important lessons. We are people who live at a time when all things will become complete.
12If you think that you are standing strongly, be careful! Do not fall down! 13You may often want to do wrong things. The things that are difficult for you are difficult for other people too. Remember that God is always there to help you. He will not let any bad thing be too difficult for you. He will help you to stand against it. When you want to do something wrong, God will make you strong in your spirit. He will show you a way out, so that you do not do anything wrong.
14So, my friends, keep away from idols. Do not worship them. 15You are people who think carefully about things. So think about what I am saying to you. 16When we eat the Lord's Supper together, we remember that Christ died on our behalf. We thank God for the wine that we drink from the cup. In that way, we remember that we all belong to Christ because of his blood. We also break the bread and we eat it together. In that way, we remember that we all belong to Christ because of his body that died on the cross. 17We are many people, but all of us eat part of the same loaf of bread. That shows that we are one group of people. We belong together because Christ died on our behalf.
18Think about Israel's people. They eat part of the animals that the priests offer on the altar as a sacrifice. This shows that they share together in the sacrifice. 19So think about food that people offer to idols as a sacrifice. I am not saying that the idols are real gods. The food that people offer to them is not special food. 20But the people who offer food to idols are worshipping demons. They are not worshipping God when they do that. I do not want you to share in what they do to worship demons. 21If you drink anything from the cup of demons, you can not then drink wine from the Lord's cup. If you share a meal with demons, you can not also share in the Lord's meal.
22If we do things like that, we will cause the Lord to be angry. We should worship only him. You know that we are not stronger than he is!
23Some of you may say, ‘We are free to do anything that we want to do!’ But not everything is good for you to do. You may say, ‘We are free to do anything!’ But not everything helps you to be strong as a believer. 24Do not think about the things that will help you. Instead, each of you should think about what will help other people.
25You can eat any meat that people sell in the market. Do not ask questions about the meat. Do not cause your thoughts to have trouble. 26The Bible says this: ‘The earth, and everything in it, belongs to the Lord.’ #10:26 See Psalms 24:1
27People who do not believe in Christ may ask you to eat a meal with them. Agree to go to his home, if you want to. Then you should eat whatever food they give to you. Do not ask questions about the food. Do not cause your thoughts to have trouble. 28But someone there may say to you, ‘They offered this food to an idol.’ If someone tells you that, do not eat the food. It might cause trouble to the thoughts of the person who told you. 29It may not cause your own thoughts to have trouble. But the other person may not be sure if it is right to eat that kind of food.
Perhaps you will say, ‘Why should another person's thoughts decide what is right for me? I am free to do what I want. 30I thank God for my food before I eat it. If I do that, nobody should say that it is wrong for me to eat it.’
31Whatever you are doing, show that God is great. When you eat anything, or you drink anything, do it all in a way that praises God. 32Do not cause problems for other people. Whether they are Jews or Gentiles, or people who belong to God's church, live in a way that does not cause problems for them. 33Copy my example. Whatever I do, I try to make other people happy. I do not try to do what will help me. Instead, I want to help other people. I live in that way so that God will save many people.
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1 Corinthians 10
10
1-5Remember our history, friends, and be warned. All our ancestors were led by the providential Cloud and taken miraculously through the Sea. They went through the waters, in a baptism like ours, as Moses led them from enslaving death to salvation life. They all ate and drank identical food and drink, meals provided daily by God. They drank from the Rock, God’s fountain for them that stayed with them wherever they were. And the Rock was Christ. But just experiencing God’s wonder and grace didn’t seem to mean much—most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased.
6-10The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did—“First the people partied, then they threw a dance.” We must not be sexually promiscuous—they paid for that, remember, with 23,000 deaths in one day! We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them.
11-12These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.
13No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.
14So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.
15-18I assume I’m addressing believers now who are mature. Draw your own conclusions: When we drink the cup of blessing, aren’t we taking into ourselves the blood, the very life, of Christ? And isn’t it the same with the loaf of bread we break and eat? Don’t we take into ourselves the body, the very life, of Christ? Because there is one loaf, our many-ness becomes one-ness—Christ doesn’t become fragmented in us. Rather, we become unified in him. We don’t reduce Christ to what we are; he raises us to what he is. That’s basically what happened even in old Israel—those who ate the sacrifices offered on God’s altar entered into God’s action at the altar.
19-22Do you see the difference? Sacrifices offered to idols are offered to nothing, for what’s the idol but a nothing? Or worse than nothing, a minus, a demon! I don’t want you to become part of something that reduces you to less than yourself. And you can’t have it both ways, banqueting with the Master one day and slumming with demons the next. Besides, the Master won’t put up with it. He wants us—all or nothing. Do you think you can get off with anything less?
23-24Looking at it one way, you could say, “Anything goes. Because of God’s immense generosity and grace, we don’t have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster.” But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.
25-28With that as a base to work from, common sense can take you the rest of the way. Eat anything sold at the butcher shop, for instance; you don’t have to run an “idolatry test” on every item. “The earth,” after all, “is God’s, and everything in it.” That “everything” certainly includes the leg of lamb in the butcher shop. If a nonbeliever invites you to dinner and you feel like going, go ahead and enjoy yourself; eat everything placed before you. It would be both bad manners and bad spirituality to cross-examine your host on the ethical purity of each course as it is served. On the other hand, if he goes out of his way to tell you that this or that was sacrificed to god or goddess so-and-so, you should pass. Even though you may be indifferent as to where it came from, he isn’t, and you don’t want to send mixed messages to him about who you are worshiping.
29-30But, except for these special cases, I’m not going to walk around on eggshells worrying about what small-minded people might say; I’m going to stride free and easy, knowing what our large-minded Master has already said. If I eat what is served to me, grateful to God for what is on the table, how can I worry about what someone will say? I thanked God for it and he blessed it!
31-33So eat your meals heartily, not worrying about what others say about you—you’re eating to God’s glory, after all, not to please them. As a matter of fact, do everything that way, heartily and freely to God’s glory. At the same time, don’t be callous in your exercise of freedom, thoughtlessly stepping on the toes of those who aren’t as free as you are. I try my best to be considerate of everyone’s feelings in all these matters; I hope you will be, too.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.