363: Martyn Lawrence - All Things Are Lawful

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:03

   Welcome to good Chris selfie and talks. I’m Levi. I’m Chris. I’m Jason. And I’m Brian, thank you for joining us this week on this podcast. We select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. Each week we post a talk that we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world. Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk. Welcome to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast. This is brother Brian.

2. 0:49

   This week’s talk is the last class in a series by brother Martin Lawrence from the UK. The series is called The Paradox of Liberty and it was just given at the Mid-Atlantic Shippensburg Bible School a few months ago. The entire series is a fantastic listen, very thought provoking. All the classes will be available on the extended podcast, and the other class beyond this one that I’d highly recommend is number 2, The House of Bondage. The class we’re listening to today was actually the last one called All Things Are Lawful, and it continues to expound on the idea that discipleship for us means giving things up and the provisions that God makes for us to be truly set free from the burden of our flesh along the way. Specifically, this class was fascinating for the deep dive into the culture of Roman slave society and the way that the Gospel would have been just such a world altering message on both ends of the spectrum, be it so many things tie directly into our experiences today in 2025.

3. 2:26

   The link for the YouTube videos with all the slides will be available in the description. As always, we hope that this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. From the series The Paradox of Liberty, Brother Martin Lawrence, All things are lawful. We added, you might remember, last yesterday, I was going to say last night, yesterday, an extra principle, didn’t we, that service is not a transaction, that it’s been done in love. And we’re going to spend our final session just digging through the New Testament to open up one or two more of these freedom ideas.

4. 3:03

   We’ve been working our way all the way through from beginning to end. And the point I’ve been trying to bring out my brothers and sisters, is this, that the the wall between US and the society in which we live is not quite as solid as we might think and not perhaps quite as solid as we might like it to be. Discipleship is about willingly giving things up, and sometimes we just need a gentle reminder about how we might best do that. I’m going to take you on the whistle stop tour of the Gospel of Mark to begin with.

5. 3:34

   Can you come with me to Mark chapter 1? Going to go flying through four or five passages just to tease out this point once again. So Mark chapter 1, it’s the beginning of the Lord’s ministry. Of course he comes verse 14 preaching the Kingdom of God, saying the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. And Mark one and verse 16, as Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers.

6. 4:10

   And Jesus said to them, come after me and I will make you fishers of men. And straight away there’s Mark’s, Mark’s word, isn’t it? Straight away they forsook their Nets and they followed him. So nothing surprising, nothing revolutionary. Jesus is walking by the sea and he calls Simon and Andrew to leave something behind.

7. 4:28

   And then they carry on. And James of Zebedee and John his brother are in the ship mending their Nets. And straight away he called them, and they left their father in the ship with the hired servants and went on after him. Simon and Andrew leave their Nets, their job. James and John leave the boat behind and their employees and their dad. Nothing much to talk about there other than the fact that people are leaving things behind.

8. 4:55

   Just come over to chapter 2 and verse 14. Jesus is walking by the seaside again and he sees Levi’s son of Alpheus chapter 2, verse 14, sitting at the receipt of custom and says to him, follow me and Levi rose and followed him. There’s a pattern emerging, isn’t there already that we’re seeing that fellowship with the Lord doesn’t just happen by accident, doesn’t just happen by coincidence.

9. 5:18

   There is a plan of, of teaching and preaching and healing and the Lord is going to purposefully recruit a group of disciples from that, but it won’t be popular with everybody. Just come on to chapter 3 and verse 31.

10. 5:36

    There came his brothers and his mother standing outside, sending to him, calling him. And the multitude said, behold, your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you. And he answered and said, well, who are who is my mother or my brothers? And he looked at those around him and said, behold, my mother’s and my and my mother and my brothers. For whoever will do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother.

11. 6:00

    Now there’s a point to be made that he doesn’t mention father. And we could talk about that. But you know, everybody’s leaving something. People are leaving their jobs. People are leaving their livelihoods, their employees, their parents. Now the Lord is leaving His family behind. There’s a little marker being laid down here about the Lord’s own commitment to His, to his ministry, to the service to which His father has called him.

12. 6:25

    Chapter 6 and verse 4, I suppose verse 2, just to make sure we know where we are. The Sabbath has come and He’s back in the synagogue again. And they say of him, is this not the Carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Josephs and Judas and Judas and Simon? And are his sisters not here?

13. 6:45

    And they were offended by him. And he could do no mighty work there. Verse five, save laying his hands on a few sick folk. The Lord is giving up things. He is without honour amongst his own family and in the area in which he grows up. Discipleship is about giving things up. Come to chapter 8 for the last of this series of references, verse 34.

14. 7:12

    When He had called the people to him with his disciples, he said, Whoever will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life will lose it. Whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospels, the same shall save it. Jesus assumes that people are going to give up things to follow Him. It’s, it’s discipleship 101.

15. 7:42

    He doesn’t hide it for us. He’s always upfront about it. It’s not as if we can work our way through 30 or 40 years of discipleship and then suddenly go, I didn’t realise we had to do that. Lord, this is upfront. This is happening to everybody. You have to give up certain things that you might feel very close to, you know, when your phone updates and shuts down unless you do something useful to it. So you have to do a software update and you click OK, and then it says you need to accept the terms and conditions. And you go OK.

16. 8:18

    And then it says, Are you sure? And you go OK. And then it says there are 84 pages of terms and conditions. Do you want to read them first? And you say no, but OK. And then finally your phone starts to do something. This is not like that. The Lord is making it clear all the way through the ministry that discipleship is about leaving your, about turning your back on something important.

17. 8:44

    It’s about not being as free as sometimes you think it is. Now, some of us have come here this week having turned our backs on something extremely dear to us. You might find that you have to turn your back on your career. You might find that there are members of your family who who will not accept your faith. There may be other things that that lie deep on your shoulders late at night when you are in prayer and you are wrestling with the very idea of giving them up. Freedom is really hard.

18. 9:17

    And yet the Lord is making it clear that we understand that this is the process that we go through and, and as, and as all of those examples show, sometimes things can be very personal for us. So I’m going to bring you, if I can, brothers and sisters, to some examples that the Apostle Paul lays down for us in terms of how we give up things in our discipleship, things that we wouldn’t necessarily expect in order to, whilst seemingly making ourselves less free, actually understanding what liberty is all about.

19. 9:52

    But I ask you to turn over to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. That was really just a preamble. We can spend the rest of our time in First Corinthians. I’m going to bring you to chapter 6 to some words that you know very well, not just because they were the title of the session, but because Paul is trying to tease out a conundrum for the Corinthian brothers and sisters.

20. 10:16

    You remember Paul writes 4 letters to Corinth. We’ve only got 2 of them. First one he writes we don’t have. And the second one he writes, which is a response to some things that they’ve said is what we call One Corinthians. And because it’s a response to the things that that they’ve written to him, we get a whole load of quotations from that Corinthian letter in our One Corinthians. And and then he writes a third letter, a severe letter that we don’t have.

21. 10:45

    And then he writes a fourth one, which is which is what you and I call Second Corinthians. And here in chapter 6 and verse 12, Paul is quoting them back at themselves. All things are lawful unto me. If you’ve got a modern version that I think it puts it in quotation marks, he’s, he’s quoting themselves, quoting them back at themselves.

22. 11:05

    This is what they’ve said to him. We think that all things are lawful, but Paul says not everything’s profitable. Not everything is expedient. All things are lawful for me. There’s the quotation again. But Paul says I will not be brought under the power of any. This is the mentality of the Roman free man because I am free in Roman society, I can choose to do what I like.

23. 11:32

    And we’ll have a look in a second at some of the ways in which that particular line could be indulged. But Paul is trying to say freedom doesn’t work like that. Freedom, he says verse 14, is because of the cross. God has both raised up the Lord and also will raise up us by his own power. Now it’s Saturday morning.

24. 11:54

    You are checked out in part of your rooms and mentally checked out of the Bible school already. Your children haven’t slept for about 96 hours. You’ve eaten more hamburgers than you’ve got through in an entire year. You’re thinking about what the freeway is going to look like, and we’re going to do a Roman history lesson just for fun because we are now friends. Slavery, wrote one writer, has been virtually ubiquitous in human civilization.

25. 12:24

    But the Romans created one of the few genuine slave societies in the Western experience. Stretching across half a Millennium, sprawling across a vast tract of space, Roman slavery existed on a different order of magnitude. 5 centuries, 3 continents, 10s of millions of souls. Roman slavery stands as the true ancient predecessor to the systems of mass scale slavery in the New World.

26. 12:50

    So when we’re reading about what’s going on as a free man in First Corinthians 6, when you think about the circumstances that your early brothers and sisters lived in and the things that they had to give up for the Gospel, it sits in that context. In a world where 1/3 of Rome was not free, where where the notion of liberty meant something that you and I really will struggle to get our get our arms around. Think, for example, about Roman law. I’m conscious that text is quite small. It’s even smaller on my screen.

27. 13:23

    Sorry. Slaves didn’t have a vote, which meant that you couldn’t change the system legally and if they rebelled they would be executed. So you couldn’t change the system illegally. Spartacus being the most sort of high profile example of all of that. There were no Social Security laws. If you had a slave who got old or a slave who got sick, it was the equivalent of your toast to having broken, and so you just got rid of it and got a new slave.

28. 13:54

    Everything is utterly dehumanized. You couldn’t emancipate your slaves. In other words, you couldn’t set them free. And even though there’s a series of laws that are brought in to do that, there are limits put around that. So you can only free a certain proportion of slaves in your house in order to make sure that society still continued to function. If you were freed, for example, under the age of 30, you could never be a Roman citizen.

29. 14:20

    So there were a whole bunch of challenges that exist. In Athens, if you were freed, you became a a free not citizen. But in Rome, even if you became a citizen eventually, you would still never really be free. Your master could still call on you. There’s a a famous letter that floats around that Cicero writes to a former slave and he’s really just checking in and says, I just wanted to see how you’re doing, making sure that your health is OK.

30. 14:43

    And by the way, if you don’t reply, I’ll thrash you. In other words, even though you’re free, you’re not really free. That’s why Paul says in Romans chapter 8 that slavery is associated with fear, because it really was. There is a proposal that turns up in Rome in the 1st century that slaves should wear uniforms because in the street you can’t tell who the slaves are and who the free people are. And it’s voted down by the Senate because if you’ve got the slaves in the street wearing uniforms, they will realise how many they are.

31. 15:18

    And so it gets turned down because you don’t want to ferment a rebellion. Now, the gospel is not about freeing slaves, just like it’s not about healing everybody who was sick. You remember the Lord’s dilemma. Do I stay here and heal, or do I go on and preach? The gospel is is about explaining the condition that people find themselves in, about allowing people to understand discipleship in their particular circumstances.

32. 15:44

    Because if you were a slave, coming to Christ would feel like freedom. Ironically, if you were free, coming to Christ might feel decidedly restrictive, which is what Paul is trying to help us understand here in First Corinthians. Think about what he says to the Romans or the Galatians or the Colossians. Think about what comes up in Philemon where we have a a real life situation of a slave who has gone free and Paul is saying reconciliation between brothers is actually ironically more important than making sure that slaves go free.

33. 16:20

    What the Gospel is doing is deconstructing the Roman social hierarchy without a revolution because it will put brothers and sisters lives in jeopardy and so Roman law is going to bump up against the Gospel. What about Roman families? Well, of course, one of the cruelties of slavery was that it’s it assaulted the family structure.

34. 16:41

    Slave marriages were not recognized. You could sell members of the slaves family or the slave, but not the family. Just on a whim. If you had your friends round for the evening and they took a a a fancy to to the slave girl who’d been dancing, you would package her up and send her off, regardless of whether she had children in your house. Slaves are systematically dehumanized. And so when the gospel comes along, not only does it liberate the marginalised, not only does it blow a hole in everything that people are used to, but it moves family structure to a more central position.

35. 17:20

    And the number of conversations I’ve had about the value of families at this Bible school should make us understand how important that is. The entire structure is being turned entirely on its head. Think about some of the things that the New Testament asks brothers and sisters to do. Sitting with your slave, having a meal with your slave, breaking bread and sharing wine with your slave.

36. 17:44

    When Paul writes Greet one another with a holy kiss, he might as well have asked them to go to the moon. It was completely different from what they were expected.

37. 17:55

    Paul says in Philemon, doesn’t he? You are no longer a bondservant, but more than a bondservant, A beloved brother. Your entire social status has been moved to another position, even though the idea of greeting your slave with a holy kiss was utterly, utterly revolutionary. So Roman law didn’t work in your favour until the gospel comes along. Family life didn’t work in your favour until the gospel came along.

38. 18:23

    And. And here’s the humdinger for Saturday morning when you’re still a bit sleepy. The very structure of Roman private life, well, it wasn’t very private meant that everything became difficult. Roman women of status were expected to marry shortly after puberty. Men wouldn’t marry. Free men wouldn’t marry until what? What the Romans called middle age.

39. 18:44

    OK, I’m not looking at anybody in particular, but but late 20s, early 30s was in the Roman Empire called middle age. So I think I’m still in middle age, but there we are. If you married or sorry if you, if you, if you violated somebody who was married, there were penalties. But of course you had the liberality.

40. 19:00

    You had the freedom to do pretty much whatever you wanted with anybody else. You and I understand the expression a double standard on morality. It means people are not being treated equally. It means there is an imbalance of power and some groups get to indulge themselves and others don’t. Rome did not have a double standard on morality.

41. 19:21

    It had a quadruple standard on morality because you had male and female, you had slave and free, you had high status and low status, and you had concubines. It wasn’t hypocrisy, it was just different rules based on where you stood in the social order. And then the gospel is here and it doesn’t wipe it all away in one moment because it can’t.

42. 19:41

    It’s not possible to do that. But it radically changes the expectation that different classes of people get to follow different rules based on whether or not they’re free. And in the Roman world, it wasn’t based on on right or wrong, it was based on social shame. So a married man, a married Roman free man, could choose to do what he wanted with somebody in a lower social class, which is pretty unpleasant. And not necessarily something that we want to spend too much time thinking about, but Paul is writing, if you’ve got the chapter open still, he’s homing right in on this in chapter 6, verse 13.

43. 20:13

    Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And he’s striking at the very heart of the Roman free man’s attitude that says all things are lawful, that I can choose to indulge myself in any way that I want because the premise of, of, of Roman Pagan culture is self-control. Limiting myself is utterly impossible and freedom is everything.

44. 20:38

    And Paul says, hang on a minute, that’s not how it works. Even though it worked in the Athenian empire as well. That’s not how the gospel works. self-control is not possible. Yes, it is, says Paul. Does that sound familiar?

45. 20:54

    It’s never, never wise to draw too many comparisons between a point in time and our day and age. That sounds remarkably familiar to some of the things that we’re seeing. I asked you the other day whether anybody had read Chronicles of Narnia, and you were very shy. All the teens have, by the way.

46. 21:11

    So just admit that. Anybody read Augustine’s Confessions? That’s the right answer. By the way, Augustine tells us he was in a relationship with a concubine and then he sends her away when he he gets engaged around about the age of 30. But the problem is his engagement is quite a long one and he doesn’t get married for a long time. And, well, you know, he’s a Roman free man and he wants to indulge himself.

47. 21:33

    So he writes. And I went and got me another one because that’s what you do. That’s the expectation on this man. It’s a world where people without protection, people without social honour are utterly exploited and it makes us feel a bit uncomfortable. You’ve seen this slide before in another context, but suddenly the gospel comes along and changes absolutely everything.

48. 21:58

    First, Paul will approach in Romans chapter 1 the issue of gender, and he will say if the ACT is same gender to same gender, then it is wrong. Ipso facto. It is wrong not because God likes to randomly draw lines in the sand and tell you not to cross them, but because of the Genesis creation. And then in First Corinthians 6 and seven, he will focus on partners and he will say if the ACT is with anyone other than your spouse, then it’s wrong not because God is drawing lines randomly in the sand, but because of the Genesis creation and he’s taking care of gender and he’s taking care of partner. And suddenly the boundaries of what Roman sexual propriety could be have shrunk dramatically. Chapter 6, verse 15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?

49. 22:49

    Shall I then take the members of Christ to make them the members of a prostitute? God forbid. Don’t you know that he who is joined to a prostitute shall be 1 body for two says he shall be 1 flesh. There’s the Genesis creation, but he that is joined to the Lord is 1 Spirit. The fundamental premise of the gospel is to change the colour of the sky.

50. 23:12

    The gospel is going to reach out. The Lord is going to reach out to the marginalized, to the sexual sinners, to the unloved. He’s going to cut across social assumptions in the early Eclesias and obviously in wider society that are built on hierarchy and are built on status. And he’s going to home in on morality and and make the point, the unavoidable point that everybody counts because everybody’s made in the image of God. Freedom starts with God as creator, with those those broad liberal opportunities that he gives Adam and Eve with guardrails and says everybody has agency because everybody is made in God’s image.

51. 23:54

    It’s true whether you are the emperor with all the power in the world. It’s true whether you are a craft maker’s slave girl. It’s true whether you are an illegitimate son of a metal worker. You matter. You count in a way that you could never have expected before because of a man who said, take my yoke upon you because my burden is light.

52. 24:16

    This is not a man, as we said earlier on in the week, for whom domination matters. Everybody has agency. Everybody now can be free. But those two issues throw out some challenges because if you exalt the marginalized and if you narrow the boundaries of sexual activity, it it raises raises one of two tricky issues. It raises the issue of rights because, you know, it’s not just limited to our world.

53. 24:44

    And it raises the issues of freedom of activity. Does a person have to consent or not to certain acts? That’s pretty contemporary. Does a person have the right or not to certain freedoms? And the Lord comes along, and Paul is writing this letter in part to say that our moral actions are fundamental to who we are.

54. 25:04

    Not that love is love, but that God is love. And so the gospel begins to enhance. It doesn’t begin. It does enhance the social status and the the dignity of those who are unfree. And ecclesias have to start confronting the issue of people who are not normally even given the time of day, but now are to be elevated to to the level of everybody else.

55. 25:31

    Freedom means, Paul says, that a powerful male can control his desires. He has to make himself unfree. Freedom means that somebody who is subservient in the eyes of 1st century society, a slave woman or a child almost certainly also has freedom, which means they have agency to resist. They are more free than they’ve ever been before. Verse 18 Flee fornication.

56. 25:58

    Every sin that a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own, for you are bought with a price.

57. 26:14

    Therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are gods. And Paul says you, you are bought with a price. He’s including the free man who never considered himself to be a slave, would have been, would have been amazed if you accused him of anything other than being as free as he wanted. But a man who suddenly has to manage his desire towards his actual slave?

58. 26:39

    What a world that the gospel comes into. What a change that this thing, this thing brings about. Freedom, I guess I’m trying to say, cuts both ways in terms of the way we restrict ourselves. Again, it’s not freedom in a 1960 sense. It’s a freedom because I am willingly free, because I of what I saw as a necessity, I am choosing to be free. I am choosing to show grace to those who would normally not get noticed, not not for me, but to those for whom the Lord dies. And I don’t know about you and maybe I just see it around me, but but I, I think we fall into this sneaky kind of dualism sometimes where we say, you know, just just one more time and I’ll stop.

59. 27:27

    Whatever it is, whatever sin you carry with you that you know about most of all, we just say, well, one more time, Lord, and I’ll stop. It won’t happen more than once, Lord, as if we can somehow leave our physical bodies at the scene of the crime and move on with our lives.

60. 27:40

    And the attitude of 2025 just seeps into the way in which we live. And, and there is a temptation sometimes to see the, the, the, the sexual holiness to which the gospel calls us as some sort of outdated toxic culture. And, and, and I beg and implore you brothers and sisters, to not see it as that, to see it as the elevated, inspired and holy word of God, and not to make it start sounding oppressive and limiting and unfree. Because at that point we go right the way back to the Garden of Eden.

61. 28:14

    We go all the way full circle to Adam and Eve saying I want more freedom, Lord, please. I don’t like your boundaries. Lord, let’s be more confident in what scripture is telling us about these issues. CS Lewis wrote. I apologise for yet another non Christadelphian author, but this one, this one touches me. One of the great difficulties he wrote back at the end of World War 2 is to keep before an audience’s mind the question of truth.

62. 28:40

    They always think you are recommending Christianity, not because it is true, but because it is comforting and useful. You have to keep forcing them back and again, back to the real point. Only then will you be able to undermine their belief that a certain amount of religion is desirable. But one mustn’t carry it too far. One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance.

63. 29:12

    The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. Of course the gospel is useful. Praise God, the gospel is useful. It can help you with any issue you might ever face. It can help you with sexual temptation. It can help you manage your money or deal with grief or understand childlessness or or rationalize your declining health or your dislike of your body or whatever issues that we might come to face.

64. 29:39

    Of course it’s, of course it’s useful. It’s not true because it’s useful. It’s useful because it’s true. That’s the point that he was trying to make as well. Once we start talking about these issues, severed from the gospel, we’re just shouting at the stars. You and I, brothers and sisters, live in a world that has sawn off the branch that it’s sitting on and wondering why the ground is getting closer.

65. 30:06

    It’s completely ridiculous. And it’s fascinating that the most explicitly gospel value of, of love is now used as a banner to object to Christianity, to, to object to the true gospel. You know, people who objected to the gospel of the Roman world objected because it promoted a lifestyle that wasn’t manly and virile enough. And it, we’ve touched some of those issues already. It was so the line said it was for fools and women and slaves and, and they flocked to it in their droves. Well, now it’s the opposite.

66. 30:36

    Now it’s attacked for being hostile to fools and women and slaves because love is love and Love Is All you need, right? Our 21st century sexual ethics are reduced to a single prohibition. Thou shalt not suppress any desire. And the gospel says it doesn’t work like that. You need to turn the world on its head. And he will begin to go on in the letter to dig into some more of these freedom issues.

67. 31:04

    Paul’s letter to the to the Corinthians or the 1st letter to the Corinthians begins to open up all manner of freedom issues. We will not cover them all, of course. So he’s talking about all things being lawful. As we’ve explained, Chapter 7 is going to focus in on the issues of self-control, self-control in particular within a marriage situation and says within that, that that if a slave is baptized, there is no stigma to being a slave.

68. 31:28

    It’s OK in society’s eyes to be unfree because in the gospel’s eyes you are much more free. You can even be free, he says, from anxiety. You can be liberated from a whole series of things. In fact, in Chapter 7, Paul takes a a very exalted view of singleness, which which I think is something that we ought to make sure we talk about more.

69. 31:51

    We often either consciously or unconsciously talk about singleness as a transit point on the way to marriage. And, and I don’t think Paul does that. He says singleness is an exalted state. I suspect if he was sat down there he would say 50% of us who are married are going to be single again in the future.

70. 32:10

    So being a disciple and not being married, it’s not just OK, it’s an honourable state to be in and you can work out your freedom in those worlds as well. He will go on in Chapter 9 to talk about though he is free, he’s made a servant of all. He’s disciplined his body and limited himself and kept it under control. He’s going to talk in chapter 10 about not seeking his own good but those of his neighbor.

71. 32:32

    In other words, voluntary submission and giving himself up. He’ll talk about chapter in Chapter 11 about symbols of voluntary subjection, voluntary submission. He’ll talk a little bit further down in Chapter 11 about what happens when the ecclesia gathers, when if you’ve got a meal and somebody else doesn’t, you don’t just plow in and fill your plate, but that you recognise that you might need to restrict yourself because others don’t have what you have. And then of course, write the way down in chapter 16 and in the second letter as well, he’ll talk about the collections for the Saints and echo the, the the Exodus metaphor and say when you make your collection, you are to freely give. It’s a free will offering, just like it was when they came out of Egypt, just like it was when God gave the manner to them in the wilderness and they could go out and collect what they chose to collect.

72. 33:22

    All of these things that are going on are telling us that Scripture is not giving carte blanche to to any one person. It’s teaching us to restrict ourselves for the benefit of other people. Slaves are not set free, but masters are told to moderate their behaviour. Wives are not given authority, but husbands are told to love their wives. Sisters are not given freedom to do all that we now say they can, but men are told to stand up and take a lead. Those who are married are encouraged not to divorce. I’m trying to get my words carefully here. It’s about freedom to restrain, not freedom to dominate in every possible shape and shade of life. Hence Mary’s song.

73. 34:04

    He’s brought down the mighty and he’s raised up the humble. So I’ve scandalized you by talking about Roman sexual ethics. Let’s talk about human rights just to round things off. Come on to chapter 8, 1st Corinthians 8 and verse one. Now as touching things offered to idols, we know that, and here’s a quote of them back to them. We all have knowledge.

74. 34:32

    Knowledge, Paul says, puffs up, but love builds up. And if any man think that he knows anything, he knows nothing as yet as he ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known of him. As concerning, therefore, the eating of those things offered in sacrifice to idols. We know that an idol is nothing in the world and there is no other God but one. And he will go on to talk in this chapter about the challenge of food being offered to idols.

75. 35:00

    We sometimes put this side by side, don’t we, with what’s going on in Romans chapter 14. Just want to keep this tight just because that clock is about to consume me. But you remember back in Romans 14, Paul sets up a a comparison between the strong and the weak. And the focus there is the Jewish food laws. And the point Paul tries to make in Romans 14 is that all food is clean, that the the law has been abrogated. Nothing that you eat from the outside can make you unclean because of course, it’s what is on the inside. But if it feels unclean, if if you bring something to the table, as it were, from your past that makes you feel that eating food that under the Law of Moses will be unclean, then don’t do it.

76. 35:43

    It’s an individual choice. He says it’s better to be strong. Paul says he’s strong, it’s better to be strong, but it brings more responsibility when you do so. And he actually gives us the example in Romans 15 of the one who was the strongest, the one who took the most responsibility upon himself, IE the Lord.

77. 36:04

    So, So what Romans 14 is doing is setting up a comparison between the strong and the weak, but over an issue that in one way has already been dealt with the the the Jewish food laws. What first Corinthians chapters 8, what chapter 8 is going to do is focus in on a slightly different food issue.

78. 36:21

    It’s not strong VE weak, it’s knowledge VE conscience. And the food is not the law unclean under the Mosaic law, but it’s food which has been offered in a Pagan temple. And here things are slightly different, aren’t they? Because what Paul is trying to say here is don’t offer food. Don’t eat food offered to idols because it sends the wrong message. It will cause others to stumble.

79. 36:47

    Yes, all food is clean. He said an idol is nothing, but don’t eat it if it causes your brother to stumble. Don’t eat it if it sends the wrong message. In other words, in the Romans example, you can make a choice. In the Corinthians example he says it’s better not to do that.

80. 37:05

    Not that knowledge is better or that conscience is better, but it’s the way in which they are applied. Now there are some Corinthians, he says, who are insisting that they can eat food offered to idols. And you know, others just have to learn to live with it because it’s my freedom. I can do what I want and you just have to figure it out. Verse seven.

81. 37:20

    However, there is in every man not that knowledge For some with conscience of the idol to this hour, eat is a thing offered to an idol and their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commends us not to God. For neither if we eat are we better, neither if we eat not are we the worst.

82. 37:36

    Paul’s response is that knowledge is good. In other words, ignorance is not a target, but that it should lead to love. It shouldn’t lead to claiming rights over your brother and sister. Verse 9. Take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours becomes a stumbling block to those who are weak. Stumbling block is not a shorthand for something you do that I don’t like, which we sometimes think that it is. It’s about whether or not you and I can agree with something. It’s a particular kind of offence that leads a disciple to sin against his or her conscience. And it’s never right to sin against your conscience because it leads you towards sin, it leads you towards destruction, as Paul says, doesn’t it in verse doesn’t he in verse 11 If through your quote knowledge the weak brother perish for whom Christ died.

83. 38:30

    There is an issue there of, of whether or not we claim our liberty in Christ to choose to do as we want in this circumstance. And Paul says, no, that’s not how it works. If when you sin or but when you sin so against your brother and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. And then Paul will go on to use two examples just to underpin his argument.

84. 38:58

    And the first is in Chapter 9. He’ll give us the example of himself. The second is in chapter 10, and he’ll give us the example of the nation, and they are both there specifically to underpin this issue of what he can and can’t claim. So he will tell us in Chapter 9 that he’s an apostle and therefore he’s free to claim certain rights because he’s an apostle, but he declines to do so. He chooses not to claim those rights because he doesn’t want to put any barriers in the way of others. When he does that.

85. 39:31

    And it’s ironic because Paul tells us that he knows and I’m I’m just skipping over rather than diving into the verses just because I want to make sure we don’t run too tight on time. Paul says he knows that idols are nothing, but he also acknowledges their influence to avoid many being destroyed.

86. 39:46

    That’s the problem that he goes through in Chapter 9. Just come actually to verse 19. In Chapter 9, though I be free from all, yet have I made myself servant to all that I might gain them more. To the Jews, I became a Jew that I might gain the Jews to them under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them under the law.

87. 40:04

    And so he goes on verse 22 as well to the weak. I became as weak that I might gain the weak. What I am trying to avoid doing, he says, is or what I am doing is limiting myself for the sake of others so that I serve God and therefore serve my brothers and sisters.

88. 40:21

    Freedom is not about just indulging yourself. Randomly I therefore verse 26 run not as uncertainly, so I fight not as one that beats the air, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest by any means when I preach to others, I myself should be a castaway. Remember Jeremiah 2, that one place that the Hebrew word ever gets translated as slave in in in in your King James Version?

89. 40:48

    And that verse about the wild camel running around randomly in the desert that Israel had let themselves go free and God was going to deal with the consequences. Paul says I’m trying not to be that camel and rather hopefully he doesn’t use that word at the end of Chapter 9 to make it.

90. 41:04

    Then he talks to us about Israel, who of course were free in a different sense because they were God’s first born son. But they fell. Why did they fall chapter 10? Well, because despite having all these things laid out before them, despite being under the cloud and eating the same spiritual meat and drinking the same spiritual drink of the the rock that went with them, which was Christ with many of them, Paul says God was not well pleased because they put barriers in the way of their own faith.

91. 41:31

    And they knew because they were told in every possible way through the law of Moses and through the prophets and through through those he sent. The idols were nothing, but they didn’t acknowledge their influence and many were destroyed. It’s the exact counterpart of what Paul is telling us about himself in the previous chapter.

92. 41:51

    And again, it just rounds off our our look at the servant songs, doesn’t it? The Israel who were free to serve God, but ended up serving idols and giving themselves over to something else. Paul is telling us that that one of the reasons we do what we do is love for our weaker brothers and sisters. And if I bring you all the way down to chapter 10 and verse 23, all things he says are lawful for me, quoting them back at themselves.

93. 42:22

    But all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but not all things build up. Let’s no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. There are limits, Paul says in how far you need to go. You don’t need to go and dig through the bins to make sure that the food that you eat in the kitchen is clean in a particular way. But if you know it’s from the temple, verse 28, if any man says to you, it’s offered in sacrifice, don’t eat it for his sake that showed you and for conscience sake. Why?

94. 42:52

    Because of the Genesis creation because end of verse 28. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. What is sorry, let me get that right. What is Paul trying to to get across As I, as I fire out these verses to a bunch of very tired looking people? What is Paul trying to communicate to us?

95. 43:12

    He’s trying to say don’t do anything that gives the impression you are soft on idolatry. Don’t do anything that gives the impression that you share in the cult of the city. In his day and age, it’s me offered to idols. In our day and age, it’s a whole bunch of other issues. Rainbow flags, right?

96. 43:37

    I, I, I know good friends who will say we have no issue with our, our son or daughter going to school carrying a bag with a rainbow on it because it’s God’s symbol, because it’s a symbol of, of his power and his creation and his judgement. And it’s just a little flag, only I don’t think it is because it’s not just a little flag to the organization that that now hang their hat on that particular life.

97. 44:01

    Just like Paul is saying in these chapters, it’s not just me. It’s a way of placating an angry deity. And so if you you wear rainbow laces to fall to school or, or to football or whatever it might be, you are absolutely 100% correct that the rainbow is God’s symbol and he sent it to prove his promises.

98. 44:20

    Verse 26 again, the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. It’s absolutely right that it’s his, but you’re sending mixed signals, I think, because that symbol has now been offered to idols, and the way that that symbol lands in the 21st century is going to cause people to sin against their conscience, which is what all of these chapters are trying to get us to understand. Or maybe your company says you need to put your preferred pronouns in your e-mail signature and the same issue comes up again because even gender has been offered to idols now and we need to be careful not to appear as if we are indulging in the cult of the city. These are wisdom issues.

99. 44:59

    Freedom is is about giving stuff up and and maybe there needs to be a sharper break between discipleship and a world that says my identity is anything that I want it to be. Which of course, was what Paul was saying in Galatians 5 when we were there yesterday. Don’t submit again to a yoke of bondage. Don’t go back to Egypt.

100. 45:21

     Don’t go back to lockdown. Don’t choose to voluntarily put yourself in these situations. How do you consume culture? How do we consume culture? Well, what’s the late? I mean, I gave some of these studies last year and the latest culture crisis is not what it was last year. But you know, what’s, what’s the latest one?

101. 45:41

     Is it AI? Well, the media tells us that the biggest challenge of AI is that machines are going to become like humans. But I suspect that for a disciple, biggest challenge is that humans start to look like machines. It is fine. This might be a test to see if anybody’s got one in their bag.

102. 45:58

     It is fine to ask Alexa what the weather’s like tomorrow, though I’d be tempted to say go and open the curtains. It is maybe less wise to ask Alexa how to deal with your depression, or how to fight your marriage battles for you, or a whole bunch of other issues that might come up.

103. 46:16

     Not because it’s necessarily going to give you the wrong answer, though it probably will, but because when things go wrong, the next time you’ll just ask the same box in the corner for the next answer. And we haven’t gained anything and we haven’t learned anything. And we are outsourcing our discipleship at our peril. Paul is is trying to get us to realise that gospel freedom is really important.

104. 46:37

     It’s not a line that you roll out when you’re trying to, to resist falling into line. It’s not a line that you roll out when you’re trying to bind somebody else’s conscience in a way that Scripture doesn’t allow us. It’s why there is so few shortcuts. It’s why it’s so difficult. I, I gave you this quote right back at the beginning of the week.

105. 46:54

     This, this line that, that everybody worships, that the only choice that we have is what to worship. Well, David Foster Wallace went on and, and he said something that I thought was really quite powerful. The only insidious thing he says about these forms of worship, it’s not that they’re evil or sinful. It’s that they are unconscious. They are default settings, the kind of worship that you just gradually slip into day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fear of the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. That’s why freedom is difficult.

106. 47:40

     I’m not holding him up as a, as a, as a totem of gospel liberty and nothing like it, but it captures the ideas that we’ve been trying to get to, doesn’t it? Freedom is about living, brothers and sisters, as if what the Lord said about his body is true. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the House of bondage. You will have no other gods before me. Come very quickly to Romans chapter 8, please. And in Romans chapter 8, you know where we are. We are back where we started.

107. 48:21

     Verse 19 In Romans 8, the earnest expectation of creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who’s subjected the same in hope, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. It’s the very way of going full circle from the beginning of Genesis, isn’t it?

108. 48:48

     And it brings us our 10th and final freedom principle, that creation itself is going to be set free from bondage. It’s what Paul is telling us later on in the chapter, that if God can be for us, who can be against us? If God can justify if Christ died, then no one can separate us from the love of Christ. The love that was in Isaiah’s servant, the love that was shown in the journey from bondage in the through the wilderness, the love that was shown in the crucified Messiah. I well, there’s the ten I I don’t think you know there will be a monument to freedom in the Kingdom age, or at least not a national one.

109. 49:40

     I guess that’s what I’ve been trying to say all the way through events do not come naked into the world. When Benjamin Franklin made that change to the Declaration of Independence, he was emblematic of a world that was trusting itself. And I don’t think there will be a a National Monument to freedom in the Kingdom of God because it will be so much bigger and more important than that.

110. 50:02

     We will sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. The paradox of liberty is a is a reminder to you and I that we can be certain in the deep roots of our faith. You want to talk about social justice? Amos talked about it 2700 years ago. You want to talk about standing up for your rights?

111. 50:23

     Paul says. I’ll show you whose rights matter most. You want to talk about racial equality? Read the promises to Abraham. They are full of it. You want to talk about sexual temptation or managing your money or dealing with grief or childlessness or declining health or all the other issues I’ve mentioned already. Your children not coming to faith and the heartbreak that that brings.

112. 50:44

     Scripture has this verse 38. I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, shall separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. There will come a day when the trumpet will sound.

113. 51:16

     There will come a day when the sun will rise in the east. There will come a day when the mantras of the secular age, whether it’s freedom or happiness or power or authority, will will melt away in the light of the glory of Christ. There will come a day when we will fly away on the wings of dawn and be as young as the morning and as old as the sea.

114. 51:42

     There will come a day when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and when the captives of all kinds will be set free.

115. 52:11

     Thank you for listening to the good Chris Adelphian Talks podcast. We hope this talk helped you in your walk and brightened your day. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes. We are on all major podcast platforms and also on YouTube. If you enjoyed this particular talk, please share it with someone else who you think might enjoy it too. For show notes on the talk you just listened to, visit [email protected] or check out the Show Notes section of your podcast player.

116. 52:40

     Please share your thoughts on the talk from this week on our Facebook or Instagram pages where we are at good Christadelphian talks, or leave a comment on our YouTube channel where these talks are posted as well. If you enjoy listening to the talks that we post and hear one that you think we should share, please tell us about it.

117. 52:56

     You can send us a suggestion using the Contact Us tab on our website or message us on any of our social media accounts. Thank you for listening. God bless and talk to you next week.