This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 10.
In this Chapter Paul uses the story of Israel as a warning to the church in Corinth. He encourages them to be self-disciplined, to flee sexual immorality and to and to do everything in their power to obtain the prize by loving God and one another.
Our freedom in Christ is a great privilege, but one that comes alongside great responsibility. Paul encourages them to learn from the mistakes and example of those who went before them.
As believers, we are all under three covenants:
We are all in covenant with Christ.
We are in covenant with our church leadership.
We are in covenant with one another.
How do we know if what we want to do is both lawful and beneficial? We pass it through the criteria of verse 24, in seeking the good of others. We have to make sure that the use of our freedoms do not infringe upon our neighbors freedoms.
Everything that is lawful to be done is not always lawfully done, and therefore some of the ways we exercise our freedoms can cause our brothers and sisters to stumble, and in doing so our rights can become idols.
We as a church need to be people who love consistently.
We have to think about the good of the whole, as in our context we ourselves can become the very idols in our way.
