One or the Other

DEVOTION

1 CORINTHIANS

ONE OR THE OTHER

1 Cor 10:18-22

18 Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

NIV

Although this was spoken to those people about a very specific thing in regards to eating that food which was offered to all those idols in those days, we can surely see some other truth here. Even though a pop song writer penned those words, “you have to serve somebody, either you’re going to serve the Lord, or you’re going to serve Satan, but you have to serve somebody” it has a certain ring of truth. How can we who eat from the Lords table partake in that which is served at Satan’s table? Yet is that not what many of us do? We claim to love the Lord and that we are believers, born again, saved, justified, sanctified, holy, set apart, however else we want to refer to ourselves and yet we live in the same manner as those who serve self, which is of course serving Satan, eating at his table. One example of this is when God tells us that we cannot serve both him and money. Why do we place so much importance on money? Why do we try our whole life to accumulate as much of it as possible to spend on ourselves at some later time. Are we actually serving self, rather than God? Why do we spend so much time and effort to surround ourselves with as much of our own desire for things, when we should be serving the Lord? Can we actually say we love God when we live so much for ourselves? Are we actually trying to drink out of both cups? Sure, we need all the stuff. We need our homes, our car, our clothes, and food. Yes we might even need some extras as God sees fit to supply us with so we can live among people of similar stuff, or lifestyle, in order to share the gospel message with them. But we have to acknowledge it is not ours, it is his, and he has blessed us with certain things that are from his hand, and not from our own efforts, so we can give him all the credit. We cannot serve both; we cannot partake from the Lords table and eat from the table of Satan. People who refuse to eat from the Lords table are eating from the table of the evil one whether they know it or not, and we cannot afford to think, behave, live using the same set of principles. It is one or the other, if cannot be both.