DEVOTION
THE 1ST
LETTER THE CORINTHIANS
TWO DIFFERENT
TABLES
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
It is extremely doubtful that
we would even have the opportunity to eat food that has been sacrificed to an
idol and therefore a demon. However, could this idea of drinking from the cup
of the Lord and the cup of demons be taken metaphorically? Could some of the
things that we participate in be considered as drinking from the cup of demons?
This is not to say that we actually would participate in demonic activity, but many
of the ways of the world are opposed to God and therefore are either a form of
idol worship that could be connected to the activities of demons. If we become
so connected or interested and maybe even so involved in some of the world’s offerings,
we might be seen as being obsessed with them, spending much of our time, energy, and even our money on their activities. Perhaps those things are just
harmless distractions of life that we use as a form of relaxation. However, at
the same time, could some of those distractions take us away from our service
or commitment to Christ? We are wondering if we can have one foot in the
kingdom of God and one foot in the world. This would go back to that divided
heart issue that we have been pondering for some time. But on the other hand,
nothing is stronger than our Lord. What can we do that would outweigh the power
of God? Could we ever be involved in anything that would overpower the work of
God in our lives? Yet, the problem that we foresee is that His being able to do
that work in our lives is based on our voluntary submission to His presence in
our lives. Can we do that part-time? It would seem that would be that divided
heart issue if that were the case of part-time service to God and part-time obsession
with something of the world. We think that we would be doing something in the
world, which we are commanded to do, that would require being involved with the
people of the world, but that would be for the purpose of being an image bearer
of Christ, and therefore we would not be participating with their activities
although we would be presence during them, thus exposing them to Jesus.
However, we must be careful not to get entangled with the concepts of the world.
It still boils down to eating from two different tables.
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