The glory of God is to be reflected in our bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit and members of Christ, not our own. The sermon emphasizes that because believers are bought with a price, their bodies are not for personal indulgence or sin but for the Lord. It urges fleeing from sexual immorality and other sins, recognizing that our bodies are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and are part of Christ. The ultimate call is to live in a way that glorifies God in all actions, whether eating, drinking, or any other activity, by considering whether it builds us up in faith and honors God.
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I'd like to turn with you please in the word of God to first Corinthians chapter six and seeing this is the last opportunity I'll have in the ministry of the word this evening will be in the gospel I'd like to thank the Christians here for your hospitality and fellowship and warm reception and encouragement It's a wonderful thing to gather with like-minded saints and to enjoy the things of God together. You know, it was God who invented conferences. He was the one who instructed his people three times a year to gather together.
And he thought it was a good thing for them to do. And I think it's a good thing for us to do too, isn't it? I'd also like to make mention very briefly of the gospel meeting this evening. I would appreciate very much if before the evening meeting, if there were some exercise brethren, if we could just gather somewhere in a little corner somewhere and have a little time of prayer, I certainly would appreciate that. And if there are some of you from the local area here, you could make a phone call at dinner time or if the Lord has laid someone on your heart to invite them out to the meetings tonight, I think it would be a good thing that we realize that it's not just in the preaching of the gospel, it's in our personal exercise, isn't it?
and burden for the loss that God responds in blessing. And so I'd like to encourage you to do that. We can go through the motions, but the Holy Spirit doesn't go through the motions. He wants us to be exercised about these things. Now I realize before we read this section in First Corinthians chapter six that the preacher has been a little overzealous in trying to take up the subject's in first and second Corinthians so what I'm going to do is just briefly give you the chapter section that deals with glory and a little title you can discard those if you like so that you can study them on your own I think one of the worst things a preacher can do is to exhaust well he doesn't exhaust the passage he exhaust the people of God usually first but giving you the impression that that's all there is to know about that Instead, we ought to be going away salivating for more, wanting to know more of the truth of God and not saying, well, that's all we need to know about that.
And so I'm just going to give you these ten passages. If you get the tapes, you can sit back and relax. If you're going to write them down, I'll try and give them more or less a dictation speed. We took a look at First Corinthians chapter one, verses twenty-six to thirty-one, God's glory and our calling. And then, First Corinthians chapter three, verses nineteen to twenty three, God's glory and our inheritance. You already have those down, I imagine. Now, I'd like to look with you today at First Corinthians chapter six, verses twelve to twenty, God's glory and our bodies.
And then First Corinthians ten verses twenty one to thirty three. God's glory and our fellowship. First Corinthians eleven verses one to sixteen. God's glory and our order in the assembly. First Corinthians fifteen, verses thirty-five to fifty-eight. God's glory and our future.
And then in Second Corinthians, chapter three and verses one to eighteen, God's glory and our transformation. We have that passage read this morning at the Lord's Supper. Chapter three, verses one to eighteen, God's glory and our transformation. Second Corinthians four, verses one to eighteen, God's glory and our suffering. The ninth passage is Second Corinthians ten, verses seven to eighteen, God's glory and our commendation.
And then in chapter eleven, verses eighteen through chapter twelve, verse ten, all right? Second Corinthians chapter eleven, verse eighteen, through chapter twelve, verse ten. God's glory and our infirmity. Well, I wish I had more time. That's the story of my life. But I hope that we'll be able to look at a few of these in any case in First Corinthians, and we'll leave the rest for your home study. Next time I'm back, I'll check your homework. Let's read now in First Corinthians chapter six, beginning at verse twelve.
All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. and God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His own power. Know ye not, the first of three occurrences now, know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ.
Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? For two saith he shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Slee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that commiteth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God and ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price.
Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Father, take thy word now and apply it to our hearts. Make us willing to obey. Give us a thirst after Christ. And a vision of him today, we pray. In his precious name. Amen. We live in a body-oriented society. We betray ourselves when we speak to one another. We talk about everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, as if it was the body that was important.
And when we think about beautiful people, we're talking about the shape of their skin. But God doesn't think that way. Man was made a living soul, and he was given a spirit, the God-conscious part of a man, His body is given to him to live in. This is not me. Someday when they, if the Lord should not come before I die and they put this body into a box, they will not be burying J.B. Nicholson. This body of mine is simply the house in which I live. And I use this air conditioning system and this PA system and look out through these windows.
And I function in this body. But this is not me. I have this body, but I may exist apart from this body. And someday, if the body is laid in the grave, I shall exist, a real person. But when we study the truth concerning the body and the scripture, we discover three great things. First of all, God created it. Our brother Star has been bringing that before us. God created it. Secondly, Christ redeemed it. And thirdly, the Spirit indwells it. Indwells every believer, and your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.
Because we live in such a body-oriented society, if you walk through the average shopping center, you can tell where the emphasis is, can't you? women shoe stores you can hardly believe that that many people can keep busy selling women shoes and clothing stores and makeup and hairdressers and food gourmet foods and gourmand foods you name it we've got it all and the emphasis is on the body but when we come to the Word of God we see that the emphasis is not there and yet in this particular passage God places unquestionably his claim on our body.
The body is not evil in itself, as some ancient philosophers taught. The body is a vehicle that may be used for the glory of God, or it may be used for self. And the Bible tells me that on either hip I have a bag, and in each bag I have seed, and I go through life sowing out of one bag or the other, and I may sow to the spirit and reap life everlasting, or I may sow to the flesh and reap corruption. And we are always sowing something. And if we sow, we shall reap. And so the Word of God calls upon us to recognize the awesome responsibility of being given occupancy in a body.
Because Christ has redeemed us, and paid the price at Calvary for my body as well as the rest of me, though I have not entered into yet the good of the redemption of the body. We've been thinking a lot about that this weekend and what a wonderful thing it's going to be. The apostle deals with that when we get to chapter fifteen. A lot of you people don't realize how close I am to being perfect. Just a shout. Of course you'll be perfect too, won't you? And we shall be like him. for we shall see him as he is. But in the meantime, we have been given the responsibility of using our bodies for the Lord.
Now, in this first statement, know ye not, the Apostle says, Your bodies are the members of Christ. That's shocking, isn't it? When I use this body for my own purposes, I am taking the members of Christ to do it. I cannot do what I want to with my body anymore because it doesn't belong to me. Now that can bring a great liberty too, can't it? I bought a Buick back in, oh, I don't know what it was. It was a nineteen seventy-three Buick, but it was about five years old and it was in pretty good shape and I like to look after my cars and keep them in good shape.
But after a while it started to get rust around the bottom edges and there was a tear in the upholstery and somebody removed my antenna and it used to bother me but it doesn't bother me anymore because I sold it and you know there are a lot of problems in J.B. Nicholson's life but if I come to realize that I don't belong to me that I'm not my own all of those things that I take to be my problems that crush me down I discover that the one who has purchased me doesn't have any problems, does he? And that brings me great peace, if I just remind my heart of it now and again.
But I keep going for joy rides, don't I, in property that doesn't belong to me. I was in the hospital when I was thirteen years of age for some surgery, and there was a young fellow in the bed across from me, and when he was finally released, the police came to take him away. He had government lodging for a little while. You see, one night he had seen his friend's motorcycle sitting by a drive-in and he was inebriated at the time. He jumped on the motorcycle and he took off down the road. He misjudged things a bit and drove into the side of a car as he was trying to pass it, bounced off that car, hit another car, ended up destroying the motorcycle, losing his leg and doing an awful lot of damage.
He was being charged with driving without a license, driving while intoxicated. the vehicle that he was driving he discovered later had belonged to his friend but his friend had sold it and it didn't belong to his friend anymore and so it was a stolen vehicle and no insurance and I don't know what all he was kind of a happy-go-lucky sort of a fellow and I tried to have some talks with him but it impressed upon me later as I thought of that here was a young man he had absolutely no right to take that vehicle And if he hadn't done that, he wouldn't have got into the trouble that he did. And how often in my life, I act as if this body is my own, as if I can do whatever I want to with this tongue of mine.
It's not my tongue anymore. It's to be used for him. And I can't do what I want to on Saturday night. And I can't go where I want to. And I can't go out with the people I want to. I can't give into my baser nature and lose my temper as we say give someone a piece of my mind most of us can't afford that that's not what we're here for is it don't you know that your body is member of Christ now the reverse is given to us as well isn't it but if it's true of me it's true of you too And if I open my mouth to lamb base you and all of a sudden you were transformed into the person of Christ, how would I feel?
Try to suck the words back in when they were halfway out. But that's what he says is the case, isn't it? That if I do it to one of the least of these, I'm doing it to him. So he warns us to take seriously the claim of Christ upon our lives, that this body does not belong to me. Your bodies... are members of Christ. Then he says, as he introduces this subject that I didn't think we'd have to preach among God's people, but unfortunately we have to preach the whole council of God, don't we? Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body, for two saith he shall be one flesh.
But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. I don't know if any of you remember a preacher named George Shivas. He used to preach around our area quite a bit, rather an eccentric fellow. But he told a story one time to a young people's gathering of walking down Young Street in Toronto. And as he was idly gazing in the window, he was waiting for a friend actually, and he wasn't paying much attention to what was in the window until all of a sudden he saw the gnarled finger of an old witch motioning him to come in. It was a... fortune tellers place of business and she was motioning him to come in he said I saw one took one look at this woman and I took to my heels and I ran as fast as I could down young street and then he said young people sometimes it's not fight the good fight it's flee the good flight get out if you're in an occupation in a job and somebody's coming on to you Get out.
Far better to lose your job and lose your testimony for God. Oh, you say, I think I can stand. Take heed. Those who think they can stand, well, sometimes they fall, don't they? You remember it was the case with Joseph that day after day she worked him over until finally he took to his heels and ran. It was the best thing he could do. Now he was a strong young man. There's no question about that. But there's a time to run. Flee youthful lust. Flee fornication.
Flee idolatry. There are times when it's not courage we need. We need just to get out of there and in a hurry. And sometimes I can say with the psalmist, my feet had well nigh slipped. And how many times I was right at the edge and God preserved me. And it wasn't any great courage on my part at all. But sometimes we just have to get out of the situation. Flee fornication. What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in you?
Everywhere you go is a double date. The Holy Spirit's there. Now, if I came to your home, and you hog-tied me and threw me in the trunk with a sack over my head, and took me down to see some grotesque movie, strapped me in the chair, don't expect me to write in your guest book, Thanks for the lovely hospitality. I didn't want to be there. It was a wonderful thing for the Lord Jesus to come into a sinful world. But what must it have been for the Holy Spirit to come into my sinful heart? Take up his residence there. And commit himself to me.
He is the seal that I will make it to heaven. And what do I subject him to? What thoughts? What unholy thoughts? Unholy motives? places I go, attitudes I have, things I do, and the Holy Spirit of God is grieved by it. You remember the story of Samson? He wished not, he knew not, that God in his power had left him? You know the story of the children of Israel?
In the days of Ezekiel, that sad picture, as the glory of God lifts up from between the cherry of him above the mercy seat, goes out to the door of the temple, and then out to the east gate, and across the key drawn to the Mount of Olives, and back to heaven, and nobody even noticed. And is it possible that over our lives sometimes we must have to write the word, Ichabod, the glory has departed. Oh, not God. God was still among His people. He was still listening for their cries. But the glory of God was gone. Don't you get tired of living unblessed?
Don't you get tired of living with unanswered prayer? Powerless? Has the glory gone? God loves to dwell among His people. And so he said, when you pitch your tents in the wilderness, I'll pitch my tent right beside you. That was wonderful, wasn't it? I was gracious of him. I'll pitch my tent right beside you. And I'll let you come in by way of your representative into the holiest, but only once a year, and only on the Day of Atonement, and only by blood. The people...
eventually have their backs to the temple and their faces to the sun and God's glory leaves but then we read that the glory of God came to earth again we read that he came and dwelt and the word is pitched his tent he tabernacled among us and it was the glory of God once again that had come to earth in the face of Jesus Christ and now The veil was very thin. Why, said John, we handled the word of life. We looked into the very face of the Son of God. We beheld His glory.
Oh, that was closer, wasn't it? The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. When the Lord Jesus was going away, He said, Now, Father, I have glorified these ones with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. And he said to his disciples, I won't leave you comfortless, I will come to you, I will send the Spirit, and he will be with you and be in you. And what is this? Not that God would pitch his tent beside man, nor yet that man could look into the very face of Christ and see the glory.
but that God should actually come to dwell in me and make his, my body, his temple. It's holy business, isn't it? And we need to preach holiness. How careless we become in this old world of ours. Have you ever sat in the armchair and thought back over the last fifteen, twenty years and see how far the standard has slipped in twenty years? Kind of scary, really. Oh, maybe you can argue against some of those things and say, well, they were just old Puritan ideas. But quite frankly, it brings a little perspiration to my brow when I see some of the things that we're doing today.
Now, of course, worldliness isn't just what you do and where you go. Worldliness is an attitude of the heart, isn't it? It's what you love. That's why the Word of God always speaks of the world in terms of loving the world. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Because if you love the world, you don't love the Father. And that's a choice we have to make. And so the apostle concludes this little section by saying, You are not your own. You are bought with a price.
If ever there was an understatement, that's it, isn't it? A price. What price? The greatest price that was ever paid for anything. Last week I was over in London, England. I was standing looking in the window of Christie's, the great house that is involved in selling off, auctioning off priceless treasures. And they have various highs that have been set. The greatest price that was ever paid for Ming Benissi Vaz and the greatest price that was ever paid for this. And there they had a picture of Van Gogh's sunflowers. Fifty-four million dollars paid by a Japanese insurance company for that painting.
And I bowed my head and I thank God that the greatest price that was ever paid for anything was paid for the poor sinner that was looking in the window. You're bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ. So you're not your own. And you can't live the way you want to live. But if you belong to him, and if you know him a bit, well, then you'll want to live the way he wants you to live. Because you'll know that's the very best way. So, Christian, take stock of your bodily resources. How much money would you give for your eyes? I read of a lady whose eyes were damaged with a certain drug that was supposed to help her and she lost her eyesight and they gave her a million dollars.
Would you take a million dollars tonight for your eyes? Pretty valuable, aren't they? Or a man who loses his hand or his arm and the insurance company will pay him a fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars. Would you take a hundred thousand dollars for your right arm? God's given you something far more valuable than that. He's given you the ability to glorify God while you're still in this body and in your spirit, which are God's. Would you turn to chapter ten, please?
Now we know that first Corinthians chapter ten has to do with the table of the Lord the Lord's table is not a New Testament idea alone we find the Lord's table in the Old Testament too the Lord's Supper is a New Testament idea and there are distinctions clear distinctions between the Lord's table in chapter ten and the Lord's Supper in chapter eleven now if someone refers to the Lord's Supper as the Lord's table I don't think you ought to take him out in stone and with stones till he's dead The fact is that the Lord's Supper is the climax to the Lord's table.
It's included in it. The Lord's Supper is a weekly act at which we gather together to remember the Lord Jesus in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. In chapter ten, it's the cup first and then the bread. Because when you're entering into fellowship, you understand that First of all, you have to enter into the value of the blood of Christ before you become a member of the body of Christ. That's the symbolic, the mystical body. But when we come to chapter eleven, it's the physical body of the Lord Jesus, and we understand that his body must be broken in order that his blood be shed.
If we have not been at the Lord's table all week long, We won't have much to bring to the Lord's Supper. The Lord's table is characterized by taking. We sit at the Lord's table and He feeds us. We feed on the Lord Jesus Himself. And God spreads a feast for us. But when we come to the Lord's Supper, we come to give something to Him. If you haven't been receiving from His hand all week long and enjoying Christ, you'll have nothing to give back to God. When I was a young... Fellow, I used to think that my job, Sunday morning, was to discover some new turn of phrase that God had never heard yet about his son. I was terribly frustrated.
All the older men always seemed to come up with the good lines, and I didn't seem to have anything much to say. And then I realized that God was already impressed with his son. God already knew everything there was to know about him. He just wanted me to agree with him. Enter into God's enjoyment concerning his son. And then I found it a delight because God's already told me how wonderful His Son is. That's what this book is all about, isn't it? And when we get up and say, Lord, we don't have the words, well, I know what you mean. But the fact is that this book is full of words about His Son. And if we'd spend more time in the book, we might have words that would suit the glories of Christ, the beauties of Christ, that the written word might speak of the living word.
Now here we read concerning glory, and we don't have time to read the whole section, but here we have a problem with eating things offered to idols. And he says in verse twenty, I say, the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I would not that you should have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of demons. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? And here we have this statement again that we read in chapter six. All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.
All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Now a little further down, verse thirty. If I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of, for that for which I give thanks? Whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give none offense neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles nor to the church of God, even as I please all in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many that they may be saved. The Apostle Paul in First Corinthians deals with three compound problems, and if we had time we could look at them.
But if we have a compound problem, we have to deal with it in its particular parts. If, for example, my son threw a plate of food at his sister, I probably wouldn't say, son, son, please don't waste food. There is a more pressing issue at the time, and that is the assault and battery of his sister. And so I would deal with that first and perhaps later on I might say, oh, and by the way, son, you wasted food and that's not a good thing. Food is expensive and the Lord gives it to us and so on, right? So we deal with a problem in its particular parts. And many times in an assembly we have great difficulty because we're trying to deal with thirty different problems all at once and it's just a hash instead of saying, now, what are the real issues here?
What are the real problems? The real problems are not this little thing and that little thing. what are the real issues let's get down to business and discover them and see what God's word has to say about them and let's go on with God and these things sometimes build up over the years why some of the problems we have in our assemblies there were somebody's great-granddaddy that did something to somebody else's great-granddaddy and we were not sure what it was but it must have been pretty bad and we're still bothered about it today so if we could get it out on the table many times a lot of these things really aren't serious problems at all But when the Apostle Paul deals with these compound problems, he deals with them in their parts. And he deals with the most important parts first.
Now we have one example in chapter six of the epistle, verses four and seven. In chapter four he makes, verse four he makes one statement. In verse seven he makes another that seems to contradict it, but they are two sides to the same issue. In chapter eight we read that... in dealing with eating food offered to idols. If you're having fellowship with a weaker brother, a new Christian, you go over. That's all he can afford is some of this food that's sold in the shambles. After all, the idols didn't eat it. So the priest ran it out the back door and sold it to the poor people. And if he brings a peace home and you go to his house, well, go ahead and eat it. Idols aren't anything. So just go ahead.
He's dealing with offending a weak brother who has not yet established his Christian life And if he's given opposition in those early days, it may cast him back into the world. But when he gets to chapter ten, why he's dealing with another issue. Again, the subject is eating food offered to idols. But here he's not talking about having fellowship with a weaker brother. He's talking about having fellowship with demons. And he says, I would not that you should do that. It's the same subject, but it's a different issue. Now, the same thing we will discover in chapter eleven. But here he's dealing with a compound problem again. It has to do both with the silence of the woman and the head covering.
And he deals again in its particular part, first of all, with the subject of the head, the headship of Christ, and then later with the body, the functioning of the body in chapters twelve and fourteen. Now, the Apostle Paul, we read in chapter six and verse twelve, put a principle down that will help us in making decisions in life. There are some things that are clearly the will of God. There are some things that are clearly not the will of God. But there are many other things that sometimes are a little bit difficult for us to determine. And so here are two of them. There are many in the Scriptures, but there are two given to us here.
First of all, the apostle asks in chapter six in verse twelve, will it hold me down. And here in chapter ten and verse twenty three, will it build me up? Now those are two great principles that we can lay against our lives as measuring sticks. When there is some questionable area, we may ask this, will it hold me down? Will it complicate my life? Will it keep me from serving God? Will it encumber me in the affairs of this life? Well, says Paul, I may be free to do it. You can run the Boston Marathon with a fifty-pound sack of potatoes on your back, but it'll keep you from winning the race.
So there are things that are lawful for me, but they will hold me down, and I will not be brought under such a restriction in my Christian living, he says. Now the scripture says that the spiritual man judges all things. I used to try and answer the question, what's wrong with rock music? I gave up. I gave up. If somebody wants to listen to rock music, we can talk about it from now until I'm an old man and it just won't do any good. But if you're spiritual, why, then you can judge it yourself, can't you? That's what John was talking about when he said, if you walk in the light, well, then you'll see, won't you?
Sometimes I get dressed in the dark. Maybe my wife's been up with a baby through the night, and so I get up early and go and open the drawer. I'm getting dressed in the dark, and I pull out, and I try to see what color socks it is, maybe even pull the drapes back a bit. It looks like blue socks. And I put them on, and I discover when I get downstairs, I have on blue socks and green socks. I couldn't tell the difference because I was in the dark. And if somebody comes to me and says, well, what's wrong with this anyway? I don't say it, but sometimes I wonder if maybe you're walking in the dark. and you can't tell the difference. If you're walking in the life, well, then many of these things become rather clear to you. And you don't have to tell a spiritual man because he judges all things.
Now here, the question is a different one. Not will it hold me down, but will it build me up. So here, Paul says, this question that we hear all over the country, what's wrong with it is the wrong question to ask. The question is what's right with it? What's good about it? How is it going to build me up in my spiritual life? Mother goes down to the grocery store and says, I'd like some food. Now, I don't want poison, you understand, but I'd like something with absolutely no nutritional value. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Well, no, nothing wrong with it. You can eat sawdust for breakfast if you wish, I suppose. But it won't build you up. Now, if my question is, what's wrong with it?
What's wrong with doing this? Nobody ever asked what's wrong with going to prayer meeting anyway. You want to fight about it? What's the matter with studying my Bible, huh? Well, I don't know, brother. Well, we never ask those questions, do we? We shouldn't ask what's wrong with it. That's a negative way to live, isn't it? What's right with it? What's good about it? How is it going to produce the fruits of peace and righteousness in my life? The fruit of the Spirit? Is it going to cultivate those things? You know, that would kill a lot of things in our lives, wouldn't it? It would make a lot of room for service for God all the time. We didn't think we had. Well, we'd find a lot of it all of a sudden.
If we put these two tests to a lot of the things that we do, all things are lawful for me, he says. But they don't necessarily build me up on my most holy faith. Well, in verses twenty-seven and verse twenty-eight, we discover where ignorance is bliss. Paul says, now you've cleared a conscience problem in your own life. You have a clear conscience about eating, about this matter of food offered to idols. But you go to someone's house and they have the food there. You're just going to go ahead and eat it.
When somebody raises a question and says, excuse me, did you know that this is food offered to idols? I wish you hadn't said that. That's the case where ignorance is bliss. As soon as they bring up the issue, it becomes an issue. Then he says, you better make a judgment on it and say, well, in that case, perhaps I better not eat. Why would he say that? Because the very reason they brought up the issue was to put it to the test. Because you, as a mature Christian, stand for something. And if you're going to say, oh, well, it doesn't really matter, you may shake that person.
There are a lot of people saying it doesn't really matter these days about a lot of things. They say, well, that's a secondary issue. Well, I realize that there are some things that are of prime importance. Would you say as you read through the Old Testament scriptures that one of the key things in the Old Testament was don't touch the ark? Probably not. You'd hardly notice it as you read through. But it was important enough that Uzzah had a funeral, wasn't it? There were a lot of things today and we say, well, I've had people say chapter eleven. Well, God only said it once, you know, about the head covering. Couldn't be that important. My father only had to say things once. There are many things in the scripture God says once.
But when he says something, it's important. Now we were hearing about Moses and how he smote the rock. He didn't understand that someday God would use that as an illustration of Christ and that Christ only had to be smitten once. And now to receive the blessing, we just speak to him. He didn't understand that. But he didn't have to understand it. He just had to obey it. Uzi didn't have to understand that that Ark of the Covenant was a beautiful picture of Christ, and God wouldn't have any symbol of His Son being dragged around by animals. That it was priestly work to lift up the Ark, and it still is.
He didn't understand that, but he didn't have to understand it. He just had to obey it. Some people call it hypocrisy if you obey something when you don't understand it. No, that's just simple obedience. If God says it, we do it, just because He says so. What we really have in this section is learning God's table manners, haven't we? The story is told that when Queen Elizabeth had evil-conneval for dinner, the man was raised on the other side of the tracks, didn't know any better, and he took his finger bowl and took a little drink. And so Queen Elizabeth...
took her finger bowl and she had a little drink too. That's good manners, you see, to make people feel at home. And in the house of God, the scripture says, don't receive a weak brother to disputation. Don't bring him in and then lay it on him and work him over. Give him time to grow. Why, we're very impatient with others, but we expect God to be very patient with us. How long does it take us to learn some lessons? We say about somebody else, I told him once, I told him twice and he didn't learn, so forget him, he's not teachable. Do you learn on the first time round? I don't. And so he's teaching us here to deal gently with our brothers and sisters, our weak brothers and sisters.
We're not talking about unruly brethren now. The Bible says warn the unruly, but it says support the weak. And God give us the grace to know the difference between warning the unruly and supporting the weak. It's a wonderful thing then to read in verse thirty-one. Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all for the glory of God. If I could just write that over my life and live it every day, There is nothing, I suppose, more selfish than eating and drinking. I sat down and had a lovely meal today.