Portion by portion as we encounter it, but
may I just give you this brief word
of introduction.
In the city of Corinth, every kind of
idolatry was known.
The idolatry of Rome, of Greece, of Africa,
all had its expression and its manifestation in
Corinth.
It is very possible that most of the
meat that would be sold in the shambles
or the butcher section of the market would
have been brought from the temples where the
beast had been slain as a sacrifice.
It would be likewise true that much of
the meat in the family home, in the
home use, would have come from that portion
returned to the one who brought the sacrifice.
This is very likely the case in most
of the pagan homes.
It would therefore be almost impossible for a
Christian to go with relatives or friends without
eating meat that had been sold, offered to
the idols.
Now Paul was vitally concerned about this matter
of the Christians relating themselves to the culture
of their day.
You see, Christianity is practical.
It's not simply a bundle of doctrines and
a box full of ideas, but it is
a life related to the sovereignty of Christ
and the extension of Christ's sovereignty, therefore, must
reach into every area and every department.
How thrilling it is to realize that there
is no part of your life that is
so mundane and commonplace and insignificant that God
has overlooked it.
He has expressed himself concerning you.
He knows you.
He knows the problems you're going to meet,
the difficulties that you'll encounter.
In fact, he has gone so far as
to say, there's no temptation overtaking you, but
such as is common to man.
Just as in the Old Testament, he gave
specific instruction, detailed instruction for almost every part
of the life of his people Israel.
So in the New Testament, he's made provision
for the life on equally detailed basis but
in a different manner.
Here it's not prescriptions for the minutiae of
your daily life, but principles, glorious principles which
are applicable to every situation into which you'll
come.
You see, he said in the New Testament
that he would take away the heart of
stone that rebellious heart that refused to have
its life ordered.
He'd take away the heart of stone, and
he'd give a heart of flesh, and he'd
put his spirit within us and cause us
to walk in his statutes.
The difference is that he instructed and commanded
Israel, but in the New Testament, he causes
us to walk in his statutes.
The statutes haven't changed, but the difference is
that instead of your trying to hold out
or hold up, as many often offer as
an excuse for not becoming Christian, you know,
I can't hold out, I can't hold up,
I can't carry it through.
Well, you see, the principle is entirely different
now.
It isn't you holding out, it's he holding
you up.
He said he would come in and do
for you and through you what it was
that his people Israel had not done for
him.
Now we would consider this under the branch
of Christian ethics.
Perhaps we could just say this, that ethics
is that branch of moral government which is
concerned with human character and conduct.
But it seeks to determine the principles by
which his conduct is to be regulated, having
to do not merely with what is, but
what ought to be.
And thus Paul is endeavoring to give to
this people a Christian ethic in relation to
the pagan world in which they were living.
Now we're going to see this in the
form of three challenges that are presented by
Paul.
First, the challenge to the Christian to rightly
view his superior knowledge, verses 1 to 3.
Now, as touching things offered unto idols, we
know that we all have knowledge.
Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifyeth, love edifyeth.
And if any man think that he knoweth
anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought
to know.
But if any man love God, the same
is known of him.
Undoubtedly, the church at Corinth had written to
Paul saying, now, what about our relationship to
our pagan relatives, and friends, and neighbors, and
family reunions, and all the things that we'd
like to take part in?
Now, Paul, you don't need to bother about
writing to us concerning idols and meat offered
to idols.
We know about that, is the word that
they give to Paul.
Well, Paul answers in terms of what they've
written, and he says, now, as touching things
offered unto idols, we know that we all
have knowledge.
We know that we all have knowledge.
But you see, you could almost read it
this way.
We know that we all have knowledge.
You know, he is implying that there's something
beyond knowledge, something that's needed in addition to
knowledge.
He concurs with them, but there's a bit
of irony here.
These were the people, you know, who were
so wise that they had fallen into the
snare of the devil.
These were the people that served as a
homiletical judging society.
They would judge Apollos, and Peter, and Paul,
and they said, well, we're for Paul, and
we're for Apollos, and we're for Peter.
They judged genealogies, and they judged business success,
all of the things which were there.
They were the wise people in the wise
church, and Paul, bearing in mind all that's
been said, says, we know that you have
knowledge, all right, you have knowledge.
But Paul then makes a statement, begins his
correction by this rather, shall we say, unsubtle
statement, knowledge puffeth up.
Knowledge puffeth up.
Well, there's not much that we can say
about it.
You know, when a thing is puffed up,
it just means that it's bigger and really
less, the density is less, it's full of
nothing but air.
And so said he, knowledge inflates, knowledge causes
one to become proud of what he has
learned and what he knows.
Having said this, let me hasten to say
that Paul here, nowhere else either, makes any
slur upon knowledge.
Obviously, ignorance is a great handicap, and Paul
isn't praising it.
It cannot be praised or used.
We must have knowledge, and we must dispense
knowledge to dispel ignorance.
He is not putting his approval upon ignorance
and stupidity in any sense at all.
He's simply saying that knowledge alone can prove
exceedingly dangerous.
He says it tends to inflate the mind
with conceit.
It puffs up.
He proceeds to say that, by implication at
least, that having caused one to become inflated
in his own evaluation of his knowledge, they
proceed almost immediately to become intolerant and cruel.
Some of the cruelest people I have ever
met have been people that have had a
great deal of knowledge.
There's one man that I recall from the
South and to whose home I came by
no choice of mine in the city for
meetings with the company of believers.
And I was asked to stay there in
this particular home.
Well, the man was well taught in the
things of the Lord, and many of the
things which he said he assumed I disagreed
with, but actually I held to be very
dear and self-evident from the Scripture.
But, you know, after two days of his
sarcasm, his intolerant cruelty, his vituperative accusations against
all who didn't agree with him, I simply
told him and his good wife, I said,
I can't stay with you.
I'm not going to stay in your home.
You have opened it to me, but I'm
sure the one who invited me here had
no idea that you were going to react
as you have.
And so I said, in spite of the
fact that I do agree with much you
say, the intolerance and the cruelty, that the
acid expressions that you've made are of such
a nature that I am not going to
stay with you any longer.
Now there was a clear case of someone
having knowledge, but you see the knowledge had
become an infection in his spirit.
It had caused this particular man to become
conceited and cruel.
Now this can happen.
Actually, of course, you understand that when one
is conceited over his knowledge, it's mere proof
of the immensity of his ignorance.
He doesn't understand the greatness of the object
about which he has some knowledge.
And of course, it proves that he has
never had really a clear glimpse of God
or of himself.
For if he had ever clearly seen God,
by which view alone he can rightly see
himself, he would have understood that in him,
in his flesh, there is no good thing.
There is nothing so humbling as a revelation
of God to the human heart.
There is nothing that so strips of conceit
and of pride as to see what you
are in the light of what God is.
There is nothing that so causes you to
rejoice in the fact that all that you
have is a gift of his grace, as
much as to get a clear vision of
how much more there is in Christ than
you've ever seen before.
And so Paul here uses great directness of
speech in correcting this mistake.
Look at verse 2.
If any man think that he knoweth anything,
he knoweth nothing yet, as he ought to
know.
Perhaps I could give you a more literal
translation and bring out the verb tense, as
we have it from Lenski, who's done such
an excellent work on 1 Corinthians.
If one thinks he has come to know,
and then still feels that he knows anything,
not yet did he get to know actually
as he ought to know.
If one has come to know something, really
come to know something, and still feel that
he knows anything, well, he didn't really come
to know it as he ought to know
it.
Because when you once have found that the
truth that you hold before you is a
part of the whole, and you see it
in relation to the whole, then you feel,
as I believe it was Pascal who said
at the close of a lifetime, I have
been as a child picking up the pebbles
of truth along the ocean shore of God's
omniscience.
And this is all that can ever characterize
the true child.
So said Paul, if any of you think
you know anything, if you do know anything,
and you still think you do, you've missed
the point.
What you have actually known ought to have
been revealed as part of a whole so
immense that you can't grasp it.
In this matter of spiritual progress, you know
the only place that anyone can feel superior
to another is when he looks down.
It's like as though we were all climbing
ladders of a thousand rungs against the wall
of eternity.
And some are a little more sprightly and
able than others, and quickly climb up to
rung 50, and they see the weary down
there laboriously getting up over rung 5 and
rung 6.
And looking down, they say, oh, these sluggards,
how slow, how indolent.
But you see, the only way that anyone
can ever have any consolation in how far
he's come in the things of Christ is
because he looks down.
For if he ever looks up and sees
the 950 rungs before him, he's going to
be so humble that he'll say it is
but as a child that's run a step
or two ahead of his fellows and never
reached the goal that's before him.
This is what Paul wants them to see.
Yes, said he, you do have knowledge, but
do you have it properly?
Do you know anything as you really ought
to know it?
You have knowledge.
I can't dispute with the facts, they're there.
But you lack in the proper manner of
knowing.
You are unable to use the knowledge that
you have rightly.
This is what is implied in that second
verse.
Then in the third verse, you will see
Paul establishes once and for all that something
is needed in addition to knowledge.
But if any man love God, if any
man love God, the same is known of
him.
You see, it isn't what you know about
God alone, said Paul, it's what he knows
about you.
He knows about you.
And the little crumbs that you've gathered like
the greedy squirrel that's taken them and put
them into the nest is so inconsequential in
terms of all that God has, all that
he has, all that he wants to teach,
all that he wants to show.
And so Paul makes it clear that in
addition to knowledge, all that you can accumulate,
all that you can gather, all that'll ever
come to you, there must be love.
The only one that can rightly employ his
knowledge, therefore, is the one in whose heart
the love of Christ has been shed abroad
by the Holy Spirit.
When you have that, when his love fills
you, then your knowledge is not ever going
to be used to hurt or to injure,
but it's going to be that in your
heart is a deep desire to secure the
greatest blessedness and good of others, and your
knowledge is going to be that which you'll
use wisely.
Thus, the fruit of the Spirit, love, is
indispensably the control of knowledge.
Though I have the gift of knowledge and
fathom all mysteries and understand all secret lore,
said Paul, and I have not love.
It's just a banging gong and a clanging
cymbal.
It's just words.
It's just noise.
It's imperative, therefore, that we should understand that
knowledge is only rightly used by that person
that is filled with the fullness of God.
It is only that one that is walking
in the fullness of the Spirit.
Only when you are filled with the Spirit
of God are you going to be able
to value the knowledge properly and use that
knowledge in solving the perplexing problems of others.
It's indispensable, therefore, dear heart, that you should
recognize that with all of your getting of
theological truth, all of your getting of eschatological
facts, with all that you've learned, the indispensable
ingredient to make the whole meaningful is the
fruit of the Spirit.
How many times some have come into a
company of people such as this that have
had through the years, perhaps, can I say
without overemphasis, deeper teaching than certain congregations.
I do not know whether that would be
true or not, but I have known since
coming of some that were babes in Christ,
and someone in the congregation with superior knowledge
would go to them and with a tongue
sharp and cutting would criticize something they had
or did or said or wore, criticize and
hurt the same way you know that a
person seeing a fly on a baby's forehead
would come over with a stick and kill
the fly but permanently injure the baby.
This is knowledge gone amok.
This is knowledge wrongly used.
God didn't intend that.
He didn't intend that.
You know, perhaps, that what someone is doing
isn't right, but I also assure you that
when the Spirit of God has penetrated you
and saturated you and filled you, you'll be
so careful how you use that knowledge because
you will understand that it hurts and it
injures and it grieves and it wounds.
Paul saw that.
There was a division.
Someone said it's all right to eat and
someone said it's wrong, and so using their
knowledge, each injuring the other.
Paul said, now wait a moment, wait a
moment.
Knowledge is only meaningful when it's saturated with
the love of the Holy Ghost.
Now, the next thing we see is the
challenge to the Christian to rightly view his
liberty.
Verses 4 to 8.
As concerning, therefore, the eating of those things
that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we
know that an idol is nothing in the
world, and that there is none other god
but one.
For though there be that are called gods,
whether in heaven or on earth, as there
be gods many and lords many, but to
us there is but one God, the Father,
of whom are all things and we in
him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
are all things and we by him.
Howbeit there is not in every man that
knowledge, for some with conscience of the idol
unto this hour eat it as a thing
offered unto an idol, and their conscience being
weak is defiled.
But meat commendeth us not to God, for
neither if we eat are we the better,
neither if we eat not are we the
worst.
You see, the Christian is called to liberty,
not to legalism.
I remember some years ago being in a
young people's conference down south, and the speaker
announced his subject for that particular day from
Colossians to this group of maybe 150 young
people.
And the text was, Touch not, taste not,
handle not.
Here he was giving biblical instruction to a
group of young people.
Well, if you'd bother to read the text
later, you'll discover that Paul says just following
that, which all are to perish with the
using, all are to perish.
In other words, this legalism that binds in
the strictures of touch not, taste not, handle
not, is a Judaistic principle that comes in.
We're called to liberty, not to legalism.
Why?
Because of what regeneration is.
It is the impartation of the divine nature.
It is God communicating new life to that
which was dead.
It is one partaking of the divine nature
in such a sense that he is said
to be a new creation, a new creation.
Something happened when he said to me, we
sing in the little chorus.
Indeed it did.
God gave you a new heart and a
new nature and a new life and a
new spirit, and he made you a new
creation.
Now we understand from 1 John that when
God gives you this new nature, he gives
you a new attitude toward the law.
The attitude of the sinner is, I want
to please me, but the attitude of the
regenerated heart is, I want to please thee.
It's a change from, I delight to do
my will, to, I delight to do thy
will, O God.
And John went so far as to say,
if we say that we have, he that
saith, I know him, and keepeth not his
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is
not in him.
Now he didn't say you keep the commandments
to be saved.
He simply said that because of what salvation
is, when you've been born of God you
have a desire to please God.
Now this is presupposed whenever you mention liberty.
I am of the opinion that for the
last fifty years in America, evangelicals have had
to erect a fence, about a five-barred
fence of separation from the world.
You can put your names on your own
bars if you wish, and maybe it'll be
higher than five.
But they've preached an easy-believe-ism salvation,
a tip-your-hat-to-Jesus, sign-a
-card salvation.
And then they put up this high-board
fence and put their unconverted converts inside, trying
to get the devil's children to behave somewhat
like Christians, in order that they won't be
discovered for the poor workmen that they are.
And we pastors and evangelists have been guilty
of creating a Judaistic system which has all
of the earmarks of Phariseeism.
Now do you say, what do you mean
by that?
I say we're called to liberty, we're called
to freedom, we're called to a relationship with
the living God that transforms the old.
Now, when we've said that, what else do
we say?
Go out and do as you want to,
yes.
Because my friend, if you want to do
certain things that God's Word forbid and you've
professed to be a Christian, the want-to
is the proof that you aren't the Christian
you profess to be.
A man is what he wants, not what
he does.
I can put a man in prison and
he won't do anything, but he is what
he wants to do, not what he's forced
to do, by social pressure, emotional pressure, religious
pressure.
You are what you want.
And though you may be a nicer neighbor
to live with, because you conform to certain
outward patterns that are set for you by
people such as myself, the fact that you
conform is not proof that you've been born
of God.
The proof that you've been born of God
lies in what you want to be, in
what you want to do.
You are what you want.
And perhaps if you were to do what
you want to do, you'd discover what you
will ultimately discover if you pretend to be
a Christian and play act the Christian life,
and come to that hour when you hear
him say, away with you, I never know
you, I never know you.
Better that you find out what's in your
heart and that you do what needs to
be done about it.
Now, having said that, I prehasten to say
that the Christian views, idolatry, and idols, and
the world in all that it is, for
the foolishness that they are.
Paul said, we know about idols.
There aren't any gods, Venus and Jupiter, they're
not gods.
They're not gods at all.
We know that.
We understand that.
And to us it means nothing, the world
and what's in it, it has no hold
on the child of God.
The true child of God can walk through
the world the same way that a diver
enclosed in a diving suit can walk through
the sea, and he's in it but not
of it, and he's in it and not
part of it, and he uses it but
he doesn't love it.
He has his own atmosphere, he's been born
of God, he's been born of God.
However, said Paul, the true child of God
recognizes that Satan is the god of this
world, and whereas there's no Jupiter or Venus,
there is Satan, and he uses idolatry, and
there are demons who associate with idols and
idolatry, he recognizes that.
And he recognizes that there are multitudes of
people who are under the control of Satan
and know not that it is Satan whom
they serve, but worship the idols.
And were he thus to do anything that
would incline someone who is weak toward idolatry,
he would be guilty of their blood upon
his heart.
So Paul introduces an entirely new thing here,
an entirely new thing.
He says the Christian must realize that whereas
he can eat or not, he's not the
better for eating or for refraining, as you
see in verse 8.
The kingdom of God is not in meat
or in drink, it is in righteousness and
in peace and in joy in the Holy
Ghost.
Ah yes, said Paul, idols are nothing, these
things are nothing.
The child of God can walk through the
midst of them and be there, and it
has no meaning, has nothing to touch him
at all.
He's above them, he's apart from them, and
the meat is nothing, the idol is nothing,
but ah, wait a moment, there are others,
there are others, there are others.
And so, whereas the child of God is
called to liberty, he is also challenged to
a Christian view of responsibility.
We see that in verses 9 to 13.
But take heed, lest by any means this
liberty of yours become a stumbling block to
them that are weak.
For if any man see thee which hath
knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple,
shall not the conscience of him which is
weak be emboldened to eat those things which
are offered to idols?
And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother
perish for whom Christ died?
But when ye sin so against the brethren
and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against
Christ.
Wherefore, if meat make thy brother to offend,
I will eat no flesh while the world
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
The Christian view of knowledge, the Christian view
of liberty, now the Christian view of responsibility.
If you refrain from certain things because I
tell you when you meet something I haven't
told you about, then you'll have to come
running back and say, now should I do
this?
But then I become your conscience.
I become the means by which your life
is governed, and you have added into a
legal system of which I am the lawgiver.
You do that for your children, you do
that for others in the same way, and
it becomes equally damaging.
But my friend, when you can bring someone
into a relationship with Christ so that they've
been born of God and are indwelt by
God and have partaken of the divine nature,
then they have an unction from the Holy
One.
The teacher is in them.
It's much better that you should have in
you the one who can give you discernment
at the time such discernment is needed.
It's much better, I say, than that you
should have a list of fifteen things that
I have proscribed for you and said you
mustn't do this or this or this.
For if you have been born of the
Spirit and are indwelt by the Spirit and
have partaken of the divine life, when you
do that which grieves him whose name is
holy, you will sense it.
You will sense it.
But, you see, it's a terrible alternative.
It seems as though, said Paul, that people
here in Corinth were eating.
They said, this doesn't mean anything to us,
we're not bound by idols.
But in the eating, they were causing pagans
to say Christianity has no significance, and they
were causing the Christians to say, these people
do not love Christ.
In other words, their good was being evil
-spoken of.
Paul said, you have to recognize that you
have a responsibility, a responsibility not only to
act in the liberty which is yours, but
to act in such a way that you
share with God his concern for those he
loved and for those for whom he died.
Let me illustrate what I mean by this.
Your liberty can become a stumbling block to
the lost in a very real way.
I recall hearing some years ago now about
a young man that was in court being
tried for murder.
Hearing about it, an old friend of the
family and of the lad came into the
courtroom and sat in one of the back
seats where the spectators were.
And after a while, when the young man
was called upon to give his witness, and
the question was asked by the prosecuting attorney,
he said, now I want to tell you
what happened.
He said, back there is my former Sunday
school teacher.
She took us, a group of youngsters, to
her home and she taught us to play
cards.
She said she'd played for years and it
hadn't hurt her.
And then she took us one time and
she gave us something to drink.
She had had it in her home and
it hadn't hurt her.
But she didn't know what it was doing
to me.
That first game of cards I played under
the tutelage of my Sunday school teacher and
that first drink that I had sent me
on a course that ended with this murder.
And she's the one that started it.
You see, to her, apparently it had no
significance, had no meaning.
It was something that didn't bother.
But to this one, this lad that came,
it had been the means of his destruction.
This is what you must understand that Paul's
talking about.
This is the kind of thing you must
see.
Therefore, the person that's been born of God
does not seek things that are his own.
He looketh and seeketh the things of others,
and he's concerned about others.
And it isn't a question, can a Christian
do this and be saved?
Can a Christian do that and be saved?
The question is, what about others?
What about others?
This is the rule.
This is the touchstone.
This is the principle that's established for us
once and for all.
How many there are that have been emboldened
by the example of the strong to do
something that even the strong could do without
hurt, but being weaker, have been plunged to
ruin.
Charles Spurgeon, during his latter years of ministry,
illness would go at times to Monaco in
France, the south of France on the Mediterranean
for rest.
And occasionally, he said that he enjoyed walking
through the gardens there at the casino, the
most beautiful gardens then in the world, they
were said to be.
But one day, the one that was in
charge of the casino saw him and said,
I haven't seen you in the gardens of
late.
Well, he said, I don't patronize your casino.
I don't ever go in.
I feel that it isn't right for me
to use your gardens.
You put them there for those that do
patronize your casino.
Oh, said the man, that's all right.
Feel perfectly free to use them anytime.
You see, you really bring great advantage to
me.
For when people see such as you walking
in the gardens, they feel that there really
must not be anything too bad about it.
And they will come in and walk in
the gardens, and then they'll make bold to
go into the casino.
And we profit greatly from having people such
as you use our gardens.
Oh, that somehow it could be understood, somehow
it could be understood that an example may
cause others to go far beyond it and
to bring destruction to them.
Liberty that becomes a snare to another becomes
a sin to you, and their blood thus
falls upon you.
Mr. Ellis, a missionary from the South Seas,
gave an illustration from the chief, a former
cannibal, offering human sacrifice that had been won
to Christ.
One day he came and said to the
missionary, last Sabbath afternoon, when I was walking
through my gardens, I saw some ripe plantains
hanging from the branch over the path.
Being hungry, I thought to reach them and
to have eaten them.
Would it have been all right?
And the missionary said, well, I don't see
why there would have been any particular harm
in it.
But let me ask you, did you?
And the chief said, no.
You see, I had some of my attendants
with me, and I knew that home in
my house I had fruit that had been
prepared the day before.
And even though I felt then that I
might have eaten it with no harm to
me, my attendants might have seen it and
felt that it was all right to gather
fruit on the Sabbath day, on the Lord's
day, and thus would have been established something
that would have broken the deep meaning of
this holy day.
So he said, for their sakes, I didn't
eat.
This we must understand.
It's love which seeketh not its own.
It isn't a question, can you do it?
That's not the issue at all.
It's what of the weaker one.
It's what of the one that sees you.
It's not a question, do I have liberty
to do this?
But it's a question, what of those little
children in the father's family?
What of those outside of Christ?
It is that I am not concerned primarily
about what pleases me now that I've been
born again.
It's what pleases him who saved me and
who called me.
Dr. Ironsides illustrates it in one of his
lovely books.
He tells of being with a group of
Christians on an outing in Michigan.
They had just a lovely time of fellowship
together.
He was talking with one that had been
one from Islam, from Mohammedanism, Mohammed Ali.
And this dear man from Pakistan, incidentally, had
really a glowing testimony and a wonderful ministry
there.
He said that they were talking together, Ironsides
and Mr. Mohammed Ali, when one of the
girls that was serving came up with a
platter of sandwiches.
And he, she offered them and said, now
I have ham here, two kinds, we have
minced ham and then we have sliced ham.
He said, is there any beef?
No.
Any chicken?
No.
Any cheese?
No.
Just the two kinds of ham sandwich.
Said, well, thank you, I won't have any.
And the girl looked at him and said,
but Mr. Mohammed Ali, you've been a Christian
surely this prohibition against eating ham doesn't have
any continuing effect on you, does it?
Oh, no, no.
It doesn't mean anything to me now, either
to eat or not to eat.
I'm not the better for eating or the
worse for not eating.
Said, it doesn't mean anything.
But you see, back home in Pakistan, I
have an unsaved father.
And every year I go to see him.
And the first thing that he will say
to me when I come into his room,
he will say, Mohammed, have those Gentiles, have
those pagans that you've been with, those people
in America, those heathen, have they gotten you
to eat the filthy flesh of a swine?
And I can look at him and say,
no, father, no, swine flesh has never passed
my lips.
And then I can preach Christ to him.
Or as if I were to eat, he'd
never hear another word I have to say.
Better that I never eat, that in eating,
I close the door to witness to my
needy father.
Here it is, the challenge to rightly view
knowledge, the challenge to rightly view liberty, the
challenge to rightly view responsibility.
Not only to those for whom the Savior
died that know him not, but the wee
babes in Christ that need to know him
better.
This, I believe, answers so many questions that
arise in the Christian's life.
May the spirit of God plant his answer
deep in your heart today.
Shall we stand for prayer?
Amen.