19, Psalm 19, this is the word of God for his people. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor knowledge where the voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is a bridegroom coming out of this chamber, and rejoiced as a strong man to run a race. This going forth is from the end of the heaven, and he circled unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hide from the head therefore. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yeah, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors clings thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumption sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then shall I be upright, and thou shalt be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. This psalm remind us about the revelation of God. It speaks about the revelation of God in nature first, and then in the revelation of God in his word in the scripture. And both of them shows the glory of our God by communicating himself to his people. Although the nature is not able to communicate the greatness, the perfection of God's salvation, God send prophets to his people to speak through the scripture with his people. And then we have the book of the Lord, the scripture, which is enough to guide us to please him and to glorify his name. Both revelations will show how big, how strong, how glorious is our God. Well, let's move our eyes now to our confession. Actually, we will sing first Psalter number 3. Now in the Scripture, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, we will read verses 4 through 9. The letter, the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 8. Verses four through nine. 1 Corinthians 8, beginning verse four, this is the word of the living God, and he speaks to his church by saying, As concerning, therefore, the eating of those things that are offering 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 there that are called gods, whether in heaven or in 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, but whom are all things, and we by him. albeit there is not in every man that knowledge, for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour eat it as a thin offering to an idol, and their conscience being weak, is defiled. but meat commanded us not to God. For neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak. Let's pray again. Meditate in the scripture, Heavenly Father, We read your word. And we ask you now, God, that may you apply these words to our hearts and minds, helping us to understand and to change our hearts according to the scripture. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Here we are in the letter of Paul, which is very debated among the centuries. especially texts like this, they were applying many different ways. The fact is that the church in Corinthians was a very difficult church. they were in need of a lot of correction. And because of this, God, using Paul, he wrote this letter to this church in order to help them to become more like Jesus Christ and to deal with their sins. If we look Together, we would see that in the first four chapters, he was dealing with many divisions in this congregation. For many different situations, they were divided and they were fighting between themselves. In chapters 5 and 6, God spoke about moral problems among them. In chapter 7, about marriage and family. But chapter 8 introduces a huge section about idolatry. And this is the point where we are right now. The huge problem of this church, it was not exactly that they were divided or they were giving themselves to things in the world, but the huge problem of the Church of the Corinthians, it was that their hearts were not worshiping only the Lord. They were worshiping other gods. They had many other gods among themselves, and this was destroying this church in Corinthian. That here, we are facing them, Paul advertising them about their knowledge of God. Knowledge is what the beginning of chapter eight, what we will not cover exactly today, we'll deal with. It will say that knowledge can be something good, but also can be something dangerous for the church. Because if we know the Lord, and if we don't treat this knowledge correctly, we will bring damage to ourselves or we will bring glory to God. But this is a very important point for the Church of Jesus Christ. As much as we know our Lord, we have also a huge call to make this knowledge make us more like Him. So, That's why when we are coming to church and learning from the scriptures and learning from many preachings about the scripture, with time we must become more like him. If He's working on us we will not continue to deal with the same sins and with the same situations for the rest of our life because He will change us through the scripture. The Holy Ghost will work on us and He will make us more like Him. And as much as we become more mature, we will become also more like Him and less like our own desires or what we believe it's good for ourselves. The goal of the church is be more like Him. And the only way to do that He's seeing and recognizing that everything is for him because there is only one God, there is only one Savior, and there is only one who should guide our lives. And how Dan Paul teaches that to the people in Corinthian? Well, he was using the food sacrifice to idols. This is an example that Paul brings to this church to exemplify what he was trying to teach them in order to make them worship only God and not letting them worship which the many gods that they were offering their lives to. So the first thing that we must understand here, it's this statement that we can find in verse four. Paul will agree with those who are called strongs among the Corinthians, who were not afraid to eat food offered to other gods. and how he would agree with Dwayne by saying that there is no other God but one. So Paul, in verse 4, he's establishing something that should guide not only their life, but the life of every believer in every moment of the Church of the Word. There is only one God. So think about the food offered to the other gods. We can imagine them worshiping Baal, for example, one of the gods of that land, those lands. We can imagine many people, many Gentiles, bringing sacrifices to that false god. They offered the sacrifice. They took their part of the sacrifice. They were not able to eat all that part, so they took small pieces of the food and they put in the markets to be sold to other people. This food, they say they could imagine, well, it was offered to other gods, so we should not eat. What Paul is saying is everything here is false. What did make you believe that this food was offered to other gods if there is no other God? If they don't exist, the sacrifice was false. It was just a theater or something like this, but the food was not offered to the other God because he just doesn't exist. Ah, okay. then he's establishing something that should make us understand the truth behind all the scenes around the other religions that exist in the world. Everything they are doing is false. There is no truth in any of their acts, in any of their works, in any of those worships that we see from other religions. So when we see Muslims going to Mecca to worship Muhammad, all of that is false because there is no God named Muhammad. When we see the Hindus going to worship their God, everything is false because there is no God there. It's just an image, a person who is not divine. Everything is false because there is only one true God. And this is the God of the scripture. This is the creator of the universe. He's establishing something to deal with these people to make them understand the meaning of life. And then he goes ahead in verses 5 through 6 to correct the weak. So first he agrees with the strong saying, yes, there is no problem about eating this kind of food. But he's also talking about with the weak saying, why are you afraid about eating this food? And he will use many situations here to show them that they are lost. So whatever there exists in heaven or earth, they belong to God. There is only one God. There is only one creator. So don't be afraid about consuming those things because He gave, He's giving it to you. He's the one who provides. He's the one who gives. Everything comes from His hand. So if He's involved with that, just submit yourself to Him and be glad. that remind us about today in the morning, right? When Peter was called to eat those foods who were forbidden in the Old Testament to the believers. Well, Paul here is dealing exactly with that situation. He's saying, look, there's nothing forbidding for the believer. If God is saying, take and eat, if God is giving it to you, take and eat. because it's coming from his hand. And we must understand that this is something precious for the believer. But I will bring forth another confession. We cover a the Apostles Creed today, but I really believe the Belgian Confession Article 1 can help us to understand what Paul is trying to teach here and say here in these verses 5 through 7. Article one in the Belgian Confession says, we all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth. There is only one simple and spiritual being, which we call God, and that he is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfect, wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good. Well, we can go through all of these, of course we will not, because we don't have time for that, but if we take some of these attributes of God, we will understand what Paul is trying to say to the weak here. He's incomprehensible for example, Matthew 11 verse 27 speaks about that and God says, all things are delivered unto me of my father and no man knoweth the son but the father neither knoweth any man the father save the son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. So what Jesus is telling there is that we cannot comprehend God because He's much bigger than all the creation. And this is an aspect that we will bring with us even through eternity. We will go to heaven, we will be in the celestial Jerusalem, we will be in the presence of Jesus Christ, but we will never comprehend God completely. For eternity, we will learn about Him, we will learn from Him, and we will never comprehend Him a hundred percent, because that's impossible. It's impossible for the creatures, even when they are perfected by the Father, to understand and comprehend the greatness of who God is. He's much bigger than we are. He's invisible. John 4.24 says that God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. So, the real God is not an image made by the man's hands, a creature produced by the artifacts that we can find in this world. Gold, silver, diamonds, what are they comparing to the greatness of the spiritual being who create the universe? How can we put together an image of Mary or an image of Buddha together with the greatness of the God Almighty who sits in the throne that any eye can see because it's on heaven. And even if we were able to go through all the galaxies, we will never get there because the galaxies are still his creation. It's impossible to see His greatness. Can you see? And then these people are saying, oh, this food offered for these idols, we cannot eat because Paul is saying, pay attention, look the size of your God, look the greatness of your God. Why are you scared about this thing, this small thing? It doesn't represent anything. He is infinite. We can deal with another aspect that Belgian Confession brings forth. Psalm 90 verse 2 says, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. What is that compared to an image that a human being took the products, he managed those things and he made something. Before the mountains, before the heaven, before the earth, before everything that exists, he was already God and forever He will be God. He cannot be broken as the other gods can be. We cannot put him in our pocket as other gods can be hidden. We cannot kill him like other gods can be killed. He is immense. He is infinite. He is almighty, the Belgian Confession will say. And we will stop here in the Belgian Confession. Isaiah 44, verses 7 and 8 says, And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? And the things that are coming and shall come, let them shew unto them. Fear ye not, neither be afraid. Have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witness. God is saying, I'm not one of these gods that these people is believing in. I'm not like one God that cannot predict what will happen in the future and know the past. I am the God who owns the future to owns the present and owns the past. Everything belongs to Him and He controls everything. It's amazing to see in the Old Testament all prophecies pointing to Jesus Christ and all the prophecies being fulfilled in the New Testament. And until today, these prophecies are still being fulfilled. Every nation in the world is bowing down to Jesus Christ. And this is a prophecy that was given to the church a long time ago. I remember when they said that China put an end to Christianity. That happens in the 1950s, and they closed the country to everyone, and they said, it's done. There is no Christianity in China. When the country was open again many years after that, They discover that there were more than 80 million believers in Jesus Christ in that country. How could that happen? How could someone imagine that in a country where they persecute and kill everyone, the progress of the church were happening under their eyes? who can see what God is doing in North Korea today, sending missionaries to a country where no one in any part of the world can visit. They cannot go there, they cannot visit that country, but many missionaries are sending themselves to North Korea to preach the gospel, bringing Bibles and producing good faith through their preaching and through the work of the Holy Spirit. We don't know when this country will be open again, but I will not be scared if we discover there are many believers there because they exist. This is the power of our God. Nothing can stop Him. Nothing can detain Him. He's the Almighty, the one who has power under His hand. And why did I use the Belgian Confession here? Not only because the Belgian Confession is saying that there is only one God, but also because these attributes show to the people of God and remind us that we should not be scared with the existence, the false existence of other gods. It doesn't matter what they are saying these gods are doing, They just don't exist. This is what Paul is saying in verse 6. But there is but one God, the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him. There is only one. Why are you afraid, Paul is saying? Why are you scared about this food? The situation behind the scenes here, it's not if we should eat or not a food, a meat, sacrifice to other gods. This is just the example. What is behind here is if the believers were still giving some measure of evidence to the other idols. If they were still believing that they could do something because they represent something that society, in that culture, they were the gods of those people. But a Christian should never look to the other gods and say, well, I should be scared of them because they are something. We should always look to them and consider them false. And we should always live a life believing and understanding there is only one God. And this is what Paul is saying to these people. Paul is trying to show them that it was not wise to be afraid of anything offered to other gods because those things were completely false. The same thing can be applied to other situations in our modern world. We don't have many idols in America. We have in Brazil, especially in the Roman church, they worship idols until today. But here in America, I didn't see so many idols around people worshiping people made by the hands of men. But there are many other gods here, and they are still trying to take the heart of the believers. security, money, power, a lot of those false gods that exist among us. And they are trying to take the heart of the believers and make them put their trust on them instead of trust only on God. It's amazing to see how someone can be so confident in his future because he has a retirement, because he has a good health plan, because he lives in a good house and he thinks everything is okay. But what is this in the face of Jesus Christ, the only Lord, the Lord who can save our souls? Money cannot save us from the last judgment. A good house will not protect us from the one who's coming in a white horse with a sword coming out from his tongue. You know, what is the door of our houses or a big dog to protect us? Nothing. We can use our bombs or nuclear bombs. There will be no result. Because He's the only one. He's the almighty and one, only one, powerful. So, what Paul is trying to teach them is, fear God and not anything else. Trust in God and not in anything else. Put your confidence in God and not in anything else. Don't be afraid to live your life here if you are living a life for God because everything you consume or everything we do, if legal before God, it's good for you. Don't be afraid of going to a market and buying a piece of meat because this is nothing for you. God is the one who provides. But then we need to go ahead and understand what Paul will say to the strong, because there's something else to be said in order to make us understand the greatness of this one being, being the one God. Paul then, in verses seven through nine, he will reprove the strong. Well, it's very strange actually, because in verse four, he was agreeing with them, but now he's reproving them. And we must understand why he's doing this. And here in verse seven, he will speak about the conscience of the idol under the minds of those who were weak. They didn't know their God like they should. I think a good example to help us to understand this, it's the children among us. My younger daughter, for example, you didn't met her, unfortunately, but almost every night she wakes up like three times during the night afraid with dogs. It's something that we cannot control. She just wake up, scared, screaming, daddy, daddy. When I arrived, she says, a dog, a dog. And I need to say, there is no dog here. Like it was maybe her dream or I don't know if she's scared about dogs around our neighborhood. I really don't know what is in her mind. She cannot. speak yet. She's two years old. She's trying to speak two languages at the same time. It's not good. It's very hard, difficult for her. But I don't understand. But I cannot force her to understand, like, pay attention, there's no dog here. Like, I need to be patient with her to explain her, look, there's no dog. Put your hand in your side. You see there is no dog. We are in our house. It's protected. Your sister is here. Daddy is here. There is no dog. Then she calms down. She becomes relaxed and she sleeps again. It's the same with the people of God. Sometimes they came from backgrounds that they really believe that those false gods, they are something. And we need to treat them with love and care, helping them to see the truth in the world that we live. We need to help them to see that there is only one being in the whole universe controlling all the situations around us. The Almighty One is in control and He's the only one who can save us and take care of us. So put your faith only on Him. We still need to do that with ourselves sometimes, especially regarding to those sins of our time. We need more money. We need more money. Then we put our efforts on that. We work in two, three jobs to make more money, thinking that this money can save us or at least bring relief to whatever we are living in. But we are not putting our trust in God. We are putting our trust in things of this world. This is an example, money, but you can apply to whatever you are thinking about. There is nothing real in this world. Everything will pass. When the Lord comes, we will not bring anything with us. The clothes, the cars, the houses, the church buildings, our house, nothing. Everything will stay. Everything will pass. There will be only us and Jesus Christ. And if he says, I know you, your name is in the book of life because you put our faith in me, then we will find salvation. But if he says, I don't know you. Nothing will be able to save us. Nothing. So why are we believing in these false gods and living a life for these false gods? Paul is trying to rebuke them in order to make them help the weak. The goal for the church, and Paul is trying to say to the Corinthians, it's that together you will walk, working for this one God, for the one Savior, Jesus Christ. You have only one Father, but you need to grow together. You need to build this trust together. You need to work together in order to glorify this one God. And then, united, we will see the glory of God being given to him. We don't want to be stumbling block to the weak, like he says in verse 9. We don't want to make our brothers and sisters stop to progress in their life with Christ because we cannot teach them like they should receive our teaching. We need to take care of ourselves and we need to take care of those around us to glorify God. But by the end, the truth, it's the same. The strong among the Corinthians, they were right. And we must believe in the only one God who exists and is forever and ever, our Lord. But we need to apply that for our lives, to ourselves today. And there is no other way besides fighting against the idolatry among ourselves. There are many things that can become an idol to ourselves, and we need to identify those things to understand if we are really putting our faith only on Jesus or if we are putting our faith in other things besides Him. I know a lot of people today who believe they are trusting Jesus Christ, but they are not. and it's only seeing their habits that we will understand that. If we believe that there is only one God, we will dedicate our lives to this one God. I cannot apply in a different way. If we don't have relationship with Him, if we don't have a deep life together with Him, how can we believe that we belong to Him and that He is our Savior and Lord? I only talk to God by Sundays when I come to the church service and then someone prays in my place, someone preaches the scripture and I listen, but that's all. I don't go to Him during the whole week. I don't try to find His knowledge to guide me in my decisions. I don't have a relationship in prayer with Him. I never pray, actually. Sometimes before lunchtime or dinner, I make those short prayers. It should be a shame for us, actually. But that's the truth for many believers. They don't see God for six days in a week. And then they come on Sundays to say, well, here I am, God. That's not a life lived to God. That's not a life recognizing that there is only one God or Lord and Savior. If we understand the meaning of what Paul is saying, we will understand that we desperately need Him. We need Him. And if we need Him, we will run to Him. We will spend time with Him. We want to know what He thinks. We want to know what He teaches. We want to know Him more and more and more, even knowing that we will never comprehend everything from Him. We want more of this one God who made us and who is saving us. I want to know more. And I believe you should no more. Go deep in the Scripture. Spend time meditating the verses that you read. Go through them. Pay attention in every word. Try to understand. Try to identify why is this important to you. Spend time with the Scripture. Then go to Him by prayer and put everything out to Him. He's saying that you should pray to Me. It's not me. I'm not saying that you should pray. It's God that says that. And we have a very good example in the Gospels. Jesus Christ is praying much more than doing anything else. We have Him praying for 20, 25 times only in the Gospel of Luke. And we don't see Him doing many other things like healings in so many times. He prays so much and He's the Son of God. If He needs to pray so much, well, I'm in danger because I need to pray much more than I am doing right now. I need to go deep in my relationship with Christ, in my relationship with God. But also, I need to understand that those gods who are in my heart, They need to be completely destroyed. They need to be completely destroyed or God is not the only God. If you trust in other things besides Him, you need to understand that you need to kill your idol in your heart. We have many examples to apply. I will apply one very specific today because it's the problem of our time in many situations, like pornography, which is destroying marriages, destroying families, destroying churches. It's destroying everything. And people is still giving themselves to this sin like it's something common and good to them. This is Satan destroying your life through a sin and you are saying that it's okay to worship God and give your body to these things by the same time. This is madness. It's impossible to have two gods in the same house. If we have the God Almighty there, it's impossible to put pornography, adultery, lies, false witness, all those things together with Him. Or He is our God, or we are giving ourselves to other gods. And we must fight and destroy every false God of our hearts. There is only one almighty, incomprehensible, good, the overflowing source of all good, just, completely wise. This is the God of creation. Our call is to submit ourselves completely to him. May he will be your God today and forevermore. Let's pray. Close your eyes. Let's talk to God. Our Heavenly Father, once again, we come before you asking for your grace and mercy. First, we must say thank you to you for your salvation, for the blood of Jesus Christ who came to this world and paid the price of our sins. Thank you, Lord, because you saved us from ourselves. You saved us from sin, and now we belong to you. And we confess with our mouth that there is only one God and you are our God. Thank you for the prophets of the past from the scripture made by the Holy Spirit to give us everything we need to our salvation. But we also pray, God, that may we live only for you. We pray that may the other gods The false ones who are trying to make us believe that they are something, they become destroyed in the presence of the one and truly God. Help us to hate every false god in our hearts. Help us to destroy them completely. Help us to face whatever is need to put them down and to give the throne only for you. Help us to love you more than ourselves. Help us to love you more than our desires. Help us to love you more than our money. Help us to love you more than our security. Help us to trust only on you, to put all our confidence on you. Help us God to see only you and to live only for you. Work on us God. and make us live a life to glorify the name of our Lord. We pray all of these in Jesus' name. Amen.