One of the great benefits of the internet is the ability to download and listen to some powerful sermons and Christian teachers.  I’m so grateful to the ministries like Grace Community Church and Desiring God that make a plethora of resources available for free.  They are available for the building up of the body of Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel to those not yet saved.

Each year John Piper has a National Conference whereby he invites Christian pastors and teachers to participate.  I recently downloaded the messages from the 2010 conference and started listening to Francis Chan’s message on the peril of pride.  Oh my…it’s powerful, convicting, challenging and motivating.  This is a message I will need to listen to again and again. 

Go to the link below to download or listen on-line to Francis Chan:

Think Hard, Stay Humble: The Life of the Mind and the Peril of Pride – Francis Chan

1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.  And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.   But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.

Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.  For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

However, there is not in everyone that knowledge; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.  But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse.

But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.  For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols?  And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?  But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.  Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.



2010 Desiring God National Conference