“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #118
“Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake: For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (1 Cor. 10:24-26).
In this section, Paul mentions a principle that he will repeat again in a moment—which is that the whole earth belongs to God. God not only owns the earth, He owns the fullness of it. This has various applications, and the first one is that each man has his own, and God gives us our own so that we might not seek it. Rather than privilege our own persons or property, we are to use whatever we have in order to seek out a blessing for others.
In this instance, we seek what is best for others by being considerate. We don’t have to worry about the history of the meat we purchased in the shambles (meat market) because whatever that history was, the meat is not demon-possessed. The earth is the Lord’s, and that includes meat that hours before was on the altar of a pagan deity. There is nothing wrong with the meat – but we might still wrong our brother by how we go about enjoying the meat. The earth is the Lord’s, and He tells us that all things are clean. The earth is the Lord’s, and He tells us to put our brother first, before ourselves.