Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Our Father in heaven, we come before you this morning and just thankful, thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ even as the world begins celebrating by shopping, by spending money, by doing all manner of things that have nothing to do with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We want to be focused on him, not just his birth, but his life, his death, his resurrection, and what it means to us and the liberty that he purchased for us, how you want us to think, how you want us to live, and how we are to influence one another.
Lord, we pray that our time this morning would be helpful to those who are here, that it would be a benefit to us as we think about our daily lives and the line that we walk between legalism and licentiousness.
And Lord, help us to remain faithful, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, let's open our Bibles to Romans chapter 14. We were looking at that last week, and I want to just review a little bit before we start talking again about this.
Romans 14, we were talking about Christian liberty and what it means. I want to read, if somebody would read the first three verses, please. Okay, so when it says here, the weak person eats only vegetables, of course we know that is a slam on vegetarianism.
I don't know why some people are laughing. I appreciate the amen. No, what does that mean? When we see a weak person, what are we to make of that? Is that a physically weak person? Okay, weak in conscience?
So to be weak in conscience is not commendable. The thrust of this is, and I think R .C. gets down to it, talking about Romans 14, and he says, we ought not to, naturally I won't be able to find it here, but we won't be able to, or we should not allow the, okay, Paul is not saying for the sake of the weaker person, we must give up our liberty.
If that were the case, our ethic would be determined, or the way we ought to live would be determined by the weaker brother and not by the word of God. In other words, we'd all be vegetarians if somebody objected to meat.
We'd all be teetotallers if somebody objected to the consumption of alcoholic beverages. We'd all be non-dancers if somebody objected to dancing. We'd all be fill-in-the-blank. If we allow the weaker person, in other words, the person who has the most easily offended conscience.
And for just a minute, I want you to think back when you first got saved, I mean, beyond responding in joy and faith and all these other things, can you think of anything really dumb that you did? Was your first response to being saved a form of legalism?
Any true confessions? Becky says yes. Did you do anything that you can remember? Okay. She established some Sunday rules. Anybody else? No true confessions. Well, I went through my record collection. I didn't just go through my record collection.
I got rid of some CDs and stuff like that, but I sold my entire record collection for like $100, which I think would be worth many thousands today. But I digress. I got rid of my comic books. I got rid of my baseball cards.
I got rid of everything that I even thought might be an idol. I just got rid of everything. I might have overdone it a little. Okay. TV set. And I totally get that. I'm sure that there are people now who get saved, and therefore, you know, the computer goes in the trash.
The TV goes in the trash. And then later on, they're like, well, I might have overdone that a little bit. Right? But our first response is this kind of sense of, I have to cut off every form of sin, and sometimes that means I have to cut off even influences, which is good thinking in one way, but you can kind of overdo it too, I think.
You know, it's like all of a sudden you want to live on a desert. It's no longer, what would I do if I was stuck on a desert island? It's like, oh, I wish I could be stuck on a desert island. Just cut off from all the influences.
Just give me the Bible, enough to eat, and I'll be fine. And where we left off last week, we talked about hypocrisy and what it is and what it isn't, and about how it's not abuse. Well, should we abuse Christian liberty?
The answer, obviously, is no. Hypocrisy, though, is not the abuse of Christian liberty. It's pretending to be something that you're not. It's saying that, you know, I don't drink alcohol, and then I drink in secret at home, or I don't watch TV, but I do watch TV, or whatever.
You know, it's basically presenting one face to the world and another face when you are alone. And we've talked about this concept of adiaphora, which means matters of indifference, which is to say things that the Word of God neither commands nor prohibits.
And so you have freedom. And we talked about at least one of those things last week, because I mentioned homeschooling. And I think there are a lot of good arguments. I didn't get to eat fan mail this week, so I guess it was okay.
I think there are good arguments on both sides, but I think the one thing that I think really concerns me, and I mentioned this last week, is that people just say the only way to do parenting is homeschooling, which is fine until you realize that, A, not everybody wants to, B, the Bible doesn't command it, and C, there are single parents out there who can't do it, or people who just can't, for whatever reason, they can't afford it.
Both parents have to work. And I know there'd be some people who say, well, how could it be that both parents have to work because the mortgage has to be paid or the rent has to be paid or whatever? We don't live in an ideal world.
We have to adapt to the world that we're in. Okay, so licentiousness, that is to say the opposite of, if legalism is I'm going to go overboard, I'm going to make up rules that don't exist, I'm going to have Sunday rules and probably Monday rules and Tuesday rules and Wednesday rules and rules, rules, rules, I'm going to live my life according to rules.
Licentiousness is the idea that there are no rules. I can do whatever I want. I have complete freedom. And that's not what liberty in Christ means. Again, if we just think about adiaphora, the idea that some things are matters of indifference, they're neither commanded nor forbidden.
Well, it's wrong for me to add to the commandments of God because then I usurp the place of God, but it's also wrong for me to ignore the commandments of God because then I take the place of God and I decide what is and what isn't okay, and I decide that everything's okay.
R .C. says that licentiousness is based on the idea that liberty, that is ours, gives us a license to sin. This most frequently arises when people put their private views and desires above the Bible. Can you think of any scriptures that would talk about licentiousness or excessive freedom, shall we say?
I know what you're thinking. It's not even in my notes, but I know what you're thinking. You are thinking about Romans 6. The apostle Paul writes,. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? And so right there he refutes the idea that somehow it's okay for me to just ignore the law of God because Jesus paid for all of my sins. Jesus is a wonderful Savior.
He's a great Savior. His sacrifice is sufficient for all my sins, so I ought to take full advantage of that. Can you think, or what would you say, are there examples that you can think of real-life Christians who have exhibited, or professing Christians, who have exhibited licentiousness, who have gone against the Word of God and then justified it somehow?
Televangelists, million-dollar jets, yeah, multi-million-dollar jets. My favorite one is the guy Creflo Dollar who then pleads for dollars, right? He says he needs that jet airplane to get around and minister the Word.
A little aside here. I asked my grandkids the other day, who's the greatest singer who's ever lived? What do you think they said? Christian man, I had to answer this. Me? No, it wasn't me. I lost this.
Very famous female singer. No, a little bit older than that. Christian female singer. Yeah, Mrs. Christmas. Amy Grant, the greatest singer. And I was just like, well, you know, your experiential pool is pretty small.
Plus, it's Christmastime, and the Amy Grant CDs are out and about, and we're listening to lots of Amy Grant songs. Amy Grant was in a difficult marriage to a man who was a professing Christian but also happened to be addicted to heroin back when heroin wasn't so pervasive.
She got a divorce from him and married the man I call Mr. Amy Grant, also known as Vince Gill. Does anybody remember what she said when she did that? She said that she knew that God wanted her to be happy, and therefore she wasn't happy, and it was okay to get a divorce.
If that's our methodology, right? I know extra-biblical revelation, in a sense. I know that God wants me to be happy. That's God's priority for my life. And therefore, since God wants me to be happy, then I can do something that does what?
Contradicts His word. So God is giving me this word here, I want you to be happy, that contradicts His revealed word. Can that happen? No. And the honest truth is what? That she wanted to do something, and she did it, figuring that God's grace was sufficient to forgive her.
R .C. says this, because he wasn't writing about Amy Grant, but he says, I've known people to engage in activities in opposition to Scripture. They consistently defend their actions by saying they prayed and God gave them what?
Peace. And again, here's the idea. God has revealed X, but I pray for Y, I get a peace about it, and that somehow contradicts what God reveals. He says, R .C. says, not only do these people sin, but they make it worse by claiming that God endorses it.
God stamps it. God approves it. R .C. said, I should write a book called The Sensuous Christian, which would describe Christians who determine the will of God by their feelings. I mean, when you think about it, what is the difference between going to a psychic and asking them what you should do, or opening up a fortune cookie, or something else?
What's the difference between that and saying, I prayed about it, God gave me a peace about it, when it contradicts the Bible? What's the difference? The difference is somehow I can put the stamp of God, his approval on what I've done.
But as we would readily admit, the Holy Spirit cannot tell us to do something. He wouldn't lead us to do something that's contrary to his word. R .C. says, it could be a spirit leading, but it is an unholy spirit.
The purpose of Christian liberty is never to incite us to sin or to lust. And R .C. notes, in some cases, the church must step in, the visible church. It says, any church that is a true church has a responsibility to exercise discipline over its members.
What do you think about that? Any church that is a true church has a responsibility to exercise discipline over its members. Is that true or false? Now, you all may not know this. How many have heard of Mark Dever?
Many hands go up. Mark Dever pastors a church in Washington, D .C. It's kind of a unique place. And it's unique for many reasons. But one of them is that most of the people who go to the church actually live in a very concentrated area.
In fact, they have what I call like a compound where the pastors live very close. They can walk across a little parking lot and go into the church, but they have a complex there. It's kind of cool, actually.
But one of the things that they do when you join the church is they have you sign a, I think it's called a membership compact. It's an agreement. And, you know, there are certain stipulations in the compact.
One of these, and I want you to think about this for a minute. Think about whether you would join BBC if we had this. One of the stipulations in this contract is that if you move away from Capitol Hill Baptist Church, if you move away, like let's say you move to Kansas, because why not Kansas?
You will then join a Bible teaching church in Kansas. What do you think about that? Okay. Pastor Bob says he thinks that's all right. Their church in California had that. Now I'm going to ask Pastor Bob a question.
What would happen if somebody didn't let you know that they joined a church when they moved to Kansas? Okay. Well, let me tell you what happens at Capitol Hill Baptist. If you move to Kansas and you don't join the church, they'll send you a letter saying, hey, Steve, how's it going?
Hope you're really enjoying the plains of Kansas. Don't know why you move there. Hope the wheat's really growing well. And by the way, by the way, have you joined a Bible teaching church? And if you either respond no or you don't respond no, but they do hold a special meeting of the church and have a vote and condemn you.
They exercise church discipline on you. Why? What's that? Not following their rules or. Okay. The church does not end in the area code. Right. It extends. You. Well, here's the thing, though. You know, when I joined Capitol Hills Baptist Church, which I didn't, by the way, I'm just using me as a bad illustration because.
I'm Mr. Bad example. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Little war is even early in the morning. I signed that contract. I signed that agreement. I said, if I leave this church and I go to Kansas, wherever I go, you know, not just Kansas, I guess it probably would also apply to the Czech Republic or Alberta, Canada or wherever I went.
I said that I would join a church when I went there, a Bible teaching church, and I didn't do it. That's not a Capitol Hills Baptist Church. They didn't force me to do that. I did that. I took that willingly.
Right. And then I don't do it. And R .C. here says any church that is a true church has a responsibility to exercise discipline over its members. Now it's a matter for the church to determine what is and is not a matter of discipline.
But if I agree to something and then I don't do it, I think that if the church wants to discipline me, that's that's up to the church. But he says this comes as a shock to many people in America that the church would exercise discipline at all.
When we exercise discipline, which we, by the way, do not enjoy. I mean, can you imagine what what kind of what kind of people would enjoy exercising church discipline? You'd have to be kind of. Little wacky.
Well, you'd have to be some kind of fundamentalist is what you have to be. Nobody likes it. Because if you think about Matthew 18, the goal that Jesus presents in Matthew 18 isn't to boot somebody out of the church.
It's not to hold them up to ridicule. It's not to make them feel small or to make them cry or make them hide in the corner. The goal is to. Restore them. Right. You want them to repent. You want them to come back into full fellowship.
So getting back to this Kansas idea, the reason they send you a letter is just to kind of give you that nudge. Yes, I need to do that. Yes, I need to attach myself to a local visible Bible teaching church.
Because, A, that's what I agree to do, but B, it's something equally important and something that people don't really grasp as believers. It's not just a. A recommended thing, I, you know, I don't have time to.
Well, and I don't really want to argue about this anyway. The truth is that every Christian should belong to a church. Every Christian should belong to a church. It should be like. You know, every every child needs an education.
Every Christian needs to be in a church. Why? I mean, to give it to give a brief summation. I ask people because they're like, well, you know, I don't really have to join a church like, OK. How do you submit to your leaders?
The leaders of your church, which is what Hebrews 13, 17 is talking about. How do you submit to leaders if you don't have any? Even a more fundamental question is how do you exercise your gifts within the body of Christ if you don't belong to a body of Christ?
When you are saved, true or false, you get spiritual gifts. OK, true. So if you have spiritual gifts and the Bible commands you to employ them for what? For the good of yourself. For the good of others, for the good of the body of Christ.
To help the body function as it is intended to by God. How do you do that if you won't join a church? And people are like, well, you know what? I don't want to mess up the church by joining it. Now, that would be a good attitude, right?
This is a pretty good church and I wouldn't want to foul it up. But that's not why people do it. People do it because they don't really like the idea of being compelled to do anything. And I'm like, well, I think it's a privilege, especially if you're converted at an older age like me.
You would see this not as a stumbling block, but as a blessing. The idea that I would get to join a church is a blessing. But again, the idea of discipline is difficult for some people. Here's what he says.
He goes on to say, the idea of ecclesiastical authority, that is to say the authority of the church, has almost disappeared from the thinking of evangelical Christians today. We don't really tend to think of the church as having any particular authority or not having any authority.
But the truth is the church, local church, does have authority. But it only has this much authority. How much? Whatever the scriptures say. That's all we have. We don't have anything more than that. So before we move on from Christian liberty, are there any questions or other topics concerning Christian liberty that anybody wants to discuss besides homeschooling?
The compact doesn't take the place of the scriptures. So the idea of somebody serving in the church for years and years and years and then going off the rails, that shouldn't happen unless they're members because there should be limitations.
Now, let's say somebody wanted to stack the chairs. I think we'd let them do that. What we wouldn't do here is we're pretty firm on you may not teach and you may not have any authority over finances. Either one, people or money, unless you're a member of the church.
Why? Because if you're not willing to submit to the authority of the elders, then why would we trust you then to exercise authority over either money or people? So good question. But, I mean, the answer is would we do that if somebody was at the church 12 or 15 years as an attender and then went off the rails?
Yes, we would go after them, I think. So, yeah. Right. Yeah, because really, you know, here's the, and that's an excellent point, Christine. We don't stop loving them just because, or, you know, let me back up a little bit.
We wouldn't say, you know what, if you haven't joined the church after 12 or 15 years, we don't care about you. Because church discipline ultimately is not about, you know, getting somebody. This isn't about the long arm of the law.
This is about caring enough about somebody to say, hey, you need to stop doing what you're doing. You need to come back into proper fellowship, not only with the brothers and sisters in Christ here in the local church, but with God.
You're in sin. You need to repent. Yeah, you know what, I think you bring up an important point. Let's just turn to Matthew 18 for a moment since we're talking about it anyway. Because I think maybe, you know, we do focus on the end results or the often end result.
I mean, I'm looking forward to, I shouldn't say, well, yeah, I guess, you know, the idea of getting to like step three and then having somebody repent before step four, before we actually put them out of the church.
I don't think people understand what a glorious thing that would be because they don't get it. You know, if you if you think the end goal of church discipline is putting somebody out of the church, then you you don't understand it.
It is always in love that we that we do this. And let's just look at verse 15 for a minute, because I want to emphasize this a little bit. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Now, firstly, why is this so important? Why is this? I mean, we call the step one. But why is this so important? What does it prevent? Okay. Further backsliding.
Gossip. Gossip. If you know somebody's in sin, you go that, you know, here are your two options. Well, there are three options. One is ignore it. Okay. And if it's something that you can cover and if it's something that's not going to impact them.
Okay. Option number two, go and talk to them in private. And if they repent, then you have won your brother. Option number three is tell somebody else. Tell somebody else. Now, which takes the most courage to go talk to them in private?
It's hard. The easiest thing to do is go find somebody else and talk to them about it. The question, though, is what's the positive effect of that? What's the positive effect of going and telling somebody else?
And if you're struggling to figure that out, it's because there is no positive effect. It might make you feel good, but you're destroying your brother or sister. You're destroying the unity of the body.
And you are basically indirectly telling that brother or sister, guess what? I don't love you. I don't care about you. I would rather destroy you, destroy your reputation, than talk to you privately and seek your restoration.
I've had people who were wandering the halls of this church, wanting to talk about Pastor Mike, wanting to talk about me. And when I asked them, why would you do that? What do you think their response was?
I was aggrieved, and I had the right to see if anyone agreed with me. You believe in Matthew 18, right? Yeah. So why wouldn't you do that? And why isn't it gossip? I've had somebody else say to me one time, well, it's not gossip if it's true.
Is that correct? It's not true at all. It could be slander, but it could be truth just said in an unloving way. And here, let me give you an example, because I cited this example. And this wasn't true in this person's case.
But I said, if one of your children was involved in sexual activity and became pregnant or caused a young woman to become pregnant, should I go around the church and tell everybody about it? That person said, absolutely not.
That would be sinful. That would be gossip. And I said, but it would be true. That won the argument, right? They understood it then at that point. But you have to take it to some extreme that affects you personally before you say, oh, I get it.
That's a wrong thing to do. But I think if we just think of the words of Jesus and we just say, okay, the master of the church says to me, if my brother or sister sins against me, to do what? To go to them in private, to talk to them in private.
Why? Because I want them restored and because it is the most loving thing that I could possibly do for them. So back to this, someone goes off the rails or whatever. By the time we get to church discipline, step three or something like that, generally speaking, months have gone into this because the person has gone and talked to them.
There have been one and a witness going with them. And there are letters sent, all manner of things, because we want to take every step we possibly can before we bring it to the church, because our goal is not to shame anybody.
Our goal is to see restoration. And again, if you think this is easy, you should just think about what it means to actually get up and do that. Or even to just go back to Matthew 18, verse 1, when he says go to the person and talk to them in private.
And you know, if you've ever done this, how difficult it is. So just imagine everything that goes on before it and how you want to avoid doing all this. It's hard. It always is. Other questions about Christian liberty or even church discipline, if I didn't answer that?
And so that's an excellent point, Pastor Bob. I go to somebody and I confront them because I think they're in sin. They say, get out of my face, you're wrong, it's not sin. So I take a witness. I grab Pastor Bob.
He comes along with me. I go and confront him again. And then Pastor Bob listens and goes, Steve, that person's not in sin. You're a knucklehead. That could also be the effect of doing this. It could be that a person who's all offended is just wrong and being offended.
Well, yeah, I think if what you're saying is if it's permitted to go public in an uncontrolled way and really if you just let gossip run rampant, then what does that do? That is the kind of thing that it doesn't bring the person to repentance.
It doesn't restore them to the body. It tends to drive them away. And so the Lord's given very clear teaching about how this is to be done. And the goal, again, is to keep it as closely held as possible.
I say to people, how do you know if it's gossip? Somebody will say, well, how do I know if it's gossip? Well, if you're not part of the problem and you're not part of the solution, I realize that's a worldly kind of thing.
But it's true, right? If it has nothing to do with you, then just be quiet. It has nothing to do with you. You're not part of the problem. You're not part of the solution. Then keep your mouth closed because anything you say about it is probably going to be gossip.
And that's the goal, right? And that's an excellent point. We ought to approach these adiaphora issues, these indifferent issues, with great deference and respect and recognizing that we're each brothers and sisters in Christ and we can have our own opinions about them.
So it is fine for, say, I don't know, Pastor Mike to hate the Boston Celtics. Well, yeah, it's fine. But if he were to say the same thing about the Patriots, that would be wrong. No. It's important that we defer to things that are ultimately indifferent.
And that's why, particularly when it comes to homeschooling, and again, I understand I have a lot of sympathy for the pro-homeschool arguments, even though our own kids were not homeschooled. I get it and I see daily the increasing encroachment into parental rights that the state is just kind of moving in.
It's like a bad 50s movie. 1950s, for those of you who are wondering. You know, the blob where it just kind of keeps growing and spreading and everything. But I think we also have to be deferential and understand that not everybody's circumstances, not everybody's maturity or thinking lines up with ours.
And that's okay. They're still our brothers and sisters in Christ. And, you know, we wind up almost, we can almost wind up with a kind of church lady mentality. You know, where we hear somebody give their opinion and we just go, oh, isn't that special?
Yeah. Yeah. Who else would think like that? Let me think. Satan, you know. Yeah. And that's exactly what Paul's trying to get away from. I mean, if they're black and white issues of, you know, biblical command, that's one thing.
But if they're not, if they're in this gray area, then we need to be deferential to one another. Okay. So I see somebody doing something that is not beneficial to their spiritual growth. So the question is, what should I do or not do?
You know, just with regard to wisdom and conscience and maturity, what do you guys think? Can I tell you what I, I'll just sort of recap what you said. He went about asking questions of the other person to see, you know, if these things are beneficial to them and everything.
And I really like that approach. Instead of accusations, questions are good. You know, get the other person to think about their position and even maybe sort of give you their rationale, their biblical rationale for it.
I think those are good because you can ask questions, you know, without saying, well, you know, or you could frame them in ways that are not so good. Like I'll just use Mark's name. You know, well, let me ask you something, Mark.
Why in the world would you think that that's a good idea? You know, that wouldn't maybe be the best way to go about it, right? But you can ask questions and sort of make the other person think about it without going, you know what, I think that's a really foolish thing to do.
Or, you know, listen, Mark, I'm a lot more mature than you. So can I just tell you how the cow eats the cabbage? That wouldn't be the right way to go either in case you're wondering how the cow eats the cabbage.
But I think that's a good question. But I think in a lot of cases, you know, the right thing to do is just going to be to just leave it alone. If you consider how to talk to them and you go, well, this is a matter of gray area, a matter of wisdom perhaps, but a gray area.
I mean, you know, like let's talk, here's a good area that maybe people think is gray but probably is not so gray, finances. You know, I hear you talking about buying a Corvette. You know, let's say Mark's thinking about buying a Corvette.
As a young, engaged man planning on getting married, you know, and Lord willing, having children and everything, that Corvette might not be the best purchase, right? So if somebody was to say, I don't know, Mark, that might not be your best move, especially in New England where you can't drive that thing six months out of the year.
Did I just say that? Yeah, I did. So, you know, something like that. I mean, somewhere, somebody who knows Mark well might go, I don't know, buddy, you might want to think about an SUV, you know, instead, something with a lot of seats in it.
Check and make sure how those child care seats fit in there and all that. So, I mean, there are areas where I think maybe you can speak wisdom to somebody, but then I think there are areas where you just kind of have to let it go, okay?
And I think there's a lot of value to that. And I think the main thing I would point to there is just the idea of fellowship being key. I think it's, you know, why is it, if I ask you, and I need to close here, but if I ask you who your best friends are and you rattle off a list of people and you can't name one Christian who's in your best friends group, you know, that you like to spend time with and that you do spend time with, there's something wrong there.
Because the people that you should most enjoy being with are Christians. And, you know, this time of year really drives that home because often we spend time with family and unbelieving family, and it can often get difficult.
Like when you think about Thanksgiving and, you know, often people will say what they're thankful for, although we failed to do that the other day. But they'll say things that they're thankful for, but who are they thankful to, right?
And so when you're gathered with a bunch of unbelievers, they might be thankful, but they're thankful to something nebulous, something that, you know, they're thankful to the universe, they're thankful to something, but they're not ultimately thankful to God.
And those of us who are in Christ Jesus, not only are we thankful to God for the physical things of life, but more importantly, we're thankful for our salvation. And if we don't have that kind of iron sharpening iron in our lives, then, you know, something is missing.
And oftentimes it can be that kind of conscience sharpening. Now, I would say that, too, if somebody says everything in my life needs to further the kingdom of God, yes. But what can that lead to? If I take that to a fine point, then I'm not going to ever go out to dinner because how is going out to dinner furthering the kingdom of God?
I'm not going to, you know, go have fun playing laser tag because, you know, I mean, you can go too far on that. You wind up in legalism. So, I mean, I think the key is seek first the kingdom of God and then everything else comes after that.
So we need to close. Lord, thank you for this discussion this morning, for these things to think through, even as we wrestle so often with legalism, with tendency to want to get away from the law of God and even be disobedient, licentious.
Father, to just remain faithful to you, to have our consciences informed to interact with one another, to lovingly interact with one another, to be willing to care enough about somebody, to go talk to them when they're in sin, to give them counsel when I think they're going astray, to do all these things but always to do them in love and to understand that our position is not one of superiority but a brother and sister in Christ to defer on matters that are not critical.
And Lord, always to think, how can I glorify you with my life, with my thoughts, with my interaction with my brothers and sisters in Christ? Lord, that is our goal, to be pleasing to you in all that we do.
We pray that you'd bless each one here this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.