Romans 15:1-6 Batteries Included

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here. And I hope that you're just as glad as I am that we have the privilege to gather together in the name of Jesus Christ.

How many of you are glad for that? You're glad to be able to gather together, I am. And the fact is, we need community in order to grow in faith and service. And we talk about growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service as the three things that we believe that every maturing Christian needs.

And those are interconnected. Have you noticed that in your life? Often when you're in community is when your faith is challenged and you grow. And then it's also through community that you get an opportunity to use your gifts of service.

And the abilities that you have.

And so those things overlap to a large degree in our lives, but they need to be expanding and growing. And that's what we're all about here at Recast. And wherever you're at on your journey with Christ, I hope that this church gathering today brings you closer to God by faith and closer to others in community and service.

And so this morning, I'd like to welcome Spencer Valeri and his wife, Megan. They just moved up here from Ohio yesterday, drove the four and a half hours, got a lot of their stuff moved in, probably last night trying to find stuff in boxes still.

Maybe they got a bed set up, I don't even know. But I look forward to having him up here regularly during the service. So you're gonna get to know him, he's gonna get up and he's gonna pray from time to time and do some different things.

He'll preach occasionally in my absence and stuff like that. But this morning, I'm just gonna ask him to do the stereotypical stand up and wave, he and his wife, Megan. And so that awkward moment where he's like, what do we do, are we supposed to clap, what do we do?

But that also, one of the purposes of that is so that you guys can all tag their location and come up and mob them during connection time with questions. So you guys have that going for you too. But now you know where they're at and you can put a face with a name and we're gonna get to know them over the coming years and months and look forward to what God is gonna do through Spencer and through his wife, Megan and their daughter, Bexley, as they join us in the mission that God has called us to as a church of worshiping God and finding more worshipers for his name.

That is our mission statement as a church and we're gonna see that even this text this morning ties in with that mission statement quite closely. And so our text this morning in Romans chapter 15 is continuing on in a series through the book of Romans.

I started that about a year ago and we're gonna be wrapping it up in the next few weeks. And so kind of mad dash through the book of Romans, I'm John Piper, I think took 260 some messages through this book and I've done it in about 46.

Not that I'm better than him, but I'm just kind of driven to get through things pretty fast so we've moved through Romans and there's obviously much more for you in your personal time with God and in his word to mine the depths of the book of Romans.

I think you could spend years in the book of Romans and certainly not get everything that it's saying to us. And so I've entitled the message this morning,.

Batteries included.

Now some of you have heard those things, you know, where they're talking about an advertisement.

Or whatever, batteries not included.

In this case, the batteries are included because a central chunk of our text was written to show us the power source for our unity as a church. Where does the power come from that unites a ragtag bunch of people like us?

People who may not in other circumstances even be friends, I mean, we might not have the same common interests. I say this often, for some of you, the closest that I might come to your life is walking down the cereal aisle at Meijer while I'm picking up my Lucky Charms and you're picking out your health cereal and we might just bump into each other and say, excuse me.

And that would be the extent of our interaction were it not for Christ. And so the interesting thing is God is doing something that is bringing unity, a people with diverse interests and diverse backgrounds and diverse thoughts and feelings and emotions and he brings us together in oneness and that's a glorious thing.

And so that's what we've been looking at since the start of chapter 14 of Romans, Paul has been clearly focused on the need for unity in the church. And as he wraps up that section this week coming into chapter 15, really it's kind of funny how the chapters are broken down because the end of the thought happens at the start of a chapter at these first six verses of chapter 15.

But he makes sure that we understand where the power for our unity comes from. He will point us to the example of Jesus Christ in this text and his sacrifice that informs our much smaller sacrifices that the way that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for us helps us to understand how we can live and move and breathe as a church in relationships that can get messy and difficult.

But he also points to the word of God that provides us with examples of endurance and examples of encouragement that shows us that we're in it for the long game in community together. But finally he acknowledges that all examples aside because examples are not sufficient, models are not enough to tame a wayward sinful heart.

And so all examples aside, what we really deeply need, the greatest power source, the largest battery in our lives for unity in the church is the God of endurance and the God of encouragement that he would grant us harmony.

That's where the text is gonna go. And this is not a message that concludes with Paul bashing us over the head telling us to get along, you bunch of knuckleheads, okay? Paul isn't driving the proverbial minivan shouting in the backseat, don't make me pull this thing over while the kids are drawing an invisible line in the center of the seat saying he touched me,.

He reached over the line. She did this, she did that, right?

He's saying that the invisible line between the kids and the backseat needs to be broken down by God and by his power. And so we pray and we'll see Paul pray for that unity just as Jesus Christ prayed for unity in his church, Paul does that as well and we ought to follow that example and we strive for that unity.

We study the scriptures for endurance. We study the scriptures to understand that sacrifice of Jesus Christ and for encouragement along the way for us. But ask yourself as we read this text right now, where is the source of our hope for unity here at Recast Church?

So open your Bibles if you're not already there to Romans chapter 15, verses one through six. If you don't have a Bible, we're gonna probably start doing something where I'm gonna ask the elder on duty to bring in a stack of Bibles.

You'll notice, I don't know if you've noticed, you probably haven't, but there's no more Bibles under the seat in front of you. What was happening is we were taking those chairs down and setting them up every week.

They were falling, the binding was getting broken, they were getting tattered and it's about a thousand to $2 ,000 investment for those Bibles and they're not very good quality Bibles and then we're giving them out to people and they're missing pages and stuff is, they're broken and so what we're doing is we're leaving a stack of Bibles out at the welcome table and right now, if you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to the Bible, you could raise your hand and Mark would grab a couple of those for you and we can bring those in.

But just rest assured, we still believe in the power of the word of God. Don't get scared, just the fact that we removed them from the bottom of the seat. I also have noticed a trend, by the way, that the majority of you, when I ask you to open your Bibles, do you know what you do?

You grab your phone. So that's another reason for that as well. I recognize that technology has advanced in the 10 years since we became a church and the majority of you are navigating to the Bible on a device and that's okay, that's okay.

But let's read the precious and powerful word of God. Recast, maybe the most beneficial thing that we do at all in our week is hear from the living God through his living word revealed to us and so take this as the power of God for us in our gathering this morning.

Romans chapter 15, verses one through six. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. Father, I wanna start off by thanking you and praising you for the unprecedented sense of unity that we have experienced here in this gathering over the last 10 years. This text identifies that you are the source and you are the power for unity in the church and so it would be foolish for any one of us or any group of us or some of us to take any credit for the unity that we've experienced here, but it is you and you alone.

So we praise you for that and then we ask that you would continue that unity in our midst. And even as the text speaks of with one voice, in accord with Christ, with one voice lifting you up and glorifying you, Father, I pray that that would be a reality in our songs this morning, more than just this hour on a Sunday morning, more than just this time of singing this half an hour of songs, more than that, Father, that we would sew our lives together in such a way that we're loving one another, we're bearing with one another, we're sacrificing for one another and that that is our lives tied together for your glory and for your honor.

So Father, I pray that you would deal with each one of us here as individuals that make up a corporate body and that as you strengthen the one, the many are stronger and Father, I pray that that would be a reality in our midst this morning, that you would deal with each one of us, correcting us where we need correction, encouraging us where we need encouragement, loving on those who are broken and hurting right now and bringing to faith those who have no faith.

We praise you and ask that you would receive these songs as worship before you this morning in Jesus' name, amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, there are no more donuts but there is more coffee and juice back there so if you need that, take advantage of that.

You're not gonna distract me at all during the message and then if you need the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side but I would ask that you please do me a favor and keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter 15, reopen to that, navigate on your device back over to that if you lost your place but Romans 15 verses one through six so that you can see that the things that I'm saying are flowing out of the text.

I'm taking these thoughts and these ideas and I'm expanding on them and trying to bring them to our culture and to our context but they're the ideas and the concepts that we find in the word of God here.

The Priority of Unity in the Church

I wanna start off by making a statement that I think all of us know to be true. Relationships can turn pretty sour pretty quickly. How many of you didn't need me to tell you that to know that to be true?

You know that by experience, you've lived a little bit, you've been around and so you know that that's true. We can grow jealous of the successes of others or others grow jealous of the successes we experience.

We can tend to look down on those who don't think like us or act like us primarily because our thoughts are that of course our ways and our thoughts are the best thoughts and the best ways, right? How many of you know what I'm talking about?

You wouldn't hold to a belief that you didn't think was the best belief and so you hold to things and you kind of cling to them. Relationships are susceptible to assumptions that is not enough communication but assuming that you know what they mean versus on the other side over communication, right?

There's all different kinds of ways for relationships to fail. They're at risk of being too clingy or too passive. It really seems like the table of healthy relationships is very narrow and very small and it slopes in every direction.

Do you get the image?

Do you get the picture?

It's very hard to stay on the table.

Of a healthy relationship.

It's very easy to slide off in multiple directions, multiple things and so with that in mind, it makes sense that Paul has taken so much time in the letter to the church in Rome talking about working through relationships together.

He started back in chapter 14 talking about that and a church is a gathering of people. It's not a place, it's not a building. I mean, it's been glorious and great that we have this facility. I mean, for two years now, over two years, it's been great.

You know, we had those wandering years where we were in a storefront. We had the years in the elementary school where we're setting up and tearing down every week and how many of you are glad for this facility?

But this is not the church. This is not the church. The church is us. We are and if this was to burn down, God forbid, but it was to burn down tomorrow, we would still be a church. We just have to find a place to meet.

Are you getting what I'm saying? And so a church is a gathering of people and it's not just merely any gathering of people but it's a gathering of people under the lordship of Jesus Christ who are called into intentional relationships of love and care for one another to help each other to grow, to hold each other accountable, to work through life together under Christ.

But there's this reality that all of us know and we raised our hand earlier to kind of say, yeah, we've experienced this and that's that where people gather, there's plenty of room for disagreement and division, isn't there?

Whenever you have people, whenever you have more than one person, matter of fact, I would suggest to you.

That even if you have one person in a room,.

You have plenty of room for disagreement. And some of you know what I'm talking about. You disagreed with yourself plenty, right? You know that where there is a person, there is conflict. There's a potential for conflict and there's the real possibility of division and animosity and war.

And so our outline for these first six verses of Romans 15 goes like this. The priority of unity, verses one and two. The second is the power for unity, the preposition matters. The first is priority of unity.

The second is power for unity, verses three through five. And we'll be looking at three things in those verses that are batteries, so to speak, for unity. And then the last thing is the purpose of unity and that's verse six.

And so yeah, I did alliterate just to show that I can. I don't usually do that and I don't always have three points either. So you're welcome. We got that done. But so let's start by digging into the priority of unity that we find in verses one and two.

Dig into this and see what God, through the apostle Paul, has for us. Throughout chapter 14, it's kind of good for us to set the stage here. Throughout chapter 14, Paul wove a discussion of two groups of people.

Those who are weak in their faith, centered around certain subjects, and those who are strong in their faith, centered around those subjects. Both groups he's speaking about are members of the body of Christ and that's what you need to understand from the get-go.

These are both subsets of the Christian gathering where they understand that Jesus Christ died on the cross. They recognize him as their Lord and their King. But they have different expressions because they come from different backgrounds and they've got different history.

And how many of you know that from your history you brought some things into the church already? You brought some baggage that nobody around you can see but you brought some stuff here with you that comes from your past, your upbringing.

Whether you were raised in an extremely strict household or your parents were the ones who bought beer for the parties or whatever it was, you come from a background that informs you and makes you think certain ways about certain subjects.

And so that's what we saw in the early church in Rome. A very significant disagreement would arise over certain subjects and some of them came from a Jewish background. And according to kosher law, they had followed that to a T.

They had never touched crispy bacon. Oh, so sad. But they remained in the conviction that from their upbringing, they shouldn't. It was their conviction in their heart.

That they just shouldn't do that,.

That that's one thing they could give up to honor God. And so they chose to not continue or not to enter into a relationship with bacon and ham. While others who were in the text called the stronger in their faith recognized that God had removed those dietary laws and they felt free to order a great big side of crispy bacon at breakfast.

And so can you imagine the kind of confusion that this would cause in the church? Can you imagine the difficulties and the distractions when the stronger in their faith would come to the weaker and would say, but bacon is awesome.

It's a gift from God.

It's delightful.

Have you ever just heard the crunch, the sizzle when it's cooking? And they're just pouring it on to the weaker brothers and sisters saying,.

Bacon is it. I mean, we're free.

And further, Christ died to purchase us.

These kinds of freedoms. So enjoy the bacon.

And they're pouring the pressure on. Meanwhile, on the other side, you have the weak. Do you know that bacon, when you consume too much of it, can clog your arteries? Did you know that it can cause obesity?

Did you know that it can cause all kinds of health issues? Not to mention if you don't cook it well, you get trichinosis and you get all these things. So really, the Christian should be very, very careful.

Maybe never touch the stuff. Can you see the arguments on both sides of the equation? And can you see how it could potentially divide a church and you could eventually have the First Baptist Church of bacon and the First Baptist Church of non-bacon.

And you could just divide and split down the middle.

And Paul's saying, no, no, this is a gray area issue. And on these gray area issues, we love each other. And there is freedom and diversity to believe different things about bacon. That's what he's getting at here.

And he's using eating as just an example. But Paul is using a specific example to generally address the way that we interact as a church in all of those gray area issues where there is no. Thus saith the Lord,.

Where there is no clear instruction,.

Where there's no clear defining role for certain things in our lives. In those cases, we are free to disagree. We're free to follow our own conscience. And really, as it said in earlier in chapter 14 to actually be convinced in your own mind, not to just live willy-nilly, but to actually pursue God and his desires for you and try to determine for yourself where you ought to stand on things like eating bacon.

So with that context in mind, Paul places the priority in verse one here on unity by strapping the stronger in their faith, the ones who feel more free, by strapping them with an obligation. You see it in verse one?

We're obliged to do something. We who are stronger are to bear with the failings of the weak, the text says. Paul outright identifies himself, by the way, for the first time since he started the subject.

Of the weak and the strong,.

He's certainly alluded to placing himself in the strong camp, but here he does so directly by the pronoun we. He identifies, we who are strong. And he identifies himself in the camp of those who are more free in the faith, but he also puts the weight on his camp to bear up the burden of unity.

That is who bears the burden of unity within the church. The bottom line to this call in verse one, what's this all about? At the end of the day, what's this unity about? What is this for? The stronger in their faith, they are not to please themselves.

Do not please anyone. Wherever you're at in your faith, wherever you identify, the goal in this verse is that we would not please ourselves. I don't want to overemphasize, by the way, the word failings in the text, though it's kind of glaring there, right?

Like if somebody's failing, that doesn't sound like a very good thing, right? But I think that Paul is not painting the weak position in a good light.

He isn't saying, hey, everyone,.

Just stay weak and that's okay. No, he says that the failure to appropriate the freedoms for which Christ died is failure, but not a failure that results in exclusion from the church, not one that disbars you from being a member of what's going on here.

What Paul is attacking in verse one is a lack of unity that comes from arrogant and selfish people doing whatever they want without a thought for others around them.

Do you see that?

That's what he's really getting at, and I can see how, in my own heart, that could be a tendency, and I'd imagine that some of you could see that, where it's like, I'm just living my life. I'll do what I want to do, and you do what you want to do, and let's not let those things come in conflict, but how many of you know that that's not a reality in community, where you're really pressing into relationships, where you're doing life together, where in this context, they're having potlucks together.

Do you bring the bacon-wrapped figs and dates, or not?

Do you know what I'm saying?

And so, that's the kind of stuff that they had to wrestle through and figure out here in their gathering. Paul is attacking that kind of selfishness that does not consider others. We've been encouraged back in verse 19 of the previous chapter to build one another up, both the weaker and the stronger living together in mutual respect and mutual encouragement.

That's what we're being called to. And I want to point out that it is human nature. It is in our very bones. It's a part and parcel of what it means to be human in a fallen world, that we want to please ourselves.

Do you see it in you? I think to a person in the room, we know that to be true. It is a natural thing to pick the largest piece of cake from the buffet line. You ever gone through there and sized it up?

That's my piece of pie right there. That's the big one. Do you know what I'm talking about? Or nobody sorts through the produce. For those of you who are more healthy, I had to throw a produce idea in here because some of you are like, I don't even like cake.

And you scare me if you don't like cake. Sorry, you can come up and address that with me personally later. Some of you, maybe fruit is a better illustration.

And you don't go through the produce.

Looking for the most bruised set of apples or the nastiest bunch of bananas. Those are for someone else, right? Built into all of us, what I'm saying is built into all of us is a sinful preference for self.

Ourselves at the center. Ourselves deserving the best. So Paul is calling the church to consider, really in these first two verses, he's really putting a priority somewhat on the golden rule. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Words of Christ and look at verse two. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good. Who should you be looking out for? Your neighbor, your brothers and sisters, those around you. And to what end?

They're good.

For the purpose of building others up. You see the calling here in verse two is for the church to adopt a new standard. A standard that looks radically different than the world standard. The world standard is make sure you fix the oxygen mask to yourself first.

Self care.

How many of you have heard the word self care recently?

A lot.

It's a big word right now. It's a big movement in our culture and I'm not down on that in the sense that there is time, that you need some breathing space. That's why the whole Sabbath thing is a good idea.

That's why God has instituted times of rest and seasons of rest and those types of things.

But the fact of the matter is,.

I think we overdo it to a large degree. Emphasis on self, self, self. We're called to a unique standard as a people. We are to be a unique people who think and act according to the needs of others. And it's important that we temper this priority of unity with a phrase in verse two, for his good.

That phrase matters a lot. Because we could easily go the wrong direction with this thought. How many of you have ever tried or gone through a season of being a people pleaser? How many of you know that that's not a good goal?

That's not an attainable goal? If you're the kind of person who naturally wants to please everybody in your life, I'm sure you could get up and give me a testimony right now on the spot of how that's gone for you and it hasn't gone well.

You can't please everyone, can you? And so what is the calling here? But it's for their good. That's what you have to have in mind when you think about this call to help others out and to be there to sacrifice for others and not put yourself on the pedestal, but let others have the priority.

We can't make everyone happy. There's a limit to our ability to please everyone and that's absolutely true. But our calling is not in this text fundamentally to please everyone, but to seek the good of others, to seek their good, to build them up.

And this may require, how many of you know that sometimes in relationship, the good that somebody else needs is rebuke? Did you know that? Sometimes that's the good that a person needs is to be told you need a different course of action.

You need to repent of that. That is sin and you need to turn towards God and run towards him because you're running away in this area of your life. Do you know what I'm talking about? That's good. Our pleasing others is only ever with the purpose of their big G, capital G, good.

And their good is always defined only. The good of others around us is only ever defined as the goodwill of God for a person as revealed in his holy word. We don't get to define what is and isn't good for another person.

We discover, we discover what is good for another person through the word of God. See what I'm saying? Digging in here to know what is and isn't good for us and for others around us as well. But by these instructions in verses one and two, we see that God through Paul is placing a high priority on unity within the church.

If we're going to be known by our love as a church, recast, then we will be people who seek to do to others what we want them to do for us. And that's proactive. That's not reactive, that's not responsive.

We proactively seek to do actively the first initiator of doing good for others. It's an active unity. It is a community in motion looking for opportunities to serve one another, bearing with one another, considering each other, building each other up.

So where does power for a unity like this come from? Because how many of you know that so far, this is a message that sounds a lot like pull yourself up by the bootstraps, fix yourself, love each other better.

How many of you know that there comes an end to your feelings of loving one another? Do you know what I'm talking about? And so where does the power for a community like that come from? Is it just muster your own strength and get there?

And that comes to our second section, verses three through five, where we see the power for a unity, verses three, four, and five, each kind of highlighting a different battery, if you will, that gives us power for unity as a church.

First, he points us to Christ. How many of you think that's a good place to start? Points to Christ. He is our savior, he is our king, and he is our example. Now he's not merely an example. I would never start off with that and I would never end with that, that Christ is our example because you cannot obey like Christ obeyed.

You're not gonna be able to do that without his help and without his assistance. Jesus needs to be your Lord, your savior, to give you a new heart, to give you a new purpose, to give you a new direction.

So he gives that to us, but he is also the highest and best of all examples. He is the example of a person who lives in perfect unity with our heavenly father. He shows us what holiness looks like in a human life.

You wanna know what a holy person looks like, a person who's in right relationship with God? Look to Jesus. Look at how he responded and how he interacted in his earthly ministry here. The example specifically that Paul appeals to is the way that Jesus didn't stand for his own rights but took on himself the hostility and reproach that humanity meant for the father and he took it on himself.

So Paul escalates our little squabbles internally and in the church and in the church at Rome and he takes those and he escalates it quickly and just goes for it. He's saying in verse three, in essence, Jesus suffered and died on the cross for you.

He didn't please himself and so maybe you could give up a little bit of bacon occasionally to get along with your brothers and sisters in Christ. He goes and argues from the greatest of sacrifices to small and meager sacrifices and he says, if Christ could do this for you, then in his strength go and sacrifice for one another.

Compromise and live in a way that is for the best and the good of those around you. Jesus serves as a powerful example. I hope you've experienced him as an example in your life now that you've come to faith in Christ.

He need not suffer. He didn't have to suffer scorn. He didn't have to suffer any reproach but he willingly took that reproach and scorn on himself so that you and I could be set free and that's the extent of his love.

That's the amazing glorious grace of his sacrifice for us. So the fact that Jesus endured suffering and sacrificed himself should inform the way that we live together, recast in community, the way that we interact with one another.

I can only imagine that some of the church splits and the animosity, how many of you have seen some church splits and animosity over the course of your years? Some of you have experienced them, some of you have been in them, some of you have jetted just before them, got out just in the nick of time but I've seen my share over the course of my 47 years on this planet and I think that there's an informal thing that happens.

I doubt that it ever formally happens. I don't think they ever get together as a congregation and ask Jesus to leave but I think there's an informal invitation for that. We don't want your example here.

We don't wanna walk like you walked here. Could you step out for a minute, Jesus, while we hash this out together? Do you know what I'm talking about? We're being called here to let Jesus be our example, to be our model, he who sacrificed all the way to the point of dying and that's to be our model, that's to be the example of the way that we interact with one another, particularly in these gray area issues.

So how could we keep the cross central? How could we acknowledge that this verse, that chapter 14 and 15 is in the Bible and is contingent on our lives, is a calling on our lives, is a real command to us and then argue over petty nuances like carpet color or the style of songs?

A church cannot simultaneously, here's what I'm trying to get at. If you're taking notes, you might wanna write this down but a church cannot simultaneously and really a person cannot simultaneously consider the example of Christ and go to war over gray area issues.

You'll have one or the other. You cannot at the same time be seeking to follow Christ's example and go to war over your preferences. But in verse four, we see a second battery that produces power. The first is that example of Jesus Christ and seeing his sacrifice for us that informs us and that fuels us and that keeps us sacrificing for one another.

But Paul just quoted the Old Testament scriptures in verse three and that kinda gets, Paul has this mind that I can kinda see the way that his mind works as I've studied him over the years and he gets diverted, sometimes a long diversion and then he comes back and sometimes a short one.