Peace in the Gray

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Don Filcek; Romans 14:1-12 Peace in the Gray

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church, everybody.
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I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and we're going to go ahead and get started, so if you can find your seats, that would be great.
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And a welcome to the gathering of God's people. It is a privilege that we have to gather together in the name of Jesus Christ, and I hope that you have come to hear from him and what he desires of us.
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Just by way of announcement, last week we did have an announcement clarifying that we are going to bring on a new associate pastor.
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He's going to be starting in February. Actually, February 2nd is going to be his first Sunday. His name is Spencer Valeri, and he and his wife,
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Megan, are originally from Michigan. They've spent some time in Ohio recently, and I guess they're kind of ready to come home, so they're coming back to Michigan to serve among us here.
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And as I said, he's going to be starting in February, so please be in prayer for Spencer and Megan and their daughter, Bexley, in this transition.
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They are in the process of looking for a home in the Matawan area, so be in prayer for that. But we're praising
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God also that there is some temporary housing that's been provided. A family in our church has an apartment that's available for them, so they have a temporary place to live while they're looking for a house.
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So it takes a little bit of the pressure off of them, so very glad for that and praising God for that.
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Spencer is going to be focusing on primarily an administrative role in pastoring. He's going to be heading up our community groups and really trying to provide more structure and more guidance and more direction to those community group leaders and organizing and structuring those in a way that helps us to grow in community here.
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He's also going to be helping in the area of service, and so helping people to get plugged in using their gifts into teams and structuring that a little bit better as well.
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So looking forward to what he's going to bring to us in 2020 as God has led him to join us here, and we're going to have some opportunities for you as a church to get to know
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Spencer a little bit better, too. February 9th, we're going to be having a potluck immediately following the service.
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That's going to be his second weekend here and a chance to get to know him better, so encourage people to follow what instructions there are for that potluck that's coming up and a chance to hang around after a service and get to know him.
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After all of that announcement, we're going to shift gears to the introduction of the text this morning, and I just am curious, how many of you prefer really clear instructions?
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If somebody gives you a task, you like to have it kind of spelled out in black and white, very clear instructions.
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I know I do, and I think many of us like to dwell in the realm of black and white, just tell me what to do, tell me what not to do, and I'll try to do those things.
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Knowing clearly if what I'm doing is wrong or if clearly what I'm doing is right, well, that just helps us to evaluate, right?
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We know whether we're on target, whether we're hitting the marks, we have some metrics we can meet if we have those clear instructions.
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Give me a checklist. How many of you would just say, I'm the kind of person who likes checklists? I kind of like that. Some of you maybe even add tasks that you've already completed to your checklist thing so you can check them off.
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My wife would be more like that than me, but yeah, I mean, I don't mind checklists.
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I don't mind having something that tells me, yes, I've accomplished this. But how many of you knew that life has some gray area in it, right?
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It's not all checklists. It's not all very clear exactly what we are and are not supposed to do.
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There's a lot of gray area between the right and wrongs of everyday life, and I want to suggest to you that that is not an oversight on God's part.
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It isn't as if he ran out of steam in giving us laws and said, I've already got that many pages already in the
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Bible, so I just don't feel like adding more. It isn't like he ran out of prophets, kept sending prophets, we kept killing them, so he's like,
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I just don't have any more prophets. I'm fresh out of prophets. I don't have any more to give laws and rules and regulations to you.
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Instead, I think that God is showing us in the way that he has orchestrated our reality that there is all of this gray area.
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He's showing us that we have significant freedom in the realm of what the Greek culture and early
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Christians called, this Greek word, a diaphora. A diaphora is a big word that simply means unclear things, debatable things, things that are up for dispute.
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Those gray area issues of our everyday life where we know that good people disagree and differ on them.
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And in our text this morning, Paul is calling the church to peace and unity in these a diaphora, up for debate kind of things.
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Within the church and out in our daily lives, we encounter all kinds of opinions and thoughts, don't we?
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People are becoming more and more free with their opinions and thoughts, aren't they? Especially with the advent of social media, that seems to be the primary place where you can turn to see everyone's opinion and thought about anything that you would be curious about.
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But within any body of believers, including recast, there's going to be people who recognize freedom in Christ and apply it easily.
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They recognize how free they are and how Christ has set us free in these gray area issues and then they go out and they live according to the clear lines that God has drawn for them.
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There are those who are strong in their faith in that regard. But then there are also people who are weak in their faith and they struggle to apply the freedoms that are given to us through the cross of Christ.
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Identifying where God draws lines and then drawing their own lines further away from those lines.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Where God says, don't do this, and they say, well then I won't do this, this, or this, because that, that, and that might lead to this, right?
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And so there are those who, according to this text, are actually identified as weak in their faith and put more structures and boundaries in place around their lives.
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And if we're not careful, a church can turn into a division on these two fronts.
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A division of people who are arrogant about their freedom versus those who judge those who apply the freedom they feel.
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Now it would be good to identify yourself in this text as we're about to read it, because everyone in this room really gravitates towards one of these poles.
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Either you are a person who has a bent towards fear of freedom, or you are a person who is bent more towards applying freedom in your life, and some of that's just straight up a byproduct of the way that you were raised.
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But identify yourself, and God has a word for all of us, so identify where you're at, for sure, and try to figure that out.
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But then this is the word that he wants us to think about, the phrase that he wants us to think about as we come to this text and read it together, and it is simply this.
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Get along. Get along. Refuse to judge one another on the gray area issues as a church.
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This passage is close to my heart, by the way, because we have really sought to apply this passage from the very beginning of Recast Church.
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It's been part of my heartbeat in starting a church here in Matawan. We set out to avoid over -owning each other's sanctification.
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So many discipleship programs and so many churches will define all of the gray area issues for us.
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We want to take those issues where people are free to disagree and make rules, and to have a published list of acceptable authors, or a published list of acceptable titles, or a published list of, and go on and on.
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You can't watch this show. You can watch this show. Do you get what I'm talking about? Some of you remember the age old.
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You're old enough like me to remember don't dance, don't play cards, don't drink.
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You remember those things. Those were, I think, some of the more funny ones for those of us that are older.
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But here at Recast, we trust God to work in you through the
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Holy Spirit to guide you into conviction. To guide you into conviction.
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You see, I think the church sits under the teaching of the Word. All of us sitting under, myself included.
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My goal as a pastor when I get up here is not to stand over you with the Word. It is all of us together standing under the
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Word. And I have intensely tried to place myself this week under this
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Word so that then I can in turn communicate it to you. So we can all be under the Word together.
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And then by hearing from God's Word and by submitting to God's Word, we let the
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Spirit help us as individuals figure out how to apply it to our personal circumstances day by day.
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And so if you're not already there, let's open up to Romans chapter 14 verses 1 through 12. Again, the passage is
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Romans 14, 1 through 12. Navigate in your device or grab your Bible and follow along.
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Recast, this is a privilege, a real true privilege that we have this morning to hear from God through the reading of His Word.
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Romans 14, 1 through 12. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?
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It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
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One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
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The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the
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Lord. Since he gives thanks to God. While the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the
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Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.
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For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the
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Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.
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Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we all stand before the judgment seat of God.
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For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
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So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that clearly speaks into our contemporary situation, into our hearts, into where we live.
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Father, I thank you for a reality that you have crafted this life with certainly do's and don'ts.
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We know areas, things that we ought to do. We know things that we ought not to do, and that we shouldn't do if we want to honor you.
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And then you have created within that whole spectrum a massive area of gray that we live and walk in.
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And that we have an opportunity in thankfulness and in gratitude to worship you in it. Each following their own convictions in that.
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And Father, you have brought us together as a unity of people who have diverse backgrounds, diverse preferences.
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You've united us in the cross of Jesus Christ, in his sacrifice, and redemption in him.
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So Father, we have this one thing in common we can rejoice right now if we're in you. We've received the salvation that is available through Jesus Christ.
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And this one thing we can certainly do together in unity, and that is praise you. Bring glory to you.
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Honor you. And so Father, we seek to do so now in singing. But I just pray that the singing is only a reflection of what's going on in our lives and in our hearts all week long.
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That it's not just a Sunday morning behavior. It's not just a song behavior. It's not a music thing. But at the end of the day, it is a worship thing that carries throughout the week in the way that we live.
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In the way that we interact with one another. The way that we interact with the world around us. I ask that you would receive these songs as worship to you this morning in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Well, go ahead and take your seats. And then remember if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts or use the restrooms, they're out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those.
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And then I just ask that you please reopen your device or your Bible to Romans chapter 14, verses 1 through 12.
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So you've got that in front of you so you can see it. I'm going to be referencing it throughout the message. We're going to be walking through that passage.
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And hopefully our focus is able to be on God's word and what he has for us for the remainder of our time together. The gospel.
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Let me start off by saying something that the gospel is not. It's very important that we keep rehearsing the gospel at the start of these messages at the latter half of Romans.
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Because the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans has been there to express to us the gospel.
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And now he goes into how we should live in light of the gospel. So if you just grab a passage out of anything after Romans chapter 12, it's going to sound like law.
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It's going to sound like rules. It's not going to sound like a relationship of love because you're missing everything that came before it.
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And the fact of the matter is God doesn't love us because of what we do. He loves us because he chose to love us and sent his son to die for us.
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And then if we're in Christ now, from that position, we go out and we follow these instructions that he's given to us based on the love that we have in our hearts through Christ's sacrifice for us.
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And so the gospel is not fix yourself and live a certain way so that God will love you.
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The gospel is God loves you and showed that love by paying the gruesome price for your sins on the cross of Christ.
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So that in love you can now live for him. That our obedience flows out of a loving relationship with our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And our text this morning is written to those who love him. It is written to those who have faith in Jesus Christ and faith in his death on the cross to cover our sins and to wash them away.
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So as we talk about the two categories of people in this text, the weak in their faith and the strong in their faith, we need to understand that both categories of people that we're talking about are in the kingdom of God.
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Both are saved. Both are members of Christ. Both have different understandings and are moving in the same direction towards a stronger faith, toward a stronger understanding.
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But they're at different stages of their lives in their understanding of their freedoms in Christ. And so it's interesting to note from the very beginning that not everyone within the faith, not every believer, not everyone in the church is expected to see things exactly the same.
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And that's fundamental to this text. That's a fundamental teaching from what we're looking at here in these first 12 verses of Romans chapter 14.
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These first 12 verses are there to express to us that it is okay for us to differ on things.
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Now it's important for us to understand at the start here, there is only one gospel that saves us. And all must come through that one door of salvation through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice.
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That's the thing that brings us together. That's the thing that makes us a church. But aside from what
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God has clearly revealed in his word as his will for us, we have a lot of freedom in our daily lives, don't we?
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There's a lot of things that when push comes to shove, and how many of you have had a decision you had to make this last week?
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Some of you had major decisions in 2019 that you had to make. And sometimes the words of our decisions aren't found in scripture.
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In other words, I might be out looking for a new car and I'm going Hummer or Prius, and how many of you knew that neither one of those words occur in the
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Bible? You can look it up, you can jump into your concordance or look it up online, and how many times does the word
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Hummer appear in scripture? How many times does Prius appear? And it's not there for you. So you have to make a judgment call based on your own convictions, based upon your own understanding.
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And so, I mean, one way we're looking at a passage is telling us, don't look awkwardly at the person who drives the
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Prius. Don't look awkwardly at the person driving the Hummer. There's a freedom within the body of Christ to differ and to disagree on what car to drive.
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We need to make sure that we do understand that there is indeed a standard. Scripture is our standard. And where it doesn't speak to an issue, then there is freedom.
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That's a gray area. That freedom, of course, within the church has produced a lot of disagreement over the years, hasn't it?
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People with strong opinions, people trying to get people to their side and win them over, and quarreling, as the text says, over opinions, over things that are in the gray area.
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So the flow of our text this morning is four points. Four points that look like this, the text breaks down like this.
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The first is verses 1 and 2, accept the weak. The second movement is don't judge each other on the gray areas, verses 3 through 6.
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The third section is we belong to the Lord, and that's one of the rationales why we ought not to judge one another, is each and every one, you can look around you right now and look at the people around you, they belong to Jesus, not to you.
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You're not their master, Jesus is their master, is the point. And then the fourth thing that ties in very closely with that is, since Jesus is their
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Lord, He alone is their judge. He alone is our judge, that's verses 10 through 12.
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So let's jump into this first section, accept the weak, accept them. The first two verses introduce a dichotomy within the church
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I've already kind of explained. And it was obviously a dichotomy within the church at Rome to whom the letter was written.
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Paul is addressing a real life situation. There are those who are weak in their faith, and there are those who are strong in their faith in that body of believers.
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And at this point of identifying these differences, I kind of expect Paul to go a different direction than he does.
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What do you expect an apostle of Jesus Christ, one who's standing for Him, what do you expect him to say when he identifies that there are weak people in the church and there are strong people in the church?
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What would be your logical thought that he's going to do in the remainder of this text? Encourage the weak to get it together.
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That's my expectation, right? If you're weak in your faith, does that sound like a good thing? Is that a good thing to be weak in your faith?
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Of course not. And so what I would expect him to do next is to encourage the weak to become strong, to give them five steps to becoming a stronger person in their faith.
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But instead, he starts off with a simple command to the strong. Welcome the weak with open arms.
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The word welcome here is to associate with, to befriend, to stay in fellowship with them.
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And he is giving instructions and he's speaking to those who are strong in their faith and are understanding the freedoms that they have in Jesus to welcome those in their midst who maybe have more hang -ups and more rules and more structures that they place around their life in order to make themselves feel more at peace.
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I find it interesting that Paul is speaking to the strong in their faith in this text, and he wants to be sure that the strong do not merely associate with the weak for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.
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Often a person coming from a stronger position, what is their goal from somebody who's coming from a weaker position?
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To win them over to my side, right? To bring them in and bring them over so that I can convince them and argue them into my position, right?
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And he says, don't do that. That's not the purpose of your welcoming, is that you would seek to constantly be badgering and badgering and pushing and pushing.
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Now verse 2 helps us to understand the type of situation because so far verse 1 is kind of theoretical.
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It's just kind of like up in the sky, like it doesn't have any flesh on it, but he says in verse 2, he kind of fleshes it out a little bit and gives a specific illustration.
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Really in verse 2 and in verse 5, we see two specific illustrations of the way that this might play out in a church.
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He says, one person feels free to eat whatever they want. This is the strong person in their faith.
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Nom. But another person only eats vegetables and this is the weak person in their faith.
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Now hear me out for a second. Some of you know a vegetarian or maybe even a vegan and it's not saying that all vegetarians and all vegans are weak.
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That's not the point. As a matter of fact, they can be quite strong, but this is about the way that a Jew would avoid meat altogether just in case it wasn't prepared in a kosher way.
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Now what you need to understand is going on here is very different than just our modern day understanding of vegetarianism or a choice for health or something like that.
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This was a religious choice. And this is a very significant religious choice because at the end of the day,
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God has, in his Old Testament, has declared certain dietary restrictions. And he drew a line in the
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Old Testament and he said, don't eat pork, don't eat lobster, don't eat shrimp. He had a list of things that he said, these are okay, these things are not okay.
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And what the person in this text is doing is saying, God, I see your standard,
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I see your line in the sand, and I'm going to do one better, God. I'm going to improve on your law. I'm going to improve on what you have said and I'm going to say, you know what, just in case the meat here would cause me to sin,
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I'm going to not eat meat at all. I'm going to draw the line. You've drawn the line here, God, good for you.
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I'm sure that's okay for you, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw the line over here and I'm not going to eat anything.
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I'm just going to eat only vegetables. For the sake of being pious, for the sake of being okay with God and being sure that I'm all in with you and that everything is okay between us,
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I'm going to draw the line there. Well, we have a further issue here that comes into play and that is the fact that Peter was standing on the roof of a house and praying in that ancient time in the book of Acts.
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He's getting ready to go and share the gospel with a Gentile, somebody who eats all of this stuff like bacon and just a sinner who eats these kinds of things.
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In a vision, God lowers a sheet with pigs, nice crispy bacon, some lobster, a little bit of shrimp maybe with a coconut on the outside, some really delicious foods.
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He lowers that sheet and he says, Peter, take and eat. I have now made this clean for you. What has happened here is that at the end of the day, the church is open to those dietary restrictions were removed from the church there.
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But can you understand how somebody was raised with very strict dietary religious restrictions would have a hard time accepting that?
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Peter sure did. Peter said, I have never touched pork since I was born.
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How could I do this? And Jesus tells him in that vision, what God has made clean, don't call unclean.
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I've made this clean for you now. You need to accept that. How many of you know that that would be whiplash a little bit?
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That would be some significant whiplash for a person. It's kind of like a person who was raised in a household where you're not told to go to dances and then you go to a dance and it's like, what do
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I do now? There's an awkwardness about this. The weak one doesn't feel free to apply the freedom that they have received in Christ.
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But the strong is a person who is leaning firmly on Jesus and is no longer fearful of defilement.
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They are okay with where God has drawn the line. The strong person is okay with the standard that God has drawn and doesn't feel the need to add more rules on top of the clear instructions of God.
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Which, by the way, we might actually think the opposite by the way that we were raised. You might imagine that the strong has more rules, right?
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And that the weak one is the one who goes out and lives free. Depending on how you were raised.
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Depending on what kind of a church you come from or what your background is. I was raised in a church where the strong person had a lot of rules.
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That was the perception. But that's not what Scripture is saying here. The strong person is more free to draw the lines right where God draws the lines and be okay with that.
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Do you get what I'm saying? Is that making sense? Some of you are looking really blank. Are you getting this? Is it making sense?
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The strong is the person who is okay with their freedom in Christ. And I find it somewhat humorous that Paul uses the word weak in the faith to describe a subset of the church.
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It is indeed a negative word in this text and there's no way around it. No scholar, no commentary that I read thought that this was a positive word.
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They couldn't wrangle it down to becoming something that's good. So in this, I truly believe that Paul would love for anybody listening to this text to draw closer to a strong position.
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To experience more freedom in Christ. Just like our church here recasts, we set a goal of growing in our faith, growing in community, growing in service, growing in faith.
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I believe that Paul would also like people to grow in their faith in the church in Rome. But here is his primary concern.
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Hear me carefully. So why isn't he going there? Why doesn't he just launch out into, you weak people, you're more free.
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You need to study this and you need to come alongside with where I am in my position of strength and more freedom.
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Well, it's because the purpose of this writing, the purpose of this text is unity in the church.
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How do we live in community together? Unified with a diversity of different opinions and different thoughts.
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And he's telling us as a church to make sure we have a room here. We have room available.
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We have space for a variety of opinions in the gray areas of life. Now, one of the beauties in this is the unity and diversity.
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Our church is not supposed to be clones of one another. You just look around the room and if you were to follow each other in life, you would recognize that we don't all live the same.
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We don't all make the same decisions day by day. And there is room for the weak to come among us and to be received here so that they also can grow.
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And we need to be willing to welcome them, as the text says, not merely to debate, but we need to welcome the weak so that we all can grow together in our faith.
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The second movement in the text is don't judge each other on the gray areas. That's verses 3 through 6.
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Now, it's important to keep in mind all throughout this text, keep going back to it, the reality of what are we talking about exactly.
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We are talking about a diaphora. We are talking about gray area issues, things that are open to debate, things that are disputable, things that require discernment, not revelation.
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There are things that are revealed in Scripture that are sin, and we are not talking about a diversity of opinion about sin.
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Do you hear me? Hear me carefully on that. We are talking about a diversity of things that God's Word gives us freedom in, where He is open to us having a divergence of opinions and thoughts about them.
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We are not to admit those into membership who feel free to murder. We are not to admit those into membership who feel free to commit adultery, who feel free to live in a life of theft.
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As a matter of fact, the same Paul who wrote this text here about unity in the body about these diverse gray area issues is the same dude who wrote 1
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Corinthians 5, where he tells us to avoid fellowship and tells the church in Corinth to avoid fellowship and to literally kick a guy out of the church who is committing incest.
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We cannot read into this text a complete free -for -all as if this is a text that just tells you just get along at any cost.
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That's not what he's talking about, but he's saying in the gray areas, in the issues that are not sin, in the issues that are not clearly revealed in Scripture, we have freedom for diversity of thought.
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It's in the areas where we have no clear command from the Lord that we are to be generous with one another and non -judgmental.
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And so when we think of what Paul is saying here, we may recognize right away that in this is found the cause of many conflicts within the church.
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We either elevate the molehills, we elevate the gray areas and make them into laws and rules, or we ignore mountains, we ignore what is clearly sin and allow sin to go unchecked in our midst, calling it a diaphora, calling it disputable when it's clear in Scripture.
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And this is where we need to study the word carefully to determine when something is a diaphora and when it isn't.
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Is it sin or is it in the gray area? God has been faithful to give us a standard in Scripture, a clear word that we can go back to and research and study and go back to time and time again to hone and sharpen our skill at understanding what
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God desires of us and where we're free. But in verse 3, the standard is that the strong should not despise the weak.
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The word despise covers a common temptation for those who are strong in their faith.
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They look down their noses at people with more rules and more constraint. But on the flip side is that those who are weaker and live by more rules will often be tempted to pass judgment on others.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? More prone to pass judgment on others because they don't live according to your standards, according to your rules.
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You know, put some flesh on it. Those who refuse to watch TV or those who may be tempted to say sending your kids to public school is like letting
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Satan raise your kids. Right? Or those who might be tempted to call alcohol the devil's brew.
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They may be tempted to assume that those who watch TV are at risk of condemnation. By the way,
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I want to be clear. It's okay for a person to abstain to not even own a TV. That's fine. It's okay to homeschool your kids.
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It's okay and a good thing to avoid alcohol. But declaring those as the only acceptable option for a
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Christian is what Paul is opposing here. It's okay to have strong convictions about these gray area issues.
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You're going to be encouraged here in a moment to be convinced in your own mind to have strength in your position.
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While being okay with others differing. Not making laws and rules for each other.
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Are you getting what I'm saying on this? But be convinced in yourself, the text is going to say. Paul reminds us at the end of verse 3 that the key to salvation is
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God welcoming a person. It's His welcome that we're looking for. And the one whom
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God has welcomed, recast, we should welcome them too. You hear that?
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The one whom God has welcomed, we must also welcome. Further in verse 4,
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Paul asks the rhetorical question. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? Who do you think you are to invent commands for other people?
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You're not their Lord. You are not their judge. They do have a Lord and they do have a judge.
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The name just doesn't match yours. Further in verse 4, at the end, it ends with a beautiful statement that should give us optimism toward one another.
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I love the optimism of verse 4. God is the one who upholds His people. And He is the one who is able to make all of us stand.
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He's able to make you stand. He's able to make the person sitting next to you stand. Our only hope to stand before Him on the day of judgment is
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His ability to make us stand. That is the foundation of the hope for both the weak and the strong.
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It all comes down to His ability to make us stand on that day of judgment.
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Paul uses another issue in verse 5 that was common in his day regarding the Sabbath. An issue that I think still resides in the church even today.
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It still is common across a variety of denominations. But the fact is
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Jesus set us free from strict Sabbath observation. I grew up in a church where it was a pretty strict church.
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I remember on one Sunday, my family, there was one real good restaurant in Middleville, Michigan.
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It had a bowling alley attached with it. It had a bar attached with it. It had a video game arcade attached with it. It was kind of a fun place to hang out.
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As a family, I remember going there one Sunday after church and my mom literally got a phone call that week from a leader in the church.
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She said, hey, we saw your car outside of the bowling alley on Sunday. And Christians don't make other people work on the
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Lord's day. Now that's addressing this issue, isn't it?
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How many of you know that that's what Paul is addressing here in verse five? Some people look at a certain day a certain way and others, because Jesus has set us free, now is there wisdom in the principle to have a
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Sabbath day? I hope you see that. And I hope you personally wrestle with it. And my encouragement to you as a pastor is that you really take on the consideration that on the seventh day,
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God rested. So there's something to that, right? And at the same time, we are not free to make that a law in the church for one another.
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Do you see the difference? Encourage each one of you to wrestle with that and consider what it means to burn the candle at both ends because many of us in our culture are starting to do that.
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You work every day of the week and your employer would love it and you'd get ahead. Maybe.
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Maybe everybody else is too right now. But Jesus set us free from strict
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Sabbath observation and so he ties into that because that's a pretty significant issue close to the heart of a Jew, close to the heart of the one who is probably weaker in this scenario, the one who wants to continue to follow those laws and those rules and those regulations.
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And by the way, the Sabbath observation is barely contested in our modern times in the church right now.
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The vast majority of us now consider the day of rest to be which day? Sunday, the first day of the week.
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But that's not right, is it? That's not following the Old Testament code. And so if you really want to follow the law, you got to take that back to Saturday.
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If we believe that the Sabbath rule still applied to us, we would be meeting on Saturday instead of Sunday. But some had stronger opinions and convictions on this subject.
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The weaker in their faith still kept the Sabbath while the stronger were able to trust more in Jesus to take on the freedom that he gives.
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But for unity's sake and for integrity's sake, Paul only commands that we all should be convinced in ourselves, convicted in ourselves to wrestle with it, to study it, to try to figure it out on our own.
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And I think that this is a key point. This idea of being convinced in yourself is fundamental and foundational.
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Paul isn't saying go live your life all willy -nilly, all is free, and just go do whatever you feel like moment to moment.
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Paul doesn't want us judging one another, but he also wants us to be confident in our decision.
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How are you going to be confident in your decision? I think the phrase be fully convinced in verse five is opening the door for growth among the weaker and a strengthening of the stronger.
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You see, if you truly dig down into your faith, you really dig into the word to figure out what kind of freedoms you have,
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I think you will increase in your understanding of the freedoms that are afforded you in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Paul doesn't outright say, and I think there's beauty in the way that he tackles this without just directly, because he's striving for unity.
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He's saying there's gonna be this difference. And all throughout church history, there's always been weaker and there's been stronger. But he doesn't outright say, weak people, get stronger faith.
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But he does say, let's all study to be convinced of our position. And the more you study this, the more
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I believe your life will increase in a faith that leads you to freedom, leads you to a deeper understanding of that trust that where God has drawn the line, that's good for me.
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And the last part of not judging each other is to think charitably about each other. If the strong drinks beer in gratitude without getting drunk, and the weak avoids beer in honor of God, and not to be more pious or better to try to earn
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God's favor, then we are both doing opposite actions. Hear me carefully. We're both doing opposite actions for the glory of God.
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Think that through. You can do something completely different than the person sitting next to you and both bring glory to God by your gratitude and your thankfulness and your desire to honor him.
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That's a beautiful thing because that takes a lot of human life and turns it into an opportunity for worship.
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Taking the things that we do, even in the gray area, and worshiping him in those things.
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I love the fact that in the gray area, two people can do absolutely opposite things that make
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God smile. One drinks a beer, says, thank you, God, this is awesome.
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And he says, yeah, it is. And another person abstains from it, completely saying, you know what?
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In honor of you, God, I'm gonna skip alcohol the rest of my life. And he says, thanks. And he smiles.
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The call in this text is to avoid judging each other in the gray areas.
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The third thing is we belong to the Lord in verses seven through nine. In these verses, Paul gives us the first reason we cannot stand over another as judge and jury in these gray areas.
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It is because we are fundamentally, first and foremost, owned by the Lord. He is our master.
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He is our king. We are subservient to him in his kingship. We have sworn allegiance to this one like knights of Jesus.
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We are those who honor the king. And we have sworn our fealty. We have sworn and pledged our duty and our lives to this one who died for us and loves us.
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And so none of us lives to ourselves, Paul says, but we live to the Lord, according to verses seven and eight.
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Everything from birth to death is orchestrated for the cause of Christ. Every breath, even including our last.
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And the fact is your life is indeed lived for someone. And it ought to be the Lord. It's interesting that in a passage expressing freedom to differ, he still reminds us that we belong to Jesus.
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And that's something that each one of us needs to wrestle with in our understanding of his commands and his rules and what he desires of us.
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But once again, this is not a free for all to sin. It is freedom to differ in the gray areas. And in verse nine,
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Paul gives a strong statement that Christ died and was raised for this very reason.
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That he might be the master of both the dead and the living. He has redeemed people.
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And we cannot be separated from his lordship, even in death.
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Recast, those of you here who are all in with Jesus, those of you who have given your lives to him and asked him to save you and asked him to be your king, if we are anything as Christians, we are those who follow what we think the
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Lord desires of us. We may disagree on some secondary and some tertiary things, but fundamentally at our core, we are those who follow the desires of our lord and savior and king, whose name is
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Jesus Christ. And that leads to the fourth point. Yes, we all belong to him.
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So when you look at that brother or sister who does differently than you in those gray areas, you look at them as one who is owned by God.
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And lastly, one who is going to give an account to God. He alone is our judge.
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The person sitting next to you is going to face to face stand and give an accounting to God almighty on their own.
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You're not gonna be there to help them, to hold up their elbow. You're not gonna be there speaking in their ear, but don't forget about this, don't forget about that.
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They will stand and give an accounting for themselves before their lord and their king.
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And so in light of that, we ought to give each other the freedom to live for the audience of one. You hear what
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I'm saying? Afford one another the opportunity to live in a way that they deem is pleasing to their lord and master.
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Why pass judgment on others regarding these debatable opinions? In verse 10, he asked the weak, why pass judgment on the strong?
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And he asked the strong, why despise those who are weaker in their faith? Don't you know that we're all in the same boat?
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And for each and every one of us, we know we are heading toward that face to face meeting with our king.
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We will all stand before his raised dais. And there on that judgment seat,
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God almighty will preside over an accounting of our lives. As every single person bows their knee to him, confessing our lives before him.
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Intimidating thought? Yeah? Glorious to know that the one who you'll be talking to saved you, came, and shed his blood for you?
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It's the only comfort I can find there. Each one of us giving an account of ourselves.
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Ourselves to God. You see, earlier in Romans 8, here's the hope. Earlier in Romans 8, 8 verse 1,
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Paul made it clear that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Anybody want to say amen to that?
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That takes the sting out of this judgment, doesn't it? There's no Christian, nobody who's been purchased by the blood of Christ is going to be there on that day of judgment giving an accounting and he's going to turn to them and say, look at all this crap, look at all this crud, look at this mountain of sin, you know what?
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You're condemned. That's not going to happen to anybody who is covered by the blood of Christ. Praise God for that.
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It still, however, is a serious accounting. It still is a solitary chance to stand before the almighty
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God and experience his immense forgiveness. As we will gush out,
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I'm confident, a tsunami of sin and failure before his throne and he will forgive.
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And he will say, well done, good and faithful servant, because you know what? He's going to see the good that you've done.
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In Christ, the things that you have done, in the power and the strength of his spirit, to honor him.
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He said, that stuff, that stuff is washed away by the blood of my son.
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So in light of that coming day of accounts, we should allow others to do what they believe the Lord is leading them to do in those gray areas of life.
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If they're okay enjoying a beer, then let them do so. If they want to homeschool their kids or send them to public school, it's all good. If they want to vote
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Republican, okay. If they want to vote Democrat, okay. If they want to drive a Hummer, okay. If they want to drive a
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Prius, okay. Do you see what I'm saying? We live in a day and an age of divisiveness.
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We live in a day and an age that's probably more divided than ever, quarreling, and no shortage of opinions about everything, at least in the history of our nation.
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Could there be a more timely message than this for his church? Unity in the things that really don't matter, that are up for debate, are up for discussion.
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Let's consider three applications from this text as we kind of wrap things up here. The first is graciously accept people who differ in strength of faith than you.
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Graciously accept them. I found it refreshing to be around people who have a younger faith than me.
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I found it refreshing to be around people who have an older faith than me, in a longer -standing relationship with God.
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Let me encourage everybody in this room to welcome others, regardless of what stage they're in.
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Welcome them into your life and sharpen one another and encourage one another. It's okay to have these discussions.
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This is not a statement to say you can't have a discussion about alcohol. You can't have a discussion about politics. Be free with one another.
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Acknowledge that they're okay with Christ. Don't turn these issues into a salvation issue.
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You can't believe in Jesus and vote for, fill in the blank.
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By the way, get ready for it, because that's coming for you. That's coming to your inbox. People are going to be very quick to tell you who you can and can't vote for this year, based on what they perceive as your faith.
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They're going to make rules for you. It's already started to happen, hasn't it? And it's replete.
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People will tell you what you can drive as a good Christian. And ironically, I find that it's often non -Christians who tell me what
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I must or must not drive as a Christian. Do you know what I'm talking about? And so in our culture and in our society, there is no lack of voices in your mind.
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And so where does a Christian turn with all of these voices? This is it.
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You must become a student, more so than ever in our culture. Not because you need to check a box or not because Pastor Don wants to hit you with a two -by -four up front and make you feel guilty for not reading the
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Bible enough. This is your lifeline. This is where you're going to know how to live without this.
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You're just tossed to and fro without some substantial standard by which to know how we live and how we love and how we move in this world to be a positive influence.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? That's why I want you to read the Word. That's why I want you to spend time in your
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Bible in the morning and begin to treasure your time with God because He speaks here.
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He tells us how to live here. Not to take on one more project or one more assignment.
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If that's all it is for you, I'd encourage you to find something else. Go work out during that time or something. But if what it is is to fellowship with God and to know
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Him more deeply and be able to live for Him better in 2020, then dig in.
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It is a feast. It's a banquet for your soul. Dig into this.
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Avoid quarreling over these gray area issues without a shred of arrogance.
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That was the second, by the way. That's the second application. Avoid quarreling over gray area issues without really any arrogance.
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Let me just offer myself to you in assisting you in arbitrating what is and isn't gray, what is and isn't sin.
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I believe that this is part of why God gives shepherds to the flock. I think it's very easy for us to become confused over these things.
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And it's very easy to take what is gray and turn it into a law and say, well, this is a serious one, though, isn't it?
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And so we can twist anything in our minds, right, to make it a law to say, well, real Christians don't do this or real
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Christians do this. It's not that I'm smarter than you, but I do have time and the skill to dig into Scripture and help you to discern this.
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If this is a hang -up for you, if there's some area of your life that you're not sure if you're free or not free, or somebody's telling you you're not free, or somebody's telling you you're constrained and bound to a certain thing, don't look down on those who are weaker and don't condemn those who are stronger.
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And the last thing, consider that you belong to the Lord and He is your only true judge. There are two things to this application depending on where you're at in your faith.
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If you do not belong to the Lord, in other words, if Jesus is not your Lord and Savior, then
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I'd encourage you to drop everything and make that your priority. You see, all will stand before His judgment, but the judgment goes very different for those who have faith in Jesus.
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You see, for the person who has trusted in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for salvation, the person who has asked
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Him to be their King, there's the promise of eternal life without condemnation on that day.
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But for the person without Christ, that person is going to bear their own sin on that day.
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Christ has not borne their sin, but they will bear it themselves. And sins committed against a holy and righteous
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God result in eternal judgment and eternal condemnation. But the pathway to salvation is easy.
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It's already been purchased for you. If you want to receive it today, you only need to pray and ask
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Jesus to cover your sins and to wash them away with His sacrifice and ask Him to be your
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King. Much like a knight would swear his allegiance to a king.
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Today could be that day for you. But if you've already done that, then understanding that He is your
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Lord should lead you to consider His ownership over your life in the day to day.
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And then, all the more that you ought to be convinced about the areas of your life that you're living out.
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Not just kind of blindly walking through your days, but intentionally walking through your days.
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Convinced and convicted that the way that you're walking is the way that the Spirit is directing and guiding. He has the right to call the shots as the
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King over a kingdom. Fortunately, the things that He asks of us are in our best interest and really are the things that promote human flourishing.
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Remember that Jesus will only ever call you away from sin. This is not freedom to sin.
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Nothing in this text gives you license or freedom to sin against our Lord. So as we come to communion this morning, let's take a moment to think together in unity.
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That's the purpose of this table, is to remember together His blood that covers us and His body that was broken for us.
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So if you belong to Jesus, then let this be a time of reflecting on the way that Jesus has paid the price to set us free together.
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And let's go out this next week living in the freedom that God has given us through His Son, Jesus Christ.
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A freedom that includes a huge, wide, gray area in which we can all give
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Him thanks by living out our own convictions before Him in thanks.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that has purchased for us the hope of an eternity with you, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
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And yet I thank you for your faithfulness to continue to guide and to continue to direct, that it's not just this one -time event and then we're off on our own, but your spirit guides and your spirit directs.
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And Father, your word is a solid revelation for us to base our lives on. Father, I don't know how you're working with people here.
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There may be some who are just convicted right now that they don't belong to Jesus and that they don't have any hope beyond this life.
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And Father, I pray that maybe today would be a day of turning point for them, a day of salvation for them.
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And then I recognize that there's just a whole host of other options available to us. Some of us have been judging others.
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Some of us have been despising others. Some of us are in a weak place in our faith where we are constantly embattled with fear that we haven't done enough or that we haven't measured up in.
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Although we're in your kingdom, we are constantly wrestling back and forth with law. Father, I pray that you would set people free through this message.
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And then Father, for those who are in a position that is strong, I pray that you would help us to do what is necessary for unity, to welcome one another and to continue to build up together without badgering and pestering people to come to a side of freedom.
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Father, I do thank you so much for the freedom that you give us to turn our everyday lives, moment by moment, into worship by gratitude and thankfulness to you.