Book of Romans, 14:4-13 - Freedom in Christ | Handling Doubtful Disputations, Pt. 5 (04/24/2022)

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I'm glad my mom is watching today. First time to watch in a while. I'm glad Katie's there with you.

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We wish she were here with us, but we're glad if she can't be that she's there with you. And hope you guys have enjoyed the service so far.

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We welcome all of our online group, our family out there and our family here. So let's turn to Romans chapter 14 and verses.

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We've made our way down through verse four. And we'll have a brief word of prayer and we'll get started today.

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Lord, thank you so much for your word. And we know we can't be saved without the word of God and the spirit of God.

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We can't grow without the word of God and the spirit of God. We can't function even in our physical lives without the word of God and the spirit of God.

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So thank you so much that you've given us this Bible and preserved it and that you're with us through your

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Holy Spirit and ask you to lead in the study of it today in Jesus name, amen.

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Well, verse one in Romans chapter 14, pretty well sums up what the whole chapter is about.

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Him that is weak in the faith receive you but not to doubtful disputations. So we've been talking about these doubtful disputations.

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And if you remember, there are a couple of different kinds of them.

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So we kind of had three points that we would focus on throughout this study. One is we must examine any perceived imperative by its context before judging others by it.

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So in other words, when people come into church and try to say, it's imperative that you do this, you must do this, you must do that.

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We need to make sure if they're, if they think they're bringing it from scripture, then we need to look at the scripture that they have and see if it's in context.

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Keep the 10 rules of Bible interpretation, ask the question who's being spoken to in this passage, what's the passage about and all the different rules and make sure they've got it in context because if they're trying to bring law into the church, most likely they have it out of context.

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Secondly, a lot of the things they try to bring are not even in the Bible. So that's another thing to check. And then

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I guess the third thing is the word of God has to be the final authority. It's the only objective thing we have.

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Everything else is subjective. If someone walks up to me and says, well, God told me to tell you this, that's subjective.

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I don't know if God told him that, could have been onions from the night before. It could have been demons mimicking the

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Holy Spirit. I don't know, it's totally subjective. But if he takes this book right here, opens it up, shares it with me and says, now here's what the context is, here's what it says, then that's objective.

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He and I can both see God said that. And that's why the word of God is so important.

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And that's why when this Bible, when this New Testament was finished and added on right down here sometime in 300

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AD, at that point, the perfect existed. This is the only perfect thing in the world.

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And it existed at that point, the signed gifts ceased. And so history proves it, the scripture exhorts it, and it did happen, but they shall be coming back.

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The second three and a half years of the tribulation period, they'll be coming back. We'll have prophetic gifts again.

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We'll have languages being spoken that weren't learned in school again, and many things, even prophesying again.

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But those things, those gifts have ceased off of the horizon on the church, because we are living in the church age, which is a dispensation predominantly of faith, not sight.

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And some people don't like that, but even in the Bible times, you go 600 years of Bible scripture time without seeing a major miracle.

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So I don't know why we think we have to see one every day. We don't have to see with our eyes to see

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God. We see him by faith. We see him working in lives. He's still healing people, but brother

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David doesn't have to touch him. He can just pray for him from the ranch. Isn't that better?

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I mean, that's better, right? You don't want me to have to come touch all these people you prayed for so they can be healed.

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And yet there are people that think that's how it works. It does not work that way anymore. So all of those people that teach all of that stuff, you gotta check the context.

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Where are they finding this information? Why do they believe this way? And the sad thing is, it should be a two -way conversation, but I find that when

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I'm speaking, they're not listening. Isn't that interesting? When I'm sharing scripture with them, they're not listening because they hold on to this belief so tightly, whether it's true or not, it's theirs.

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And they hold on so tightly, the adrenaline flows, they stop listening. And yet it should be that as mature

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Christians, it's all about just knowing the truth, right? Not about the truth.

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Like we wanna know what is the truth. And the truth comes from this book and from the Holy Spirit. And the

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Holy Spirit will never speak outside this book or against this book or contradict this book. So if the

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Holy Spirit who wrote the book says, I won't do this anymore. And then people tell me, well, he's still doing it.

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I don't believe the people. I believe they think he's doing it. And I believe stuff's happening. I just don't think the

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Holy Spirit's the source of it. If I had a man ask me face to face, well, then that means you think I'm either number one, a liar or number two.

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You think I'm filled with demons. And I'm sitting there thinking, could be. But there is a third choice, you've been taught to do the stuff you're doing by people who misled you.

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That could be a third choice, couldn't it? Like you have been taught this doctrine by people who are wrong and they misled you.

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So there you have it. So any kind of doctrines brought into the church, we gotta check the context of any scripture they think they have that proves it.

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And if it's not even in the Bible, then we just point that out. So that's what I've been talking about. So we made our way down to chapter 14 in verse four.

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And one of the things we had started to do there is we started talking about what is an imperative. And when you look at the

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Greek language, even in English, we have it. But when you see in the

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Greek that it's in the imperative, it means it's sort of like a command. It's like the Lord is saying, hey, you need to live this way.

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We gave some examples out of Ephesians chapter four, verse 29 and following where it says, let not corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.

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The word let is in the imperative and it's God telling us, here's how I want you to live. Speak kindly to one another.

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Let your words be words that edify and build. So those were just some examples of imperatives that we gave.

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All right, so that brought us down to verse four and actually verse three, verse two, three and three are talking about an example that the

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Lord gives us all of a sudden of doubtful disputations. He said, there's gonna be some people in the church that are vegetarians and there's gonna be people that eat meat.

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About how, you know, what Satan wants to do is create division between the meat eaters and the vegetarians and things like that.

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So he used that as an example. And so that's a doubtful disputation because when you look at the scripture, you know, you can look in the

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Old Testament where it says that a Jew under Moses cannot eat ham and then you could debate, well, we're supposed to not eat ham.

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Well, obviously when God himself brought the sheep down to the apostle Peter and said, and had unclean what he considered to be unclean food on it and he said,

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God told him to eat it. And Peter said, no, no, no, Lord, I won't eat that which is unclean. What did God say? God said, don't call that which

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I say is clean, unclean. Eat, right? There's a dispensational change there between the church and Moses, between grace and Jesus Christ and Moses.

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So you've got to recognize these things. So when you have people coming in the church saying, you really shouldn't be eating pork here.

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And they do, they'd say that. I've heard that. You know, those are the kinds of things that verses two and three are talking about that we talked about last time.

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So let's look at verse four. And it begins from verse four on down through a good part of this chapter, it begins to talk about how do we deal with these situations then?

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If we got two brothers and sisters that disagree on something, but it's not a major doctrinal issue, maybe.

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It's just some little doubtful disputation and it's starting to cause division in the church. How do we deal with that?

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So it says, who art thou that judges another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls.

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Yea, he shall be holding up by God, for God is able to hold this person up and make him stand.

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One man esteems one day, another esteems another day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

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And this word persuaded in the Greek means to carry out fully in evidence.

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May he have his own evidence, be fully persuaded in what he's believing he should do or not do. And so there's a lot of information in that little verse four.

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Number one, first we gotta recognize that this brother that we're disagreeing with is not our servant.

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He does not serve us. Therefore we don't have the right to tell him how to live. We don't have the right to tell him or her, you have to live and believe just like I do because actually they're the servant of the

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Lord and they answer to the Lord. And that's what verse four says. And the Lord is not only able to deal with their belief, whether it's right or wrong, through the

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Holy Spirit and the Bible, he can correct them. You don't have to do it. I mean, it's okay if you show them in scripture where you think they're wrong, but if they don't change their mind, you don't need to worry about it because they're not your servant.

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They're not my servant, they're his servant. He can bring you the right truth though, right?

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We rest in the Lord. The second thing is, it said that God holds that person up and here we are kind of mad at them and fighting with them because they don't believe just like we do.

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And yet God is the one holding them up and making their whole life work together because they belong to him. You see that there in verse four.

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So there's a couple of things. The third thing is, it ends up saying, let each man be persuaded in their own mind, which tells me

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I don't have to make everyone believe just like I do. In the first place, I can't do it, but I don't need to feel like I need to do it.

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And boy, that's hard for all of us. That's hard for all of us. And I don't know why, but it just, it is.

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It's part of human nature, I guess. So that brings me to verse six here in Romans 14, six.

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And we're gonna get a different allegory now instead of talking about vegetarians and meat eaters, we're gonna talk about something a little different.

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So let's look at this. He that regardeth the day regards it unto the Lord and he that regards not the day to the

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Lord, he doesn't regard it. So here you have people coming in and saying, we're supposed to worship on Saturday, not Sunday.

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I mean, it's all over the country now. It's all over the world. People trying to spread legalism. And so what do you do with that?

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Well, what we see here is we must take any perceived imperative in context before judging other people by that.

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So we may be the one that thinks, well, the other person needs to worship on Saturday. But what we need to do is we need to go look at why we think that.

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And of course it came from the law of Moses, right? 10 commandments. Okay, are we still under the 10 commandments?

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Has there been a dispensational change where we're no longer under Moses and the law, but now we're under Jesus and grace where the apostle

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Paul himself said, all things are lawful for me. And what does that mean? And then you have the naysayers that say, yeah, but it's not talking about the whole law.

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There's three different types of laws. She's talking about one specific part. Still got to keep the rest of it. That's not true either.

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I had a Jewish person tell me that once. It took me like three weeks to study to see if it was right or not.

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And I'm glad that we had the debate because that study is now on my hard drive and I share with everybody that would like to see it where it shows clearly that not any of the three parts of the law, we're not under any of those three parts.

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We're not under the law period. We're under grace and all things are lawful for us, yet not all things are expedient, just like Paul said.

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So people lie about it. They cheat. They don't keep the rules of Bible interpretation to try to win their argument.

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And we don't want any part in that, do we? So we've got to check that context. So here's an example. If you can quickly do so, take a look at Exodus chapter 20, verse eight.

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And so here I am, I'm a person that's gonna share scripture with you and show you what you need to do in your life, okay? So I'm gonna say, well, yeah,

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I got scripture. Here it is. Look with me. Exodus 28 says, "'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

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"'Six days shalt thou labor and do all your work. "'But on the seventh day, "'the seventh day is the

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Sabbath of the Lord thy God. "'In it thou shalt not do any work, "'thou nor thy son nor thy daughter, "'thy manservant, your maidservant.'"

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Is it all right to have slaves? Well, I mean, if you're gonna use this scripture to teach me

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I gotta worship on Saturday, then how about we talk about the fact that maybe we should own some slaves? See, people don't like it when you do that, when you say, okay, if you think this applies to us, then this also applies, so let's do that too.

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They don't like that because it kind of throws them off their game a little bit. But so if this applies, then yeah, we can still have slaves, it'd be just fine to do it.

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And so we teach our slaves, our male slaves and our female slaves, and even the cattle and the stranger, teach them all, you don't work on Saturday because it's

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Sabbath, right? Okay, so now are we under that? And when people come to the church and say, we should be worshiping on Saturday and all that, what do we say to them?

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Well, now turn to the book of Revelation 1, verse nine. Yeah, Revelation 1, verse nine.

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And so you say, well, I got a scripture for you. Let me share a scripture with you. Maybe it'd be good to take them to the one that talks about, you know, to rightly divide the word of truth would be a nice one to show this person as well, because there are dispensations and you have to read the passage with regard to what dispensation is it speaking to, this one or that one?

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Does it even apply today? Or is it just symbolic for today? Or does it have a secondary application? You have to ask all those questions.

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Number nine, I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ was in the isle that is called

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Patmos or because of the word of God. So because he preached the word of God, they banished him.

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They tried to kill him from, we don't know this from scripture, but tradition tells us they boiled him in oil and it didn't kill him.

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So then they banished him and they put him on the isle of Patmos because he preached the word of God. So he was persecuted because of the word of God and because of the testimony of Jesus Christ.

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That's why they did these things to the apostle John. But look at number 10. I was in the spirit on the

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Lord's day and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet. So what's interesting about it is he talked about this thing called the

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Lord's day and it's not the only place in scripture, but we can look in early church history.

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It was known as the resurrection day. It was Sunday, not Saturday. It was known as the Lord's day. And this was the day that John on that island by himself was having church by himself.

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And he did it on the Lord's day. And as he did that, as he worshiped God, he had this vision and he wrote the entire book of Revelation from the vision that he had that day.

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But it was on Sunday, not Saturday. So there are some things that are imperatives in the old

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Testament dispensation, but they are not imperatives for us in the new Testament.

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Okay, that's something to think about. The 10 rules of proper Bible interpretation must be used without malice in discerning these things.

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You can't, if you want to cheat, you can cheat, right? But if you really just want to know the truth, then just keep those rules and don't worry about it.

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If it proves, means you need to stop believing it that way. You need to change because it's not right.

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And there's nothing wrong with that. I've done that many times. Ben back there likes to go through the archives of sermons that I preached when

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I was like 20 something and 30 something. And he finds that quite a few that none of us in this church would agree with anymore, you know?

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So what happened? Well, the scripture or the Holy Spirit or some person showed me, David, that's not exactly right.

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And so I apologize for it. And don't preach it that way anymore, all right?

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So that's what we all have to be willing to do that. So let me read Acts, the book of Acts chapter 20, verse seven with regard to the first day of the week, which is

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Sunday. And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, what does that mean?

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Did they just like to go and have a sandwich or are they having church? Because their church consisted of Bible study, like a sermon,

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Bible study, praying together, fellowshiping together and breaking bread together. That's what their church was.

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Then they went out from that and witnessed. And so that's a simple church. That's the way churches should be run.

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And it happened on the Lord's day, which was Sunday. And they didn't have Wednesday night service.

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They had Sunday. They might've spent most of Sunday together though. Well, we do a good deal of Sunday together here.

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And then they go home and they spend the rest of the week with their family, taking care of what they need to in their marriage and with their children and with the education of their children and witnessing to people in the workplace.

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That's the true church. The mega church where you got something to do Monday night, Tuesday night,

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Wednesday night. We used to do that in this church. The founder of this church was one of those dudes. Every night when

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Charlotte and I were in our twenties, we were doing some churchy thing every night or every day. And it just, it'll wear you out.

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It won't help your marriage either, by the way. So some of you guys

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I'm talking about, but in the Bible, what they did, and this is ancient history.

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I mean, this is even before the early church fathers. This is the apostles and disciples right after Jesus was resurrected, went into heaven, the

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Holy Spirit came, the church started. This is how they were doing it. They were meeting together on the Lord's day, the first day of the week, which is

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Sunday. And they broke bread together and Paul preached to them. So they had preaching, right?

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Ready to depart on the morrow and continued his speech until midnight. That was a long sermon.

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One of Paul's sermons was so long, a kid fell asleep, fell out the second story window and died. Paul went out late on top of him and his life came back into him.

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Why was Paul able to do that? Because he was an apostle. There are no more apostles. There are several rules given in the

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New Testament on what you have to be and do to be an apostle. And one of them happens to be, you had to have walked with Jesus personally in the flesh.

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So that ain't happening, right? So we don't have apostles anymore. People claim we do, but we don't. But if we did, no one's grandma would die because they would just go lay on her and the life would come back to her, right?

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I know I'm being a little facetious. It doesn't quite work like that. But I mean, seriously, you wonder why

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Oral Roberts built the hospital. But anyway, they're misguided. I shouldn't make light of it.

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It's sad. It's sad and misdirection is from Satan. It's very sad.

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And I don't wanna talk about that anymore this morning. So anyway, what do we do in church? We come together, we break bread, we fellowship, we preach and we pray.

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And it happened on which day? And upon the first day of the week. So these legalists say, oh, no, no, no, that was

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Constantine and the Roman Catholics that invented worshiping on Sunday because they hated Jews. They'll tell you that.

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They're lying. It's right here in the book of Acts. One of the older books of the New Testament.

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One of the earliest books, right? Now look at 1 Corinthians 16, one. Now concerning the collection of the saints.

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So they took up money too. They passed plates or whatever they had. And they took up offerings.

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And Paul was there in Corinth, which they had quite a bit of money in Corinth. And he was gonna pass the plates and take that money to the poor church in Jerusalem to help the saints that were poor.

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So concerning the collection of the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia.

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How'd you like it if it was still that nowadays where the pastor comes in and he says, I order you to put money in the plate.

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I'm taking it to help some other saints. But then again, he wasn't just a pastor. He was an apostle. It's a little different, isn't it,

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Bill? If we had an apostle still, if we had apostles and they walked in and said, everybody can give us all your money, we'd probably do it.

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And, but we don't have apostles anymore. But anyway, Paul acting as an apostle and as a preacher, he takes a collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem and the churches in Galatia.

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He did both. This account is the Galatian church. No, I'm sorry.

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He gave the order to the Galatian church to take the money up for the church of Jerusalem. Had it right in the first place.

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And look at verse two. Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store as God has prospered him, that there be no gatherings when

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I come. So when did they take this offering? It was on Sunday. So they were apparently together, assembling, worshiping, preaching, fellowship and breaking bread, and they took up an offering.

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So there's additional proof. And one of the later, it's still one of the very early books. Corinthians is one of the earlier books written in the

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New Testament, that they were already worshiping on the first day of the week at that point. Now let's look at a little bit of church history on this issue.

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Ignatius, who was the Bishop of Antioch in the year 110 AD. So if we say

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Jesus died around 33 AD, and you say that John lived until what?

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90, I don't remember, 90 AD, somewhere in there. So this was 20 years after the apostle

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John died. This is old. This is ancient, right? And look what it says.

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Those who walked in the ancient practices, don't you think it's funny that like 20, 25 years out in the future, after all the apostles had died and all that, he calls it ancient, ancient church history, right?

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It's kind of cool that Ignatius put it that way. Those who walked in the ancient practices attain unto newness of hope.

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They no longer observe Sabbaths. So I guess what he's talking about, so it's not being so cute, because obviously what he's talking about, those that walk in the ancient practices, he's talking about Old Testament, right?

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Old Testament people. And you still had people in 110 AD who were Jewish. You still had people who were

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Judaizers. You still people living according to the law. And he says, but when those people came to newness of hope, in other words, they got born again, they changed.

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That's what he's talking about. Okay, we have some Jews who lived according to the law. Now they got saved, now what happened?

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So he says, they no longer observed the Sabbaths. Wow, well, one of the

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Sabbaths was every Saturday, wasn't it? Well, they no longer are observing them by 110 AD. And how can you say the

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Roman Catholics invented that? They didn't exist yet. The Roman church in 110

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AD was still a good church. It was not the Roman Catholic perverted church. It didn't have government money paying for everything yet.

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That's what perverted it. So he says, they no longer observed the

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Sabbaths, but fashioning their lives after the Lord's day. Well, anyone who, any scholar in the world that studies what they mean when they talk about the

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Lord's day, that is Sunday. It's the resurrection day, Sunday. So they stopped observing the

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Sabbath when they got saved. And then they fashioned their lives after Sunday, worshiping on Sunday, the

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Lord's day, on which our life also rose through him. Is that good doctrine? He's saying we rose the day he rose.

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Right, well, so what did I have to do with my own salvation? Nothing, I just received it as a free gift.

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My life started when Jesus came out of that grave. Hallelujah, well, Ignatius was preaching this in 110 AD.

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And fashioning their lives after the Lord's day on which our life also rose through him, that we may be found disciples of Jesus Christ, our only teacher.

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Did you hear that? No Pope, no Cardinal, no denominational leader, you know, no

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Judaizer, nobody comes in and tells us how to live, but Jesus. I love that, because yesterday in the

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Tradeway meeting, I talked a little bit about how Jesus gave, you know how the

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Bible says in sundry times and old times, God spake to us through the prophets.

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But in these last days, he hath spoken to us through his son. I was showing in scripture how

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Jesus prophesied how we would get that New Testament. The words of the son that we live by, the

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New Testament. He told exactly how he would give it to us. And I talked about that yesterday, it's fascinating.

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It's fascinating to see that. But so Ignatius in 110

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AD would certainly agree that we were no longer being taught by prophets, but by Jesus himself, our only teacher.

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He says, I love that quote, wow. Okay, there's another man named Justin Martyr who lived in 135

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AD. And Justin Martyr is the man who got in an argument with a

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Judaizer who was trying to say, you know, you guys are ungodly because you don't worship on Saturday and on the

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Sabbath. And Justin Martyr is the one that says, listen, I rest in Jesus every day. Every day of my life is a

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Sabbath because Sabbath means rest. I rest in him every day. You can't tell me which of those days to pick to worship him on because I worship him every day.

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That was his answer. Great, brilliant man, but great answer. And I use that answer a whole lot when people challenge me on this stuff.

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But he said this, this man said this, he said, Sunday is the day on which we all hold communion.

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Now, I want you to think about this. This was written in the year 135 AD. So it's only 100 years roughly after Jesus died on the cross.

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This is early, early church, and this is how they did church. So he says,

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Sunday is the day on which we all, not some of us, all of us hold communion assembly.

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Now, isn't that something? And I had a person literally tell me, no, the Catholics invented it.

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I said, well, if I can show you evidence that early church fathers before Constantine worshiped on Sunday, would you change your mind?

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Yeah, and I showed it to him. He just, huh, walked away, never changed his mind. See, that's not an honest person.

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I mean, I don't have anything to do with people like that if I can help it because they don't care about the truth. They're not, they have no integrity.

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And sure is what that is. So, Sunday is the day on which we all hold communion assembly.

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And Jesus Christ, our Savior on that same day rose from the dead. And on the day called

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Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place.

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And the memoir of the apostles, I love that. That's the New Testament. Are the writings of the prophets, that's the

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Old Testament, are read as long as time permits. Long sermons, isn't that great?

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Love it. Long sermons, and then they'd go home. And it was on Sunday. So Romans 14, six, the second part of that verse says this.

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He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks, and he that eateth not, he eats to the

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Lord, and he eats not, and he gives God thanks. And so Paul here in our passage in Romans chapter 14, in verse six, it's saying, look, just let's make sure whatever you do, whether you worship on Saturday or Sunday or Monday or Wednesday, give

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God thanks. Whatever you eat, whether you eat vegetables or meat, give God thanks. Love the Lord, it's all about God.

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And he points the direction so well back to balance and the right things we should be thinking about.

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Now, let's see. And let's look at Deuteronomy chapter 14, verse six.

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Now, here we deal with food, okay? Deuteronomy 14, six.

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Now, here a man walks into our church or a woman walks into our church, a couple of women in Bahia teaching this.

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So it could be a woman. And they pull out scripture. I'm gonna show you scripture.

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You're not living by the Bible. And they pull out Deuteronomy 14, six. And they say, every beast that parts the hoof and cleaves the cleft into two claws and chews the cud among the beast, you can eat those.

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So that's like a cow that has a hoof that's cleft like that.

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A horse doesn't have a hoof cleft like that. So you're not supposed to eat a horse, okay?

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If you're a Jew, right? Nevertheless, these ye shall not eat of them.

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And then he names these things like camels, the hare, the coney, et cetera.

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And then verse eight, the swine, you don't eat pig meat. These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters.

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So then he starts talking about the kind of fish you can eat. And he mentioned the one you can't, which are like catfish. Don't eat the catfish because they don't have scales.

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That is very specific. Verse 10, whatsoever has not fins or scales, don't eat it. So you cannot eat catfish, which

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I just had some of that recently, didn't I, Brother Dave? I got the big plate, you got the little plate.

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And so there it is. We now have scripture, we cannot eat a horse. Sad, but true.

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Can't eat camel, can't eat catfish, can't eat ham. And they showed it to us in the

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Bible, didn't they? So what do we do with that? Well, let's go to Acts chapter 10 and verse 12, wherein we're all manner of four -footed beast of the earth.

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So here, God brings a vision to the apostle Peter with a sheet coming down from heaven.

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And on that sheet are all manner of four -footed beast of the earth and wild beast and creeping things.

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Stuff you're not supposed to eat if you're a Jew. Fouls of the air, buzzards, things like that that you're not supposed to eat.

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Probably a few catfish flipping around on that sheet. And there came a voice to him, rise,

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Peter, kill and eat. And that was God. But Peter said, not so,

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Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean because he's pulling it from the

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Old Testament scriptures under Moses' law. And he's using scripture here, quoted scripture to God.

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He told God, no, it's not biblical. I think that's humorous. Anybody get a kick out of that one?

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Brother Otis would have. And the voice spake unto him again a second time, what

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God has cleansed, don't call that unclean. Whoa, that's what

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God told him. So apparently God changed how he deals with men in this dispensational change from Old Testament to New Testament because we're not under the law anymore.

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God said, look, if I'm calling it clean for you now since Jesus has died, was buried and rose again, and you're covered by the blood and you're no longer under the law and I say it's clean for you, then don't tell me it's not clean.

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That's what he told Peter. So show the person that passage, right? What are they gonna do with that?

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There's not much they can do with that other than just change the subject, which is what they will do, they'll change the subject. So that gives us a fifth point.

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We're not to judge others with regard to disputable things because each of us live and die unto the

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Lord and to him only. And we see all of that in these passages. Now, that takes us to verse seven.

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Now, let's go back to Romans chapter 14, where we're studying through this passage. Let's go to look at verse seven. And I'll quit in a minute when

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I think we're kind of had about all we can take. So I'm just gonna read through this.

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We'll see how much of it we talk about today. Verse seven, for none of us lives to himself and no man dies to himself.

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For whether we live or whether we die, we do it under the Lord. So some of this passage now is gonna start talking about how do we deal with it when we disagree on stuff that's not, it's not like we're not disagreeing on the fact that Jesus died for us and that he's the only savior.

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We're not, it's not that kind of disagreement. We're talking about, well, I'll tell you a good one, like, okay, in Sunday school recently, you mentioned that,

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I believe it was Matthew Henry that said he thought that Noah was already dead before the whale,

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Noah. Did I get that right? No, Jonah. I knew I said something wrong. Okay, Jonah was already dead before the whale swallowed him.

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And MacArthur, I think, thinks that he died while he was inside the fish maybe. And then others, including myself, don't think he was ever dead, that it was a picture of that.

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But so like, do we split over that? Do we like divide the church over those who think

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Jonah was already dead and those who think, no, he never died? You see, that's the kind of thing

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Paul is saying. Don't have arguments over stuff like that. Don't, you know, you can disagree on some things.

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It doesn't matter. You can do, like, because if you, this is a silly example, but if you're a believer that he was dead, then do that under the

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Lord. Spend time with the Lord and say, Lord, am I right about that? Show me in scripture more things.

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You know, Holy Spirit, how do you feel about it? Because if I say it and it's false, you'll make me feel weird. So like, isn't it possible for the

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Holy Spirit to deal with each of us on these kinds of issues? And then over time, maybe our beliefs do come closer together.

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I think they do. We don't need to worry about that. So that's exactly what this is talking about, things like that.

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For none of us lives to himself. We live and we don't die to ourself. We die to the Lord. You know, when we're on our deathbed, we've been talking about in our prayer request, death a lot and things that can cause death.

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And my mom had this stroke and we've been thinking about that a lot. And we think about, okay, what about when

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I'm that person? Isn't that weird? None of us like thinking that thought. What would it's me there and Katie's having to sit there by my side and watch me either get better, which that's what we believe

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Nana will do because she's a fighter. She ain't gonna quit. She wants to come home and be with us, be with our grand, our grandbabies, her great grandbabies.

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So that's what she's gonna do. But what happens when it's me someday and it is my day and the book of Job says, you got the right day and hour,

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David, this is it. And I'm dying. How much help really can you give me, you guys that may be hanging out in the room?

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How much, like, what can you do for me? Sing a song, play the,

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I imagine Sam will be playing the guitar and Ben will be playing the drums. David will be singing.

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Matty, she came from your loins. So it's the same as if you're singing, right? I mean, you can't do a thing for me.

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Why? Because I die, it's just me and the Lord. Isn't that true? We probably should walk more that way while we're alive.

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But I mean, when we die, it'll definitely be that way. And so that's really what matters.

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And it's so interesting that the Apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit brings that into this conversation on arguing about stuff that doesn't even matter.

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Really? Does it really matter? I mean, truth matters, but if you don't have enough information in this book to figure out exactly which is true and which, and then it doesn't matter because you don't know.

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If it's not in this book, you don't know. You have no authority, unless it's from his other book,

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Bill, which is his creation, which science can give us some facts. I agree with that. All right, so although they get it wrong sometimes, right?

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So this is his line of talking about how to sort of balance out these things and put them down where they belong, where they're not like the biggest thing in the world to worry about.

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For to this end, Christ both died and rose and revived, came alive again, that he might be

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Lord both of the dead and the living. But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you like, he's just so wrong on this.

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Why do we think like that? Why do we set at naught the brother? Like people that believe that are just stupid.

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They're worthless, right? Like they don't have it going on. Why do we do that?

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So why do you bring at naught your brother? And then he says, for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

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Now, what's that telling us? Don't you think that those of us who teach stuff wrong, Jesus say, by the way, brother

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David, you got that one wrong. I'm not happy with you about it, but I love you.

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And you won't be doing it anymore because in heaven, you're gonna teach it exactly right. Are you with me? Yes, sir,

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I'm with you. In fact, I was with you when I thought it wrong. And he'll say, yes, you were, right? I mean, look, this is what he's saying.

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He said, put all this in perspective. We're all gonna stand before him. So why do I need to judge you?

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Why do I need to judge you? You're gonna stand for him. And so am I, we don't need to be doing that to each other.

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Now it's okay to share scripture. It's wonderful to have discussions and even disagree on because it makes us study more every time, doesn't it?

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And so all that's good, but this judging thing and putting people at naught because of it is not allowed.

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See, these are imperatives is what's funny about it. If you look this Greek up, it'll be imperative.

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Don't judge your brother. That's an imperative. It's funny. Okay, so that's one thing that's not disputable.

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So we're gonna stand before the judgment seat of Christ for as it is written, as I live, say if the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, every tongue shall confess to God.

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So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. So we don't need to worry about some of that stuff. We let the

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Lord do the judging. So my sixth point is we're not, oh, the next point is we're not supposed to put a stumbling block in your brother's way.

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The previous point was we don't need to judge each other over these disputable things. We're gonna all answer to the

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Lord anyway, and we already do anyway. The next point in verse 13 is gonna be the thing about the stumbling block.

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And this is maybe one of the strongest points on this thing about disputations is, okay, so what

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Paul is saying is, okay, like you've had people come in here and argue that you can't eat meat, right? You've had people come in and say, you have to worship on Saturday.

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And now Paul's saying, okay, but we know the truth is that's not true. I can eat catfish and I can eat it on Saturday if I want to.

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I can eat it on Sunday. I can worship on Monday or Tuesday or Sunday. And we know that's true, but look what he says now.

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And to me, this one's harder. See if it is for you. I don't know. To me, this one's more difficult.

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So he says, verse 13, let us not therefore judge one another anymore. That we just covered.

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But judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.

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Wow. Isn't that something? Well, I'm gonna say something about that in a second, but I wanna put it in context of the next verse because the next verse has another point.

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Paul is gonna say that there's nothing unclean in and of itself. And that Jesus Christ himself taught that to Paul.

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That's one reason Paul could be an apostle because Jesus physically met with him in the Arabian desert. Scripture says that it's happened.

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That's why he's an apostle. He couldn't have been one if it weren't a fact. So Jesus taught him this.

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He says, I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean in and of itself.

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That's why Paul said all things are lawful to me, right? So here we have this teaching that all of this bickering about stuff that's either out of context or it's not even in the

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Bible. And these people have a major problem. If I'm eating meat, he turns around and says, it's all lawful.

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You can eat the catfish for the day. You can eat more than what you got last time.

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It's okay. Then he says, but if it bothers your mother, don't do it. See, that part is hard.

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Like you have someone in a church that really strongly believes we all should be vegetarians, then don't eat the catfish in front of that person.

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And if you're like me, you're thinking, well, why not? He's wrong. Is that just me or is that all of us?

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Well, the books say that the church takes on the personality of pastor over a period of years, God forbid, right?

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Think about that one for a minute. Let's hope they're wrong about that. But, and they say, you know, that the spouse becomes just like the other spouse.

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She's only going. Yeah, but so think about that, like they're wrong.

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So I'm going to eat my catfish. I don't care if they see it. Isn't that kind of how we think or is that just me? But anyway,

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Paul said, don't think like that. You know, don't be that way. So we have to be gentle and kind and oh boy, that's the hard part.

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Well, I think that we have covered enough for one day and it was good to have my mom with us for the first time since she had her stroke and Katie, thanks for being out there and mom, be a fighter because everybody in here has prayed for you to get back home.

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And we'd like to see that happen as soon as possible, maybe next week and that'll be our prayer.

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So let's stand and have prayer together. By the way, a little report.

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Ben was with my mom yesterday and said she was awake for five hours. If you just went back three, four days, she slept all day.

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So she's getting better. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

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Yeah, that was probably for Katie more than anybody. All right, well, let's pray and we'll be dismissed.

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Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you that you speak to our hearts and you may be in heaven physically, but you're still here with us through the

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Holy Spirit and through your word and it's wonderful. Thank you for that. We don't have to see you in bodily form to fellowship with you today and be taught by you.

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And may you be our only teacher as Ignatius, I think it was who said that. That's a wonderful thing. That's a wonderful thought.

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Go with us into our time of fellowship now, bless the meal and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.