WWUTT 1376 It is Wrong to Make Another Stumble (Romans 14:20-21)

Matters of Conscience in Romans 14

Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God, it says in Romans 14, 20. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats, when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of Romans chapter 14, and we'll finish up our study of this chapter this week. To keep things in context, I'll start in verse 13. We'll read through verse 23.

Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.

For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.

It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.

But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. So once again, here in Romans chapter 14, we're talking about liberty of conscience issues.

These are not things that are expressly sins, or let's put it this way. This would pertain to things that would not be expressly sins. But the example that Paul uses is with food, because this actually would have been a point of contention in the church there in Rome, between Jews and Gentiles.

You've got Jews who still are upholding the dietary laws in Leviticus chapter 11. There were certain foods that God said are unclean, you shall not eat these things. Jesus fulfilled all the ceremonial laws, and that was the reason for the dietary laws.

If you eat these foods, you make yourself ceremonially unclean. Well, Jesus fulfills that law, and he declares in Mark chapter seven that everything is clean. All foods are clean. Just like it was back in Genesis nine, in the Noahic covenant, when God gave all of the animals to mankind for food, there was nothing that was unclean.

It wasn't until the Mosaic law that certain foods were said to be unclean. Jesus declares all foods clean. You have that again in Acts chapter 10, and there's various places where Paul says this, Romans 14 being one of them.

So there's no food that is unclean, but certain Jews were still keeping dietary laws. Don't therefore eat food that is gonna cause your brother to stumble. If he eats it, believing that it's unclean, then you've caused your brother to sin.

Do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. That's as it pertained to Jews. That's how food, how Jews considered certain food laws. For the Gentiles, there were some who had come from paganism where they witnessed food being sacrificed to idols in the pagan temples.

And a lot of times those temples also served as meat markets. So if you were buying meat, more than likely it had first been sacrificed to a false God. Well, certain pagans thought, hey, if I eat this food, then I am gonna fall right back into my idolatry.

I'm eating something that has been sacrificed to a false God. So therefore I'm doing something idolatrous and their conscience is defiled. And to protect themselves from potentially eating something that had been sacrificed to a false God and then participating in idolatry, they would eat only vegetables.

And that's why it says in verse two, one person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. I don't wanna eat meat and fall right back into paganism again. So I'm gonna eat only vegetables and that's gonna prevent me from falling back into this sin.

So those who were stronger of conscience, who were convinced that, hey, I can eat anything I want and I'm not breaking the Mosaic law, nor am I participating in anything pagan if I eat this food. And their conscience is perfectly intact when they eat this food.

That's fine, that's good. And it's why Paul says in verse 16, do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. Nobody can tell you that what you're doing is evil, which would be like gaslighting basically.

Hey, you're sinning. Oh, wow, that person said I'm sinning. I guess I'm sinning. Don't let your conscience be defiled in that way. If you're convinced this is clean, do not let anyone tell you that it's unclean.

Liberty of Conscience and Cultural Pressure

Now, again, we're talking about food here in Romans chapter 14, but we have been applying this to other things as well. An example of that is mask wearing because that's something that's kind of big in the culture right now.

It is even an argument, a point of contention among Christians in the church. There are those that will say that if you're not wearing a mask, you're not loving your neighbor. And so therefore, you're sinning.

If you're not wearing a mask during this COVID pandemic, then you're committing a sin. Or they will say, hey, the government says that you have to wear a mask. Our local government, our town or whatever, they say that you have to wear a mask.

And so therefore, if you're not wearing a mask, then you're breaking the law, you're doing something illegal. These are some of the ways that we as Christians have kind of been imposing this morality upon one another regarding mask wearing when the Bible doesn't say anything about wearing masks.

So you're actually tying the conscience, you're binding the conscience of your fellow believers over something that is not a sin. It is not a sin to wear a mask. It is not a sin to not wear a mask. And it goes both ways.

There are some believers who will shame other believers for wearing masks. And they will say, why are you wearing a mask? Don't you know that it just promotes a culture of fear? Or you're submitting yourself to the government instead of submitting yourself to Christ or something like that.

So there are believers who shame Christians for wearing masks, and there are believers who shame Christians for not wearing masks. We see this go back and forth in this way. The person who is convinced that they must wear a mask, then wear a mask.

And the person who is convinced that I should not wear a mask, then don't wear a mask. But don't be binding the conscience of your fellow believer to something that the Bible does not expressly say is a sin or is not a sin.

This is a matter of conscience, which is why that's the approach that I take to mask wearing. I don't say, hey, never wear a mask. Or I don't say, you must wear a mask because these are not things that are sin or are not a sin.

It is a matter of conscience. If you're convinced you must wear a mask, then wear one. But if you are convinced that you should not wear a mask, then don't. And don't impose what you and your conscience have decided that you must do.

Don't impose that on somebody else as though they're doing something right or wrong. So therefore you have that statement again in verse 16, do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. The statement right before that is by what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.

And we come back to that here in verse 20, do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. Now, Paul is talking about food here.

So let's just stick with the matter of food. Let's say that you are witnessing to somebody in your community who comes from a Muslim faith or a Muslim persuasion. Maybe that's their background, their upbringing, or they still hold those beliefs.

You invite them over or you go out to eat or something like that. And your intention is to share the gospel with them. Well, a Muslim, like a Jew, believes that they should not eat pork. So do not pull out some bacon and try to persuade this Muslim, see, this is clean because Jesus has declared that it's clean.

They're not gonna understand that because they don't yet believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. So they're not gonna believe what is said in the Bible about Jesus declaring all foods clean. You could put a stumbling block in the way of this person, preventing them from coming to Christ over a matter of food, right?

So that's not where you go with this discussion first. When you're sharing the gospel with this person, you stick with the gospel. You stick to the basics of the gospel. You are a sinner. You are deserving of the judgment and the wrath of God.

You need a savior. Jesus Christ is that savior who has died on the cross for our sins. He has risen again from the grave so that all who believe in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life with God.

Okay, that's a very simple presentation of the gospel, but you get the point. So you're just sticking with the points of the gospel. You're not gonna start getting into these tertiary issues like eating bacon.

So that's if you're sharing with somebody who is a Muslim, you're sharing the gospel with a Muslim. Let's say that this person has become a Christian now, but their conscience is not yet matured to the place where they are convinced that they can leave their former dietary practices behind.

They can eat pork now, and that's perfectly fine because as a Muslim, they still believe certain things in the Old Testament too. And so, hey, when I was in Islam, I couldn't eat bacon. So therefore, as a Christian, while I find it in Leviticus 11 that I shouldn't eat bacon either.

So I'm still gonna keep with this. This is still a food that is declared unclean, and therefore I'm not gonna eat it. Well, don't be inviting those Christians, former Muslims, now Christians, don't be inviting them over to your house and then pulling out a pork roast and saying, hey, now that you're a believer, let's eat some pork because it's just fine to eat some pork.

Their mind isn't there yet. They don't yet understand that I'm not unclean by anything that I eat, nor am I clean by anything that I eat. Some of you know that at the previous church that I pastored, First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas, we had a Palauan congregation join our church.

Now, the island of Palau is out in the Pacific. How in the world did they get to Kansas? Well, that's a long story, but needless to say, we had a Palauan congregation in our community and we were pleased for these two churches to merge together.

Now, I knew very little about Palauan or about the culture of the Palauans when we first started making friends with one another. So we're inviting each other to each other's houses and things like that.

And I had one family over to my house and I asked them, I had to ask them in advance, I said, do you guys eat pork? And boy, their eyes lit up. They were like, oh yeah, we love pork. I said, okay, I had to make sure because that's one of those meats that cross-culturally, some people won't eat it.

So I needed to make sure before I made my famous pulled pork sandwiches that the Palauans were comfortable with eating pork. I did not want to cause anybody to stumble over something that they were convinced that we should not eat.

And then it turned out to be okay, you can eat pork, that was all fine. We ate some wonderful pulled pork sandwiches together. But that was one of those instances where I wanted to make sure that everything was okay.

I brought up the Muslim example because a pastor friend of mine went through this once. He had a new family join his church and they were new believers. They were not just new to the church, but they were new to the faith altogether.

And they formerly had been Muslim. So there were still a lot of practices, a lot of convictions of conscience that came from that former way of life that he had brought with him into his new faith in Christ.

And as he's growing in that faith, he's not yet come to the point where he's convinced that he can eat pork. And that's something clean, that's a clean food that I can partake in. And so my pastor friend, when he had this family over, he cleared his house of it.

Like he got rid of it in his fridge, in his freezer, everywhere, that he had a pork, he threw it away. Or he may not have thrown it away, I think he gave it to somebody. He was like, here, either hold onto this or you can eat it.

Something like that. Point being, he did not have it in his house because he did not want to cause somebody else to have a guilty conscience over something that just was not a big deal. This is not where we cross that bridge right now.

We're going to fellowship with one another. I'm gonna lead you deeper into who Christ is and the wonderful blessings of his grace that we experience as his followers, as children of God. Those were going to be the things that would fill their conversations.

It was not gonna come into, okay, now I'm gonna introduce you to pork. That would come later. I wanna say that I'm hoping I'm not getting my stories mixed up because I know that there is one friend of mine that said he introduced, he got the privilege of introducing someone to bacon for the first time and seeing their eyes light up and was like, wow, this is fantastic.

It may have been that pastor, I'm not sure. He did get the chance to introduce them to pork later. Anyway, so we have this statement here in verse 20. Do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.

Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. Let me give you another example of this. I was invited to come and speak to a youth group and I was supposed to be speaking on basically why we're Protestant.

This was in 2017. It was during the 500, everybody was talking about at that time that it was the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. So one pastor invited me to come to his church and speak to their youth about why we're Protestant and not Catholic and what the problems are with Roman Catholicism.

So for an illustration, I was gonna show them some Catholic candles and go through the prayers on the back of that candle. And this is how a Catholic prays to a saint or to an angel. But it required me going to the store and purchasing some Catholic candles.

Now, I don't know if you've seen these candles or if you've ever bought these candles, they're actually really cheap, but you find them everywhere. You can find them at a regular grocery store, like where you go buy your produce and your meats and stuff like that, right?

They will have Catholic candles there more often than not. You can buy them at Walmart, you can get them at Dollar General. These Catholic candles are all over the place. So I needed to go buy some of these candles, but I did not want anyone to see me buy these candles because I'm a pastor in my community.

It's a small town and I was pretty well-recognized in my community. So I went to the store to buy these candles at 11 .45 at night the store closed at midnight. So I'm buying it late, right as the store is about to close.

So no one will see me doing this. And at the grocery store that I shopped at after like 10 o 'clock or something like that, they only had the self-checkout registers open. So I was able to do this and no one saw me, even the gal that was watching the self-checkout registers wasn't standing there when I was checking out.

So no one saw me purchase these candles. I didn't want anyone to think that this is okay. I did not want anyone to even see me like from a distance and they know, hey, that's Gabe, the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church.

And he's buying Catholic candles. So I guess it's okay for me as a Protestant to buy some Catholic candles and I can pray to these dead saints. And then I caused them to sin. I caused them to fall into a very serious sin in fact, for you cannot pray to anyone but Christ.

You cannot pray to anyone but God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and we get to God through Jesus Christ. First Corinthians, or I'm sorry, First Timothy 2 .5, there is one mediator between God and man, and that is the man, Christ Jesus.

You don't pray to Mary. You don't pray to the apostle Paul. You don't pray to Gabriel the angel. You pray to God through Christ and the Holy Spirit who lives within you, okay? Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Jesus teaching us to take our prayers directly to the Father in his name. So you don't pray to anyone but God. He alone is worthy of our prayers. He alone is omnipresent. None of the saints are omnipresent.

They don't have God-like qualities that you can pray to a saint or from anywhere at any place, you know, anything like that. Only to God, only he hears our prayers. Only Christ takes our prayers before the Father.

Why would you even pray to anybody else if you have direct access to God? So anyway, all that to say that I had bought these candles and I bought them really late so I would not cause anyone else to sin.

For as it says in verse 20, it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble. It wasn't wrong for me to buy Catholic candles for the reason I was buying them. Now, if I was buying them to light them and pray to those saints that were marked on those candles, that would have been wrong, but not for the reason I bought them.

So there wasn't anything wrong for me to buy those candles. It would have been wrong if I bought those candles and therefore it had caused someone else to fall into sin. This is how we are to be with each other.

We're supposed to be compassionate and considerate of one another, to be mindful of each other. And this is how we love one another, not flaunting our liberty that could potentially cause somebody to stumble.

And we're not supposed to be walking on eggshells with one another either. We need to exercise grace and forgiveness with each other. But for what you are convinced, if you're convinced that something is right, the Bible does not call it sin.

So you're convinced it's right. Then enjoy it to the praise and the glory of God and don't let anyone else tell you that it's sin. If you are convinced that something is wrong, even if the Bible does not expressly say that it is wrong, then you need to abstain from that thing that could potentially cause you to defile your conscience and then sin before God, even if the Bible doesn't call it sin.

If you're convinced it's sin, then it's gonna be sinful for you to do it. As the chapter closes here and says, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. So if you're convinced it's sin, if you do it, then you're gonna be sinning.

We need to have a high reverence of the holiness of God that we would desire to walk holy and blameless before him, as was charged of us in Romans 12, one, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

And this is part of that. And part of that worship also means that we need to take care of each other. Verse 21, it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.

We'll come back to that again tomorrow. Heavenly father, we thank you for the patience and the grace and mercy that you have demonstrated to us, the love that you have shown to us through Jesus Christ, our savior.

And may we likewise be patient with each other, merciful, gracious, mindful of one another, forgiving as you have forgiven us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.