WWUTT 1378 We Who Are Strong Have an Obligation (Romans 15:1-2)

Here's one Becky and I have shared many times, Romans 15, 1. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves, but our neighbor, to build him up when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We come back to our study of Romans, starting a new chapter today, but still in the context of the chapter we just finished.

This is Romans chapter 15, and I'll begin by reading verses 1 through 7.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.

For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

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

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

Now, that last verse there should clue you in to recognizing we're still talking about the same subject that we just came out of in chapter 14.

Paul may not be referencing the issue of food anymore, that you're not unclean by anything that you eat, nor are you clean by anything that you don't eat.

That was the specific example in chapter 14. But remember how that chapter started, verse 1.

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

What did we just read in 15 -7? Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

So you could see those two verses kind of sandwiching the stuff that we've talked about in between.

Chapter 14 gets to be that chapter where we talk about the tertiary things, those things that Scripture has not strictly forbidden.

You might think that they're wrong. Keep that between you and the Lord. You might be perfectly fine with doing these things that Scripture has not said is wrong.

So you also keep that between you and Christ. Consider verse 22.

I may not have explained this one very well yesterday. So Romans 14 -22, the faith that you have, keep between yourself and God.

And I may not have explained it well because I probably don't need to. This is not saying that you just keep your faith between you and God and you don't share it with anybody else.

That's not what's being said here. I actually heard a teacher defend Donald Trump when

Trump said that his faith was very personal to him, that it's just between him and God.

This was when reporters were asking him, hey, can you share a favorite verse or something like that?

There was an interview between him and Sean Hannity, I think. I think it was on Fox News. This was back when he was running for president in 2015 or 2016.

And he said, oh, you know, my faith is very personal to me. It's just between me and the Lord, which was ridiculous.

And some evangelical teachers out there were warning that Donald Trump was not a godly man. Still don't think that he is.

But I pray for his I pray for his soul. There were some evangelical teachers that were saying that this is this is not the way that we share our faith.

Donald Trump isn't sharing it at all. He's just saying that he's a Christian, but he cannot produce any fruit, cannot even tell you parts of the

Bible that he likes. He says it's his favorite book, but he doesn't read any of it. By the way, this was one of the reasons why

I thought that he would win the presidency in 2016. There were a lot of folks that were betting against it.

I thought that he would, because I've done quite a bit of evangelism. And some of the things that Trump was saying was just like what

I hear from people who tell me that they're Christians, but there's no fruit in their life. They say that the Bible is their favorite book, that they go to church on Christmas and Easter, that they that they do communion, they eat their little wafer and drink their little cup.

Those were things that Trump said. I was like, this guy is perfectly tapped into the heart of American evangelicalism.

So I think that he will get the majority of the evangelical vote even back in 2016. And he did.

When you ask that of somebody what their favorite part of the Bible is, you should hear all kinds of verses pour forth from them.

If it's their favorite book, if they truly love God and his word, then that's what they're going to have stored up in their heart.

And that's what's going to flow from them whenever they speak of God. But Donald Trump did not do that.

And some teachers were defending him and saying, well, it says in Romans 14, 22, the faith that you have keep between yourself and God.

Donald Trump practices that maybe we need to be practicing that a little bit better ourselves.

I wish I could remember one of those teachers. I'd grab the audio clip and play it for you. That's a that's a horrible defense.

And that's not what Romans 14, 22 is saying. I gave the context yesterday.

I just didn't explain that this verse is not saying that you don't share your faith with anybody else.

The faith that you have keep between yourself and God. Remember that we're talking about a measure of faith that has been assigned back to Romans 12, 3, for by the grace given to me,

I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

And as it says in Micah, six, eight, he has told you, oh, man, what is good and what does the

Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your

God. You are humble before God. You are humble in your faith, not boasting in yourself over and above anybody else.

And so this is how those who are strong in faith even should consider themselves. If there is something that they are convinced is clean and I am not unclean, if I do this, the

Bible doesn't tell me that it's wrong. Therefore, do it and keep that between you and God.

Do not lord the maturity of your faith over somebody else to either make them feel bad or cause them to stumble.

Likewise, the one who is weak in faith should not be condemning those things that the Bible doesn't condemn.

So you keep that between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.

That's the context of verse twenty two. So, yes, we are called to share our faith. First Peter three fifteen in your heart, honor

Christ the Lord as holy, always ready to give an answer for the hope that you have. But to do this with gentleness and respect in Second Timothy two twenty five, correct opponents with gentleness.

And of course, the Great Commission in Matthew twenty eight verses eighteen through twenty, where Jesus told his disciples to go into all nations, baptizing in the name of the father and of the son and of the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. It is a commandment of God that we share our faith.

But when it comes to these matters that are tertiary, that the Bible doesn't strictly forbid that you not pass judgment on one another, but you keep that between yourself and God.

Do that thing to the glory of God and do not cause your brother to stumble. Remember, first Corinthians ten thirty one, whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

And then in Romans fifteen addressing those who are mature in faith, Paul says, we who are strong and he groups himself with those who are strong.

This is not a boastful statement. Paul is not pridefully saying, look at how mature I am in my faith.

It's simply a matter of fact. If he did not have maturity and faith, what business did he have being an apostle, telling people, imitate me as I am of Christ, as he said to the

Philippians and the Corinthians and in other places, end of Galatians chapter one, they praise God because of me.

So, of course, Paul is going to say that he is mature in faith. And there are others even within the church there in Rome who have a maturity in faith and those who are more mature have greater responsibility.

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the week and not to please ourselves.

I just love that he says there we have an obligation. I love that for myself, that that it is said that I have an obligation to help others in the body of Christ grow in faith and love and righteousness and an understanding of God's word.

We're supposed to help one another in these things. There are people who think of themselves as more mature than others and and they will take themselves out of the church.

I'm better than these people. I don't need to go to church. It's just me and the Lord. I can grow just fine at home.

I can watch it online. I can do my Bible studies. I can listen to podcasts. And so they won't go to church anymore.

And they think that they are better than everybody else because of this. I'm more mature than these people.

These folks are not going to help me mature. They're just going to tear me down. Well, if a person has that mindset, then they go against what is specifically said here to the mature in Romans 15 one.

Of course, the fact of the matter is that person is not mature at all. But even if what they were saying about themselves was true, they would still have to submit to the clear command given in Romans 15 one that we who are strong have an obligation.

We are commanded by God in our submission to him. We must bear with the failings of the week and not to please ourselves.

We don't do this for ourselves. We do it for the benefit of our neighbor to build him up.

Verse two, let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

So going back again to Romans 14 one, as for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him.

But do not quarrel over opinions. Who is going to be more likely to quarrel over opinions?

The mature person or the immature person, the one who is immature is going to be more likely to quarrel over opinions.

If you know and you have confidence in Christ that what you are doing, the way that you live, these things that you enjoy, an immature person might say is is wrong or it's sin, but you know that it's not.

If your trust is in Christ, you're not going to be shaken by what that immature person says, and you're not going to reduce yourself to the level of quarreling that maybe an immature person does.

This is how we who are mature must consider these things. Surely, you know that I've got a social media presence.

I'm on Twitter. That's it's pretty much the main social media platform. And I'm on Gab now, by the way, same username or handle

Pastor underscore Gabe. You can find me on either Twitter or Gab. Yeah, I do some Facebook stuff, but you really won't find me there.

Instagram. I'm not even using it anymore. It's pretty much just just Twitter and Gab. So when they're, of course, going to be people who try to argue with me about things, and I just simply do not argue most of the time.

I don't I don't argue when it comes to any kind of argument. I try to use or follow the Titus three rule, warn a divisive person once, warn him a second time, and after that have nothing to do with them.

So even when it comes to quarreling on the Internet, we need to be disciplined in this way as well, not to quarrel over opinions.

And we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the week. Sometimes the weak have a tendency to quarrel more so than those who are more mature.

And those who are more mature even need to know when to not enter into that quarrel at all, because it will probably ruin the heroes.

That's another warning Paul gives to both Timothy and to Titus that you not enter into useless, fruitless quarrels because all they do is cause divisions and will even ruin the people over here, this conflict that's going on between Christian believers.

So we who are strong even must understand that that this quarrel is not going to be necessary and it's going to do more harm than good.

You're going to harm the person who's initiating the quarrel because you might cause them in their conscience to feel some sort of anger toward you that would become sin.

And then there are also people around who hear two Christians fighting and they might be led astray by some of the stuff that's going on.

So the more mature person needs to be careful into those those disagreements or matters of opinion that are entered into be the person who knows how to cut the argument off and say, you know, things are getting out of hand here.

I think we just need to put this to rest and we can pick it up another time. Certain discussions that, you know, you shouldn't even enter into as well, whether it's online, whether it's in person.

The more mature person needs to be the most mindful of one another of others and not entering into quarrels.

We bear with the failings of the week and we do not do this to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

The purpose of having strength and maturity in your faith is so that you become a benefit to other people.

The more mature helping the less mature you have, that model of mentorship there that's given in Titus chapter two, the older men mentoring the younger men, the older women mentoring the younger women and older there may not necessarily be older in age, although that could very well have something to do with it.

But you can have persons in the church who are more mature in spiritual faith that may not be more mature in their their physical age.

That's the case with me as a pastor, because, of course, I'm 40, but I'm going to have a level of maturity that might be more so than a man in my congregation who is 60 and hasn't been a believer as long as I have.

At the same time, he is an elder in the church and I mean elder, not in the office, but elder as in he's just experienced more life.

And so there's going to be a certain respect that I'm going to have for that man because he can teach me something about experience that I don't know yet.

I know God's word. I'm going to preach and teach God's word. But when it comes to deferring to the person who has experience,

I'm going to treat that older man as I would my own father, for as it says in first Timothy five, one, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers.

All of us have an obligation to mature in the faith. Those of us who are mature have an obligation to help those who are less mature, that they may grow up into the head who is

Christ. This is what the church is supposed to do for one another. We have this instruction in multiple places.

That, that I just said to you is, is a partial quote from Ephesians chapter four, where it says that God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

This is equipping the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ again, to attain what maturity in Christ so that we may no longer be children.

That's verse 14 tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth in love.

We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ for from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped.

When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

We need each other. You need to go to church because you need to grow in your faith and you need to help others grow in your faith.

You go to church because Christ has commanded you to, but this being a part of the body of Christ is how we help each other grow in Hebrews chapter five, beginning in verse 11.

It says about this, we have much to say and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

You need milk, not solid food for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child, but solid food is for the mature and those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

This comes by maturing in our faith. Every one of us has an obligation to mature and those who have matured have an obligation to bear with the failings of the week, not to please ourselves again.

Romans 15 to let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

Consider also Philippians two and you've heard me quote this to you many times. If you've been a regular listener of this program,

Philippians two one. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

And how do we do this? How do we be of the same mind? How could that even be possible that we're of the same mind?

Well, because as it goes on to say in Philippians two five, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

In other words, have the mind of Christ. We go back to Romans 13, 14, put on the

Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

When we fight and when we quarrel with one another, that comes from the flesh. But when we are unified with one another, when we have this desire to serve one another and build each other up and we use this maturity that has been granted to us in Christ again,

Romans 12, three, the measure of faith that God has assigned when we use this for the benefit of somebody else, not to please ourselves, but to please our neighbor for his good to build him up.

When we do that, that is of Christ. That is the Holy Spirit of God working in us that we would be of one accord and being of the same mind, having the same love when we have the mind of Christ.

So let us do this with one another. Let us aspire to maturity in our understanding of God's word, who he is, what he has said through his prophets and apostles, the promises given to us in Christ mature in these things and grow in the doctrines that you have learned.

Join difficult Bible classes so that you can learn more of the meat and the potatoes of the word and not just continually be drinking on milk.

Learn those things. And then as you mature, as you become a mature person in the faith, help those who are less mature that they may grow up into Christ.

Heavenly Father, you are the one who has taught us and nurtured us and has grown us.

The growth comes from God, as Paul says in first Corinthians chapter three, you have given this to us in Christ and by your

Holy Spirit that has been poured into our hearts. So as you have shown this affection to us, may we be as spiritual fathers and mothers to one another, helping those who are less mature grow up, that they may be sanctified, growing in righteousness and holiness and holding fast to Christ.

That the body of Christ may be built up in love when we are building each other up.

That benefits us as well, for as the whole body grows and we're part of that body, we benefit from that growth in the body.

Let it be for the building up of your church until that great day that Christ returns and the church is delivered to him in splendor.

Thank you for continually working in our hearts, the goodness of your word, and it's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an