Romans 14:13-23 The Sacrificial Community

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

Growth in Faith, Community, and Service

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here and wanna welcome all of you. I hope that this morning you take this as an opportunity to grow in your faith.

Really, that's what God has brought us together for. And Recast started 10 years ago as a simple church with a simple goal that we would be a church of very simple programming centered around three areas of growth, that we would continue to grow in three specific areas of our lives.

And what I'm really getting at is we believe that maturity in the Christian life looks like a lifelong commitment to growth, not just to crossing a line and then you've arrived and you're there, because that's the way a lot of people think of maturity, right?

Like, now I'm mature. But maturity looks like continuing on in the process of growing. And those areas, those three areas where we expect everybody to continue to grow is in faith, in community, and in service.

Our hope is that 2020 is a year of deeper faith, that it's a year of a more vibrant community, that we love one another better in this year, and a year of more sacrificial service toward one another where our skills and our abilities come to bear in the lives of others and we allow others to allow their skills and their abilities to come to bear in our lives as well.

And so our text this morning that we're gonna be looking at in the book of Romans has the power to impact all three areas of growth for us. You see, as I studied this text this week, I knew right away that it was gonna be a faith stretcher for me.

And the way that you can tell that a text is gonna stretch your faith is depending on how much you like it when you first read it. If you love it, it's probably not gonna stretch you that much, but if you read it and you're like, that rubs me the wrong way, then that's a place where God is pointing out, you need to listen, you need to pay attention, you need to take this one on.

If I don't like what the text is saying, it just highlights an area where I need less conformity to the world, less conformity to my own patterns and my own, the way that I think of things, and more conformity to God and his agenda for my life.

Are you getting what I'm saying?

And so when you read a text, it's kinda like sometimes you read it and you're like, oh, I have to read that a couple more times to really get down to what is that communicating to me and what is it saying to me and I don't feel it right away.

So my hope is that this text stretches all of us in our faith this week and that it also draws all of us into a more radical view of community life and sacrificial service to one another. You see, we live in a culture that demands our rights.

Did you notice that?

Have you noticed that in the world around us? It's the American way to stand and to stomp our foot and say, but my rights. But as we dig into this text, I think it becomes very clear throughout what Paul is revealing to us and what God is telling us through Paul is that faith demands that we willingly sacrifice our rights in community and service toward one another.

And the way that that sacrifice looks is a way of righteousness, a way of peace, and a way of joy in our midst as a community of followers of Jesus Christ. And so if you haven't done so already, open your Bibles to Romans chapter 14 verses 13 through 23.

Romans 14, 13 through 23, navigate in your device. You can grab your phone if you got an app on there or whatever, but let's follow along and read the latter half of the book, the chapter of Romans chapter 14.

And again, as I say every week, this is a privilege that we have recast, this is God's very precious and holy word revealed to us so that we can go to it time and time again, we can take this home with us.

It's really cool that we have a high level of literacy and we have a high level of availability of God's word so that we can talk about these things this morning and then you can go home and you can wrestle with it.

And then a month from now you can read this again and two months from now you can read this again and next year you can read this again and we can keep going back to the word of God. It's a privilege, it's such an awesome thing.

So Romans chapter 14 verses 13 through 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 or 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.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you that you are faithful to address real life. The reality of what happens often in our midst, the reality of the difficulties in the gray areas. We struggle enough as it is to follow your given rules, the very clear, revealed instructions from scripture.

And then we get to all of these gray area issues where within the church we want to legislate, we want to create rules, and we want to pigeonhole one another, and we want to be on the right side, and we have the wrong side, and we want, and these battles can quickly form between us.

And so, Father, I pray that you would continue here at Recast to be uniting us, continue to allow the weaker and the stronger to come together in a way that is encouraging to one another, giving room at the end of the day for you and you alone to be our judge, especially in these gray area issues.

Well, Father, I pray that you would allow us to glorify you, because at the center of all of this.

Is the cross of Christ.

At the center of this is you purchasing a people for yourself, and, Father, I thank you that we have come to understand, and for those of us in the room who have come to understand what Christ has done for us, and that we have indeed been set free from the bondage to sin and to death, and that we have hope for eternal life.

And I pray that from that hope springs worship from our voices this morning, that as we have an opportunity to sing songs before you, that it would be an exercise of our hearts, an exercise of love and gratitude and thankfulness, expressing hope and trust that our future is secured, and come what may, whatever circumstances we're facing, whatever devastating things or good things have happened this week, all of that pales in comparison to the hope of the glory that awaits those children who are yours.

And so, Father, I pray that you would ignite us with joy, with delight, with gratitude, with thanks, with hope, and with passion as we sing these songs before you this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. Our goal is gonna be to keep the remainder of our time focused on God's word and what he is saying to us, and so it would be also good for you to open your Bibles or your devices back to Romans 14, verses 13 through 23, so that you can follow along and see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word.

I'm not making this stuff up. God forbid that we would gather together to hear what I would make up or what I would, my thoughts or my opinions, because at the end of the day, that would be a waste of all of our time.

And so, we really need to hear from God. As the Allied armies landed on Normandy, they began to push east through Europe, and village by village, they began to liberate French towns. And as they liberated those French towns and villages along the way, it took a while for those people to really accept the freedom that they were being given.

The Germans were being pushed out and the Allies were coming in, and it took them a little bit of time to wrap their mind around that, because they had been now living under subjugation of the German army for a while.

And so, fear still gripped their hearts long after the threat was removed. Think about that for just a minute. Long after the threat had been removed, there was still fear among the people. And as the front continued to advance, but it takes a while for us to really understand and to grasp newfound freedom.

Newfound freedom is hard to accept, especially when you've lived under subjugation for a while. Last week, our text highlighted the potential conflict in the church between those who are strong in their faith and understand their freedoms, and feel free to enjoy life in every area that is right up to that line where God calls it sin.

So, able to draw the lines where God draws the lines, able to accept that which God has said is gray area as free, and those areas where he has declared sin to avoid, and so there are those. He said, are strong in their faith, understanding that God has set them free, but then there are others who Paul identified in our text last week as those who are weaker in their faith.

His words, not mine. Weaker in the faith. And they would be like the villagers who have been liberated, but still find their knee-jerk reaction is to duck for cover when a book falls off a shelf, or there's a loud noise and they're like, is it happening again?

Is that gunfire? What's going on? They find themselves on spiritual high alert, and they have a hard time leaning into the freedom that has been bought for them at the cross of Christ, and especially if they were raised with a lot of religious rules like the Jews.

Now, some of you here in this room, this is exactly your upbringing. You were raised with a lot of rules, and you almost kind of had to overcome a very religious, rigid upbringing in order to accept that salvation is by Christ alone rather than by your works and by your behavior.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I'm not gonna ask for you to raise your hand, but I know that there's many of us in this room who that was our context. And we were saved despite the message that it's rules, rules, rules. That's what we got when we were a kid.

And I have to say that's partly my story. The church that I was raised in, I don't think for a second they wanted to communicate to me as a young child that it's all on rules. But I got that. That's somehow what I assimilated from my youth was the idea that it's primarily, I mean, it's really about how you live.

The Christian faith is really basically what you live.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

And so you have to, I mean, salvation comes to us by grace alone through faith, and the freedoms are a little bit hard for somebody raised in that context to truly grasp, to truly understand. And so our text picks up on that theme of the weak and the strong, the strong being those who understand the freedoms and can lean into those freedoms, and the weak being those who still have some of those rules and add rules on top of rules to make sure you stay far away from the line.

But it's very important that during this message we remember that we are not saved at all by keeping commands. I keep saying this, and I'm gonna keep saying this till the end of Romans, that the first 11 chapters of this book are there, a big, huge chunk of this letter to the church in Rome to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you cannot be righteous, but you need a righteousness that is given to you from God in order to be saved.

And we are only saved by the righteousness of Jesus Christ and his righteous and holy and perfect bloody sacrifice on the cross on our behalf, him taking the punishment that we deserved to cover our sins.

So these commands that we're gonna be looking at in this text are only commands that come to us after an understanding that Jesus Christ has saved us. We are now his, we've asked him to save us based on the cross, and now we've come into a relationship of love with him where we want to obey him.

And then the commands come to us for the purpose in this text, a purpose of community and the purpose of loving God. The purpose of loving one another well and functioning well as a church, functioning well in community, and then functioning well with our relationship with God.

And so our outline this morning is these three commands kind of expounded out and explained a little bit more in detail. The first is protect the weak in our midst from stumbling, protect the weak from stumbling.

That's verses 13 through 18. That's gonna be the bulk of the message, that's the bulk of the text. The other two just take up a little bit less, but they're still vital and important. The second point is build each other up.

After protect the weak from stumbling, the second is build each other up, verses 19 through 21. And then the third point, verses 22 through 23, don't flaunt your freedom. So those are the three things that they tie together in terms of our community, our relationship, the way that we work and roll when we have strong people in our midst who feel great freedom in the gray areas, and we have people who feel very constrained with rules and things that they'd like to line their life with to make sure that they're going in the right direction.

And so how do we live in community? Well, we protect the weak from stumbling, we build each other up, and we don't flaunt our freedoms. And so as I mentioned in my introduction, this text sharpens my faith personally.

You see, as a pastor, here's the catching point for me. When I read it, I wanna do something different than what Paul says, and I alluded to that last week, but I wanna kinda explain it up front, what I'm talking about.

Why would I read this? Why would I read this and struggle with this? Why would I read this and be like, oh man, this doesn't hit me right? You see, as a pastor, I want all of you to live into all the freedom that God has for you.

Do you understand that?

I want you to just be as free as possible because Christ has purchased that for you. And so that's where my heart goes when I read about this. Whether you're weak or whether you're strong, I want all of us growing.

And growth does indeed look like less fear and more trust, more faith, that the cross of Jesus Christ is all that you need. Do you get what I'm saying? So my heart would be, if I was writing this,.

I would write it different,.

And that's where God corrects my heart. Because what I wanna say is I wanna say weak.

Those of you who would identify more.

On the legalistic side, Christ has purchased your freedom and live in it, walk in it, but that's not what he says. He says, protect the weak from stumbling. And this is to all of us here. This is a corrective to my heart.

The fundamental thing that I need to lean into as a pastor is to protect the weak from stumbling when it comes to this issue of unity in the church. So even the way that Paul addresses the subject corrects me, and I think it's sometimes kinda cool, I don't know if you've had that happen, where Scripture, even just the tone of it is like, okay, the angle that it comes at things, even that has the power to redirect us and put us in the right direction.

So this first point is the fact that our first point, really, in the text is protect the weak from stumbling reminds me where the work in my life as leading the church begins. It cannot be overstated how precious and valuable church unity really is.

And those of you who have gone through a phase or gone through a situation or gone through a church where there was issues and there was division and where there was war, you understand all the better than I do how valuable church unity is.

You don't know what you have until it's gone. And once it's gone, it gets ugly. And so I'm just so grateful. I praise God every day that God has held our church together in unity and love for one another.

And I see that. I don't think it had to go that way over these 10 years. I know people who planted churches around the same time that they're not functioning anymore and they're unhealthy and things are breaking down.

And God has continued to bless us here. And that's nothing to do with me. It's everything to do with his spirit and what he desires for us. And so in verse 13, Paul begins a paragraph by reminding us that we are not to be judging one another.

Now, I don't necessarily see that in the church, but I think it's so valuable that we hear that right up front. I think we cast we need this message. Even though things are going well here, we need to be reminded of these things regularly and routinely.

Don't judge one another. And remember that we're talking about the gray area issues of life here. We're not talking about sin. We're not talking about your inability to determine what is and isn't sin.

We're talking about when you determine that God hasn't written about it explicitly.

In the word of God.

Now, in those areas, in those gray area issues, in the big word that we talked about last week, a diaphora, the Greek word that means neither here nor there, the things that are disputable and up for debate in those areas of life, we are not to be judging one another.

And remember that he concluded last week with a reminder that each and every one of us will give an accounting of our own lives in those gray area issues before God himself. He is our only true judge.

And so, we should be convinced that what we're doing is acceptable to him. In ourselves, we should study it. We should, in those gray area issues, you should be convicted and convinced that the things that you choose to do are right.

Our concern in our daily lives should be, of course, as followers of Christ, well, to follow Christ, to live for him, to go after him and to go the direction that we think he's leading us. But still speaking about gray area issues, we are not to judge each other.

The text is clear. Whether it be enjoying a beer or where we educate our kids or the car we choose to drive or which political party we vote for, there is a wide scope of freedom in which we ought not to judge one another.

And Paul states clearly that he is, that the strong are to never put a stumbling block or a hindrance in the way of a fellow believer. You see, throughout the text, Paul will clarify what he means by stumbling block and hindrance, and it kind of gets teased out by nuance and the different ways that he talks about this issue between the two.

What is he talking about? What's a stumbling block? What's a hindrance? And it would be worth us dealing with this up front so we know what we're talking about. What is this stumbling block or this hindrance?

You see, Paul here is, in essence, warning the strong person who has a lot of freedom that they need to be cautious in the way that they express and live out that freedom and community. In other words, I'm gonna use the topic of alcohol throughout this message just because it's a common contemporary one that still is an issue in the church.

And a person who feels free to enjoy an alcoholic beverage from time to time must be careful to not flaunt that in front of weaker persons. And the trick in all of this, of course, is not knowing who and who isn't weak.

They don't come with a label, right? I mean, you don't have a label on you. I don't know whether you're a strong person.

Or a weak person.

And so, how many of you think that that might be a barrier in this?

That might be a little confusing.

That might be a little bit hard to practice.

How am I gonna avoid? How can I, at the same time,.

Exercise my strength in my trust in God and rejoice that he gives me the freedom to enjoy a craft beer from time to time and not cause you, who are weak, to struggle or whatever? And how does that all work out?

But I wanna suggest to you that that's silly of us because it's very easy to overcome. Yeah, we don't come with labels, but we come with mouths and ears. We can talk with one another about these things.

I can have a conversation with you.

A simple conversation about how a person feels.

About alcohol will reveal very quickly what they think about alcohol. Now you know where they're at. All you gotta do is talk about it.

Don't be scared. Have conversations.

And when I find out that somebody struggles with alcohol, that they're a former alcoholic, or even just by their conscience, they say, I've never touched it and I never want to. I'd like to go to my grave never having tasted alcohol and I'm good with that, then that informs me.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Now I know how to interact with that person. Now I know where we stand on that. A simple conversation. You see, there are people here in this church I would never offer a beer to and I would never sit down to have a beer with them.

And by now I imagine that most of you know where I personally stand on alcohol. Enjoy it if you're free to. Don't enjoy it if it's against your conscience or you know that you struggle with overindulgence or you're underage and it's illegal for you.

But fundamentally, the text of Scripture is abundantly clear on this one injunction. Never get drunk. Never get drunk. Full stop, never get drunk.

It's clear.

So don't push that line. Don't try to press in on that. But when it comes to the freedom that we have in there, there's freedom to have all kinds of opinions and thoughts about this subject. But talk with one another so that you're not causing the other to stumble because when it comes to having somebody over to your house for dinner, you can get into trouble with this.

If you come over with a group of friends and I know you have a commitment to avoid alcohol, but I say to you, come on, just this one time.

It's New Year's Eve, dude.

We're having champagne.

It's all good.

Just this once, celebrate with us. And you look around, but you've got a weak conscience and you're like, I just, I don't ever wanna do this. But you look around and you see people you respect in the church and they've got a glass of champagne and they're getting ready to toast and you say, sure, just this once.

And you break your conscience to appease me or to fit in or whatever it might be. The text makes a case that in this we have both sinned. Both of us have sinned. I sinned by not lovingly putting away the alcohol in favor of what I know is true of you in not pressuring you or not even wanting to offer that stumbling block in front of you.

And you've sinned by doing something that you at least think God doesn't want you to do. You see, at the end of the text it's gonna say whatever doesn't proceed from faith is sin and what that's getting at is that literally the way that you think about things in the gray area impacts whether it's right or wrong for you.

And this is the way that mechanism works. If you think that buying candy cigarettes is evil, just say that. Anybody even know what I'm talking about? Anybody ever had a candy cigarette?

Don't say it.

I got some in my stocking for Christmas. I just like the taste of them. Okay, now, wait, did I just cause the weaker among us to stumble? I don't know.

But if you think that that's wrong,.

No, really though, if you think that that is evil and you think that is wrong, then the question becomes if you do it, who are you doing it against? You're doing it against God. You believe and you are convinced in yourself that he doesn't want you to eat candy cigarettes,.

But you did it. Who did you do it against?

Not your own conscience, but at the end of the day, against God because you thought he didn't want you to do it and you did it anyways. You're thumbing your nose at God by eating candy cigarettes.

By the way, I am thoroughly, I just wanna clarify,.

I'm thoroughly convinced that I can eat whatever candy that I want. I'm okay with that. Not stolen candy, though, guys, but this was a gift. In verse 14, it's clear that there is no issue with you knowing where I stand on any host of gray area issues.

This is not a prohibition against talking about these things. As a matter of fact, I think it's an encouragement to talk about these things so that we know where each other are on them. Paul was bold.

He was very clear.

He was very forthright in verse 14, declaring that he was fully convinced in the Lord that dietary restrictions were lifted for the believer, and he says as much. He's not ashamed to say that, and by the way, this wasn't read in a secret meeting of the strong.

This was read to the entire congregation, which included the weak, and he literally says,.

I think all of you guys need to know.

That in the Lord, you can eat whatever you want. Some of you aren't gonna be able to accept that, but you can eat whatever you want. I mean, nothing is unclean, he says, pertaining to food. Bacon, all you can eat shrimp, steak and lobster.

Paul says, it's all good, and from personal experience, I can tell you, it's all good, but for anyone who thinks it's unclean for them, it's unclean. Don't do it. In other words, our convictions do actually have a role in defining what is right and wrong for us, so knowing that a person is indeed bound to their own conscience on these gray area issues, where we have no command from the Lord, but the conviction creates a rule for us that then we ought to abide by if we think that it's from God, so verse 15 clarifies then what's at stake for us.

If our freedom causes grief to a fellow believer, then we are no longer, as the strong, we're no longer walking in love.

We've committed a sin.

We haven't loved our brother or sister in Christ when we try to press them into our convictions, and by seeking to stretch someone to act outside of their faith, we run the risk of setting them on a destructive pathway, so then the direct command of this first section, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died by flaunting your freedoms.

Don't break them. Don't break each other on these gray area issues, and in case you were not here last week, let me clarify and remind us why he's talking about the illustration of eating. Why would Paul be talking about eating food in this?

Well, remember that the Old Testament was full of all kinds of dietary laws, and most likely what Paul had in mind when he's talking about the week are those who come from that very hyper-religious, hyper-rules, hyper-laws-based religion of Judaism, so they came to faith in Christ coming out of an upbringing in a childhood that was very legalistic and tons of rules, and so the Old Testament was full of all of these dietary laws, and many of the early Christians came to Christ from that background, and so they were raised with velocit-kosher dills, and they sadly, very, very sadly, they skipped the bacon and the shrimp and the lobster and all that, so when they came to Jesus, they were told, you're free to eat whatever you want, and as you can imagine from upbringing and how these patterns of life get instilled in us, and they balked at expressing that freedom, and they chose to stay in the kosher camp, and hear me carefully, they chose to stay in that camp by conviction, by conviction, not just out of some external,.

Like, well, I just wanna please my mom or dad,.

Or whatever, they were convicted in themselves that this is, I just feel better with God if I do these things, so you can maybe imagine the potential powder keg that this caused in the early church. Why is Paul writing about this to the Roman church?

Well, it's really interesting to note that in historical documents, we see the way that the church practiced church in the early church times in the life of Paul, they had a feast every time they gathered.

We're gonna have a potluck on the ninth, they would have a potluck every day. They had what they called the love feast, and every week, they would get together, they would hear some teaching from the word, they would sing some hymns and some praises to God, and they would eat together, and the end of that meal was, it culminated in the Lord's Supper,.

And they would have the bread,.

And they would have the wine at the end of that meal, and actually, you get some really weird things that are centered around that feast. You get people getting, in Corinth, people getting drunk at that meal together.

Some people showing up with caviar and really great food, and other people sitting there not even having barely half a piece of bread or something, and they're not sharing together. So you actually see that in context, there was a lot of issues centered around what you ate and how you ate and how you shared and how you did community together.

So the topic that Paul uses as an illustration isn't really a problem in our culture. We don't tend to judge each other that much over what we eat. Like, that's just generally not a huge issue. But the need to be sensitive with one another about conviction still remains the same.

More and more, I mean, politics, schooling our kids, there are still some hot-button issues and some topics that can really cause people to get their feathers ruffled within the church. I've personally chosen to use alcohol as the illustration only because it's the one that I've personally experienced the most.

But Paul has acknowledged that we are free in Christ, and he has also acknowledged that in the church, there are those who do not think they are free. And so in verse 16, Paul cryptically is saying that the strong are not to press so hard for their rights that their freedom, the freedom of the strong, will be spoken of as evil.

And although that sounds like a strange way to say it, to bring it kind of home for us, if people who don't want to drink are constantly being pressured to drink, how is that gonna go? How's it gonna go in the church?

Eventually, I would suggest to you that what he's getting at is a band of non-drinkers is gonna get together and malign the freedoms of those aggressive boozers who are constantly trying to push people toward drinking.

And now the very freedom that the strong possess and is able to demonstrate in gratitude to God is being viewed as evil and spoken of as evil in the church. If you don't make a big deal out of your freedoms, then you are doing all you can to keep it from being spoken of as evil.

So to clarify, there will always be people, regardless of how guarded the strong are, there will always be some weak who will malign all freedom. And so verse 16, I would suggest to you, cuts both ways.

The weaker should also take this verse on and not choose to not malign those who have more freedom than you. Choose to be together in unity with one another. But I love this because verse 17 through 18 cuts through all of the darkness of this difficulty and disagreement and paints for us a beautiful alternative this type of bickering over freedom and rules and gray areas and what you can and can't do and how you should feel about one another and all that.