Romans 14

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Alright, good morning.
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Take out your Bibles and turn with me to Romans chapter 14.
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We are getting close to the end.
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We have been doing a chapter by chapter each week study of the book of Romans.
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So if you're new, you missed the first 13 chapters.
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So, if I'm able to be here every week between now and Christmas, I'll be done with Romans before Christmas and if I don't miss any weeks, and you all know I have a newborn and sometimes that causes me to have to miss things with my wife and such, but if I am able to be here every week, then we'll have, the next three weeks will finish, it'll be 14, 15, 16, and then the Thursday before Christmas, I'll do a special Christmas message, I don't know what it'll be about, but it'll be something regarding the Incarnation.
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And then after that, I'm still considering what we're going to do after, whether I'm going to go through another book or whether I'm going to go back to doing the doctrinal study, which is what I had been doing for the last couple of years, is doing a 12 week doctrinal teaching, which is my, sort of, an area that I like to do, so that may be what we go back to.
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But today we're going to be in Romans chapter 14 and what we do is we read the entire chapter and then I seek to give an explanation and understanding of it as best as I can in the 45 minutes that I have, obviously I'm used to preaching verse by verse, I do that on Sunday mornings and I usually preach only one or two verses at a time for 45 to 55 minutes, so getting through a whole chapter is a little difficult, but we'll do our best.
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So take out your Bibles, turn to Romans 14, let's read it together.
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As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.
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One person believes he may eat anything, while another weak person eats only vegetables.
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Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.
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Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
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One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.
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Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
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The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.
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The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.
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For none of us lives to himself, none of us dies to himself, for if we live, we live to the Lord, if we die, we die to the Lord, so then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
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For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and the living.
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Why do you pass judgment on your brother or you? Why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.
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So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
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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.
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I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.
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For if a brother is grieved by what you eat, you're no longer walking in love.
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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.
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For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
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Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.
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So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
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Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.
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Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.
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It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
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The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God.
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Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.
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But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith, but whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray, O God, now that as I seek to give an understanding of your word, that you would, by your grace, keep me from error.
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For Lord, I am a fallible man, incapable of preaching error, and I pray that you would keep me from that for the sake of these men, for the sake of my conscience, and for the sake of your name.
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I pray, Lord, that those who know you would be built up in their faith by the study of this text, that they would have a better understanding of what it means when we are done.
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And I pray for those who do not yet know you, perhaps who are being resilient to the work of the Spirit, who are fighting off, Lord, that drawing of your work in their heart.
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I pray, Lord, that today would be the day that they would be broken over their sin and that they would repent and trust in the Lord.
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And I pray, Lord, that knowing that that is a work that only you can do in the heart of man.
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I give it all to you in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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One of the most difficult things that we have to do as—yes, do you have your hand up already? Yeah.
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Okay.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, at least let me give an introduction.
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One of the most difficult things that we have to do as we study the Scriptures is we have to sometimes base our understanding of a text on only one half of a conversation.
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Dr.
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Doug Moo, who is a New Testament professor, often equates this to sitting in a coffee shop and hearing a conversation that someone else is having on the phone.
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And I don't know if you've ever done that.
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I don't know if you've ever exercised your prerogative in eavesdropping.
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I know I have.
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You'll be sitting there and you'll have someone next to you having a conversation and they're on the phone and you can't hear what the other person is saying, but you can hear what they're saying and you begin to, in your mind, imagine what the conversation is about based upon the half of the conversation that you're hearing.
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And if you hear the person being sad or you hear the person getting animated or hear them getting angry, you get even more invested because it's like, well, what in the world is the other person saying? The reason why I bring this up is because several times in the New Testament, we find ourselves reading the writers, whether it be Paul or Peter or whomever else, about a situation that we are unaware of in the sense that we don't have the other half of the conversation.
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We don't know, for instance, about what Paul received when he received the report from Chloe, Chloe's people in 1 Corinthians.
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He tells us in 1 Corinthians, he says, I've received a report about you.
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And then he begins to give a response to a report we don't have.
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So we have to begin to interpret the report based upon his response.
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And we sort of like, again, we call that mirror reading.
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We have to read it like we're only getting one side of the conversation.
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Well, the same is true when we come to the 14th chapter of Romans.
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We have to immediately begin to interpret this based on the idea that Paul is addressing an issue in the Roman church.
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And we don't know exactly what the issue is, but based on what he is saying, we can make some very good conclusions based upon his words.
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He tells us in Romans 14 that there is a conflict going on.
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And he defines the conflict between two different groups that he gives a definition.
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He calls them weak and strong.
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That is the way that he defines them.
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Now, in general, I want to ask a very simple question.
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If you were looking for an adjective for yourself, would you rather someone describe you as weak or strong? Hopefully strong, right? Most of us don't like to be called weak, whether it's weak-minded, weak-bodied, weak intellectually, whatever.
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We don't like to be considered weak, right? And so I do think right away, when we consider the fact that Paul is defining these two groups that are having this issue as the weak and the strong, he is, by nature, giving deference or giving a preference, if we will, to the strong.
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He's saying that the strong are the ones that are correct and the weak are the ones that are less or, we say, incorrect.
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But that doesn't mean that the strong are to mistreat the weak.
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Neither does it mean that the weak are to hold their weakness as some form of priority over the strong.
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And so right away, we have to understand, Paul is dealing with two different people, two different groups of people, and he says that the ones who are weak, according to the chapter, he says the ones who are weak have a very limited diet.
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So we're going to just put this up here.
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I like, by the way, I like charts.
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I like whiteboards.
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It's sort of my thing.
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So this just sort of helps me visualize the text.
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He says, look at verse 2.
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One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables.
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So he defines weakness first as having a very limited diet.
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And he says the other person eats what? Anything.
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He doesn't say just meat.
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He says Arby's? Okay, we got the beef.
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Now, you'll notice in verse 2, he doesn't say weak and strong.
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He says weak and the other person.
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But if you go to chapter 15, very quickly, he says, we who are strong, this is chapter 15, verse 1, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with who? The failings of the weak, right? So he does define weak and strong.
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He doesn't mention the strong until the beginning of chapter 15, and we're going to do that one next week.
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So I'm just making the point, if you don't see the word strong in this text, it's not because it's not there, it's implied.
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It is implied that he's referring to the weak and to the strong.
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And in verse 2, he says one person may eat anything, that's obviously the strong.
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And he says, and the other person eats only vegetables, so they have a very limited diet.
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And immediately, he says, in verse 3, let not the one who eats, that's the strong, despise the one who abstains, that's the weak, and let not the one who abstains, that's the weak, pass judgment on the one who eats, that's the strong, for God has welcomed him.
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So what we are getting into here is the concept of what we might say in one sense is a form of moral relativism.
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And this is dangerous because people tend to expand this out into areas that it doesn't belong, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment.
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But oftentimes, you'll hear people say, well, there's truth, and there's error, and there's no gray area.
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And on many things, that's true.
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Like, it's murder or it ain't murder, right? There's no gray area.
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You murder somebody, you murdered them.
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There's not any gray area, right? I didn't say there weren't other things, I said when it comes to murder, it's either murder or it ain't, right? But when we look at the subject that Paul is addressing here, he's addressing a restriction on what people eat.
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And ultimately what he says, and throughout this chapter, is what a man eats is ultimately going to be between him and God.
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And I don't have the right that if I have the ability to eat foods that are things that you can't eat because of your conscience, for whatever reason, I don't have the right to encourage you to eat those foods if you don't think that it's right to eat them.
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Neither do you have the right to condemn me for eating those foods just because your conscience won't allow you to eat those foods.
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Now very quickly, let's take a step back and go back to that phone conversation I was talking about earlier.
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We don't know who's on the other side of the phone, but we can begin to extrapolate at least an idea.
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We know that this division that's going on within the Roman church has to do with dietary restriction.
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And what is a group that would have been very prominent in the early church that would have had a natural dietary restriction? The Israelites.
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Very good.
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The Israelites would have had their dietary restrictions which came from the Mosaic Code, the Levitical law that they received, right? And they would have been very strict on what they could eat.
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However, the Jews did not have a restriction against eating meat.
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They had a restriction against eating certain types of meat, right? Like Jews didn't have any problem eating lamb because that was, in fact, part of the Passover meal was lamb, right? They didn't have any problem eating lamb.
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But they weren't allowed to eat what foods? Pork.
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That's a big one, right? Because pork was considered to be an unclean food.
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What other foods? Camels.
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Camels.
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Shellfish.
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Shellfish, right? So they weren't allowed to eat shrimp or lobster or anything else that comes from the bottom of the ocean, right? Those bottom feeders, the Jewish people were forbidden from eating those things.
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Yeah, there's a whole list of stuff they're not allowed to eat.
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Yeah, the foods that wouldn't be kosher.
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Even to this day, Jewish people who are orthodox in their faith would not eat certain meats, right? And so right away we have to say, well, are they the ones that are in view? I do think that they are, but I think that there's more that's going on here in Rome.
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And here's what I mean.
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Paul doesn't say there are some of you who eat certain meats and some who don't.
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He just says there's some who don't eat meat and there's some who do.
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And so you say, well, wait a minute.
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The Jews didn't have an aversion to all meat.
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They only had an aversion to certain meat.
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Well, there is actually the reality that in certain cultures, when Jewish people were living among Gentile believers, they would not eat any meat so as to not risk contamination with unclean meat.
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And we see this in the book of Daniel.
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Yeah, you beat me.
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That's right.
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In the book of Daniel, what does Daniel do? He's offered to eat the meat of the king's table.
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Remember Nebuchadnezzar said, you can feast on my table.
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And Daniel says, no, we're going to eat only vegetables.
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We're not going to drink wine.
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We're going to drink only water, right? Some churches have what's called a Daniel fast.
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A Daniel fast is like a 60-day fast where they eat only vegetables, they drink only water, and they base that on Daniel chapter 1 where Daniel asked, we can only eat vegetables and only drink water.
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Him and his associates were more healthy than the ones who were eating all the fat off the king's table, right? So there is a sense in which there were times where Jewish people, when introduced into a Gentile culture, and certainly Rome would have been a Gentile culture, where Jewish people would abstain from all meat for the purpose of ensuring that they don't taint themselves with the eating of unclean meat.
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So, yes? Yeah, because it actually says later on about they feared that it might have been a sacrificial meat or something.
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Yeah, and 1 Corinthians talks about that, where they talk about not eating meat offered to idols.
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And again, even if it's good meat, let's say it's lamb, but had it been offered to idols, they would still consider it tainted because it has that taint of having been offered to idols.
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So there was this disallowance of eating meat among certain Jewish people.
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Yes? Remember when you said the wine? Yes.
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I got some friends who are Jews, so they drink like the Manischewitz, like the Greek? Sure, yeah.
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They don't drink regular wine then? No, no, I'm saying this particular culture that had been introduced into a Gentile culture within the 1st century, I'm not talking about today, I'm saying they would have been abstaining for the purpose of not becoming ceremonially unclean.
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So the Manischewitz wine, that's what? Like the last one? Oh, I don't know.
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I don't know enough about it to speak to it.
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Yeah, I really don't know.
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I'd have to look it up, yeah.
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So, getting back to here, the point is I do believe that what we have in Romans 14 is the very same thing we see in Galatians and in 1st Corinthians and that is we have a church that's divided between Jew and Gentile.
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If you've never read Galatians, I always encourage you to read Galatians along with Romans because Paul is dealing with the same issue.
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If you go back to Romans 2, he talks all about the fact that this divide between Jew and Gentile and how all are under sin and all need to be justified and all need to be in Christ, right? When we are in Christ, there's no longer Jew or Gentile, there's no longer slave or free, there's no longer male or female, but we're all one in Christ Jesus.
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So the division that I believe creates this conversation in Romans 14 is you have some within the Roman church who are very strictly holding to their dietary restrictions and there are those who are not bound by those dietary restrictions and as a result, there's a conflict here and we actually see this conflict happen in Galatians where the Apostle Peter eats with the Gentiles until what? Until the Jewish people show up.
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When the Jewish people come from Jerusalem and they walk in, what does he do? He separates himself from the Gentiles and Paul has a fit.
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Now that's the Keith Standard version, the Bible doesn't say he had a fit, but the Bible says he challenged him publicly and to his face and reprimanded him saying, you're going to separate from the Gentiles just because the Jews come? You're going to separate? You've been eating at their table, you've been feasting on their food, but now the Gentiles come and you're going to separate? And you're going to divide from them? And again, Paul calls him out.
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He said, we're all sinners, we're all in need of grace, we're all in Christ.
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Why would you put up a wall of division that Christ has torn down? So Paul is concerned about this division between Jew and Gentile that has gone on within the church, but now in Romans 14, he approaches it in a manner of loving your brother.
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In fact, go back up to verse 1.
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Notice what he says.
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As for the one who is weak in faith, and again, I think he's defining the one with the limited diet, he says that in verse 2.
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As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over what? Opinions.
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Yeah, don't quarrel over things that don't matter.
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There are, and I'm going to draw a quick circle here, kind of eliminate this from your mind for a second and come down here with me.
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There are within the Christian faith things that we would say are primary, things that are secondary, sorry, and then things that we would say are tertiary, another way of saying it would be definitional, essential, and adiaphora.
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Adiaphora is just a fancy term.
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Adiaphora is a Greek word which means optional or not necessary, right? And so we have primary, secondary, and tertiary.
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And what Paul is saying is yes, there are primary things that we can't give up.
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God is one.
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The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God.
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These are things that are essential, right? We can't give up the essentials.
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The justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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Those are essentials, right? Those all go in this middle section.
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And all Christians should believe that.
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But when it comes to secondary matters, when it comes to things that are not essential, that we ought not to divide over secondary things or over things that are left to an opinion.
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And one of those things is diet.
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I don't mean diet like...
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I know, I need diet.
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But I mean diet as in what we eat.
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Whether a man eats meat or doesn't eat meat.
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Whether a man chooses to eat only foods that would be according to kosher law or meats that would be outside of kosher law.
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The New Testament tells us in the book of Acts and in the book of Mark that all foods have been made clean under the New Covenant.
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So there is no distinction in the New Covenant.
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That's why I say I'm thankful for the New Covenant because me loves a pork sandwich, right? And all of you who had ham at Thanksgiving can say praise the Lord.
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You had the ham at Thanksgiving.
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So I'm thankful for the New Covenant.
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I'm thankful that under the New Covenant there are no longer dietary restrictions that are enforced for the people of God.
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But if a man is convicted that he should not eat pork...
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There was a man here at Set Free.
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It's been several years.
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I've been teaching here for years.
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And he was convinced that he should not eat foods that would be...
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Yeah, you were here.
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Yeah, huh? I don't know his name.
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I just remember he wanted to talk to me after class and we talked.
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But his whole thing was I can't eat foods that are not kosher.
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He didn't say kosher.
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He said according to the dietary laws.
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I said, well, then don't.
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I would never encourage you to do that.
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I would never invite you over on pork night.
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Right? I mean, as simple as that is, I have no problem if your conscience is bound further than mine.
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Yeah, you like pork night.
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Rib night.
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But you understand the point Paul is making is really found in verse 1.
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Welcome him.
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Welcome him.
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If there's a difference on matters that are not essential, then get over it, essentially.
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Welcome.
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And the one is not to judge the other.
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Neither is the other to hold it over the other.
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There is to be unity even in diversity.
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Right? Because we are all diverse.
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All of us have different backgrounds.
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All of us have different level of education.
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All of us have probably different church traditions that we've come from.
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But we can still have unity in our diversity.
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And so, he says, he uses that word judgment.
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He says, let not us pass judgment on one another.
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Yes? I was reading in Galatians last night or the night before, wherever it was.
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Okay, you have Gentile believers and you have Jewish believers.
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Okay, if they're both believers, why do you still have Jewish Gentiles and why aren't they just Christians? No, I think they are.
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And I think that's Paul's argument is that they should be.
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The point here is that there are those who have a Jewish background and therefore their conscience is still bound by some of those things that they grew up with.
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Paul's not saying stay separated.
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But Paul is saying within your church, you're going to have people who are, like for instance, and this one might create a little bit of a controversy.
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There are certain people who are brought up to believe that all alcohol is sinful.
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Okay? So here's a good example.
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I don't believe all alcohol is sinful.
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But I do know alcohol can be dangerous.
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Right? And I do know that not everybody has in their conscience the ability to drink alcohol.
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Some people it's because they were once a drunkard and they need to stay away from it completely.
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Some people it's because they were brought up in a situation where they were always taught it was wrong.
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Therefore, if I put a beer in front of that person or a bottle of alcohol in front of that person or a shot or whatever, I'm encouraging them to do something that would violate their conscience.
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And that's not good.
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Because if their conscience is not able to do it in good faith, then I ought not encourage them to do it for that reason.
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So I would say the Jewish people in Romans 14 and in Galatians, Paul is not saying stay separated.
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But he is saying if you're bound by your conscience not to eat meat, then don't eat it.
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I was talking to someone else in Romans about if you feel that whatever you're doing is bad even though it's not bad, is it sin? Yeah, that's the last verse.
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It says whatever is not of faith is sin.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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It's in the same chapter.
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We're getting there.
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Yeah, but the first thing I just, I'm trying to establish the context because I do believe the context is Paul is dealing with Jew and Gentile.
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Primarily because he talks about food, but the next thing he talks about is he talks about holy days.
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Read along with me and you'll see.
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He says, verse 5, One person esteems one day as better than another while another esteems all days alike.
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Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
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Alright, so you have the weaker brother.
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It has a limited diet.
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The weaker brother also has specific days that he holds to as having particular significance.
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This person sees all days the same.
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So this person can eat anything, this person sees all days the same.
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So, with verse 5, what group in the early church would have had particular holy days that they kept that were very specific to who they were? What was the first most important day for them? I hear a lot.
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The answer is Sabbath.
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One day a week is the Sabbath.
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That would have been the day that was absolutely essential that they didn't work on that day.
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Remember the story in the Torah where Moses there was a man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath.
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They stoned him because it was a serious offense to break God's Sabbath.
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Now if you had been brought up as a Jewish person and you had been told that story from the Torah that God was so concerned with the holiness of the Sabbath day that if a man were working on the Sabbath day he could be executed for it, then you might take that pretty seriously.
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I would imagine just a little, right? Would that be a sin to do that? Well, I don't want to get into Sabbath restrictions.
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That will take a different...
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My point is the Jewish people had specific one day a week that was absolutely necessary.
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By the way, it was Saturday.
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Sabbath was the seventh day, which is Saturday.
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And then they also had throughout the year they had feast days.
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They had, somebody mentioned earlier, Passover.
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Passover was one of the feasts.
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There was the Feast of Booths, Tabernacles, right? There were other feasts that went on throughout the year.
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And so they had holy days and they had holy times and all of these to them were important.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Is there anywhere in the New Testament where we're commanded to observe any holy days? That's a good question.
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I was like patting myself on the back.
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It was a good question.
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It's a good question, right? There isn't.
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Jesus told the Samaritan woman they will worship in truth and in...
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Yeah, spirit and in truth, right? Now, I will say this.
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We have in the New Testament a model of weekly gathering and the weekly gathering was on the Lord's day, which is the day Christ arose.
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So I argue that we should meet on Sunday.
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I don't think that that is something that is wrong.
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Some people say, oh, that's because of Constantine.
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That's bunk and don't listen to that garbage.
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I teach church history.
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It's just not true.
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The church was meeting on the first day of the week from the first century, not the fourth century.
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So anybody who's been taught that or you've heard that in a YouTube video, I'll give you a church history book.
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Spend some more times in books than you do on YouTube, okay? Trust me.
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It's just not the truth.
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The church was meeting on the first day of the week from the first century, right? So, yes, the church did have a regular time of gathering.
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It's the first day of the week, which we call what? Sunday.
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That's right.
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So it's not the Sabbath.
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The Sabbath pointed to Christ because the Sabbath represented rest.
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And the Bible says that Christ is our rest.
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In Him, we have our rest.
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He says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and what? I will give you rest, right? Christ becomes our rest.
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Hebrews chapter 4, if you want to back up for that.
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Hebrews chapter 4 says we enter into rest by trusting in Christ.
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We enter into Him.
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He becomes our Sabbath rest.
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He is our Sabbath.
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But we do have a day that we worship and it's Sunday.
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And I do think Sunday is the proper day to worship.
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However, what Paul is saying is he's saying we don't have holidays or, by the way, the word holiday comes from the word holy day.
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Holiday is simply the idea of, holy means separated.
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So a day that's separated.
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We don't have holidays in the New Covenant in the way that they had holidays in the Old Covenant.
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In the Old Covenant, again, they had the Feast of Booths.
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All these different things, right? They had the Passover.
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We don't have any of that.
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And you say, but wait a minute.
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Yes we do.
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We got Easter and Christmas.
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Okay.
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Allow me to speak frankly.
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There's nothing in the New Testament about the celebration of Easter and Christmas.
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Now does that mean it's wrong? No.
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I love Christmas.
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I'm already listening to Christmas music.
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My daughter is the biggest Christmas nut ever and she decorates.
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She's 24 years old.
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She decorates our house and she loves it.
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She cooks Thanksgiving.
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I love that she loves holidays.
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And we can do that because Romans 14 says there's nothing wrong if I want to see a day and esteem it.
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I can do that.
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There's nothing wrong with it.
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But if you don't celebrate Christmas, I'm not going to say you devil for not celebrating.
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Whatever.
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It's up to you.
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If you want to celebrate Christmas, celebrate Christmas.
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If you don't want to celebrate Christmas, don't celebrate Christmas.
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If you want to celebrate Easter, celebrate Easter.
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If you don't want to celebrate Easter, don't celebrate Easter.
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I celebrate Easter every Sunday, technically, because every Sunday we celebrate the resurrection.
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That's why we celebrate on the first day of the week because that's the day Jesus rose.
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So when somebody says, are you celebrating Easter this year? I say I celebrate Easter every week.
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Celebrate the resurrection every week.
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Now does that not mean one time a year we do something special? Yeah.
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On Resurrection Sunday is what we call it.
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We have an early morning service.
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It's called a sunrise service.
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And we do a little something special on sunrise service.
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But at the same time, it's not required.
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If another church chooses to do it or not to do it, it's up to them.
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I'm not going to sit here and judge them.
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He had his hand up first.
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Didn't you have your hand up? I'm sorry.
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You? Okay.
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Go ahead.
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Christmas is celebration of the birth.
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There's two major events in the life of Christ that Christians celebrate.
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Typically.
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The Incarnation, which is His birth when God became man, right? That's Incarnation.
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And Resurrection.
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That's the day He rose.
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So it's Christmas and Easter.
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That's the two days.
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And those, honestly, all the way back to the early church.
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Ever since the early church, the church has been celebrating those days.
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So we do have a tradition, but it's not a required tradition.
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It's not required.
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It's up to the conscience.
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Yes, sir? Quick question.
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Kind of off topic.
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I was raised up in church where we did sunrise service, so I've asked questions about why it's a sunrise service, and I never got an answer.
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Oh, it's just something different.
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Honestly, I don't have a reason for it outside of the fact that Christ...
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The women came to the tomb at daybreak in the Gospels.
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And that's throughout the four Gospels.
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It says the women went at daybreak and they saw that the tomb was empty.
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And it's just remembering that.
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It's just an act of remembrance.
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It's not anything particular.
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So, one man esteems one day as better than another.
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Another esteems all days alike.
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Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
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So what's he saying? It's not something that is required.
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It's something that is going to be...
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And again, I hate the word relative, but it is going to be relative to the individual.
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Right? There are certain things that are not relative.
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Murder is not relative.
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Adultery is not relative.
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If you cheat on your wife, you can't cheat on your wife.
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You can't say, oh, I slipped.
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No, you cheated.
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You did wrong.
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You sinned.
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There are certain things that are not relative.
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But, there are certain things that are.
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And what we eat, and the days we observe, those things are up to the conscience.
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And, he goes on to say in verse 6, the one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.
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The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord since he gives thanks to God.
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While the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord, he gives thanks to God.
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For none of us lives to himself.
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None of us dies to himself.
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For if we live, we live to the Lord.
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If we die, we die to the Lord.
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So, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
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And the point is, if you're doing what you're doing for the glory of God, and that's your purpose, then you have to go with your conscience.
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And you can at that moment, be essentially allowed some liberty.
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You guys know what liberty means, right? It means freedom.
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It comes from the Latin word, which means freedom.
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To have libertas.
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Or freedom.
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So you have freedom in what you eat.
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You have freedom in what you, in when you observe certain days.
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Now, an interesting side note to that.
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When we think about what Paul is saying, he's saying that the weak have less freedom than the strong.
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Now, that doesn't mean they're worse people.
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Understand, Paul is not condemning them by calling them weak.
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We think weak, you know, again, we don't want to be weak.
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We want to be strong.
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He's not saying it's a moral failure.
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He's not saying they're religiously deficient.
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He's simply saying that in this sense, they are bound further than they have to be, and therefore, they have more weakness than someone who would have more freedom.
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And I asked this question years ago, and sometimes people misunderstand it, so I hope this isn't confusing, but I'm going to ask the question here.
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What provides you more freedom? The Scripture, or your conscience? Okay, what provides you more freedom, Scripture or conscience? You say Scripture.
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You say conscience.
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Alright, yes.
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Well, just take it on its face for now before we try to dig too far, because my point is this.
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Which one allows you more freedom? I can't say it another way.
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When I explain it, it'll make sense.
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But when I...
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Okay.
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Okay.
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It can, it can, but this is where I was afraid it might get confusing.
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Let me explain what I mean.
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Are we ever...
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Do we ever have the right to do what God says not to do? I didn't say you could, I said do you have the right? Do you have the right? No.
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So we don't have the right to violate God.
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We do, but it's never right.
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But our conscience will bind us further than the Scripture.
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Therefore, the Scripture actually gives us more freedom.
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Our conscience binds us past the Scripture.
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For instance, Scripture tells me...
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Here you go.
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Scripture tells me that it's not a sin to drink, but my conscience may tell me it is.
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And therefore, if my conscience says it is, I can't do it.
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My conscience is binding me further than the Scripture.
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Scripture tells me I can eat whatever I want, but my conscience may say no, you can't eat certain things.
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And therefore my conscience binds me further than the Scripture.
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Scripture says I can look at all days the same, but my conscience may say no, I've got to celebrate this day or that day.
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And therefore, my conscience binds me further than the Scripture.
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The Scripture actually gives me more freedom than my conscience.
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That's the point I was making.
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The conscience actually binds us further than the Scripture.
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The Scripture gives us freedom, and our conscience actually binds us.
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Now, you might say, well, my conscience doesn't bind me.
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You might have seared your conscience.
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And that's a problem.
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What I'm saying is if our conscience is seeking to be right, often it will bind us further.
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This is what the Pharisees did.
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What did the Pharisees do? They bound men further than the Scriptures.
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Right? The Scriptures had certain commands.
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They added to those commands.
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Like they had certain amount of steps you could take on the Sabbath.
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Why? Because you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath, so we're going to count how many steps you take.
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That way you can't take only a certain amount of steps.
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So they bound people further than the Scripture did.
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That could be dangerous, too, because they make you self-righteous.
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Absolutely.
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Think about how many churches, and again, I'm not here to kick anybody in the shin, but think about how many churches bind people way past where the Scripture binds them.
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Well, I'll give you an example, and this is, again, if you come from this tradition, don't come charging the pulpit, because I'm not here to kick anybody in the teeth.
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There are churches that would say if a woman wears pants, she's in sin.
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My mom told me about that.
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She was in a church where if a woman wore pants to church, she couldn't come in.
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Because you're supposed to wear dresses.
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Because women are supposed to dress like women and men are supposed to dress like men.
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So their interpretation was a woman can't wear pantaloons, women can't wear breeches, or culottes.
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So that is binding someone further than the Scripture, because there wasn't even pants in the Scripture.
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Everybody wore dresses in the Bible.
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They weren't dresses, but they were these long gown-like tunics.
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They were robes, tunics.
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In fact, girding up your loins meant to reach down and grab the tunic and pull it up and tie it up around your crotch so that you could fight.
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That's what girding up your loins meant.
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It meant to tie up your skirt so it don't get in the way of your legs.
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So the idea that women can't wear pants is a modern addition to the Scripture based upon a cultural norm that men wear pants and women wear skirts.
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It's not biblical.
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It's an addition to the Scripture.
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And the Pharisees did the same thing.
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Think of what Jesus said to the Pharisees.
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You bind up men's consciences with burdens too heavy for them to bear.
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He wasn't talking about the law.
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He was talking about all of their additions to the law.
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You added to the law all of these burdens.
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And there are some people who go their whole life with those burdens because they never experienced their freedom in Christ.
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And that's why Paul describes them as weak.
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He says because you're still under the...
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It's like a man who's carrying 200 pound weights on his arms and another man who is don't have nothing.
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Who's more free? The guy whose weights have been lifted.
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Now again, I'm not saying that this gives us a right to do any old thing because there are essential things.
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If you come to me and you say, well, my conscience doesn't bother me when I murder people.
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I would say, you got a screwed up conscience.
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Because your conscience should bother you when you murder people because that's always wrong.
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What do you call somebody like that? Psycho.
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Who? No.
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Let's not be.
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But ultimately, and I'm being a little playful, but ultimately, it all comes down to the question whether or not what we do is for God.
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And if we have bound ourselves to something, like somebody who comes to me and says, I don't drink alcohol ever because I have committed that to God and I'm not going to do it.
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Well, praise the Lord.
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I'm not going to encourage you to drink alcohol.
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There's no reason for me to encourage you to drink alcohol.
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You know? When it comes to eating certain foods, there are certain people who just won't eat pork or whatever.
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That's fine.
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But again, I'm not going to allow their conscience to bind me, but I'm also not going to allow my freedom to trip them up.
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So I have to love them more than I love my freedom when it comes to how I manage my relationship with them.
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Now, there are times where the weaker will become a tyrant over the stronger.
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And actually, R.C.
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Sproul did a sermon called The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother.
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I love that title.
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I'm a big title guy.
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I think titles are cool and that is a good, cool title.
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But he was called The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother.
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And what he said was, he says, there are people who, in their weakness, try to demand that others obey the same things as them.
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Again, going back to the whole women's pants thing.
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You better do it because that's the way I see it and so you ought to see it that way.
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Yes? Yeah, absolutely.
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There are those who would say you have to be circumcised.
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And that was what Paul was dealing with in Galatians.
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Yes? Could be.
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Could be.
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The weaker brother likes wrestling and rock music but the stronger brother doesn't listen to that stuff no more.
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See what I'm saying? Or maybe the other way around.
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Maybe the other way around.
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Maybe the weaker brother is the one who says I can't listen to anything other than hymns on Sundays.
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And the stronger brother says, well I can listen to things that not bother me.
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And not affect my conscience.
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Again, there are certain things that are always bad.
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If you're listening to kill my daddy, kill my mama, rape my sister, that's bad.
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Don't listen to that.
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That is always wrong.
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You understand I'm being a little facetious but the point is there are things that are objectively wrong.
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We have to be careful.
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But there are things where people say, well all secular music is bad.
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I don't think that that's necessarily the case.
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There are songs that I enjoy that are not Christian songs.
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As long as they're not glorifying evil or something like that, I think...
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It's not good to push the guy...
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Yeah, I'm not going to push this guy to listen.
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If a guy gets in my car and I know he doesn't want to listen to songs that I listen to, then we're not going to listen to those songs.
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Basically it's wrong to say I do this, you should do this too.
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Yes.
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That's a good way of saying it.
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It's wrong to enforce upon someone else the binds of my conscience.
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As long as it's not something that's demanded in Scripture.
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Again, murder is always wrong.
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Stealing is always wrong.
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I would say things like intentional hatred, words of hatred would be wrong.
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I don't think there's a way to make that justified.
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That's why I think a lot of music falls into that category, unfortunately.
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He had his hand up first.
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Go ahead, brother.
46:31
Is it wrong to listen to girl voices instead of guy voices? Instead of girl voices? Can you explain that a little bit? All you listen to is girl voices.
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She got mad at me all the time.
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Are you talking about girl singers? I don't think it matters.
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She was probably offended because maybe she thought you were lusting.
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I mean, I don't know that.
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I'm just assuming.
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Maybe it's wrong to assume.
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Maybe she just thought, you're only listening to girls because you like their voices and it's some type of a lust thing.
47:06
I've never heard that before.
47:08
I always look forward to set free because I tend to hear things I've never heard before when I come here.
47:15
No offense.
47:17
You guys are unique.
47:19
Alright, go ahead.
47:21
So, I was raised up, you know, you take your hat off whenever you pray.
47:26
Good example.
47:29
So, I never really thought too much about it until I read about it in what, 2nd Corinthians? About covering your head? So, that's whenever I just kind of like put one or two together, I guess.
47:45
So, if one person believes that you have to take your hat off whenever you pray and the next person don't and one person says, hey, everybody takes their hats off, you know, so...
47:56
Again, I think that's...
47:58
I think a situation like that, and again, we could do this all day on things that are...
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That's not even tertiary.
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I would say that's almost a real preference issue.
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I don't think anybody should bind their conscience on preferences like that.
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And I honestly don't think 1 Corinthians 11 is dealing with that particular issue.
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I think that what's happening in 1 Corinthians 11 is you have men who were being usurped by the women of the church, and one of the ways they were usurping was the women who did wear head coverings were taking them off.
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And according to the passage, it seems like some men were actually putting them on and reversing the roles, and it was a reversal of roles of men and women.
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So, it was more to it than just the head.
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It was the...
48:39
Who was the head? The man was the head and the wife was supposed to be in submission to her husband, and there was a reversal of roles going on in the Corinthian church.
48:45
So, it was more than just what was on the head.
48:48
But getting back to the issue of a hat, yeah, I mean, like when my dad was a kid, you didn't go into a building.
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Like, right now, you have a hat on in a building.
48:56
It's not about prayer.
48:57
It was about in the building, and the military is that way.
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You can't wear a hat in a building unless you're under arms.
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Unless you have a weapon.
49:06
It's the only time you can wear a hat inside.
49:08
You have to have a weapon.
49:10
It's just part of the rules.
49:11
Right? And so, that's part of a structure that we really don't observe anymore.
49:16
Like, for instance, I'm teaching in shorts right now.
49:20
There was time in history where you didn't stand behind a pulpit unless you were wearing a tie.
49:25
Because the culture demanded, you know, I wear ties on Sunday, but not every Sunday.
49:31
Every once in a while, I go with a polo shirt just to prove I can.
49:34
Because sometimes I don't want to wear a tie.
49:38
You know, and I don't wear a robe, but I could.
49:41
Not a bathrobe, I mean like a ministry robe.
49:44
Well, that might be a little far.
49:48
But like I said, yeah, so things like that are cultural, things like that.
49:51
And this is, I'll give you a story to go with that.
49:54
A man I know, he's a pastor.
49:57
He was preaching at a church.
50:00
He was a guest speaker.
50:03
There was a lady there who was listening to him preach.
50:07
And she, after the service, she comes up to him and she says, I want you to know I enjoyed your sermon.
50:16
And he said, well, thank you.
50:17
I appreciate the encouragement.
50:19
And she says, but your beard is causing me to stumble.
50:29
And you need to shave it off.
50:34
No, no, it wasn't that.
50:39
In certain churches and certain cultures, beards are not allowed.
50:45
I mean, think about it.
50:45
Again, going back to the military.
50:47
Beards are not allowed in the military.
50:49
Right? You can have a mustache, but it can go to here, right? It can't go over your lip.
50:53
And the rules in those churches were men of God, mogs.
50:58
Men of God, mogs? Man of God.
51:02
The man of God does not have facial hair, according to certain traditions, right? Which is completely cultural.
51:11
It has no place in Scripture.
51:13
It's again the whole pants thing.
51:15
It's all cultural.
51:16
But she said, your beard is causing me to stumble.
51:20
And my man had a tremendous response.
51:24
He said, Madam, unless my beard is encouraging you to grow your own, it's not causing you to stumble.
51:34
Because that's what it means to cause someone to stumble.
51:39
It means to put something before them that would encourage them to do something that would violate their conscience.
51:46
It doesn't mean I'm doing something that you don't like.
51:49
There's going to be times where I do stuff that you don't like.
51:53
That doesn't mean I'm causing you to stumble.
51:55
Causing you to stumble is when I put something before you that you do not approve of and I encourage you to do it.
52:03
That's causing you to stumble.
52:05
Not just doing something that...
52:07
People say to me, Pastor, you know, well, I'm trying to think of a good example.
52:14
There are things like, I like to go to movies.
52:16
I enjoy movies.
52:18
I really do.
52:19
I've enjoyed movies ever since I was a kid.
52:21
My brother, y'all know Bobby.
52:23
Bobby and I grew up...
52:26
Well, we grew up going to movies together.
52:29
And so even to this day, part of our tradition and family is like watching Christmas movies together or sitting around and that's how we bonded.
52:38
So we have this long tradition of movies in our family.
52:41
And there are some pastors who would say, no movies.
52:44
No, don't go to the cinema.
52:46
Okay.
52:47
Well, I'm not going to not go because you don't go.
52:51
But I'm also not going to invite you if you don't think you should go.
52:56
And that's the difference.
52:57
I'm not going to stop going because you don't go.
53:00
But I'm not going to encourage you to go with me if it's going to violate your conscience.
53:06
And that's what it means to cause your brother to stumble.
53:08
Putting something in front of him that would encourage him to violate his conscience.
53:12
He had his hand up first.
53:13
Go ahead.
53:15
So, would you encourage the weaker person to try to throw off these things that are like heavy loads that they can't bear? But it does say in the 23rd verse that he who counts is condemned if he does eat.
53:30
Because he does not eat in faith.
53:34
But, we have a deeper understanding of like, hey look, you know, smoking cigarettes, as long as it's not ruling my whole day, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, no.
53:47
That's a great question and I'm actually glad you asked it.
53:50
Because that has been in my mind before.
53:53
Okay, we have somebody who comes to our church who is bound to something that binds them further than the Scripture.
53:59
As their pastor, is it my job to help them overcome that burden? I would say possibly with time, but not right away.
54:07
It's not my job to go to them and immediately start trying to get them to...
54:11
Because again, I want to find unity with that person, not try to make that person feel divided or unloved or discouraged.
54:20
Right? So if a person visits our church and joins our church and says, Pastor, you know what, I'm bound by...
54:26
We'll just say alcohol.
54:27
I don't drink alcohol.
54:28
Okay.
54:28
I'm never going to put alcohol in front of you.
54:30
I'm never going to encourage you to drink alcohol.
54:32
But understand this.
54:33
I do drink alcohol.
54:35
As your pastor, I don't want you to ever find that out by secret.
54:38
Right? I don't drink much alcohol, in case you're wondering.
54:40
I'm no drunkard.
54:43
My dad worked 35 years for Anheuser-Busch.
54:46
He only drank...
54:47
I never saw him drink more than two or three beers a year.
54:51
He worked for Anheuser-Busch 35 years and they gave him one case of beer at Christmas every year.
54:55
He never drank the whole case for the whole year.
54:58
So my dad was not a drunkard.
54:59
But every once in a while, he would pull a beer out of the fridge, who'd sat there all year long, and he would drink one beer.
55:05
And that's the same...
55:06
That's the attitude towards alcohol I had growing up.
55:08
It was never something that was enticing.
55:10
I've never been drunk.
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So, to me, it's not an issue.
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It's not even an issue at all to have a beer in my fridge.
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Now, now I keep old ghouls in there.
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And the reason why I keep old ghouls in there is because not because I'm afraid of alcohol, but because I found out I have a liver issue.
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And so I don't want to drink alcohol because of the danger to my health.
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But I still like the taste of beer.
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And when I have pizza, I like to have a beer with my pizza.
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So I keep a non-alcoholic beer in the fridge.
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I drink a beer with my...
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And I hope this isn't offending you guys.
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I'm trying to be honest with you.
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Because if somebody comes to my house and I allow people to go in my fridge if they want something out of my fridge, they open up the fridge.
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Oh my goodness! The pastor's got an old ghoul! I don't want that to be a secret.
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But also, I would never encourage them to violate their conscience.
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I hope, though, that they would grow in a better understanding of their freedom in Christ.
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And I would hope that through the preaching of the Word, not through me trying to browbeat them or trying to force them, but through the simple preaching of the Word.
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And I have had people that have done that over the years.
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I've been in the same church 16 years.
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I've had people come to me and say, you know, when I came here, I was very convicted about something.
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But through the study of the Word, I saw that I was wrong.
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That's a wonderful feeling.
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Not that I forced them to come to that conclusion, but through the study of the Word, they found out, hey, I have freedom here that I didn't realize I had before.
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So yes, I would hope that they would, but I wouldn't demand it of them or force it of them.
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So I hope that's helpful.
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Yes, you had? Um...
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And we're out of time anyway, but go ahead.
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I gotta close up.
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Desires to learn about other religions, if that's just to learn about them, is that adultery? Here's my simple hot take.
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Spend the majority of your time studying what is true before you invest in what is false.
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When they train men to identify false currency, the people who study counterfeit, they don't study the fake.
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They study what's real.
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They become so acquainted with a real bill that they would be able to spot the counterfeits because they know the real so well.
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So I've taught comparative religion.
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I've taught on Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah Witness.
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I've actually preached outside the Jehovah Witness conference in Jacksonville.
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Me and Brother Mike went down there and preached outside the conference, which was a blast.
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By the way.
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To stand outside.
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They're all there waiting to go in.
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We're across the way preaching the Gospel to the Jehovah Witnesses.
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So I don't think it's wrong to learn about those things as long as our goal is to use that information in some way to glorify God, not simply for the purpose of building up our own brain or something like that.
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I think it should have a good end goal.
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I don't think it's necessarily idolatrous to learn about other things, but making the Gospel of Christ and the true faith your primary focus would be my encouragement.
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If I saw somebody in our church who was always reading about the Koran or always reading about the Book of Mormon and was never reading their Bible, I would say that you got a wrong priority.
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I would say we need to reprioritize our study.
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That would be the way I would encourage that.
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Guys, I hope that was helpful.
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That was a lot and we went over time.
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So, let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I pray that it would be used to glorify Your name, build up these men.
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And Lord, I do pray that nothing I have said would cause any of them to seek to violate their own conscience.
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But Lord, that we would all seek to discover the freedom that we have in Christ.
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Not freedom to sin, but the freedom to live a life that glorifies God according to Your Word.
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We pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.