Loving One Another: A Construction Zone - [Romans 1:13-23]

I don't know about you guys, but for me, old habits die hard. You have problems killing those old habits?

For years, I trained myself that while I was driving around, I would pay special attention to everything, and particularly cars.

I looked at cars to figure out their make and model, and do you know why I would do that? Of course you know why

I would do that. But license plates, I wanted to read license plates, bumper stickers, everything about cars, everything that was in the cars, everything.

I just focused on that. I wanted to know what was in there. And you know what I found out? Bumper stickers can give you some pretty good clues as to who and what is in the car.

I remember, it's true. I remember once I was on training, and I said to,

I was a pretty confident trainee, by the way, as a police officer. I said to my training officer one day,

I said, I bet there's marijuana in that car. And he said, what makes you say that?

And I said, Grateful Dead bumper sticker, let's go find out. And guess what?

There was marijuana in that car. Some things never change. But today,

I believe that there's no greater indication of the vulgarity, the crassness of our culture, than bumper stickers.

I am shocked to see what some people will put on their car. Why is that?

I think we've reached a point in our culture where the freedom of expression is absolute.

If you're offended by what you see on somebody's bumper sticker, and you went up to them and talked to them, what do you think they'd say?

Get lost? Hey, if you don't like it, don't read it. You know, that kind of thing. People have absolutely no respect for the sensibilities of other people.

Now, they have an absolute freedom, they think, to do whatever they want.

Well, as believers, we have freedom too. We are free from the power and bondage of sin.

We are free in knowing that our salvation is secure. It's set aside for us. It's permanent.

It cannot be taken away. Nothing can happen to it. We have been freed forever from the confines of the law.

We're not going to be running off to the temple and making sacrifices. We're not going to be doing a lot of different things that the Old Testament prescribed.

The question, though, for us this morning is, how should we exercise that freedom? How do we go about doing that?

Are there any limitations on what a Christian can do? Let's look at Romans 14,

Romans chapter 14, verses 13 to 23. Romans 14, verses 13 to 23.

Starting in verse 13, You are no longer walking according to love.

Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. Therefore, do not let what is for you a good thing be spoken of as evil.

For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the

Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.

So then, let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.

Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense.

It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.

The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves, but he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith.

And whatever is not from faith is sin. Now this morning,

I want to draw your attention to two key commands in our text that you must follow in order to exercise your freedom in Christ in a way that glorifies

God. Paul gives this instruction so that we might understand how to utilize our freedom in a way that does not dishonor

God nor cause harm to our brothers and sisters in Christ. It's key that we understand that we do have freedom, but we need to exercise that freedom with restraint and not be like the world.

We need to care about and exercise proper care and even love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Those two key commands are first, to look at creation properly and secondly, to love your brother properly.

Now just to kind of give you some idea where we are in the book of Romans, Paul spent the first 11 chapters of Romans discussing theology.

Chapters 1 through 8 would discuss salvation. 9 through 11, sovereignty.

And chapters 12 through 16, where we are, we're right in the middle of that, are focused on service, practical ways of interacting with the body of Christ, of serving one another.

In chapter 12, the focus was on a believer's responsibilities toward God and also toward society.

In chapter 13, one of my favorite chapters, because of where I came from, it was a believer's responsibility toward government and neighbors.

And that brings us to chapter 14, which focuses on balancing Christian liberty, Christian freedom to do what we'd like, as long as it's not sinful, balancing that up against our responsibility toward one another, toward loving one another.

So having given you a little bit of framework of where we are, our first key command is to look at creation properly.

And I've separated Christians into two groups, so that we can do this. First of all, those who are free without a doubt.

Look at verse 14. Verse 14. And they are free without a doubt because nothing is forbidden.

14. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.

Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that you could do whatever you want? Absolute freedom? No. We can't set aside the clear commands of Scripture and go off and do whatever we'd like.

You can't violate Scripture and then call it freedom. If you violate Scripture, we have a three -letter word for that.

Sin. But the word unclean in verse 14 is the same word, the same

Greek word, from which we get koine Greek. Koine. And it doesn't...

Unclean is one way of looking at it. Another way, or several other ways, it means common, base, vulgar.

Something that's defiled. Or in this way, it's unclean. Ceremonially unclean.

The idea of an Old Testament Jewish mindset of looking at something and saying that is unclean.

It is defiled. It is the opposite of holy. It's the opposite of dedicated to the

Lord's service. It's the opposite of sacred. And in this case, Paul's use of the term primarily is focused on Old Testament dietary laws.

Why? Because the Roman Church had a Jewish component, had a Gentile component.

The Jewish component was struggling and wrestling with the idea of giving up their

Old Testament laws. Just as an idea of how convoluted things can get when you try to live this.

When we were in Israel about, what was that? Five years ago now. We went to a pizza hut.

I mean, you know, when you're in a foreign land, you just go for whatever is familiar. So we went to a pizza hut in Jerusalem.

And it was a little unsettling to look at the menu and see that there was no meat.

You couldn't get any sausage or pepperoni or anything on your, you know, meat lovers. Forget it. You know, maybe cheese lovers.

But the reason for that is because under the kosher dietary laws, you couldn't use the same knife you used to cut cheese to cut meat because that made it unclean.

And so to do away with that, to, you know, avoid even the possibility of that, they don't serve meat, which made for some sad coolies in Jerusalem.

But this idea of the dietary laws being set aside was one with which the

Jewish people wrestled, the Jewish believers wrestled. And Peter, even in Acts 10, and you don't have to turn there,

Peter was hungry. And he gets this vision. And he's presented with a number of animals.

They just come down and they're like some big blanket or something. But he sees all these animals, and some of them were expressly forbidden under the

Old Testament. They were unclean. And he's told to, he's commanded to rise, kill, and eat.

But he wouldn't do it. Why not? Because he had this Old Testament law, this

Old Testament Jewish mindset, and he wasn't going to do it. And Acts 10 .15 says, and again a voice came to him a second time, what

God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy. But it was a difficult thing for them to change their minds about this.

But how firm is Paul's conviction that nothing is unclean? In other words, nothing is base or vulgar or ceremonially unclean with this idea of Old Testament dietary laws.

Well, the verb in verse 14, I know, translated I know, is a perfect tense.

And for those Greek scholars here, perfect tense, of course, means that it is a verb, it's an action that has taken place in the past, and has ongoing continuous results.

So he knows, he came to that conviction at one point, and he continuously has that same conviction.

He has an absolute knowledge, and that absolute knowledge has permanent results.

And the same applies to the participle that's translated am convinced. It's the same tense, it's a perfect participle, meaning that he was convinced at some point, and it has ongoing results.

And how did he do this? He didn't dull his conscience, he didn't ignore the Bible or convince himself that something was okay when it wasn't, when it was actually sin.

It was the Lord Himself that brought Paul to this understanding. The verse says that he was convinced in the

Lord Jesus Christ, or that preposition could also be translated that he was convinced by the

Lord Jesus Christ. Paul had a tutor, that tutor was the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was convinced that the old things had passed away, and that new things had come.

1 Timothy 4 .4, another indication of his conviction. He writes, For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude.

Now note the unlimited language there. Everything created is good, nothing is to be rejected.

There aren't many exceptions to everything and nothing. Those are pretty absolute terms, you can't get around that.

In Colossians 2 .16 -17, Paul writes this, Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a

Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

All these things that people worry so much about, food, drink, festivals, new moons, which we don't really focus on a whole lot, the

Sabbath day, all those things are a shadow. But the substance, the real things that matter belong to Christ.

These were to tell us, to warn us about Christ's coming, and now he's here.

In this context in Colossians, Paul has just finished proclaiming the victory, the absolute victory of Jesus Christ.

And because of that victory, we are free from the law, we are free from worrying about such things as that.

And it's interesting, I think, just as a side note, that I think that if you study cults long enough, you'll find that every single one of them puts limits on these things.

Limits with regard to food, limits with regard to drink, limits with regard to celebration of holidays, even birthdays, whatever.

And why would that be? Why would they all do that? Because false religion always undermines the finished work of Christ, the perfect work of Christ, and seeks to convince you that you can make yourself right by what you do and what you don't do.

That is the nature of a cult. It's not true self -denial, which is what the Bible calls us to, a kind of internal self -denial, where you train yourself not to want things.

It is external, it's a show. It's put on so that people can see it and observe it and think, oh, how holy that guy is.

So they don't drink coffee, they don't celebrate their birthdays, or they don't eat beef. Why? Because that makes them somehow holier than other people.

Paul also writes in Titus 1 .15, to the pure, all things are pure. What did he mean?

To the perfectly pure, holy person? No, to the person who has a pure conscience, a trained conscience.

And then all things are pure, all things are safe and free for you to eat.

So those are the first group of people, the ones who are free with a doubt, they have an untrained conscience, they're not really sure what they can have or not, or free without a doubt.

I just reversed that. The free without a doubt people can do what they like, they have that freedom. But the free without people are in the second part of verse 14.

But to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. And the simple message that Paul gives us here is that, if a food, an action, a word, a movie, a

TV show, a song, anything offends your conscience, you ought not to eat it, do it, say it, watch it, listen to it, or have any part of it.

Don't violate your conscience. Why is that so important? Because if you violate your conscience, you are sinning.

Paul again, when he was on trial before Ananias and the council, in Acts 23 verse 1, he says,

And Paul, looking intently at the council, said, Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.

What does he mean? What he's saying is, the things I knew that were wrong, I did not do. The things that I had freedom in,

I was free to do. And that's the objective, is to have a perfectly clear conscience. One that is clear and one that is obeyed.

Our consciences, Romans 2 tells us, are a gift from God, to restrain us from doing things that we ought not do.

Even unbelievers have a conscience. That's what Romans 2 tells us, and it restrains them. But our conscience should be trained at a higher level.

And we should never violate our conscience. To do so is to sin. Now, for some, it is difficult to have a clear conscience.

And in a sense, it's as if the chains of the law, the rules, the restrictions, the limitations of the law, though fully removed, are still there.

They live as if they're still there. What causes this? Well, in this context, as I mentioned earlier, the

Jewish believers were struggling with putting off the requirements of the Old Testament law.

I would say for us today, what are some of the things that can cause us to have, to think things are wrong when maybe they're not?

First of all, I think a sincere revulsion of the things of the world, and I think that's fine. I think our tendency is almost to want to live like hermit -like lives.

Why? Because we're so put off by the sinfulness and the God -hatingness,

I'll just make up a word, of the world that we just want to remove ourselves completely from it. Some of us come from different religious backgrounds, and it's hard for us to get over some of those things.

Some of us might have a fundamentalist background. Some of us might come from Catholicism or Mormonism or whatever.

Each of us carries in our own baggage, and we might have different levels of conscience based on that.

Now, if that seems subjective, well, it is a little bit. What is sin?

Can it be just a matter of opinion? Well, no. Let's look at verse 20.

Second part of verse 20. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense.

So how can something be clean and yet still be evil? Well, it's a matter of conscience.

If I believe it to be sinful to drink coffee, to eat beef, to have a

Christmas tree, whatever it is, I shouldn't do it. So what do we do if we have an overactive conscience?

What if a lot of things offend us? First of all, like I said, you need to obey it.

Verse 23a. The first part of 23. Paul writes,

But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith.

Condemned. You're sinning. If your conscience condemns a particular action, why would you do it?

I think this is wrong, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway. Now, are there exceptions?

Yes, but only when scriptural truth is at stake. I think of when I first came to know who

Jesus Christ was, and notice I'm not saying that I was a Christian. Now, why can I not say that? Because I thought

I came in with baggage of my own. I came in as a Mormon, and you know what?

The doctrine I just really struggled with was the Trinity. Now, can you be a Christian and not believe in the

Trinity? I don't think so. But it was a difficult thing I had to study that issue through.

And that leads us right into this. What do you do if you've got an overactive conscience? You need to inform it.

Look again at verse 23. And whatever is not from faith is sin. Any action that you take that you are not confident is okay is sinful.

MacArthur says this. If the mind is defiled, it cannot, in other words, if you're sinning, it cannot accurately inform the conscience.

So the conscience cannot warn the person. Now, listen to this. When the conscience is accurately and fully infused with God's truth, it functions as the warning system

God designed. In other words, what MacArthur's saying there is when you study, when you learn, when you grow in Christ and knowledge of the truth, your conscience will be exactly what

God designed it to be, an early warning system that will keep you from sin. You need to get good teaching.

You need to do reading. You need to really work on understanding the word of God. When he says the idea of infused, being infused with truth, it means to be so filled with God's truth that our conscience is a faithful reflection of the word of God.

We want our consciences to be so filled with the Bible that every decision we make, we go, okay, quick scan.

Anything in the Bible that's a violation here? No. How does my conscience feel about doing this?

If I don't feel right about doing it, I should not do it. Now, what if you've got a conscience that is fully informed and is not given to guilt over non -sin issues?

In other words, what if you've done all that? What if your conscience is good to go, it's a great alarm system and you don't feel guilty about things that aren't sinful?

Look at verse 22a. The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God.

And in the Greek, just as when I just read it, the you is emphatic. Why? Because it's as if Paul is pointing his finger at a particular person, a strong believer, one with a well -informed conscience.

And his point is, keep your convictions about your freedom to yourself.

Don't run around trying to convince everybody that these things that they think are wrong are okay. It's not about that.

Why? Because he does not want you to cause someone else to stumble. And can

I just say, beloved, it's not our job to run around and be the Holy Spirit.

If our brother's in sin, that's one thing. If we think our brother's in sin, but there's nothing in the

Bible to back that up, I think we need to back off. Now this might happen if a stronger believer acts in such a way that a weaker brother might be tempted to imitate.

In other words, you don't want to behave in such a way, if you're a stronger believer, if your conscience is more fully informed, you don't want to behave in such a way where a weaker believer might look at you and go, hey, if Mike can do that, if Steve can do that, then

I can do that. Not if it's a violation of that person's conscience. They can't do that. Freedom, our freedom in Christ, is not an issue that we should run around debating with other people.

It is wrong to try and talk someone out of their conscience. Don't obey your conscience, listen to what

I'm telling you. That's how we start cults. In other words, if someone is convinced that something is wrong, don't substitute yourself for the

Holy Spirit or for their God -given conscience. Look at verse 22, second half of it.

Happy is he who does not condemn himself and what he approves. A lot of difficult language in these verses.

That word happy can also be translated blessed. And the sense here is that you are blessed if you restrain the exercising your freedom for the benefit of a weaker brother or sister in Christ.

That's the idea. Do you have freedom? Yes. Must you always exercise that freedom even to the detriment of your brother or sister in Christ?

The answer is no. Sometimes you need to take a step back and say, I don't want to cause someone else to stumble.

I'm not going to do this. So in addition to looking at creation properly, in other words, seeing creation for what it is, that nothing is unclean that God has made, you also need to love your brother properly.

Now I know that on the, and I said the, forgive me, on 190 and 290, there are signs up right now that say fines doubled in construction zones.

And we need to remember that God is working on every single believer.

God is working in the lives of every single person who loves him. In essence, every single one of us is a construction zone.

And we ought not do damage to those who are under construction. This is an area where it is possible to inflict a lot of damage on each other by stunting the spiritual growth of those who are weaker, who have less well -informed consciences.

We can actually damage, we can actually set back somebody's sanctification. Can we destroy their salvation?

No. But we can set them back, we can put them into a spiritual funk, as it were. Any sin, any frustration, any jealousy, bitterness, rivalry, all of those things can be caused by exercising our freedom wrongly.

It can cause a brother or sister in Christ to stop growing for a time. Why? Because they start, they build up resentment towards you, towards what you're doing, they think that you're in sin, they get frustrated, they get jealous.

And Paul's point throughout this entire passage is a simple one. Love your neighbor as yourself.

He is basically explaining what the Lord Jesus Christ has said. What are the two great commandments?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This is it. This is loving your neighbor as yourself. This is not love as an emotion, but love in action.

Love puts the concerns of others ahead of oneself. These are areas where Christians offend each other all too frequently.

Now, to love your brother properly, you must first not judge him improperly.

Look at 13, verse 13. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore.

Now, it sounds like one of those famous unbelieving verses, or verses that unbelievers like to twist.

Matthew 7, verse 1. Do not judge, lest ye be judged. What does

Paul mean when he says this? What does he mean when he says, let us not judge one another anymore?

First of all, that word anymore tells us that it's already going on. It's already happening. Otherwise, there's no reason for him to use it.

There was judgment of other believers going on in the Roman Church. And what does that lead to?

If we start judging one another, if we start deciding what somebody else should be doing, it's inevitable that gossip, factiousness, other things, the unity of the body is going to suffer.

And it had been going on, and those who were weaker in the faith had been judging those who were stronger in the faith, and vice versa.

Well, what does that mean? Somebody who's weaker in the faith looks at what somebody who's stronger in the faith does, and says, hey, they shouldn't be doing that.

And somebody who's stronger in the faith looks at how somebody who's weaker in the faith won't do this, that, or the other thing, and says, does that guy not get it?

Doesn't he know he has the freedom to do those things? Now, shockingly, I suspect that it may even happen here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

At my former church, I was chatting with a couple between services in California, and eventually

I began talking about a movie that was tops at the box office. And I said something in effect of, no

Christian in his right mind would go see that movie. Well, their countenances fell, you know, they started looking away and everything, and it was like one of those airline commercials, want to get away?

I did. You know, if there was a trap door or something, I would have just bailed. Now, was going to the movie, this particular movie, a good thing?

No, but I had made them feel uncomfortable by presuming that they thought about things the same way

I did. Now, did the Lord use my untimely word? I certainly hope so.

You know, would they go see it again today? I don't know. I hope not. But it's the same thing in a number of areas.

I don't think there's anybody that if they come to faith later on in life, they don't have areas of their lives where they do some cleaning.

You know, for me, it was my CD collection. I went in and even still now, I'll go through every once in a while,

I'll just go, I can't believe I own that. You know, I can't believe I own that. In the beginning, it was easy, you know, like that, but not so easy now.

But there's a way to handle situations like that where you see somebody and you think, I don't know, that's probably not the best way to go.

And it's not to directly confront them. A lot of times, we just need to get into a discipling relationship.

If you think that you're living a more informed kind of life, that your conscience is better informed, then maybe you should be discipling that person.

But judging can go both ways. In thinking that someone is a libertine, in other words, that they think they can do whatever they want, and you're just shocked by that, you think that that person is playing too fast and too loose with the law of God.

Or it could be the other way, where you see somebody as a legalist. You just think, doesn't that person get it?

He's been freed from that stuff, and this guy just lives like all the law is still in force.

But we also want to make sure that we don't cause our brother to stumble. Look at verse 13 again, the second half of it.

Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this, not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way.

Jesus, the Lord, had some very strong words for those who would be stumbling blocks.

Luke 17, he says this, And he said to his disciples, It is inevitable that stumbling blocks should come, but woe to him through whom they come.

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.

Better to have a millstone tied around your neck and thrown into the sea than to cause someone who is weaker than you to stumble.

So, as opposed to judging one another, Paul says, make a judgment or make a decision not to contribute to the sin of a fellow believer.

Don't be a stumbling block. Don't get in their way. Don't make them violate their conscience. The contrast could not be stronger.

This is what you have been doing, and Paul says, and Paul uses a very strong adversative, in other words, he goes to the direct opposite.

He says, but you ought to be doing this. You've been doing this. Don't do that anymore.

Instead, do that. Now, the word obstacle here, verse 13, literally means a rock or a hard object against which you could strike your foot and that would cause you to stumble or fall.

But Paul's not talking about throwing rocks in front of people, making them fall over. He's not talking about a physical situation at all, but he's talking about tripping up our fellow

Christians spiritually. So we can presume that he's using it figuratively as an obstacle to their spiritual development.

Don't put things in the way of your brother and sister in Christ that would cause them to not grow, that would cause them to fall spiritually.

Don't do that. Hendrickson notes this can actually be, this idea of a stumbling block, could actually be an incentive to sin.

In other words, you actually lure them in to sin. The Greek word for stumbling block in that same verse is skandalon, which is a word that is very familiar to us and it is one from which we get our

English word, of course, scandal. And it is that which causes opposition, resentment, offense, or sin.

The word also, if we look through the entire New Testament, we'd also find that it refers to Jesus upon occasion.

Jesus himself was a skandalon. 1 Peter 2 says,

Jesus became a stumbling stone, a rock of offense. Not because of anything he did, but because of who he was, because people chose to reject him.

The same word, that skandalon, is used by Jesus of Peter in Matthew 16.

I always enjoy this, you know, Peter gets told, upon this rock I will build the church, and then just a few verses later, we don't know exactly how long it is time -wise, but Jesus says to him in verse 23 of Matthew 16,

We don't want to be spiritual obstacles, stumbling blocks, to one another within the body of Christ.

Can I suggest the most obvious means of becoming an obstacle and or a stumbling block?

That would be to argue and contend and debate over non -essentials of the faith.

Accuse your brother or sister in Christ of sin when the Bible doesn't call it sin. You think that doesn't cause some resentment?

You think that doesn't cause someone to stumble? You might as well send an engraved invitation to sin, because you'll either get some kind of a fight or an argument, or they'll be tempted to murmur about you after you leave.

To put it simply, hold someone to a standard that the

Bible doesn't teach, and you will be a stumbling block in their lives.

Not only should you not cause your brother to stumble, but you should also cause your brother no harm. How do you do that?

In three ways. First of all, value love more than your freedom.

Value love more than your freedom. Look at verse 15. For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love.

You have the freedom as a Christian to do a good many things, but should you do them, if they're going to injure, cause harm to your brother or sister in Christ.

Now there might be something that I really enjoy doing that is not sinful, but if it's going to cause someone to stumble, if it's going to cause injury to them, if it's going to cause spiritual pain to them,

Paul says that I am not loving them if I do it. What is more valuable?

Bottom line. What's more valuable? Your freedom in Christ or your brother in Christ? Now does this mean that I am permanently restrained from eating something or doing something that I enjoy that might possibly offend someone else?

No. But it means that I should consider others more important than myself and restrain myself when that weaker brother or sister is present.

I should not flaunt my freedom. I should not just flaunt it and then say it's your problem.

That is not godly. That is not loving. And that's not how we are to be. Now if these people are completely unrealistic, you know, they say,

Steve, I'm offended if you drink water. Well, you know, that's fine, but that's not anything that anyone should be offended by.

So we need to value our brother. We need to love our brother more than our freedom.

We also need to value the well -being of our brother more than our freedom. Again in verse 15,

Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. Paul says the wrongful exercise of our freedom can do more than cause a weaker brother pain.

It can destroy him or her. Hodge says this, If Christ so loved him as to die for him, how base, how inconsiderate of you not to submit to the smallest self -denial for his welfare.

Paul suggests that we can put our brother or sister at risk of great harm if we fail to exercise self -control in a matter we know to be potentially harmful to them.

Selfishness is not a desirable characteristic for a Christian. We also need to value the work of God more than our own freedom.

Value the work of God more than your own freedom. Look at verse 20. Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food.

Again, this idea of food can fill it in with almost any exercise of Christian freedom.

Nothing is more important than your brother or sister in Christ. And in this case, what he's suggesting is that by participating in something that may not be sinful, we can actually tear down the work of God.

And again, this is the idea of a brother or sister being sanctified, being built up, being constructed, as it were, by God.

He is under construction by the Lord. How dare you tear him down? How dare you put his or her sanctification at risk for some minor right of yours?

After all, what is it that separates Christians from the world? What is it?

Pastor Dave referred to it earlier. How are they going to know? How does the world know that we are different from them?

The Bible is replete with instruction on that. A few verses. 1

John 3 .16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

We ought to lay down our lives, sacrifice ourselves for our brothers and sisters in Christ. 1

John 3 .18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

That's how we show our love, by what we do. John 13 .35

This is a classic verse on this. Jesus said, By this, all men, every single person on the face of the planet, will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

What is that bond that you guys have? What is that closeness you have?

It's because we love one another because we're in Christ. That should be obvious to unbelievers viewing a situation.

In addition to causing your brother no harm, and in fact, to not getting in his way, to not tearing down what the

Lord is doing, you should build him up the opposite of that. Look at verse 19.

So then let us pursue the things which make for peace, and the building up of one another.

Now, let us pursue, that verb is a subjunctive, and so this is a collective exhortation. Paul is saying, let's all go and do this.

The idea of pursuing is not passive. Paul is putting a lot of emphasis on this.

Also in this verse, peace. Gift of God, one that cannot be taken for granted. We have the peace that surpasses understanding, and we ought to have peace within the body of Christ.

This is vertical peace. We have vertical peace with God. We ought to practice horizontal peace within the body of Christ.

We ought to care for our brothers and sisters. Should we take that horizontal peace for granted?

No. It's something that we constantly pursue. Why? Because it is so fragile. It's easy to destroy that peace, and we've discussed that, because it's so valuable also.

Look at verse 17. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the

Holy Spirit. These are the things that we are to be practicing. Not to be concerned about eating or drinking, but righteousness, the active practicing of righteousness.

Peace, that horizontal peace within the body of Christ, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Because it is acceptable, it is pleasing to God. Look at verse 18.

For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. It is pleasing to God when we are focused on righteousness, peace, and joy.

When we're worried about, concerned about body life. When we're concerned about our brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is the desire of God for us to do this. And it also tells us in verse 18 that it is approved by men, or it is respected by men.

People look at it and they get it. They understand that. They respect that. But in addition to peace with one another, we also need to pursue the building up of one another.

This is to up -build, to encourage one another. In other words, mutual edification.

The building up of one another. And we cannot do that outside of an atmosphere of peace within the body.

And this is to be our focus, to build one another up in the faith, by exercising our spiritual gifts, by exercising our freedom in ways that help one another, not tear one another down.

We come here on Sundays, first of all, to worship God. But secondly, to serve one another and to build one another up.

Ephesians 4, 15 and 16 makes this plain. Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even

Christ. From whom the whole body, that's us, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

We have to have that love for one another in order to build one another up. We have to focus on righteousness and peace and harmony within the body of Christ.

The Word of God instructs us as believers to live in harmony with one another. There isn't a single person here this morning,

I dare say, that has arrived, that has finished the race, that has fought the good fight, and that stands perfect.

There are some who may be struggling with issues that they will not struggle with, maybe three years, five years or ten years from now.

But it is incumbent upon them not to condemn those who exercise greater freedom in Christ.

On the other hand, there are those here this morning that are stronger in the faith, who have more better informed consciences, and they have an obligation not to flaunt their freedom in such a way that they cause a weaker brother to struggle or to stumble.

The overarching principle is simple, love. You need to love me enough not to jump at conclusions based on what

I'm doing. The Lord has defined the means of our sanctification, primarily the

Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Again, we don't need to play the Holy Spirit.

Should we confront a brother or sister when they're without a doubt in sin? Yes, but the sin needs to be defined biblically, not by our own subjective standards, not by our opinions, not by what we think, but what the

Bible says. We are all under construction. Each of us is not yet what someday we will be.

But your focus needs to be on building one another up, respecting the fact that your brother or sister may have a more or less developed conscience in a particular area than you do.

Again, I would exhort you not to just sit there and try to figure out every what if. What if this happens?

What if that happens? There are some basic principles that I think we can all just kind of go with.

First of all, train your conscience. God gave us that conscience for a reason.

We need to fill it with the Word of God. Number two, don't violate your conscience.

What good is it? The Bible tells us if we violate our conscience, we've sinned.

And number three, don't use your freedom wrongly. Do you have freedom in Christ? Absolutely. But don't use it in such a way that you would cause somebody to stumble or that you would cause them harm.

So we must, first of all, look at creation properly. We must understand that everything that God has created is good.

Secondly, we must love our brothers properly. This is a terribly important and complex issue, beloved, and not something that we can maybe grasp in a single moment.

But I would say to you, the basic principles are simple. Train your conscience.

Don't violate your conscience. Don't use your freedom wrongly. Don't judge based on any other standard than the

Word of God. Let's pray. Father in heaven,

I'm just so thankful for your Word, for the freedom that you have granted us in Christ, for sending your

Son to die on our behalf, Lord, that we might be free from the restraints and the limitations of the law.

Father, let us strive to inform our consciences that we might in all things obey the two great commandments that our

Lord gave us. First of all, to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Secondly, to love our neighbor as ourself.

Father, the Bible says that we will be known by the world, or that we should be known by the world, by the way we love one another.

I pray that you would make that true at Bethlehem Bible Church, that we wouldn't be running around as a people, worrying about what other people are doing,

Lord, that we would take care of ourselves, that we would confront when necessary, but more than anything else, we would love one another, that we would build one another up in the truth.

Father, may we be a people devoted and dedicated to proclaiming the truth about Jesus Christ.

Father, I pray that each one here would just love his or her neighbor more than they love themselves, that we would see each of us, each brother and sister in Christ here, as a work of yours to be guarded, to be built up, to be loved, not to be destroyed or damaged or thought lightly of.