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Okay, we're back in the book
of Romans and Romans chapter 14. Paul has some more practical
issues for us as believers. These are some real important
advice for us as believers that we should take to heart. and
he's going to be talking to us about how we should deal with
the weaker brother. And I'll explain. There's a lot
of confusion about who is the weaker brother, who is the carnal
or the sinful brother, who is the stronger brother, things
of that sort. And so we'll try to break that down. So let's
go to the Lord in prayer one more time. Father in Jesus' precious
name, we just love you, Lord, and we just thank you that we
can be here to worship you. We know there's a lot of people,
Lord, in the church that are sick that aren't feeling well
and have some you know virus or bacteria whatever it may be
and We just pray for your healing hand upon us all and we just
pray Lord that that you would anoint me today To proclaim your
truth so that I would not lead anyone astray Now you'd open
hearts and minds to receive truth from your word and empower us
to apply these truths to our lives I pray Lord that you would
help us to be gentle and kind to the weaker brother. In Jesus'
precious name we pray, Amen. So, Paul has explained the need
for salvation, the fact that we're all condemned, because
we're all sinners, and he explained how we get saved. We get saved
through trusting in Jesus alone for salvation. We grow in the
Lord by trusting in Jesus and His Word. for daily living and
God empowers us to live the overcoming life and that the day will come
when Jesus will return and fully glorify us, complete the work
that he starts in all believers. He talked about the Jews. What
about the Jews? If they're God's chosen nation,
how come they're rejecting Jesus and Jesus is the one source of
salvation? So he explained about that, how
they were elected in the past Presently they're living in a
state of rejection, but in the future all Israel, the hardening
of their hearts, will be removed and all Israel will be saved
at the second coming of Christ. Paul then tells us to humbly
serve one another, to use the spiritual gifts God has given
us, to live lives of love, to submit to the governing authorities.
And now he's going to talk with us about dealing with the weaker
brother. So look at verses 1 to 6 of Romans
chapter 14. Verses 1 to 6, Romans 14. Receive one who is weak in the
faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. So, you know,
receive one who is weak, but not to get in debates with them.
For one believes he may eat all things, But he who is weak eats
only vegetables. So who's the strong brother?
The strong brother is the one who believes he may eat all things.
That's the stronger brother, the weaker brother. He who is
weak eats only vegetables. Verse 3, let not him who eats
despise him who does not eat. And let not him who does not
eat judge him who eats, for God has received him. So Paul's saying,
I want the weaker brother and the stronger brother to get along.
Verse four, who are you to judge another servant? To his own master
he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand,
for God is able to make him stand. So the weaker brother is a true
brother in Christ. Verse 5, one person esteems one
day above another, another esteems every day alike. Let each be
fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes
it to the Lord. And he who does not observe the
day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats
to the Lord, for he gives God thanks. And he who does not eat,
to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. So what you have here is the
weaker brother is one who does not understand fully his freedom
in Christ. He still lives like he's under
the law. He's trusting in Jesus for salvation, but apparently
he thinks, okay, now I'm trusting in Jesus for salvation, but I
have to obey these Old Testament regulations to please God, maybe
to grow in the Lord, to be sanctified, to be set apart for God's holy
purposes. So the weaker brother doesn't
understand his freedom in Christ. He still lives like he's under
the law. Now Paul says we must accept the weaker brother and
we're not to judge the weaker brother, okay? And this is in
the area of both food and feast days, the Sabbath day and feast
days. The weaker brother thinks, oh,
I can only eat certain foods now that I trust in Jesus. I'm
not saved by the law. So I trust in Jesus, I'm saved
by God's grace alone, through faith alone and Jesus alone,
that's true. But now I'm going to grow in the Lord by obeying
the law, placing myself under the Old Testament dietary laws
and the Old Testament feast days. And so, whereas the stronger
brother recognizes his freedom in Christ, that Jesus has fulfilled
all this. Now I'm free to eat all things.
this is why God gave Peter three times he gave him a vision of
a sheet coming down from heaven with unclean food and God says
take and eat and Peter says no I've never eaten unclean food
and then God says what God has declared clean let that be clean. See there was a purpose for God
separating the Jews from all the other nations, because they
had false beliefs. They had false beliefs and served
false gods. There were no video games back
then, there was no television, there was no radio, there were
no sports, professional sports. So the way you fellowship with
people, you broke bread with them, you ate with them. So if
God didn't want the Jews to be influenced for bad, by the pagan
nations, he gave them such a different diet that they couldn't even
fellowship with the pagans, because they'd have to violate their
dietary laws. And then he gave them feast days
that all pointed forward to Jesus. And now Jesus has fulfilled those
feast days. And so Jesus, you know, look
at Colossians Paul's letter to the Colossians chapter 2. See, Jesus is the real thing.
All the Old Testament ceremonial laws, the temple and the temple
sacrifices and the feast days, that pointed forward to the day
when Jesus would come. Now that Jesus has come, the
substance is here. We don't have to worry about
the types of Christ. Colossians 2, 16 and 17, so let
no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival
or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come,
but the substance is of Christ." So Paul is telling Gentile believers,
don't let anyone judge you and say you're supposed to be attending
the feast days. Don't let anybody judge you and
say you're only supposed to stick to an Old Testament diet. No,
we're not only saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus,
we will grow by God's grace through faith in Jesus. So we're no longer
under the law. But it's the stronger brother
who realizes this, that we're no longer under these Old Testament
dietary laws and the these days. The weaker brother doesn't understand
it. And so with Paul saying, you
know what, over there in a church in Rome, you got some weaker
brethren, just love them right where they're at. Okay? And I'm
going to give you advice. I don't want you to judge them.
Jesus is their master, and Jesus is your master. He's going to
judge us. He doesn't need any help from
us to judge the weaker brother. Okay? And so, now, God wants
us to be stronger brothers. He wants us to recognize our
freedom in Christ. But He doesn't want us, He wants
us to be To recognize our freedom in Christ, to enhance our walk
with Him, He doesn't want us to be stronger brothers, so He
can look down on the weaker brothers. So we need to be very gracious.
to them. The weaker brother doesn't fully
understand his freedom in Christ, still lives like he's under the
law on both the food question, but also on the Sabbath day and
things of that sort, things they have to worship on the Sabbath
day and have to rest on the Sabbath day. and things of that sort. Now let me draw a couple, and
this is not in your notes, but a couple of distinctions here
that are real important to understand what's going on. The weaker brother
is not the Judaizer. The weaker brother is not the
Judaizer. The Judaizer is the legalist. The Judaizer says, oh yeah, you
need to believe in Jesus to be saved, but you also have to obey
God's laws, all the Old Testament laws, along with believing in
Jesus to be saved. So the legalizer, that's the
Galatian heresy. Paul refutes it in the book of
Galatians. The legalizer, the Judaizer heresy,
says you're saved through faith in Jesus plus the law. Well guess
what? The Judaizer is not even saved.
That's a false religion. That's a false gospel. Paul calls
it a false gospel and another gospel. It's not the one that
has been preached originally. So the idea that you're saved
through faith in Jesus plus works of the law, that's a false gospel. The true gospel teaches you're
saved through faith in Jesus, but that will produce good works. But that's the result of being
saved, that's not part of the cause of being saved. Okay? So that's what the Judaizer,
the legalist, they're not even saved. Okay? And Paul says anyone
who preaches a gospel, other than that which has already been
preached to you, let him be accursed. And he's talking about the Judaizer
legalist heresy. But the weaker brother is saved.
The weaker brother understands, yeah, we're saved by trusting
in Jesus. I don't deserve to go to heaven.
I can't perfectly obey God's laws. So I'm going to trust in
Jesus to be saved. But then the weaker brother just
doesn't understand, okay, now that I'm saved, Jesus has fulfilled
that, I don't have to worry about the burden of the law anymore.
I don't have to worry the weaker brothers and understand that
thinks I've got to still live by an Old Testament diet, maybe
even getting more extreme than an Old Testament diet, saying
I can eat vegetables only. So a vegetarian, I mean the Old
Testament wasn't even vegetarian. And then I have to still keep
the Sabbath day and the Jewish feast days, okay? But he's not
doing that to get saved. He just thinks, okay, I'm saved
by God's grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus alone,
but it's still my duty to do all these other things. Okay?
By the way, we have many Christians, you know, I have a friend, Pastor
Fred Rabinowitz, he's Jewish, he's as Jewish as he gets, but
he's a Bible-believing Christian, he pastors a church, and he celebrates
the Passover as an instructional thing for Christians, and we'll celebrate
some of the feast days. There's no problem with that,
and saying, well look at these beautiful things that the Jewish
people did, and Pastor Fred also happens to be Jewish, and we
can partake in these things and see the beauty of finding Jesus
in them. But he's not saying, hey you
have to do this. He's not doing it out of duty.
He's not forcing other people to do it out of duty. So there's
nothing wrong with that. But it's when you tell other
people, you know, if you tell other people you don't rest on
the Sabbath, you don't stick to an Old Testament diet, and
you're going to hell, then you're not even saved. That's the Judaizer
heresy. But if you're the weaker brother
and say, if you don't rest on the Sabbath and don't uphold
the Sabbath day, the feast days, and stick to a Jewish diet, you're
still a Christian, but you're not being sanctified and stuff
like that, then you're the weaker brother. And what Paul's saying
is, you know what? They're trusting in Jesus for
salvation. Don't hammer these guys. If they're convinced that
that's what they should do, just love them where they're at. Okay?
And be very gentle with them. So, now let me say something
else, too. Almost always, with my high school students, when
we go over the weaker brethren, we go over this passage in our
devotions, I get a lot of students who will write down that God
doesn't want us to judge at all. And they act like the weaker
brother is a sinful brother. The weaker brother is not a sinful
brother. The weaker brother is not doing
bad stuff. The weaker brother is living
a stricter life than the stronger brother. They just don't relax
enough. Okay? So, you've got to understand
what the Bible calls the carnal brother, which is the immoral
brother. The Bible commands us to judge
them. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, there
was a guy who was living with his father's wife. Now, they
didn't call him his mother, so it must have been his stepmother.
And he was living with her in sin. And Paul's saying, this
kind of stuff doesn't even go on with the pagans. And you guys
are allowing this guy to come to your church doing this? And
he basically calls for them to excommunicate the guy. Kick him
out of the church. will pray to deliver his flesh
to Satan for destruction so that his soul will be saved in the
day of the Lord Jesus. Now in 2 Corinthians, the guy
repents and they still don't want to take him back. So Paul
says, hey look, the guy's repented, that's why you do church discipline. Not to crush somebody. but in
hopes that somebody will turn from their sin and come back
to the Lord. Okay? And so church discipline
is always done out of love. But God actually commands us
to judge the immoral brother. So let me give you just real
quick a general teaching about when to judge and when not to
judge. Okay? And I'm just going to sum
it up in a few seconds here. The Bible tells us that we are
to judge the immoral brother. Somebody claims to be a Christian,
especially if they're coming to your church, okay? If you're
coming to this church and you're doing drugs, I'm supposed to
confront you on it. Actually, Matthew 18 tells you
one person is supposed to confront them on it. If they won't repent,
then he brings two witnesses and confront them on it. If he
won't repent, then you bring it before the church and the
church has to make it. Those are very tough decisions. I'm the kind of guy, I'd rather
just mind my own business. So it's been very difficult that
over the decades, we've had to take people aside and say, you
need to go back to your wife and leave this other woman or
you can't, you know, so I had to tell one professing brother,
you got to choose between your wife and this other woman. And
he said, I made my choice. And I said, let me put it to
you another way. You gotta choose between this other woman and
Jesus. And he said, I already made my
choice. And I said, I'll pray for you, you're no longer welcome.
And, um, if I bump into the guy at Walmart, I'll give him a hug. And tell him I'm praying for
him. But, um, but see, you know, this is not a social club. Okay? We don't just hang out together
and just shoot the breeze. I mean, I love fellowshipping
with you. I hope you love fellowshipping
with me. But we're not a social club. We represent the King of
Kings and the Lord of Lords. None of us are perfect, but the
Bible is very clear that if someone's living in willful, habitual sin,
okay? I've actually got complaints
from people for not disciplining somebody who made one mistake
two years ago. We're only supposed to discipline
if it's willful, habitual sin. And the whole goal of discipline
is to get them to stop sinning. And then when they stop sinning,
the discipline stops. So if somebody made a bad choice,
and isn't continuing to make that choice, You praise God that
they're not making that bad choice anymore. But whatever the case,
we got to understand, this is why Paul says in Philippians
2, work out, not work for. You can't work for your salvation.
You can never earn it. Work out your salvation with
fear and trembling. Why? Because it is God who is
at work in you. We sometimes, I mean, there's
one sense you can't get Too close to Jesus. You want to get closer
and closer to Him. But there is a sense where you
can get too familiar with Jesus. Where you can act like, yeah,
we're drinking buddies. You know, we just hang out together.
Okay? Well, yes, Jesus is your friend.
Yes, Jesus is your Savior. Yes, Jesus loves you. He is still
the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who
created the heavens and the earth. He is the King of Kings and He
is the Lord of Lords. Therefore, you need to take your
walk with the Lord seriously. We need to take this church collectively. We represent, you know, I love
you. Okay? But we represent Jesus. By calling ourselves Christians
and identifying with a Christian church, we are telling the world
that we represent Jesus to the world. So if we're going to do
all kinds of sinful garbage stuff, okay, the church has to judge that.
And so Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5, we judge the immoral brother.
But Paul tells the Corinthians too, now when I told you not
to fellowship with immoral people, he said, I wasn't talking about
the unsaved people, because you've got to go into the marketplace,
you've got to do your business. So, Paul's basically saying,
you judge the immoral brother, but you don't judge the unsaved.
The unsaved, I mean, if a guy's not doing drugs, it's going to
be alcohol. If it's not alcohol, it's going
to be sexual immorality. But if Jesus isn't your Lord,
some sin's going to be your Lord. But you do have to judge the
sinning believer, the immoral brother. The Bible tells us to
judge sin itself. Okay? So, whereas I should not
spend a whole lot of time screaming at a homosexual and judging his
actions as sin, if he asked me, well, I suppose you think homosexuality
is a sin. I'd say, yes sir, I do. The Bible
calls it a sin, and God's not in the business of revising his
word. He doesn't change his mind, so it's a sin, yeah. But that
doesn't mean, it's my goal, you give me 20 minutes to spend with
a homosexual, I'm not going to talk to him about homosexuality.
I'm going to talk to him about Jesus. Now, if he's my relative,
and I also care about his physical health, we might have discussions
like that. But the Bible does not call us
to stand in judgment on the world's sins. on the sins of unbelievers. When we do, guess what happens?
People think that we're preaching salvation by works and they think
that we're preaching that we're better than them. Okay? So, we've got to condemn sin
itself At the same time, we don't judge the unsaved. They're already
condemned, so we don't need to condemn them. We've got to give
them the good news of salvation through Jesus. And when you share
the gospel message with people, please, you're going to have
to let them know that they're sinners. So please let them know
that you also are a sinner who deserves hell. Okay? Nobody physically sitting in
this room right now or physically standing in this room right now
that deserves to go to heaven. Okay? Even after being saved. I've been saved for 35 years
and I still deserve the flames of hell. But I'm saved by God's
grace. Okay? And to prepare me for heaven,
God's gonna eventually remove all the sin from me. All the
sinfulness. That's glorification when I receive
my resurrection body. But the fact of the matter, when
we preach the gospel message, we gotta let people know, hey,
we're in the same boat without Jesus. We're all sinners. We're all fallen. Okay? And if
you get in the habit of judging non-believers' sins, what will
happen is you'll be witnessing to alcoholics and you'll spend
all your time and all your energy trying to get them to stop drinking.
And then guess what happens if you succeed? The guy goes to
hell sober. Okay? we need to lead people
to Jesus' salvation and then, as a brother in Christ, you,
the church, and the Holy Spirit can triple team this guy. By
the way, I'm a former Roman Catholic and I catch flack when I speak
at conferences when I'm asked to speak on the subject of Roman
Catholicism because I'm told I'm too soft on Roman Catholics.
because there's an awful lot of Protestants that when they
preach the gospel to anybody on earth, except Roman Catholics,
they preach the good news of salvation through Jesus. Then
when they preach to Catholics, what do they do? The Pope's not
infallible. Stop praying to Mary. Stop praying
to the saints. This and that. And you never
do tell, you say, I shared my faith with a Roman Catholic friend
the other day. No you didn't. You just slammed
him for all the stuff we disagree with them on, and you never preach
it. I go to a Catholic missilette when I witness the Roman Catholics,
because the gospel message is in there. Now there's a lot of
other stuff I don't like, and I don't think it's biblical,
but the gospel message is there. So I figure, rather than hammering
him on areas we disagree, lead him to Christ's salvation. This
is Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Have mercy
on us. Lord I'm not worthy to receive
you, only say the word and I shall be healed. Lead the guy to Christ
and then it's you and the Holy Spirit can work on those areas
and see if we can get this guy to a more biblical view of Christianity. So we've got to understand God
tells us judge the immoral brother and judge sin itself. What the
Bible tells us, when the Bible tells us to not judge, don't
judge hypocritically. Matthew 7 says if you want to
avoid judgment stop passing judgment. So everybody thinks oh see Christians
are never supposed to judge No, that passage is actually a command
to judge But what it says is if you got filled if you're filthy
if You got issues. You got no business judging another
now if you take the log out of your eye and then you can help
the brother take the splinter out of his eye. So, it's actually
a command to judge Christian brothers if you allow the Holy
Spirit to clean up your life first. So, you got a brother
who smokes pot. You want to stop this brother,
help this brother stop smoking pot. Well, if it's a Christian
brother, it's the right thing to say, confront him and say,
Smoking pot is a sin. You need to stop. You represent
Jesus. When you trusted in Jesus for
salvation, you claimed you were living for Him, not for yourself. That's fine. But if you're snorting
cocaine, God's not calling you to confront
your Christian brethren. Okay? Let me tell you, If you're trying to help somebody
and you're a hypocrite, please don't try to help them.
Okay? You're just making our job tougher.
Okay? And so you got to make sure,
now, if you quit the cocaine and you go a couple years of
being clean, then you can help your brothers and sisters in
the Lord who have problems with marijuana. But you got to take
the log out of your eye first before you can help a brother
take the speck out of his eye. So when not to judge, you don't
judge hypocritically. You don't judge the unsaved.
In other words, you don't zero in on their sins. You're doing
this wrong, you're doing that wrong. What you do is you just
say, hey look, in general, like with Ray Comfort, what he does
is he takes the whole ten commandments. Okay? That's fine. Just saying,
look, God, there's a moral God. He's given us commands and you've
broken them just like I've broken them. Okay? But that doesn't mean you just,
you know, In America, the church, we've gotten so... our political
voice is so much louder than our gospel voice, that right
now the world defines evangelical Christianity in America by what
we're opposed to, not by the one we worship. Okay? And by
the way, the only ones who are going to stand up for God's righteousness
is going to be the church. So we've got to stand up for
that righteousness. At the same time, it's got to be a one-two
punch. It's got to come with the gospel message. We can't
water down what is wrong. We've got to judge sin itself.
but it's not our job to slam the unsaved guy for his sins. It's our job to give him the
gospel message. Paul also says not to judge motives. Keep in mind here, the Corinthians
were judging Paul's motives. What was Paul doing? Paul was
going around the ancient Roman Empire preaching the gospel He
was discipling people. He was getting beat up. He was
getting shipwrecked. And they had the audacity to
question his motives. Okay? So, if I'm not getting
enough sleep, Because I'm trying to teach the Bible here at Crosspoint. I'm trying to pastor Trinity
Bible Fellowship. And then I'm doing speaking engagements
on the side. Maybe sometimes I overdo it.
Maybe my wife and others have to gently encourage me to pull
back a little bit. Okay? But don't question my motives. Don't say, oh, this guy preaches
the gospel almost all the time. Oh, yeah, well he's just in it
for the glory. or he's just in it for the money.
By the way, if a guy's preaching the gospel and that's his only
job and he's got like a three million dollar home, nothing
wrong with it, if he was in real estate and he got that three
million dollar home and then became a pastor. But I mean,
if he's got a three million dollar home, he's got a private jet,
a helicopter, but even there you're not really
questioning the motives, you're just saying, hey, what you're
doing is wrong. You're not supposed to turn, like 1 Corinthians 6
says, the preaching of the gospel into a means to get rich. So whatever the case, you don't
judge a person's motives. If somebody's doing the right
thing, okay, don't judge their motives. Just praise God. And
there's this kind of this spirit of competition in the church.
where sometimes when one pastor's doing better than another pastor,
and usually better is defined by the American dream, often
one pastor will be upset, like we're in competition with each
other. No, we're all, to build the kingdom of God, we're all
on the same side, we're all serving the Lord. John the Baptist, when
people started leaving his ministry and following Jesus, The Jewish
religious leaders tried to get him mad about that. Instead he
said, he must increase but I must decrease. If I'm doing a good
job, every once in a while we'll get guys and gals that will leave
our church and feel led to lead in some kind of ministry. like
Gary Tronson, struggling Bibles into other countries. Wayne Struker,
chaplaincy, the hospital chaplaincy. And so we've had people who have
left the ministries and stuff like that. We're not supposed
to be upset with that. We're supposed to praise God
that we were able to disciple them and equip them for leadership. And so when to not judge, you
don't judge hypocritically. You don't judge the unsaved you
don't judge an obedient Christians motives, and you don't judge
the weaker brother So the I anybody who just says what? supposed
to judge all that person is showing you is that either they don't
read the Bible or or they're not diligent. They read it, but
they're not diligent in their study of the Bible. The biblical
teaching on judging is much more complex than many people would
have us believe. But one of the people you don't
judge is the weaker brother. We must accept the weaker brother
who doesn't fully understand his freedom in Christ and still
lives like he's under the law. The stronger brother understands
his freedom in Christ knows he may eat all things, okay, but
the weaker brother, in this context, thinks he can only eat vegetables.
It's even stricter than the Old Testament law. Places unnecessary
restrictions on himself. Now, by the way, there's nothing
wrong with being a vegetarian. Okay? I wouldn't get in a fight with
a meat eater if I was a vegetarian, but nothing wrong with being
a vegetarian. There's some vegetarians that
just don't like eating meat. Okay? Let me tell you, I don't
like eating vegetables. Alright? So, we can peacefully
coexist. You know, I used to tell people
that the longest I've known a man to live without eating vegetables
is 56 years, and on my next birthday it'll be 57 years. But whatever
the case, There's nothing wrong with somebody
saying, I'm just gonna, I like this diet rather than another
diet. We got a guy who teaches here
who's like pretty much a carnivore. It's a high fat diet, but believe
this guy's transformed Kenny Atkins. He's transformed, he
speaks around the nation on it. And, you know, but he's not saying
if you eat carbs, you're displeasing God. I mean, Jesus called himself
the bread of life. And so, keep in mind, this is
not about a person's choice of what they want to eat. This is
a person saying, I won't eat these foods because it will make
me spiritually unclean. Okay? And Paul says, if the weaker
brother's doing that, just love him where he's at. He's wrong,
but just love him where he's at. It's the master's job to
judge, okay? So who are we to judge and reject
him? The Sabbath question, setting
apart Saturday for the Lord, the weaker brother lives like
he's under the Lord. Let me tell you, we Christians,
if we turn Sunday into the new Sabbath, we're weaker brothers
ourselves. If we say, oh, you have to go
to church on Christmas, or you have to go to church on Easter,
we're weaker brothers ourselves. Okay? Now, God's Word makes it
clear, if you're a true believer, you should regularly fellowship
with other believers and place yourself where you receive the
instruction in the Word, where you worship God, where you pray,
where you're accountable, Okay, where you celebrate the the church
ordinances of water baptism and the Lord's Supper? But If we
say well Sunday is the day you have to do that we got to remind
ourselves nowhere does the Bible say that but the Bible does say
that Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday
and most, if not all, of his post-resurrection appearances
were on Sundays. So the early church started calling
Sunday the Lord's Day. Okay? And the Christians started gathering
on the Lord's Day. Now, if you're a Jewish, you
also went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day to witness to
your fellow Jews, to try to lead them to Christ. But we have to
understand What we do, whether we go to church on Christmas
and Easter and on Sundays, we do so freely. We choose to do
so. We do so because we want to. We don't do it out of some sense
of duty. Oh, I have to go to church today,
so I'm going to go to church today. You should do it because
you love Jesus and because you want to, not because you feel
that you have to. Okay? Another thing, if somebody
decides, you know what, I'm going to take one day a week off Because
it's a good idea. Well, guess what? That was a
really good idea when God came up with it and said, hey, take
one day a week off. Some of us probably, just for
our health, need to take a little bit of a Sabbath rest there.
And at the same time, when we say you're required to do these
things, we run into trouble. So in reality, Jesus fulfilled
the Sabbath day. Jesus is our Sabbath rest. So now we rest from trying to
save ourselves by works. Jesus is our Sabbath rest, but
we voluntarily choose to worship on Sunday because Jesus rose
from the dead on a Sunday. So rather than celebrate creation,
we celebrate God's recreation work, his resurrection work,
rather than creation, his regeneration work, the work of the new birth. Having said that, suppose my
day job forced me to work on Sundays. And we had to, for our
church, we had to worship on Tuesdays. I don't think God would
look down on us and say, I don't accept their worship, they worship
on Tuesdays. Okay? Some churches will have multiple
services and some will be Saturday night services. Nothing wrong
with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. But I think it's
a good idea to voluntarily gather and fellowship on Sunday in celebration
of Jesus' resurrection. You know, we think, you know,
you've got to celebrate Jesus' resurrection once a year. Well,
why not celebrate it once a week? Better yet, why not be the strong
brother who lives every day for the Lord? Okay? See, the weaker brother thinks,
well, if I take these set days and out of duty, I'll please
the Lord. And the Lord's like, look, every
morning you wake up is my day. And so we need to
live for the Lord 365 days a week. But we can take our own Christian
traditions and turn into weaker brothers real quick. We can say,
you know what? We're going to go to church on
Sunday. because that's what you gotta do, that's your duty and
then I'm gonna have a foul mouth and tell dirty jokes from Monday
through Saturday and then it's like, man, that's a combining
of the weaker brother and the immoral brother. But the mature
Christian, the stronger brother, lives every day for the Lord
and does not look down on those who are weak, assembles regularly
with believers, But see you got to be fully convinced in your
own mind Paul says don't go against your conscience You realize that
the weaker brother really believes eating pork is evil if he really
believes eating pork is a sin If you pressure him and force
him to eat pork You're pressuring him to go against his conscience,
and it's actually a sin for him Okay If you think something is wrong
and it's not wrong and then you think well I know it's wrong
but I'm going to do it anyway even if it really isn't wrong
now it's become wrong. You've sinned against your conscience
and we cannot be that kind of a stumbling block to the weaker
brother. Look at verses 7 to 12 Paul talks
about the fact that we live for the Lord and will be judged by
the Lord. For none of us lives to himself,
and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the
Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether
we live or die, we are the Lord's. We belong to Jesus. For to this
end, Christ died and rose and lived again, that he might be
the Lord of both the dead and the living. Jesus experienced
death, and he rose from the dead and experiences living, so he's
the Lord of both the living and the dead. But why do you judge
your brother? Or why do you show contempt for
your brother? For we shall all stand before
the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, as I live,
says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue confess
to God. So then each of us shall give
account of himself to God. Look at verse 13, too. Therefore
let us not judge one another any more, but rather resolve
this not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's
way. And so Paul is basically saying,
look, we live for the Lord. We're going to be judged by the
Lord. The weaker brother, you might think, well, I'm going
to stand in judgment. Well, look, you're not his Lord. Just love
him where he's at. Don't place a stumbling block
before him. Believers, both the weaker brother
and the stronger brother, our works will be judged at the judgment
seat of Christ. This is not to determine salvation. Salvation has been determined
when you trusted in Jesus alone for salvation. your sins were
atoned for, your sins were covered through the death and resurrection
of the Lord Jesus. But this is to determine rewards.
A lot of people, a lot of Christians don't understand that in heaven
there will be different degrees of rewards. Everybody who goes
to heaven receives eternal joy, eternal life, but there's going
to be a different degree of rewards just as in hell, Jesus teaches,
there's different degrees of punishment. So Satan and his
demons are not going to rule in hell, they're going to have
the lowest places in hell. But we are going to be at the
judgment seat of Christ, not the great white throne judgment,
That's where those whose names are not in the Lamb's Book of
Life, Revelation chapter 20 verses 11 to 15, that's where they'll
be condemned forever and ever, because they choose to stand
in the judgment day apart from Jesus. We believers have trusted in
Jesus, so our judgment is just going to be, you know, did the
work we did in God's kingdom Was it wood, hay, and stubble?
It'll be tested by fire. If it burns up, we'll still be
saved, but we don't have reward. But if it's gold, and silver,
and precious stones, if it stands the test of fire... So, you know,
I know that at the judgment seat of Christ, there's going to be
a huge mound. I know, because I don't get much
sleep. There's going to be a huge mound, okay? Now, how much of
it is going to be passed through the fire, you know? You know,
it probably might take a few U-Hauls or a few dump trucks
to pile this stuff up. It's going to be huge. It's going
to be, you know, a sight to see. But for all I know, okay, the
Lord judges the hearts. Has God called me to do all that?
For all I know, I'll be able to just put the worst that passed
through the fire in a backpack. And then all of a sudden you
can leave the U-Hauls behind now. They're not needed. Well, I don't know. I take the
mentality, if I'm not sure, better safe than sorry. But wouldn't
it be nice if I had good discernment to know when is God calling me? to serve him and when is he saying
no, just stay home and pray. But whatever the case and the
judgment seat of Christ, so what Paul is saying is look, you don't
have to be, God doesn't give us the gift of judging. God doesn't
give us the gift of criticism. So Paul is saying just leave,
you know, by the way, if anybody could be an expert on criticizing
and dotting every i and crossing everything, it would be Paul.
He knew this stuff better than anybody. And Paul's saying, look,
go light on the weaker brother. If he believes he's saved solely
through trusting in Jesus, by God's grace, apart from the law,
he's one of us. Now if he still doesn't, if he
doesn't recognize his freedom in Christ, don't worry about
him. We got the immoral brother over
here. We gotta deal with them. Just go light on these other
guys. Love them where they're at. And whatever you do, don't
show up at his house with a bag of hot dogs. Okay? Don't... You know, the thing
is, too... I'm one of those Christians who
believes it's not a sin to drink. Okay? It seems to me that Jesus
really drank wine. okay, when he went to wedding
feast and all, and really drank wine with the disciples and all.
Now, one thing you got to understand though, is that in the Jewish
Talmud, which goes back to oral tradition that dates around the
time of Christ, they define, the Jews define wine as one part
wine and three parts water. So, for all practical purposes,
I mean the water was from polluted, broken cisterns. If you drank
straight water, you'd probably die. Which is probably why Paul
tells Timothy, have a little bit of wine with your water.
Because of your stomach ailments. So the acid of the wine and the
alcohol probably killed some of the germs, gave it a little
bit of flavor. But if you're drinking wine and
you get drunk, you're either really dumb or you had to do
it on purpose. Because you'd have to drink four times as much
wine as it would take to get drunk right now. The Jews considered
strong drink one part wine and one part water. And then if you
drank straight wine, the Jews called you a barbarian. But at the same time, so let's
say that Let's say I have no taste for
alcohol, by the way. I used to drink as a non-believer
for purposes of getting drunk. That's how stupid I was. But as a believer, I don't desire
alcohol, so I don't drink it at all. But if I did, if I thought,
you know what, I'd like to have one little glass of wine a night,
I would have to take several precautions. One would be, well
you better make sure if somebody calls and they need a ride late
at night, you better tell them, you know, we got to get a designated
driver, I can't do it. Because believe me, you get impaired
a lot sooner than you think. But number two, and I think even
more importantly, as a preacher of the gospel, if I was going
to drink alcohol, I would not want to do it in public because
of the weaker brother. Okay? And now let me tell you, you'll never see a picture of
me on Facebook holding a bottle of beer like this. And it could
be, you know, it could be I have an eye infection, so I'm not
drunk, but I'm just having one beer. But I will not, you know,
number one, I don't even drink beer. But if I did, I'm not going
to post that. It might send the wrong message,
okay? At the same time, If I'm witnessing
to a guy at Red Robin, and I wouldn't even sit in the bar area, you
know. Although, you gotta go to the bar area if you order
something to go. So, you could see a picture someday
on Facebook. Somebody could snap a picture
of me at the bar at Red Robin because I'm waiting for my to-go
meal, okay? But if I'm sitting in Red Robin
and the guy I'm witnessing to orders a beer, I don't think
it's my job to say, I don't drink beer so you can't drink beer.
So in other words, if you ever see a picture on Facebook of
me witnessing to a guy, and he's got a beer, and you want to slam
me for that? Go ahead. I mean, you could slam
Jesus for that every single day. Jesus had a reputation, not of
sinning, but of hanging out with sinners. I think one of our problems
is we smell too good. I don't want to hang out with
stinky people. I'm a righteous guy. I'm only
going to hang out with the people who morally smell good. Well,
you know what? I think there ought to be some
time where people think, man, you stink. Have you been hanging
out with stinky people? There ought to be some times
when you show up to church smelling like smoke. Not because you smoke.
Because the people you witness to smoke. You know, I can remember riding
the city buses. When I went to Essex Catholic
High School in Newark, I had to drive the 29, the city bus. Rarely a day went by when somebody, you know, when it wasn't somebody
sitting down next to me who really, really stunk. Usually body odor,
okay? Sometimes alcohol. Now granted, I want to commend
the Christian Church for hygiene. We're doing a great job on hygiene.
Carl, stop pointing back there. But I want to commend the church
for hygiene, okay? At the same time, do we just
decide not to witness to people who smell? You know, Jonah got slammed for
selective evangelism. He only wanted to witness to
Jews and Israelites. He didn't want to witness. to
the Ninevites, but we got our own selective evangelism. But whatever the case, the stronger
brother, we live for the Lord. But you don't, you want to remove
those obstacles, okay? So you don't want to lead somebody
to stumble. So now let's say you're one of
those Christians who does believe you can drink and you like to
have a drink every now and then. And your next door neighbor's
a Christian, loves the Lord, and believes it's always a sin
to drink. Don't knock on your neighbor's door with a glass
of wine in your hand then. You know, it's not our job to
cause a stumbling block to the weaker brother. The weaker brother,
the weaker sister, they love Jesus. They just don't recognize
our freedom of Christ. You know what? Just love them
where they're at. And so, you know what Paul does? He tells
the stronger brother, don't use your freedom in Christ
to cause another brother to fall. Okay? I can remember when I was
like six years old, my brother was four. He would start a fight
with me. He would hit me first. I'd hit
him back. When my dad got there, who got
whooped? I got whooped. Because I was
supposed to be more mature than him. Okay? You know, we've got to understand
that the stronger brother Yes, we recognize our freedom in Christ.
Praise God. But don't use your freedom in
Christ to cause the weaker brother to stumble. Okay? And we'll pick it up there next
week. Let's close with a word of prayer.
Father in Jesus' precious name, we love you Lord so much. And
we love not only the salvation you've given us, but the freedom.
You tell us, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and
I will give you rest. You take the burden of the technicalities
of the ceremonial law. You take the burden of these
laws off of our backs. And so I pray, Lord, we will
recognize our freedom in Christ. But I also pray, Lord, that we
would love the weaker brother. We would care for the weaker
brother more, that we would love the weaker brother more than
we love our freedom in Christ. And that we would be willing
to put our freedom on the shelf so as to not cause the weaker
brother to stumble. We just love you Lord. Help us
to know when to judge and when not to judge. Help us to not
judge the weaker brother But help us to to rightfully and
in a non-hypocritical way to judge the immoral brother To
not judge people's motives Just cause us Lord to think your thoughts
after you to see people through Jesus's eyes and To love others,
especially the weaker brother with the love of Jesus and Jesus
precious name we pray Amen
Romans part 26
Series Romans Sermon Series 2016
| Sermon ID | 10301621225410 |
| Duration | 57:35 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Romans 14:1-13 |
| Language | English |
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