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