How many of you have taken a trip where you needed a lot of traveling to get to the destination? Maybe it was in the car or in a plane. And you set out on the trip and you're all together as a family. You're excited. You're going to Florida or wherever you're going. But 20 hours later, together, cooped up in the car, Are you as united as when you began? It takes great work. to keep the peace in the car for 20 hours. Trust me, our home state is Washington, and it takes a long time to drive there. Last, in November, Kristen and I drove there, and it's a 43-hour drive. And thankfully, we began the trip united, and we ended it united by the grace of God. But if you would have thrown in children, It would have been even more work to keep us united together, to keep the peace as we travel to our destination. And the Scriptures have a great deal to say about unity and brotherly love. In fact, Jesus, in His high priestly prayer, He prays for a lot of different things. He prays for joy, in verse 13. He prays for holiness, in verse 17. He prays for the truth. He prays for the mission of His church. But He prays most of all for unity for His people. Hear these words from Jesus in John 17, verse 20 to 23. He says, I do not ask for these things only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may be all one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. the glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me that's the longest petition in Jesus's high priestly prayer for unity For the people of God to be one as the Father and the Son are one. Advent is a time of waiting. It's a time between when Christ came in His infant birth, and when He returns again in great glory, waiting for the peace that Christ promises will one day come. A peace like we read about in Isaiah 11 earlier, as we lit the Advent candle, where the creation is no longer seeking to kill us, where the wolf flies down with the lamb. That kind of peace. We're waiting for that. But the trouble with waiting is that people get impatient, and they often try to take things into their own hands. They try to make peace in ways that are different from what we would find in Scripture. We think we can make peace all on our own apart from Christ, and the results are always disastrous. This morning we're going to look at Romans chapter 15, the first 13 verses. But before I do, let me summarize where we are in this letter. The first 11 chapters of Romans are a dense theological treatise. He is unpacking the gospel in very profound depth. And he turns in chapter 12 to move from the indicatives of the gospel to the imperatives. How that should impact the lives of the people of God. That gospel that he's just proclaimed, how should it affect us in our lived experience of the gospel within the body of Christ, the church. As we noted last week, chapter 13 deals with our submission to authorities and then towards our neighbor with the command that we are, in verse 8 of chapter 13, to owe no one anything except to love each other. Chapter 14 deals with the thorny problem of how to get along in community when there are disagreements about matters indifferent. Things adiaphora, things that do not relate or do not have any bearing on the gospel itself. Things like food, which day of the week is sacred. The problem facing the Roman church was overgeneralized by Paul, reduced to things like somebody fearful about eating meat, only eating vegetables, and one hollowing every day as holy, and one only certain special days. The problem is they, in the Roman Church, were judging each other based on these subtle distinctions. The stronger brother judged the weaker, and the weaker judged the stronger. The stronger looked down on the weak faith of the other, and the weaker brother judged the one who seemed to be licentious. Both were in serious error because both had allowed matters that are indifferent to determine their behavior towards one another. It was true that no food is unclean. That is true. But eating it in front of someone who thought that it was could actually be sin, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10. Our text this morning may be seen as a summary of that exhortation. of chapter 14. He's summarizing chapter 14 and chapter 15. So if you have a Bible you can turn with me to Romans 15 verses 1 through 13. We're going to consider that since peace is wrought by the Spirit through faith, we need to pray for endurance and encouragement that comes from the God of hope so that in unity we may glorify Him. Let me remind you that these are the words of God. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproach you fell on me. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written. Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again, it is said, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him. And again, Isaiah says, The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles. In him will the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Oh, indeed, Father, grant us that joy and peace by faith through the Spirit who works in us that unity through which with one voice we may glorify God. Father, teach us to see the example of Christ and so live into that example by loving one another as Christ has loved us. We pray this in his name, and amen. Our text is punctuated by two prayers, both for very similar things. One in verses 5 and 6 and the other in verse 13. The prayer is for harmony and to be filled with joy and peace. Both are very similar ideas. All of these things come by faith through the powerful working of the Spirit. So as we consider the theme of peace and the need for unity, we'll look first at the obligation of the strong to be at peace. Then we'll look at the example of Jesus before we conclude with just how this unity is accomplished by the Spirit working through faith. First, the obligation to be at peace. In the first seven verses, Paul unpacks this obligation, beginning with, we who are strong. Paul is including himself. He says, we. He's including himself among those who are strong. The strong are those who have mature faith. If we looked back at verse 1 of chapter 14, we would see, as for the one who is weak in the faith, welcome him, not to quarrel over opinions. The weakness and the strongness has to do with their faith. Faith ebbs and flows. Its strength is dependent upon the object of our faith, which is Christ, and our trust in Him, which is always assailed by the troubles of this world and our own temptations. The strong are those who have mature faith. Faith that not only understands the gospel, but understands the implications of it, how it's worked out in the life of the church. And that way their conscience is not bothered in matters indifferent. The weaker brother, he understands the gospel, but he's not yet worked out the gospel implications in the life of faith. And their conscience is bothered by things that seem connected to their previous life outside of Christ. The weak are those who are overly scrupulous over matters where Scripture gives liberty or no prescription at all. Paul in Romans is intentionally general in his examples so that he can fit well any situation the church is facing. This is a different situation than we read of in 1 Corinthians 9 through 11, that Those issues that Paul is dealing with in 1 Corinthians 8-10, those issues that Paul is dealing with there are specific to the Gentile believers who are eating meat sacrificed to idols and causing their brother to stumble, who still believes that meat sacrificed to idols was sacrificed to something that was real, a real idol. And therefore, it's causing a stumbling block to the people of God. But here in Romans, it's much different. It's very general. Vegetables. Somebody who only eats vegetables and somebody who eats meat. This problem is very general and probably not specific to the debate between Jew and Gentile. In fact, Romans is probably a Gentile predominant church. There are probably not being very many Jewish believers there. Paul is not addressing the problem of Gentiles being a stumbling block to those Jews because the Jews have very strict dietary laws. But instead, he's speaking generally so that when we read it today, 2,000 years later, it's as applicable to us. Because there are many things, many matters of indifference where the Scripture has not spoken that God gives liberty that can be stumbling blocks to people. Things like economics and politics. Politics especially today is divisive, right? Our view of Christian nationalism is dividing the church. These things God has not given a, thus saith the Lord, this is how you should rule. This is how government should operate. He has not told us those things. He's given us wisdom and Christian prudence and the light of nature. And through those things, we ought to be able to order our civil life together. But there's going to be disagreements. Should they divide the people of God? Should they tear us apart? Should they separate us? Not just politics, but education, family planning. How many kids should you have? Ecology, how should we treat creation? Clothing, what kind of clothes should you wear? How long should the skirt be? Entertainment. Should you have Netflix? Probably not. In these issues God gives us great liberty. We need wisdom to know how to make choices and when we make choices sometimes we are overly dogmatic and we try to impose that on other people and it creates division. Division within the church. These matters are not specified in great detail and so we should be cautious about being overly dogmatic about them. If you were to turn back to Romans 14.1, as I just read, you would learn that the weak person is weak in the faith. And the cause of the disagreement is not as important as that fact. The fact that the weaker brother is weak in his trust of Christ, and his understanding of what Christ has done for him, and how that works itself out in his life. So what are we, sadly, those who often think that they are strong are in fact weak, and the weak are rarely recognized that they are weak. I think Paul is a realist, and he assumes that everyone reading will presume that they are strong in the faith. Do you not come to this text and read and think I must be one of the strong ones? We all do this, right? It's natural to us and I think Paul anticipates that. He understands that. So my charge to you this morning is that each of you is to hear this message as if you are strong in the faith and therefore hear his admonition. Now, the language here in verse 1 of 15, he says, we who are strong have an obligation. And that word obligation is the same word that I read earlier in chapter 13, verse 8, where it says, owe no one anything. That is the same word for obligation. What's your obligation? Paul says, don't be obliged to anyone, except, as we continue to read, to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law." So Paul carries that same idea. The strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak. They owe it to them. This is a debt. This language is serious. It's not something that you can easily just lay aside. It's an obligation. You are obliged to treat others this way. To bear with is a strong moral obligation and it does not mean tolerate or put up with. Oh, you know Sally. That's not bearing with someone. that may be tolerating by avoiding, bearing with rather the strong are to take on themselves the burden of the weaker brother and their scruples, all of them. That's your burden to carry, their conscious. That is plagued by problems that they're trying to work out as they begin to understand the gospel. That's your burden to bear. Not to look down on them, not to judge them for having those scruples. but to enter into them with them so that you can lead them out of them, so that they begin to understand the implications of the gospel. And this, Paul says, we are to do first negatively and then positively. Negatively, he says, by not pleasing ourselves. That's easier said than done. As I said earlier, as we confess our sin, that's just natural. Our natural tendency is to please ourselves. We go through life with that as the basic operating instructions that we go through. Everything that we, everything we look at and filter through, it's always with the eye towards pleasing myself. And we have to intentionally shape our direction in a better way by learning positively to please your neighbor for his good, to build him up. So negatively, we need to turn away, just as we looked at last week, cast off the works of darkness and put on Christ. Negatively, don't please yourself. Positively, learn to please others for their good, to build them up. Now pleasing Hear me, pleasing does not mean adopt the scruples of the weak. That's not what Paul is saying. Paul is not saying the things that bother their conscience should bother yours too. Maybe they don't and your conscience is at liberty. It's been freed by Christ. But it means to be considerate. It means to not use your freedom to destroy a brother. As Paul said previously in verse 20, do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. If you know that something is a scruple for your brother, and then you intentionally make light of it, and maybe do that very thing in their presence, what does that do for their faith? Does that strengthen them? Does it build them up? Does it create good for them? Does it help them overcome and see the truth of the gospel, how God has set them free? No, it further reinforces their bondage. It keeps them racked with that self-doubt as they wrestle with their scruples. The key is our actions must start not with yourself, but with others. It has to always start out there, them. Don't please yourself. And of course, there's boundaries to this. Paul gives us boundaries by saying, for his good, to build him up. You can imagine doing things for someone that might please them, but are not for their good. Parents nowadays face this a lot with their children who, sadly, because of our culture, think that because of their personality, maybe they are are homosexual, and they want to come out to their parents, and their parents feel like, I need to please them, I need to affirm their situation, their lived experience. But that's not pleasing them for their good, to build them up. Paul provides boundaries for our pleasing them. We can all imagine ways that we can do things that might please somebody, but would actually just lead them further into sin. This is like giving candy to a child before dinner, right? If you do that, don't expect them to want to eat their food. Now the word that Paul uses, he says in verse 5, May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another. Harmony literally means think the same thing or have the same mind. Again, this does not mean that you agree with them on their scruples. And the key there is in accord with Christ Jesus. Paul tells us this in the section of Philippians that I didn't read this morning. In verse 5 he says, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross." You see, the harmony Paul wants the church to aim at is one that is in accord with Christ Jesus. To have the same mind means to have the same mind in Christ. It doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with them on the things that bother their conscience. Especially if you know that Scripture does not bind us in one particular direction or another. As Paul uses the example of meat and vegetables. There's nothing in Scripture that prohibits us eating meat. Thanks be to God. But that doesn't necessarily mean that somebody who might have scruples about eating meat doesn't have real concerns that need to be overcome. So our having the same mind as them doesn't mean that we all become vegetarians. It means that we Help them to understand how the gospel has freed them from those things that previously bound their consciences. And walk with them as they begin to learn that. We don't want to be tyrannized by the weaker brother. There are churches that develop who are made up of all weaker brothers. There's no diversity in them. They have gathered around together around their scruples. We are a confessional reform Presbyterian homeschool church. Only those who homeschool can come here, right? That's a weaker brother church, right, that's not recognized, that God has not specifically said only homeschooling is that which is faithful for parents. No, that's not the case. And you can think of many other issues. Previous generations, it was don't drink or smoke or chew or go with girls who do, right? All those things were the things that separated, that were the boundary markers that kept you from those liberal Christians out there. You were labeled a fundamentalist. And, of course, there are dangers to worldliness. We don't want to make light of that when we maybe pendulum swing in the other direction. Our culture now has no boundaries. The church now, the evangelical church especially, is almost identical with the world. And so we want to be cautious, of course, but we need to be careful that our churches don't develop into weaker brother churches. God has created a diversity of people and there are many applications to the various things, especially some of the ones I listed, like politics and family life. that God has given us liberty and wisdom for how to apply the truths of God's Word to our particular situations, to our families, how God has made them and wired them, what they need. and how we can glorify God through the nurture of our children. All of us should take seriously that, but none of us should look down on others who make different decisions than we do. That is the attitude of the weaker brother. Now, to be in harmony, in accords with Christ, I take that in two ways. First, it's consistent with what Christ taught. Something is in accords with Christ if it lines up with the teachings of Christ. But secondly, also by following his example. What Jesus taught, he embodied in his life on the earth. How he ministered to the people of God. How he treated others. How he treated himself, the one who was rich, who had everything. who was the Lord and Creator of all, who by His Word sustains the world, and yet did not count or grasp after that equality with God, but emptied Himself and took the form of a servant, so that He could love you, so that He could not please Himself, but please the people of God. That provides us with the guardrails. We need to be cautious because the world is desperately searching for unity. Just look at Reddit. If you've ever gone on Reddit, there's a group for literally everything. Anything you can think of, there's a group of people who will gather together, who will be united about that cause, and they're passionate about it. They love whatever cause, and there's nothing wrong with those kinds of groups. The problem is that Anytime we try to forge a unity together that's not founded in accords with Christ, we're going to be divisive to something else. We certainly want to be divisive to the world, but we don't want to be divisive towards one another. And it's easy to imagine uniting around the wrong kinds of things. Whole churches develop this, and it's very dangerous. Now, what are the dangers when the strong don't fulfill their obligation to be at peace? They damage weak faith. Matthew, in Matthew 18, Jesus says, let me find that, Jesus says a very, very stern warning to the strong brother. He says this in verse 5, Whoever receives one such child, and by child he doesn't necessarily just mean an infant or a little kid, but he means somebody weak in faith. Hear him say child, hear weak in faith. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." Jesus doesn't have any patience for strong brothers who refuse to fulfill their obligation. He says, just get it over with. Just get it over with. Just get the millstone and throw your... Just be done. Instead of lead weak people away from me. Don't mess with children. Don't mess with those who are weak in faith because they're close to the heart of Jesus. And you who are strong have an obligation to bear with them and their failings. To bring them up and along. To encourage them and build them up. Secondly, the dangers of when the strong don't fulfill their obligation to be at peace is it distracts from the mission of the church. Notice in verse 7, as the church is with one voice, is to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our witness is hampered when we are seen disagreeing about matters that are indifferent. The world looks at that and they think, you guys are ridiculous. We spend so much energy fighting one another that we forget to keep the main thing, the main thing. It's easy to start a Twitter battle over Christian nationalism. That is super easy. It's really difficult to love your wife and your kids, to love people here who are hard to love. I'm hard to love. You're hard to love because we're all sinners. It's very easy to rally together around our hobby horses. But it's difficult for us to not please ourselves, but to please each other for their good, for building up in the faith. As I close, I want to draw our attention to the prayer at the very end. There is much in this text that I will not get to, but as I bring this to a close, I want to focus on Paul's two prayers and how similar they are. Just let me read them back-to-back. He says in verse five and six, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Now I want you to notice just a couple of key ingredients to this prayer as I close. First, it's directed to God, who is the source of endurance and encouragement and hope. He's the one that those things come from. He's the God of endurance, the God of encouragement, the God of hope. He is the source, and He is the one we are directing our prayers to. Now, the petitions are almost the same, to live in harmony with one another and to be filled with all joy and peace. Those are very similar. To be filled with joy and peace is to be living in harmony with one another. And the result of God's answering shouts of prayer is that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and that you may abound in hope. That's the result of our prayer. That's the evidence that we're looking for. The means by which he accomplishes this prayer are faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is, by believing the Spirit works joy and peace in the hearts of His people so that they are enabled to live in harmony with one another. You can't produce this on your own. You can't produce unity through your own energy. It has to be through the energy that the Spirit works in you because of prayer, because we are going to the Lord and asking Him to unite us together, to help us as in our obligations to bear with one another. God is the source of all of it, from the start to the finish. He's the God of hope, and He's the one who produces hope. He's the God of peace, and He's the one that creates peace. God is the source. And this highlights the fact that unity comes from God and glorifies Him, and this underscores, of course, the importance of prayer. Paul prays for unity, and so should you. You should pray broadly for unity in the larger church, but also specifically that the Holy Spirit would equip you to live at peace with others. So pray for peace. And as the angel proclaimed to the shepherds that night outside of Bethlehem, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those whom he is pleased. Christ came to bring peace. And until he comes again, he calls us to be at peace. And it's easy to grow impatient while we wait. We're that family traveling together. We're all stuck in the same car. And we're going to glory. And it's a long journey. And we're smelly. and we need God's grace so we can love each other and bear with each other's failings and be at peace. So pray that the Holy Spirit would enable each of us to please his neighbor for his good, to build him up so we may be found on the day when Christ returns, a church that is at peace. Amen? Let's pray together. Oh Father, we thank you so much for the peace that you have extended us in Christ, that our sins have been forgiven and we've been reconciled to you, that we have great encouragement to live with one another in unity because Christ has set us the example, did not consider himself worthy of All that glory did not grasp after that station, but He emptied Himself and He came and He took on the form of a servant and He loved us. enough to die in our place, to reconcile us to you so we are at peace with you so that we can be enabled to be at peace with one another. Father, cause us to be peacemakers as we, the strong, are obliged to live at peace with one another. We pray for the strength that comes only from your Spirit so that we may indeed glorify God with one voice. We pray this in Jesus' name. The death of Christ reconciles you to God.