I'm gonna start recording. I think this is number three that we've done on this chapter so this would be plenty I think. But just to get to the end we talked about Romans 13 and I told you there's a couple other places and this is the other two places Romans 14 21 that we need to look at because what people would do and we talked about this especially during for us a practical contemporary example was COVID. We saw people say, well, yeah, we're Christians and we obey scripture, except for because of Romans 13, we've got to do what the government says. And so that's why we talked about it. No, we to some degree, but mostly we obey scripture. And so what people also say is, well, yeah, you have liberty of conscience, but Your liberty of conscience stops Romans 14, 21 with this. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. Or 1 Corinthians 8, 13. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble. Now, the, I'm trying to remember, oh, the King James, if any of you are reading the King James, it says offend, if I offend my brother. And that's where this teaching comes from, where people will say, okay, Yeah, you're free in Christ to do anything except offend your brother. So if your brother's offended by what you do, then you can't do it. And part of the problem with that is the word offend may not be the best way for us to understand that word that's used there, and that's why the ESV translates it stumble. Instead of offending your brother, you cause him to stumble. The word really means to fall away. And it's used several, about three or four other times in the New Testament. I'll give you these if you want to look at them sometime. Matthew 11, 6. Matthew 13, 21 and 57. And John 6, 61. I know what that one is. Jesus was the Bible says that many went away after his hard teaching about his body and his blood and he said will you also Go away or fall away When Peter said well, where else could we go because you have words of eternal life so the idea is to fall away so more accurately Probably at the least, we could say what Romans 14, 21 and 1 Corinthians 8, 13 is saying to us is to be cautious that our actions, our lifestyle, our words would not cause a new believer, someone that don't understand very much about the Christian faith, to maybe return to a sinful life, to stumble or fall away in such a way that they're going back into idolatry or they think that it's okay to do something that's very much against the Word of God. It'd have to be a pretty serious thing. In other words, what it's not saying is that, okay, you gotta be careful because if any Christian or believer anywhere says, hey, that offends me, you can't do that. because what that does is that throws you into a different kind of bondage. So now you've been set free from one bondage, but now you're in bondage to all believers who decide what you can do and what you can't do. And I've seen this before. I've seen people try to use that against somebody. Well, you shouldn't be doing that. Why? Well, first of all, because it offends me. And you're not supposed to offend me. As a Christian, that's offensive. And that's not what this means. And people have used that to do that. And people say, you know, I don't think you should be doing that because I've decided that's not right and it's not right for me and you shouldn't be doing it. So, I only point that out because, again, those are the two major places that people within Christianity over the years have said, you're free and you have this liberty of conscience. Romans 13 limits that. And then 1 Corinthians 8 in Romans 14 limits it. And so this statement says, you go back to God alone is Lord of the conscience. Therefore, the only thing that limits your conscience is the word of God, not people. So, and I think this is wonderful because a lot of reasons, you go back to what in the first section, all those things that we've been set free from, I mean, the gospel liberty gives us practical liberty. We've been set free from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the severity of the curse of the law. We've been delivered from this present age. We've been delivered from the bondage of Satan, the dominion of sin, all those things. So as a believer, because you've been set free from things, then there are things that you're not gonna wanna do anymore or things you wanna try to trust God to take away from you, right? So it's all we can do individually to allow God to deal with our own sin and our own shortcomings and our own flesh. We don't need the whole rest of the church helping decide what kind of flesh I need to crucify, right? Because that's annoying. And it's not helpful. And what it does is it creates all these things where all of a sudden I've decided here's what Christianity is. It looks like me. And it don't do the things I don't do and it does the things I do. And that's not, that's what we're trying to get away from. That's what this whole chapter is about. No. I mean, here's the thing. I believe the beauty of Christianity, the beauty of looking at, just look at the New Testament, all these different writers that God used to put together the scripture, now some of them did kind of the same thing, some of them were, several of them were fishermen, but some of them were physicians, some of them were kind of like lawyers or tax collectors, this just, crazy compilation of different kind of people and God used them specifically for his purpose. And that's what he's doing with us. And so I don't think, I mean, yeah, there's some things that we agree on and there's some things that we ought to all agree on. It doesn't mean we're all going to be in the same place at the same time. You know, dealing that our sin is going to go away at the same pace and we're going to be able to overcome and conquer the flesh at the same pace. And I think if we can ever grasp the real teaching of the doctrine of the Christian conscience. we really start experiencing what liberty and Christ is and freedom. And it's hard, I'm still, I mean, because I wasn't raised this, I was taught a different kind, we've talked about this a lot, this pietism, this do good and be good, and here's a list of things, you gotta do these things and don't do these things. And again, I mean, there's some things, you know, there's probably plenty of sins. I could go down, I could make a list, and we'd all say, or we all agree this is sin. There'd be lots of them. And we could look at the Bible. Do you agree that Christians shouldn't do this? We probably, a lot of things we could agree on. But we're gonna eventually get to some things where we're like, well, I don't know. Or, well, I hope nobody knows that I still struggle with that. You know, I can't get, I'm not, I mean, they've gotten rid of it, but I'm still not rid of it. Those, to me, that's the beauty of the freedom and liberty of Christ is that he's dealing with that in my life by grace. And it's a beautiful thing. And sometimes I can share that with people, sometimes I don't. But just to see God working it out in my life, not only is it freeing, but it's also assuring. You know, like, oh, there's You know, God just gives us this little bit of assurance on the way, like, man, look at what he took away from me. I didn't even know I needed that gone. Or you see some things that, you know, maybe he'll take this away. I'll need him to take this away. And even showing us stuff that we didn't realize was needed to go. You know, just the beauty of all that. is what this doctrine is about. And so no, I mean, yes, we are responsible, but you know, like I said, I've been taught, I've heard Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians taught in a very harsh way. Like, you know, you don't do this at your house and this at your house and out in public, you know, you're gonna cause somebody to stumble. Well, what it's really, when you start thinking about the term falling away, Now, again, I don't know, we could probably name some things. To you, if you saw a believer, usually we talk about preachers. If you saw a preacher doing something, X, Y, Z, and here's my thinking. If you've been born again and brought from death to life, you might be hurt and disappointed because your preacher or somebody you knew, they got caught in some kind of sin. You ain't gonna go home and quit the church and quit God and leave Christianity. You can't do that. Now, you might be hurt and disappointed, but I don't believe anybody who's been brought from death to life, born again, looks and says, man, that preacher was cheating on his wife. That's it. I don't have nothing to do with Christianity anymore. I'm going home. went all around the whole daggone world, people were cheating on their wives, and I'm not saying that's good, and it's not right, and preachers shouldn't do that. Nobody should do that, okay? But I think we've overreached that and taught people like, so people come to our church and say, well, I thought y'all were all supposed to be perfect, and I come here and you're not perfect, bunch of hypocrite. You know, how many times you heard that? I'll go to church because hypocrites. Well, yeah. I mean, we've been redeemed, but God's working the sin out of our life, and we're trying to fix it. But again, I don't want you to follow me or emulate me, I want you to see Christ and follow Him and see that's the standard. Perfect righteousness, I'm not that. So don't follow me, don't mimic me. But I mean, it should be, I wish I was like Paul, say you have me an example, follow me and it's like following Christ, but I would rather you follow Christ. And that's the problem, I think, with so many that put pastors and teachers and everything on a pedestal. And then when they do fall, they fall with them. I've seen that in the church when certain big-name pastors or whatever fall into sin, and people just lose it because it's like, man, I thought he was perfect. I thought he was great. Then they throw away all their books and everything. Yeah. Well, and if you think about the context here, people were leaving idolatry in droves. And so you read in some other places where Paul warns about be careful not eating meat, to not eat meat offered to idols. And he's like, I can eat it because I don't care. It's not going to cause me to want to go worship an idol. That's the kind of thing he's specifically talking about. You got these new believers and they're trying to see what do I not, what do I do now as a believer? will get away from idols and don't offer, don't eat meat off the idols because they ate this part of their worshiping the idol. And Paul's like, I don't care, it's a piece of meat, I can eat it. Because I have liberty in Christ, they ain't gonna offend me, that's good meat, I'm not gonna throw it away, I'll eat it. But those are the kind of things that I think, it's an individual thing, you have to consider this. You got children in your home or people around you, then you have the liberty of conscience to, try to word this thing out. What kind of things do I need my children to see that, hey, this is, I do this and it's okay, I'm a Christian. Sometimes it's a good teaching time when you do things you shouldn't do. Say, I just did something I shouldn't do. You know, that's a thing that's not Christian-like, but I did it because I'm still human fleshly. But, so I think it's important to, you know, I'm not saying, don't ignore Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. Because we should take that seriously. Don't do anything to cause your brother to stumble, but literally to fall away. I mean, again, those things we were just talking about, those are warnings that I wish people did heed. Infidelity is a serious thing, and that could cause people to fall away. But we're not subjective to everybody around us deciding how I'm supposed to live, what I'm supposed to do, what I'm not supposed to do. you know, there are things that God says don't do these things, right? Right. And then I remember when I grew up, we were like, do not mow the yard on Sundays. Right. Because you're supposed to rest, but not just that, but the neighbors might see and think you're not a believer. And you could cause them to stumble. Right. Because so you shouldn't work on Sundays. Yeah. And you know, we had the blue wall during those ancient days. You know, didn't even go to the grocery store. Yeah, nothing was open. You know, and so there was a lot of behavioral things that people in that was the unwritten rule. You don't do that if you're a believer. Yeah. But when you're talking about adultery or murder, Anything the Bible says, lying, stealing, cheating, I mean taking God's name in vain, anything, yeah. And those are things we could agree on and say we shouldn't be doing those. Right, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Now, you never attending worship, that could be something that another believer could say, hey, I mean, first you consider being with the people of God because the Bible is clear that we shouldn't forsake that. But what you do on Sunday afternoon when you're not worshiping, I think that's a liberty of conscience issue. But again, if you tell a lie in one of your, fellow brothers and sisters, hey, that was a lie. You shouldn't be lying. I mean, we're supposed to be telling the truth. That's not infringing on your liberty. That's a sin that you shouldn't be doing. But, you know, if you're, I mean, just, we can name a lot of things, you know, certain biases that people have. you know, watching certain things. I mean, there's a lot of that kind of teaching still, where, you know, don't watch, you know, Harry Potter's evil, and Lord of the Rings is evil, all that stuff, witchcraft, and you're all going to hell if you watch it. I mean, those are- You can have drums in the church. Huh? Drums in the church. Yeah, those kind of things. Those are the kind of things that we're not held captive to everybody's opinion about. I mean, those are things that we should work out in our own lives. And I think God's given us the liberty of conscience to do that. Well, I think of my going back to my childhood as a journalist witness, there being a workspace religion, you basically did have like a checklist of things you did not do. Yeah. Like we weren't allowed to watch any movie that was above PG. PG-13 came out and I was like, no, you can't watch those. You definitely couldn't watch R. You couldn't go to the movie theater, you couldn't drink alcohol, you couldn't grow facial hair. It was just list after list after list. And these days, again, if you go by what offends everybody, something's going to offend somebody, no matter what you do. Well, then you have the world who's not even Christian being offended by what we do. You know, saying, well, I thought you were a Christian. You're not supposed to be doing that. And so we're certainly not. Now, again, we could argue, but we have a responsibility to be soft and light. All those things are true. but your conscience is free. I mean, you know, the Lord will deal with those things as he needs to, I think, but. I remember studying, reading, listening to Michael Horton on this in his book and talking about the weaker brother and what we're talking about, you know, being sensitive to the weaker brother. And he comes at it from the opposite point of view, too, and says that It's not explicitly said, but there's inferences that also say that the weaker brother is also called to not stay a weaker brother, but to grow in maturity and grow in faith and grow in knowledge and grace. So it's kind of a give and take. you know, mature Christians should be sensitive to newer Christians and things, but at the same time, they're not supposed to stay there. They are supposed to grow. And it's not even wrong to, I mean, there may be some things that you do that you don't think are sinful, but you recognize a new believer might be not know what this is about. So I think I'll just refrain while they're around. And again, that's a liberty of conscience issue. That's something that you can do. That's okay. It's not you're not being a hypocrite. You're being sensitive. Like, I don't want to, you know, they're not a place to receive this yet. But like you say, you know, 10 years into this, you shouldn't still be a baby Christian. You know, and plus, I think Paul's main point, what I've always got out of Paul's main point is our love for others should outweigh our rights. Are you saying, oh, I have the right to do this because Jesus, but if somebody else does get offended, we should be able to say, well, I can do without this, you know, just for that. That's right. Can you do without it for, I mean, that's what I'm saying. You know, I heard an example of a pastor using, smoking a cigar like that. He said, you know, I like to smoke a cigar when I'm home. I didn't do it in front of these people because I didn't know if it was, you know, would these new believers find this offensive or not? I just refrained until later. And I think that's perfectly okay because you can't, it'd be hard to open the Bible and say, look here, shouldn't be smoking cigars. Now you can, people will say, yeah, but your body's a temple of God. There's plenty of things, you know, you could go through all these things. Like I shouldn't be eating chocolate and putting a bunch of stuff in my coffee. You know, I know that. So, but you know what, I think we've all been, we've all heard that kind of preaching where you're like, and sometimes, I mean, some people like that. They like to go to church and for a preacher just to jump all over all the stuff that they do and beat them down. That's the way some people live their life. They can't, you know, have to have those boundaries. Yeah. And I think that's the point here. There aren't, I mean, your boundary is Christ. Now, like you say, we are bound by the love of each other. And if I know that, if I know something is offending, truly something is offending, this could cause them, I mean falling away is pretty strong, but at least it could cause them, it could hinder them some way or cause them some kind of hurt, I should refrain from it. Because like I said, my love for them should trump my liberty to do stuff. But my liberty to do stuff comes from all the freedom and liberty I have in Christ. And so, and that brings, I think that's why it perfectly goes to section three, because now we're getting into that part. Those who use Christian liberty as an excuse to practice any sin, or nurture any sinful desire, pervert the main objective of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction. And they completely destroy the purpose of Christian liberty. The purpose is that we, having been delivered from the hands of all our enemies, may serve the Lord without fear and holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives. So we're able, we were talking about this at lunch today, we are free to be obedient knowing that God will receive our obedience and accept it because he's commanded it and he's given us the ability to keep it so we do obey and we try you know we know we're not perfect at it but I don't have to live in fear of I mean God said do this I hope I'm doing it good I hope I'm not what if I mess up you know God said share the gospel with preach to every creature but what if I don't do it well what if I didn't say all the right things I don't have to live in that kind of fear I've been set free from that because I recognize the gospel and the power of God and salvation is the gospel and it's his gospel and it's his people his kingdom I can't mess it up I have responsibility I have a stewardship with the gospel, but it's not mine. I can't mess it up. In the same way, to be a husband, to be a father, to be an elder, yeah, I should work harder at some stuff, lots of stuff. I should do better at stuff, all those things, but I have the freedom and liberty to do the things that he's called me to do without fear that he's gonna zap one of my toes off because I wasn't good enough. be running around maimed and limp and limping around. So I think that's the, on one hand, yeah, our love for people should trump our freedom. And on the far end of that, because this is kind of an antinomian side, where you go to the far side and say, you know what, man, we're free in Christ, nothing can apply to us. We're free to do whatever we want to. And apparently, especially when this was written, there was a lot of that going on that people were running. to this idea of christian liberty these antinomians and something called libertines just people that were like there's really no difference between good and evil i mean anything we do don't matter because god you know and honestly do we not hear this kind of in a different context now love is love it don't matter you know there's no boundaries to love Which is not true. Because we can just go in all kind of sick ways with that and I'm not even going to. But that is not true. God has defined love and purity and correctness. And so we can't just come up and say there's no boundaries. We're in Christ, therefore we can, nothing I do is sin anymore. And there's teachings like that. Oh, I don't sin anymore, I'm a Christian. Romans was, they said that they could, or what was it, they said, are we to continue to sin because so that grace might abound. They thought they could just do whatever they wanted to because of grace. I think a lot of people have that view today too. Oh yeah. Well this, Sam Waldron says, there's a difference between Christian liberty and the cult of liberty. Liberty is not the right to do as I please. Liberty is the right to do as God pleases without fear. And that's the point there that's made. You know. Yeah. Yeah, it's not mine, but it is good. He says there is a difference between Christian liberty and the cult of liberty. And that's what, sometimes people treat liberty like it's become a cult, you know, like, oh, I mean, we're Christians, we're not bound to anything. And you are, you're bound to the Word of God, you know. And he goes on to say, liberty is not the right to do as I please. Liberty is the right to do as God pleases without fear. Did y'all get it that time? Let me read it one more time. All right, there's a difference between Christian liberty and the cult of liberty. Liberty is not the right to do as I please. Liberty is the right to do as God pleases without fear. And not only that, but see, now you have something within you called the Holy Spirit that helps with that. So you have the desire and the ability that comes from the Holy Spirit to even do as God pleases. and you can do it without fear. It puts fear in the right spot. Yeah. You don't have to fear man. And that you're gonna fear that you... And that you have the righteous fear for God. Right. Not the fear of God. Exactly. And it gives us... I like what else he says here. This understanding of Christian liberty will prevent us from sinfully insisting on the exercise of our rights and liberties. That's kind of what we've been talking about. Yet, we may not so give up our liberty as to misrepresent the faith. So again, we don't want to look... We're not going to be a bunch of legalists and give up liberty so that we all look like we're... You can come in here and you can worship God imperfectly and not be under the fear of condemnation. Right. Amen. Yes. Thank you, Father. Galatians 2, 3 is a good verse where Paul is talking about... Well, there's one place, I think, Galatians, maybe Galatians 5, where Paul says, don't use your liberty as a cloak or a vice. But here he's talking about with Timothy in Galatians 2. He said, no, he's talking about, I'm sorry, he's talking about Barnabas. No, taking Titus along with him. And he said that, you know, there's a lot of people insisting, hey, you gotta be circumcised, because he was among all these Jews. And he said, but even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek, because they were trying to make all this happen. And you can read all that and find out, because he says, false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy on our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery. And he was saying those Judaizers that were coming in, trying to make us be Jews before we could be Christians, they were just putting us into a different kind of bondage. And he said, I didn't allow that. And I think we read this last week. It's Colossians 2. But it's another great place to where, begin in verse 16. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind. and not holding fast to the head from whom the whole body nourishing it together through the joints, ligaments, grows with the growth that is from God. So if with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why as if you were still alive in the world do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to all things that perish when they're used, according to human precepts and teachings. They have an appearance indeed of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." That would be a great passage to hang on the wall of the church that's always teaching this pietistic rule-keeping hey you know what all that rule keeping all them things you're telling people to do and don't do they have no ability to stop the indulgence of the flesh the only thing does the spirit of God and he set us free to that and from that and he's called us to crucify the flesh and he's called us to crucify the passions of the flesh he's called us to do all these things so some man-made rules on top of that it's not gonna fix it And again, you know, Paul's right in the first century, but our Baptist forefathers in the 16th century, in the 17th century, they're riding to combat this new thing that comes in. But even in the Old Testament, the rules from God, we're not condemned by those in our freedom. No. I mean, we got a lot of man-made rules, but even if we worship God imperfectly, I'm thinking of the Pharisees and the chief priest, the high priest would have to go in every year and have to do everything perfect in order to drag him out dead. And we don't have to worry about that. If we're in Christ, we can worship, we can have failures. We're not under that law, under condemnation. Paul says, I can't remember, he says, you know, we have not come to the foot of the mountain like Moses did, where you're scared to touch and you're afraid. He said, but no, instead we've come to Mount Zion.