Living in Unity Amidst Differences

I want to read Romans chapter 14 verses 9 through 23. And in this Paul is talking about what it means to live a life of faith in the church. Now he's talking about this in the middle of a discussion about people who are in dispute over issues that are not necessarily biblical issues. For example, the issue that he's faced with here are that some people think that the food laws of the Old Testament are still binding on them because of their Jewish background. They're used to doing this and it's hard for people to turn loose of these things. Some people, I remember the people have told me in their Catholic church, when they were members of the Catholic church, and the church came out and said, you no longer have to eat fish on Fridays, that it was really difficult for them not to feel guilty anymore to be able to eat regular meat. So when you've had a pattern of years and years and years, and you'll be told it's a sin to eat this, and all of a sudden somebody tells you it's not a sin to eat it, even though you hear that, it's difficult for you to accept and change. Now what happened here in the church, they didn't have a church leader like in the Catholic church that says no longer a sin to eat meat on Friday, but the Old Testament laws were no longer binding because of what Jesus said, that there's no such thing as one thing being bad or good for you to eat, there's no food laws. So Jesus' words about this were clear, but many people just had great difficulty with it. So in this Roman church you had Jewish people and you had non-Jewish people in the same congregation trying to live, eat together, be related to each other in the church setting. The one group thought eating this meat is really not good, and so I'm not going to eat any kind of pork that's processed, any kind of meat that's not processed in a way that was proper for Jewish people to eat. There were those who were freed from that, and they understood that the meat was not necessarily an issue for them because God had given them the freedom to eat anything that they could eat. So you had people who had, when they saw people eating pork, they felt that that's not the right thing to do. And people who were eating pork, look at these Jewish people who were eating maybe just vegetables and saying, gosh, they're sure bound up in their legalism. It's a shame that they feel that way. What Paul is trying to talk about here is how do you settle issues whenever people have strong feelings that are not necessarily issues in the scripture? It wasn't a matter of saying should you kill someone or not. That issue would be pretty clear. So these come up in the church, and people have issues about things that they think are right or wrong. For example, there may be some people who think that it's wrong to ever drink alcohol. And you have some people in the congregation who think maybe there's nothing wrong with having a beer once in a while or a glass of wine. I've heard people in our congregation debate that, say, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And some say, I think you should never do it. So there's a debate about issues like that sometimes in church. When I was growing up in our small community, there's a lot of preachers that preached against movies because, you know, they had in those days really bad movies. John Wayne out there shooting people and Roy Rogers over there shooting people. And so they say you shouldn't do that. And then, well, those guys died, so I don't know what they think about them now. But anyway, and so there's some people that didn't think that a person who's a good Christian should go to movies. And there's a strong feeling in the community that some people heard there wasn't a movie theater in our town. You had to drive 15 miles. But whenever people would see so-and-so went to the movie last week, you know, they would be kind of looking down on them. And there were some people in the church that didn't think there was anything wrong with going to the movies. This passage of scripture was a great influence on me as a teenager because that was kind of a debate. And the issue was not about the Bible, even though people thought it was a moral issue. It was about their idea about what was moral, right and wrong. And there was the decisions that people that saw it in two different lights. Well, this is the basis of where God is dealing with us on how to handle issues that come up, not just in the church, but in your home or your relationships with people around you, because it's about how a follower of Christ deals with issues that seem that there were people have different moral judgments about what you do and how you do things. So he's concluding now what he's talked about the whole chapter, really the weak and the strong. And he talks about the weak being people who didn't want who wanted to felt like they should always eat the Jewish by the Jewish laws. The meat processed that way and should never eat pork. And because he's saying that their faith was weak, they didn't have enough faith to believe that God had given them the freedom to do whatever they wanted. And then there were people who had strong faith who said, God, we trust God and we feel that we were free to do this and because it's not forbidden for us. So there's the strong and the weak in this struggle. And the weak are the people who think there are some rules you need to keep. So please, God, and they're not rules that are in the scripture. So that's the debate that he has now you're going to find in your relationships, in your home where you have issues about what you should do with your children, for example, a discipline for them, rules for what they do, maybe even money management where there's no real clear biblical issues about that. One of you will have a stronger opinion than the other about discipline or money management and the other won't have that. You'll know people that have issues like this around. This is a principle he's given for followers of Christ to deal with those kind of differences together. And chapter 14 verse 19, let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Now, he doesn't address the issue of what's right and wrong about this. That's a normal way the world thinks of things. And beginning with chapter 12, all of this is folding under chapter 12, where he says, don't think like the world thinks, instead be transformed and think about how the kingdom thinks. Now, in the world, if you have a debate about someone says, well, I don't see anything wrong with having a beer once in a while, and you just start telling them, well, you know, one out of every 10 people that starts drinking comes an alcoholic. And if you were on an airplane and whenever one out of every 10 seats fell through the floor, would you get on that airplane? You could have all kinds of arguments about whether or not it was really a good thing to do. But you're not going to be persuasive to someone who really wants to do that. Because and the other person can say, well, I see in the Bible, Jesus drank and the other people drank. So you have a debate and you try to say, who is going to win? What what Paul does is to say, that's not the way Christians do this. You don't say who's going to win. What you aim for is how can we have peace? Now, when you have one of those fights about alcohol or whatever it is, if you win there, say there are seven people there and there's you and this other person are debating it and you win and you have five on your side and two on the other person's side. What happens to the relationship between the five and two? It always gets a little strained. There's a barrier there. What God wants to have happen in his church is to have unity. What he wants to have happen in a marriage is unity. What he wants to have happen in a home is unity. The unity comes because there is one person directing all of his children. So if there's differences of opinion, there should be one answer that comes. Now, when we try to convince everybody, I have the answer from God and you don't, then they build walls that are really difficult to break down. So Paul switches this to say, your goal in this debate, remember there's no clear biblical pattern for either side. Your issue in this debate is how can we have peace between us and how when this is over do both of us grow? To be edified means to be built up, to be encouraged, to be supported, to feel like there's something good taking place in your life. You build someone up when you talk good things to them, when you trust them, when you cause them to feel that they're important or valuable, then you build them up. So you have this difference of opinion. Quit trying to pass judgment, he said before on who's right and wrong, and quit trying to win. In other words, when you get into this, say, how can we end this discussion so there's nobody mad at each other? How can we end this discussion so one person doesn't feel like they're beat and the other person doesn't feel like they're victorious? So that both people feel they're valuable and there's peace between the people who have the difference of opinion. So when you have this different aim, you see, you're now beginning to deal with the conflict the way God wants you to deal with it. Because you're dealing with it in love. Remember earlier back in chapter 12 he said, let your love be sincere. It's to guide us in all these relationships. And our love means sacrificial, self-denying, sacrificial service to the other person. So even in this difference of opinion, your goal is to help the other person. And their goal is to help you. So both of you are trying to do something good for each other. And if both people are guided by this principle, then you respect that other person. You don't try to beat them. You don't try to prove they're wrong. You don't try to push them in a corner. You honor and respect what they're saying. You listen to what they're saying. And you want to end, whenever it's over, for that person feeling like you really respect them and care for them. Peace means more than simply the absence of conflict in the scripture. It means a state or condition of life with the absence of anxiety. Have you ever had an argument with somebody and when it's over you couldn't quit thinking about it in your mind? You just go over and over and over that all day long, and maybe two days or three days, and you're really torn up inside, and you think of new things you could have said, and you think of things that are wrong. That's anxiety. Peace is the opposite of anxiety. Peace is a sense of contentment, a satisfaction. And what God wants when we have this conflict is when it's over for everybody to feel, this went great. This is good. Because we're able to express our opinion, to respect each other, and to let each other make the choices based on what they think God wants them to do without any criticism of one or the other. I've had times in the past when, I think I talked about this one time before, but it fits this very well. When O.C. McCrary came, Hossie's father-in-law, Denise's dad, when he came to church the first time he had a Bible, I mean it was a huge Bible, a King James Bible, and as he came to our church several different times and was thinking about joining, I went down to see him, and I knew he was a King James only person, that King James is the only Bible that's real. So I said, I know that you use the King James Bible, at that time we were using the Good News Bible in the Bag of Pews, which is about as far from the King James as you could get at that time. And I said, you notice we don't use the King James, we use the Good News Bible in our church's services. I want to assure you I love the Lord with all my heart, and I not only read the Good News Bible, but I look at the NIV, and I look at the Greek and Hebrew text, and try to find the truth of what the Scripture is. And I'm devoted to living in obedience to the Scriptures. If you feel God wants you to come in this church, I want you to respect that. I want you to say, Doyle loves the Lord, and I can trust him, even though he doesn't use the Bible I use. And I can say to you that I'll never try to get you to stop using that King James Bible. I'll believe that you love the Lord with all your heart, and that you want to follow him and be obedient to him, and always respect the fact that you believe that that Bible is what you ought to be reading. And if you can respect me and say that I'm a Christian when I don't use your Bible, I can respect you and say I believe you're as good a follower of Christ as me, even though you use the Bible. And if you can accept that, I can accept it, and we can live together just fine. And they were members of our church for many, many years, and never had any time did we have conflict about it. I think I left that feeling he was affirming me, and he's trusted me, and he left that experience feeling that I was accepting of him. This is the principle that you use. When I was a boy growing up and encountered this, I was passionate to follow Christ, and I made a decision that I wouldn't ever go to any movies as long as I was in that town. And I didn't. Never went to a movie. It was a decision to say, I don't want to cause, I don't think there's anything wrong with going to see Walt Disney or some of the movies that were out there. I don't think there's anything wrong with them, but there's some people that do. And I'd made a commitment to follow Christ, and made a commitment to be a pastor, and I didn't want anyone to think that I was compromising my morals, even though I didn't think going to the movie would. And it was this passage of Scripture that gave me that guidance. I can say it didn't thwart my personality, and I didn't become a weird person because I didn't go to movies, as long as two or three years into college, and some of my friends talked me into going to see a movie with them. But I felt like that following this principle was a valid thing to do. I didn't feel like I was being cheated. I felt like I was doing something that allowed people to accept me, and I thought that they were wrong, but I felt that this was the best way to be able to do it. Peace that is a relationship in which you're not anxious, the other people are not anxious, and then the mutual edification. How do you grow when you do this? Well, I grew in making that decision by saying, you know, I've learned what it's like to say other people's opinions are important to me, and I don't ever want to do anything that would cause another person to stumble. I don't want to do anything that would limit my own ministry and opportunities that I have to be able to be a servant of Christ in this community. That's the way it helped me to grow. I don't know how it helped the others. They never did get mad, I guess, because I went or looked down on me. Maybe that was beneficial to them. But in each of these situations, I think the discussion about the King James Bible, too, I think it caused me to say, okay, I can respect this person, and I have an opportunity to show them that I love and care for them, and I think it helped O.C. to say there are Christians that don't use this old King James. I think he grew from it. I think I did, too. This is what the principle is, basically. Keep in mind that what you're trying to do is to bring peace and build each other up, not win a battle. That's the first principle he sets down. And here's what he says is guiding principle about it. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. You can win the battle. You can say, I can prove to you why you're wrong, and I can prove to you that I'm right. And you might win that battle, but you might also damage the Christian walk of another person who is weaker in their faith. He says, describes them that way, weaker in their faith, who maybe doesn't understand that there is a different way of looking at this issue. In their background, in their experience, they can only see this limited portion, and it seems so real to them that they can't change. So you allow them to be able to live without feeling put down or destroying their own, what God is doing in their life, just because of this non-biblical issue. Now Paul stops here, and he turns around and says, now I want you to understand, I think all food is good to eat. I'm on your side, strong followers of Christ. I believe that you're right, but this is not an issue about who's right or who's wrong. It's about the work of God and making sure that our actions do not destroy the faith and the lifestyle of another person in following Christ. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. Even though I may be doing something that's exactly right, if in the eyes of other people they look at me and say, that guy says he's going to be a preacher, and that's what, look at what he's doing. And if they're honest, and not just trying to, some people are not honest when they're looking for criticisms of other people. But if they honestly feel in some way that you've compromised your conviction, then you lose your relationship with them and cause them to question whether or not your own Christian faith is real and genuine. So in the process of all of this, you're looking to say, does anything that I do become an issue in the spiritual growth of another person? If so, then I'll back away from it. It's not a matter now of whether God thinks it's wrong or God thinks it's right to do. It's now whether or not what you do destroys the work of God in the life of a younger believer, or a less mature follower of Christ, or a person who's not yet come to the place to understand things the way you understand them. So God is carefully nurturing all the people in our lives. Some believers, if you could say this, are, say, in the first grade. Some are in the third grade. Some are in the ninth grade. Some are in graduate school in their Christian walk. What we're looking for are the people who are beginning to say, my obligation is not to create a sense of defeat on their part, so they give up before they're able to grow to maturity. And sometimes if people are not mature enough in their faith, they can't take the freedom that we might have. For example, when a person starts out in their Christian faith, and they need desperately to have as much of the Bible in their mind and heart as they can possibly get, and they come to church on Sunday night or Wednesday night, and they look around, and none of the Christian leaders are here, I think it hurts them. It causes them to say, well, maybe this is not important to do. Our behavior, you see, some people say, well, I come because I need it. Sometimes we do things because other people need the encouragement. We have to take into consideration the example and the lifestyle we live as to whether or not it encourages people who are beginning in their lifestyle. They need to know that we practice the same things that we say are good. Now, in your home you do this. When our kids were growing up, we had their dining table in the same room with the television. We never watched TV when we ate. As soon as we got the last one out of the house, then we recorded movies or bought movies, and sometimes Carol and I will sit and eat supper and lunch and watch a movie. Whenever our grandchildren come to our house, we never watch the television with our grandchildren there. It's not because it's wicked, but because it's the kind of example we want to set for them about what's good in family life. Some people think in their spiritual life, as long as I've gotten to grade seven, I'm not going to worry about those in grade four. But a part of our responsibility, Paul is saying, is to be aware that we have an influence on other people who may not be quite as mature as we are. We are responsible for each other. We are a family. We're training babies how to be Christians. We're training first graders how to be Christians. We're training seventh grade people how to be Christians. Now, I don't mean literally in those grades, but in their spiritual level, we're training them, and they're watching us, and they're learning by watching us. They listen to what we have to say, and they're trying to put it all together. And we owe them an obligation to make sure that we're aware of the needs that they have and the example that we set for them. So that's what he's talking about. All food is clean, but it's wrong for a man to do anything that causes someone else to stumble spiritually. What do we want people to do? We want them to pray, so we need to pray, as an example. We want them to read the Bible, so we need to read the Bible, as an example. We want them to be in church, we need to be in church, as an example. We want them to share their faith, then we need to get up in front of the church and tell how we share our faith. If we want people to do those things, we have to give an example to them as to how it's done. The way you do this, he says, is you make sure that they see in you the things that would allow them to grow and not to stumble. It's better not to eat meat, verse 21, it's better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that will cause your brother to fall. We have an obligation to each other, not only to do the things that are right, but to do the things that we know are not necessarily necessary for us, but they may be necessary examples for the others. And when you get in the habit of doing things a certain way, and you decide on yourself, I don't need this anymore, you have to ask yourself another question. Does anyone need my example? I may not need it. I could probably miss reading the scriptures a week or two, but do I need to be able to make sure that I mark on my card that I read the Bible every day that week so that other people will see that it's a pattern of my lifestyle and it should be for them? That's what Paul is talking about. Our whole purpose in the church is to care for each other like a family. Help us to grow spiritually with one another. It's not just so that you come here and you get good at it and you learn what you should do and you do all the right things for yourself. We have an obligation to our brothers and sisters in Christ to help them grow and become more mature in what they have to do. So verse 22, he begins the conclusion to this conclusion. So whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God. In other words, if you think, I know from my own experience in studying the history of translations that the King James Version of the Bible has some serious errors in it and that it has some words that are not well translated in our contemporary language. But there's no value to me to tell that to someone else who thinks that the King James Version of the Bible is the very best version you can have. There's no benefit to that. You don't try to tear down what somebody believes. You instead try to say to God, how over the time that we're together can I help them to see that there is something more than what they've already found? How can I help them grow in their knowledge and experience? And I trust you, step by step, to teach them the things that you want them to learn and that you want them to know. So we keep it between ourselves and God. God's shown me there's nothing wrong with going to movies. I'll keep that within myself and I'm not going to argue with anybody in the church. I'm just going to keep it to myself. And I'm going to do what God tells me to do. Now for you, blessed is the person or the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. The blessing is if I know that it's okay to do these things, I receive a blessing from God when I hold back and I don't get condemned because I do something that is good and in the process of doing something that's good, I hurt someone else. That opens the door for God to bless me. How does that bless me? Well, it blesses me because this weaker person now is able to grow in their faith and I participate in their growth. I am helping them become more mature. I am helping God by not sidetracking them or discouraging them, but I'm helping him bring them to the level in which God approves of their life more and more. So I am assisting them. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats because his eating is not from faith. And everything that does not come from faith is sin. This is a very important passage for me. Everything that is done in faith is acceptable to God. So if someone says, okay, God, I don't think it's best for me to go to the movies. I think you want me not to go to the movies. God blesses you for that. If someone says, oh, I don't want to have anybody catch me going to the movies and they go because they know that it's wrong, then God condemns them for that because they've done something against their own conscience. Even though there's nothing wrong with eating meat, if you eat the meat and inside you feel maybe this is not right, it's a sin for you. No, it's not the eating the meat that's a sin. It's the failure to get the approval of God that is the sin. I try to tell people about making decisions like this, and I think this is a really important principle of life. If you have a choice to make and you're trying to decide between one thing and the other, and you sit down before God and you say, I've got two choices to make. I can do this or I can do that. I want to do one or the other, but I'm willing to do whichever one you want me to do. If you come to the decision that you can do either one of those, God approves of it, and you choose one to do, and you believe that it's what God wants you to do, even though it could be wrong, God didn't want you to do it. I mean, it's not wicked or evil like killing somebody, but it's a choice you need to make. Even though you make a mistake, if you did it thinking that you were obeying God, then it's not a sin. But if you know what the right thing is to do and you refuse to do it because you don't want to, then you've sinned. What he's trying to tell us is that all the things we do in our life need to be done trusting God. I don't mean if you go in there and you say, God, should I brush my teeth with my left hand or right? Which one do you want me to do? I'm not talking about silly things like that. I'm talking about the decisions you make in your life, and you're trying to figure out what God wants. You may have a financial decision. You may have other kinds of decisions, and you're trying your best to do what God wants, so long as your conscience is clear. I prayed about this. I asked God what we should do, and we're going to take this step. Even if it's the wrong thing and you discover it two or three days later, it's not a sin because you have done your best to follow God's direction. Now you have to be honest with yourself as to whether you've really done your best to try to follow God or you've just kind of worked it around so you get to do what you want. What he's telling us is that the Holy Spirit's given to us to guide us, and if in our immaturity we're not at the level where we know, okay, I don't see anything wrong with doing this, even if we're at that level and we do it thinking that it's okay, God approves of it. He'll give us grace. If we honestly choose to do what we know God wants and we act, then we're acting trusting God. Anything that we do, if we eat with doubts, I'm not sure I should do this, but I'm going to go ahead and do it, then we've acted not in obedience to God. If we say anything, whatever it is, everything that a person does, that is not the result of asking God, getting clearance from Him, and doing it. Anything we do that's not that, he says, is sin. Now, the act itself is not sin, eating the food or not eating the food. What is the sin is acting outside the authority of God. That's the first commandment. You're to have no other gods before you. Nothing in the world is to control your life but God. That's the very first commandment. So when you have some sense inside of you that something's wrong, the Holy Spirit's convicting you of it, and you get all the people around you tell you it's right and it's okay to do, you say, well, everybody else tells me that that's okay to do, but you still have this conviction inside you shouldn't. Listen to it. To fail to do that is taking the advice of all the other people around you instead of the Holy Spirit, and that is the failure to put God in charge of your life. What Paul is telling us is, giving your life to God means that you live your ordinary days in submission and surrender to His authority, and if we have doubts or uncertainty, we're never to violate those. Now the problem that Paul is trying to deal with is, when you begin at a little bitty place of saying, I don't know if this is right or wrong for me to do, but everybody else tells me it's okay, and I'm going to go ahead and do it, and all of a sudden you've moved yourself away from the fact that you're completely dependent on God, and you've begun to take other people's opinions as a guide for your choices. When you start that, when you open that door, there is no end to where you can end up. Do not begin this trip. Always make sure, on the issues that are important to you and God, to make sure that you have His approval. You may be wrong, but as long as you are doing it, trying to trust God, then you've put Him in the place of authority, you're living out your life in obedience to Him, and He will receive it as a gift of obedience, even though you may discover you made the wrong choice later on. God forgives us of those, because we've done the very best we know how. I try to explain that to people in this way. If you have a child, and you say to that child, you know, I want you to go in the living room, and I want you to clean the floor. And you go in there, and the child has tried their best, and they've put stuff all over the floor, maybe the wrong kind of soap or whatever it is, and they've scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and made a real mess. You can go in and look at that and say, they were really trying to do the best they could. I understand now they didn't understand what to do and how to do it, but that's immaturity. It's not rebellion. And so you take a child who's immature and doesn't know quite what to do, and you say, I should have explained that a little bit better. I'll work around this, and next time I'll help out. And so you get down there and you help them clean up the mess. If you tell a child that's a senior in high school, I want you to go in there and take the Mr. Clean and wipe up the floor, and they go in there and spread powder all over the floor and make a big mess, and you know they just didn't listen to you, or they said, I don't care, I don't think that's the best thing to do, I'm going to do it my way. Then you have a reason to say, I am angry. You rebelled against what I told you. You see, God understands our immaturity. He understands what we do when we make mistakes. What upsets him is when we know better and we do not do it. If we don't know better and we do it, he's compassionate and forgiving. Because you can forgive immaturity, but you have a hard time forgiving rebellion. So what Paul is talking about here is learning to live by trust so that we have the primary goal, not our self-winning, not us getting our way, but making sure that what we do helps our brothers and sisters in Christ, builds them up, and brings peace to the congregation. In this way, we witness to the world how God deals with conflict and differences. And this is our witness to the world. It's not a witness to the world where people say, well, I went to that church a long time, and I didn't like those people, and I didn't like the way they did that, and so I went and got another church. What he wants is for us to be able to learn to live together and find peace with one another. That reflects to the world a different kind of place than they understand and know. Let's pray. What does God want you to learn from this? Can you think of a circumstance or situation in which you realized, this is something that I need to pay attention to, maybe something God wants you to do, a conversation He wants you to have with someone? Doing that is what it means to act in faith. I think you want this, I trust you, so I'll do it. Whatever we do in faith is a wonderful gift from God. Someone told me this morning leaving the service, when the lady got up to speak, I knew I should have gone up and prayed for her. I could tell the person was telling me this, feeling like I failed God. It's a bad feeling to have. Father, teach us how to live by faith. Teach us not to want to win arguments, but to build each other up and to bring peace in circumstances where there is tension. Help us in the middle of all the conflict around us to be islands of peace and mutual support. And teach us to live believing that if we do what you tell us, life will always be better. In Christ's name we ask this, Amen. How's your mom doing? Oh, she's doing too good. She can't keep her in. She was supposed to go back to Plesky, Tennessee, you know, and she wasn't able to drive or anything. It was to maintain that 90 degree angle. It was one of these little things. Use a walker. And after we got to Plesky and they said you can drive, you can do pretty much anything. I went to her house and I said, Mom!