Living as True Followers of Christ

I've got a bulletin here, April 20th, is that what it is? That's why I have a calendar, I don't have to worry about opening it up, but I know right there because it's right there in front of me. I want to use Romans chapter 14, and I want to start at verse 13. One of the things that's difficult when we read the Bible and try to put into application the things that the Bible says is that the churches they were dealing with then were considerably different than ours. In this book, Not a Fan, he makes a distinction between people who are fans of Jesus and people who are followers of Jesus. He uses the analogy of ball teams, and you go to the ballpark and people are crowded, thousands and thousands of people there, and they're very fanatical, that they're cheering for their team, and they're upset if something bad happens, the referee makes a bad call. And if you say anything about their teams, they're players that might threaten your life even, on the internet or on the phone. You see that all the time. They're passionate about their teams, but they don't ever play. So they're just in the sands watching. They're very emotional about their teams, and they're very passionate about their teams, but they don't participate in the actual game that goes on. And his idea is that there's a difference between those people and the ones who are out on the field playing. In the New Testament, they didn't have as big a problem as we have with this. For some reason or other, the way we enlist people in our churches, we don't convince them that there ought to be some kind of surrender of their life to the authority of Christ. And so we have a lot of people who are in churches who have not really made the decision and commitment to be followers of Christ. And he uses in that book, Luke 9.23, where Jesus says, If you want to come after me, you must deny yourself. So he talks about the football players deny themselves, and the fans just enjoy themselves. And you must take up your cross. You must pay the price to follow him. And you must practice living like Jesus lived. That was Jesus' own requirement. And he shows the difference between people who are fans. They love Jesus, like him. They're in favor of him. They're excited about him, but they don't do these things. They don't deny their self anything. They don't suffer anything for what they do. And they don't follow Jesus, make a practice of trying to live like him. In the New Testament, they didn't have this kind of issue in their churches. They had an advantage we don't have. Anybody in this Roman church who became a follower of Christ and joined the church, they did something that was illegal and could bring to them great suffering and pain. Anyone who joined this Roman church, if they were Jews, their Jewish family and friends no longer had anything to do with them. If they were Romans and they joined, they were looked at as abandoning the Roman religion. And their whole kingdom was based on the Roman religion. It was an act that was unpatriotic. It's like someone in our country, if one of our representatives, for example, decided they'd become a Muslim, he probably wouldn't have been elected the next time he ran for office here in Kansas. So this was the situation they were in. Someone carefully considered all this before they did it. So when he writes a letter to the Roman church, he's writing to a bunch of people who are followers of Christ. That's quite unlike what you'd have in a church here anywhere in this country because so many people have not really made that kind of sacrificial commitment to follow Christ. So Paul, in all through this letter, is talking about what it means, I mean the whole thing from beginning of chapter 1 up to chapter 12, he's talking about what it means to become a follower of Christ. He's talking about giving yourself to Christ and he's talking to the Jews that the law won't do, you can't do that, there's something else that has to take place besides that. He's talking to the Gentiles and saying you have to simply lay your life down in the hands of Christ and be obedient to him. So he's talking to people who have made a promise to God that is sacrificial, self-denying, and they're trying to be faithful to following him. Quite unlike what you'd have in almost any church in our country on a Sunday morning. So that this letter that he's writing is different than what we would receive in our own churches. Now, in our churches, especially in Baptist churches, a big emphasis is made on trying to reach people for Christ and trying to get people to come to Christ and trying to get them to join the church. It's amazing to me how little that idea impacts any of Paul's letters. He's talked the whole time about the necessity of faith and that trusting like we trust in Abraham is what brings us to Christ, but he doesn't say I want you to go out now and get more people to come to your church. He doesn't say I want you to go out and witness and get people to come to church. When Paul finishes his letter and then he turns to the practical dimensions of what he wants the church to do, I think for myself as a pastor, most that I know, when we get to this practical section, we talk about now you need to go out and tell your friends about what you've learned and how they can commit their life to Christ and how their life can be changed. But Paul doesn't do that. In this practical session, he starts with the beginning in Romans chapter 12. When he starts that, he says now the result of all this is that you, he's talking to now the church members, you should have this nature about you. You should not be conformed to the culture that's around you, but you should be transformed. His emphasis is not on going out and getting other people to come to church, but it's on you being the kind of person God wants you to be. That's his whole focus. Our effort is if we can have a great preacher and you can get thousands to come in, you have great music and everybody has a good time with it, that this is what's going to make it all work. Paul's idea is quite different than that. His idea is if I can take a human being, an ordinary human being, in the culture in Rome, and Christ comes into their mind and heart and begins to transform their nature and character so they become like Christ, then the people around them are going to say, Wow, I sure want to be like that person. And they're going to be attracted to whatever's happening in this Roman church. So what Paul focuses on is I want you to be careful to see the things in this world that the people around you do and the way they act. And I want you to see how Christ now wants to transform you to a different kind of person. His confidence is if there were enough Christs living in the world, then everybody saw Christ in human flesh. They would be attracted to him in the same way that they, Paul, and the other apostles, and those that met Jesus were attracted to him, and would be prepared to actually die for him. And if this kind of passion for obedience to Christ was installed in all of those people, then they would be attracted to us because Christ lives in us. And they would want to be a part of what Christ was doing and would be willing to do it even if it meant that their family turned against them, their friends turned against them, and even their culture turned against them. Because having the life that is victorious in Christ is worth more than anything in all the world. That's what they believe. But what Paul is saying is we can't preach this unless you people are living it. No one is going to be attracted to something that they think might happen to them, but they've never seen it occur. And what they're going to be attracted to is something they can see in you. And the people around you that know you, they know what you're like. They know all your faults. They know all the flaws you have. But when Christ takes control of your life, something different is going to happen, and they're going to say, wow, what happened to Doyle? He's not the same person I used to know. He doesn't act the same way. Whenever we start this, what we often think of is, okay, I'm going to get saved, and I'm going to quit drinking, I'm going to quit smoking, I'm going to quit gambling, I'm going to quit whatever all these other popular sins are. It's true that Paul thinks that that should happen to us, but that's not what he sees as the critical issue. I want to go back over this chapter 13. So if you're in chapter 12, if you'd look at that for just a minute. And I want to look at what Paul means when he says, I want you now to no longer conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed. And the very first thing he says after that chapter, chapter 12, verse 3, this whole paragraph is about this. I want you to not think more highly of yourself than you should. Have humility in your life, not the arrogance and pride that says, I know everything, you can't tell me anything, I'm going to do what I want to do, nobody's going to make me do anything different. All of us have arrogance and pride in our lives. It comes in simple things, and you know it's there whenever somebody tells you you should change something in your life. Immediately we just, you know, flare up, you know, because we don't want anybody telling us what to do. How many fights occur in our homes because someone tells the other one you ought to do something different? Our human nature just rears up. And we have such an offense to this. And what he starts off by saying, that's the way the world is. You go up to anybody and tell them they should change, and they'll never say to you, well, gee, thanks, I appreciate you telling me that. Never do we have that reaction. I want you to be the kind of people that if somebody points out to you that something needs to be changed about your life, you'll stop and say, is God trying to tell me I need to be different? I was really impressed one time. A pastor complained about Peck Lindsey, who's executive director of our state, about he'd called him several times, and Peck didn't ever call him back. And so I was visiting with Peck one time, and I said, you need to go see this pastor because he told me he called you three times and you never returned his call. And I expected him to resist that, to say how busy he was, to give an excuse for it. And he said, he's right, I should have called him back. He had to acknowledge that he had done something wrong. He had a lot of reasons why he could have said, I don't do that. This is what he's talking about. I want you to be able to be correctable, so that people around you see that you have a spirit of humility about you. So the first characteristic, he says that. Then the second paragraph is verse 9. Your love must be sincere. Cling to what is good. And his key is verse 10. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Say, here's what I want you to do. I want you to have a humble spirit, and then I want you to be devoted to each other, like your brothers and sisters. Now, we all know what it means to have a family, and we're concerned about our children, we're concerned about our mother, we're concerned about our brothers and sisters. What I want you guys to do, he says to the Roman church, I want you to treat each other as if they were your birth family. I want you to think of them as if they were your birth family. The people around you are going to be looking at you, and going to say, why are they so concerned about those other people that are not even a part of their family, and they're doing so much to help and encourage them. Everyone expects you to be concerned about your birth family. In fact, they'd think it odd if you weren't. So, the fact that you love your brothers and sisters, your mother and father, and your children, is not a great Christian witness to anybody around you. It really isn't. It's a terrible witness if you don't like your family, but to love your family is not necessarily a witness. What he's talking about is, I want you to learn to believe that once someone comes to know and trust me like I am, they are your brother and sister in Christ. They're your mother and father in Christ, and they're your children in Christ, and I want you to treat them as if they were. I want people around you to say, why do these people care so much about each other? I wish I were in a place where even my own family cared as much for me as these people do. This, he says, is what you will find attracts people to you, this love of God that comes through your life. He said, now, here's the way I want you to handle conflict. Bless those that persecute you. Do not bless and do not curse. When you're attacked, this I want you to think, what does the world do if somebody attacks you? You attack back. And you always attack worse than they did to you, because it always feels worse when you're attacked. I don't want you to attack. I don't want you to be the kind of person when someone jumps on you, cusses you out, treats you badly, that you get defensive. And I don't want you to try to get even with them. I want you instead to accept the sufferings. Here's what Jesus said. Deny yourself, take up your cross. I want you to accept the suffering that comes from following me. I want you to see it as a sign of your success as a follower of me, to be in a situation where people would hurt you. We try to avoid at all costs, and the whole world does, avoid being hurt. But Jesus did not avoid that. He knew he was going to Jerusalem to die, and he set his face to Jerusalem. I am going to do this, whatever it costs me. Most of us, I'm included in that circle, want to avoid any kind of pain that we can, emotional, psychological, or spiritual. We don't want people to criticize us. We don't want people to say nasty things about us. We don't want people to say things that hurt our feelings. But Jesus said, that's the way the world looks. I don't want you to look for it. I don't want you to try to make it happen. But when it does, I want you to return to those people who hurt you, blessings instead of curses. Jesus' own words, if people hurt you, pray for them. Good things will happen to them and come to them. He didn't overwhelm us, instead people should look at us and see, instead of being overwhelmed by the things that people say about us, instead we are responding in a positive and loving fashion. We accept what they do, and we act differently. Now you can see, if you have a church filled with people like that, how much difference it would be, what a different world it would be for people to see a church where all these people seem to have the same quality about them. They care for other people. So you do not repay evil for evil. You do what's right in the eyes of everybody if possible. And as long as it depends on you, make peace with people. No fighting or conflict is to come to you. Verse chapter 13, he says, Everyone must submit himself to government authorities. In a Christian community, there shouldn't be anti-government people. He says, this is my government, these people are there for me, and if there's something wrong with them, I'll pay them back. I want you to be citizens who are supportive of the government that you're around. And it's certainly not popular in almost any place you go in the world to be supportive of the government, unless it's our government, the ones that we elected. The real test is when somebody's elected you didn't vote for, how do you react to it? If you have strong opinions, being a Democrat or a Republican, and the opposite party's elected as president, what do you do? If you act like they're the enemy in the world, you violate the scripture. What I want people to see is I want you to have strong opinions about what you believe. But when it's over, I want them to see that you're supportive of the person that's in charge or the people that's in charge of your government. The world doesn't do that way. If I'm a Democrat, I'm only for those people, and I run down the other people that are not. If I'm a Republican, I do the same thing. Not so among you. Don't live the way the rest of the world lives. People shouldn't say, well, I don't have any opinions. That's not what he's asking us to do. He's asking us to have opinions and ideas, but to not run down or to try to make other people who are in charge and who have been elected or appointed or however the government's chosen, to accept them and see them as God's servant, placed there by God and accountable to God. He says in chapter 13, verse 8, that we're to love one another and in this way fulfill the law. Here he talks about fulfilling the law in terms of adultery, murder, stealing, loving your neighbor, all the moral qualities that the Ten Commandments would have. The church should be a place where the Ten Commandments and all the commandments of Scripture are lived. We shouldn't tolerate among ourselves people who do not live what the community would see as a moral life as a part of our church and leadership. The world will allow you to live the way it accepts you. We've seen this in our culture. Everybody's changed their ideas about what's proper and improper. You know, I used to, if you had somebody that was living together and wasn't married, they'd say, well, you know, we can't let them teach in our schools. We can't let them do anything. And now, I met someone who's a pastor the other day who was living with someone they weren't married to or wanted to be a preacher and aligned to be a preacher and, you know, just living with somebody who wasn't married to them and felt no embarrassment or shame about it. Things have changed in the world. But we do not have the right to compromise the moral integrity that the Scripture demands. I had a friend one time who committed adultery. He was pastor of a very, very large church. Thousands of people attended it. And the pulpit committee called him. He resigned the church, and a pulpit committee came to see him and said, we'd like to hire you to be our pastor. He said, well, I have to tell you, you know, I committed adultery in the last church I was in. And they said, oh, that's okay. We know about that. We want you to come, and we'll make sure we hire a counselor to counsel all the women, and we'll make sure the secretary lets no women in your office so that you're alone with them because it's just so hard to get a good preacher. What they're saying is that the moral character of the people who preach are not significant to us. Now, for us, we're not going to do that, I don't think. But we have to be careful. Our teachers, music people, wherever we have people who are in spiritual leadership places, we are to expect moral integrity. Now, he's not talking about this as a tool. He's talking about when this church is seen by everybody around them as people with moral integrity, they will admire and respect you. Now, they may not act like that all the time because whenever you're moral and you have integrity, people who don't have that will try to pick at you all the time. They'll try to find something wrong with your life, but inside they know that what you're doing is right. You see, all the things that Paul is talking about is the character and nature of the believers. He's not talking about outreach programs. He's not talking about revivals. He's talking about the congregation becoming the kind of people God wants them to be. Why is he doing this? He says, if you can live the life like Jesus, then God will draw into your church the people who want to also become followers of Christ just the way you are. He starts in chapter 14, and that's where I wanted to get to with this, but I may not get much done with that. Okay, I want to talk, he said, about you guys getting along with each other. And you know that's a big issue in churches. It's hard to find anybody in church that hadn't been a member of one or two other churches because they didn't like what happened there, didn't get along with the people there. It's rampant everywhere you go. It's hard for us to find people in churches where they've overcome the issue, the fact that there's other people they don't agree with or other people they don't like or there's something going on that they don't approve of. Paul had no idea that these kind of things should exist in a church. If you have people who are weak in their faith, who are not doing the things you think they should do, you don't pass judgment on them with regard to disputable matters. He's not talking about someone that's an adulterer or someone that's a thief. He's talking about things that really are not in the Scriptures that say you shouldn't or should do this. If you think about people that you know that get upset with church, they're usually not because they deny the divinity of Jesus. It's generally not because they don't believe the Bible. It's other things. Things that have no spiritual significance. They're just things that I don't like or things that I would prefer to be different. My own choice. I want a place where everything is exactly the way I want it to be. And if it's not going to be that way and the people are not going to act the way I want them to, then I want out of this. That's the attitude that the world has. When they have somebody that joins a club and they don't like the way they do things, they quit the club and go somewhere else. Just like they do at church. What Paul wanted us to say was, I want you to be a group of people who can learn how to live with each other even though there's great differences between you. Now what he was talking about in this issue was there were Gentiles and Jews in the church. And the Jews, the Jewish believers, they had been Jews all their lives. So they were very careful about their eating patterns. Following the patterns of the Old Testament. The patterns that Jesus himself probably followed in terms of eating. And so when they came to become a part of this Roman church, they found Gentiles who never did this. They ate anything they wanted. They ate pork, whatever it was. They didn't have any rules about this. And so now you have the love feast they used to have. They used to have potluck dinners like we did. Everybody would bring their food and set it down on their table and eat with the friends and people around them. And so you're sitting here with your table and you have some pork out there on the table. You Jewish Christians are sitting at the next table and they're looking over here at your table and saying, Man, you guys are chowing down on that pork. The Bible says you shouldn't eat that. They're right. That's what the Bible said. How can you do this? This is a disputable issue. There is evidence in the New Testament. Jesus said there's anything wrong with any kind of food. And Peter had the same experience and God's saying that to him. So there's an evidence in Scripture that it's okay to do this. Nothing wrong with any food. There's an evidence in Scripture that something says you shouldn't eat in the Old Testament. So it's an issue that's disputable. So he says whenever you come in church and there's issues like that between you, you must deal with them in a different way. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not eat pork and whatever it is. Don't look at your Jewish brothers and say, Oh, those people are so backward. They don't even accept the New Testament and things that Jesus said. For God has accepted him. And I remember when I started this, I was talking about these people were not fans. They were devoted to Christ. Now, so we're not talking about two tables of people, some of whom are deeply devoted to Christ and some are not. These people who are Jewish in their background have strong feelings about obedience to what they say the Scripture should say. The Romans say this is what we see God has given to us and the freedom that we have to eat whatever we want. And God is leading them and God is leading them. Our tendency is to get one or the other of those and say everybody needs to knuckle down and get together and all think the same thing. Paul asked the amazing thing of them. I want you to accept each other even though you don't interpret the Scriptures the same. Why? Because this table of Jewish people are under God's control. This table of Gentile people are under God's control. Who do you think you are criticizing someone who's living in obedience to God? He says, Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. He will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand. See now, this assumes that you're a follower, not a fan. And if church has that in it, if you have somebody that's a fan that's just doing whatever they want to do and not obedient to Christ, then this would not fit for them. But if you have someone who's a follower, one man who considers one day more sacred than another, see he moves on to talk about the Jewish people who want to keep the Sabbath day and make sure that everything's kept on the Sabbath day. The Gentiles would say all the days are the same. Every day is holy. There's churches now that have certain weeks that are holy. And they say this is a holy week, these are holy days. But the Bible says all days are the same. Every day to the follower of Christ is a holy day. Every week to the follower of Christ is a holy day. Holy means it's set apart for the use of God. Every day in your life is holy because God wants you to set that day aside to live in obedience to him. So you have the Gentiles who are thinking that way and the Jews who are thinking, hey, this is the Sabbath, you shouldn't be out there working on the Sabbath day. The scripture says you shouldn't, so there's conflict between them. One side criticizing the other for what they're done. So Paul says, For none of us lives to himself alone, none of us dies to himself alone. If we live to the Lord, we die to the Lord. So we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Remember, you don't belong to each other. You belong to the Lord. That's the authority. Now, for this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You then, why do you judge your brother? Why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat, as it is written, As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, and every tongue will confess. So then each of you will give an account for himself to God. Verse 13, a long way to get here. Therefore stop passing judgment on one another. It is easy for us to look around at each other when people don't do things exactly the way we want them to do it and decide in our own minds that this person is not following Christ. We can do it in a lot of different ways. Pastors are pretty bad about this. You know, you didn't come to church on Wednesday night, so you're backsliding. You didn't come to church on Sunday night, so you're backsliding. It's not our business to determine whether or not people are following Christ. If they've committed their lives to Christ, and they're a follower of Christ, it is God's business to straighten them out. And what happens in the world, you know, if you have an organization, whether it's a school or a business, and you have somebody in charge, if somebody's not toeing the line exactly the way the boss wants them to, you sit down to them and say, you're supposed to be here when I tell you to be here, and you're supposed to get out there and get that done the way I tell you to get it done. But you see, the big difference is, I'm not your boss. God is. I'm not your boss. God is. I don't know what He's telling you. If I can believe that you're really controlled by the Spirit of God, and you act in a way that's different than what I'm thinking you should do, or what God has told me to do, my first reaction to always that is, why isn't this other person doing what I think they ought to do? Someone came to me one time and said, I don't know why I'm tithing all the time. Some of the people in this church are not tithing. Why do I have to tithe all the time when they don't have to do that? See, what you do and what I do before God, we're accountable to Him. We don't have to please each other. And if we have the freedom to be able to say, is this person genuinely a follower of Christ? Do I see in their life evidence that they love and serve Him? We're to give them freedom to serve God. Therefore, here's a conclusion to all this, stop passing judgment on one another. What should you do instead? Make up your mind not to put any stumbling blocks or obstacles in your brother's way. You're talking about the people who were Gentiles. You realize that there's no food laws here. And you feel perfectly free to eat all the pork you want. And if you come to your brother and you say, I don't know why you guys can't enjoy the pork that we're having. Look at this feast that we're having. Why don't you do that? God's given us the freedom. You should take part in it too. What you're asking them to do is to eat pork because you think it's a good idea. What does that mean? The person here who thinks that God doesn't want them to eat it, now eats the pork because you have persuaded them to do so. Who then is directing their behavior? They set aside the conviction that they have in their heart that they should not eat pork. And now they eat it because you have told them that it's a good thing to do and ridiculed them or pressured them into doing it. And now when that happens, no longer are they following Christ, but now they're following you. And you have removed them from this submission to the authority of Christ. Once you do that, then they start looking around everywhere and saying, okay, what do you guys think I should do? Remember, salvation comes when we place our lives in the hands of God and God alone guides us. So if you have a brother who's afraid to eat pork because he's convinced because of his background in the Old Testament, and Paul says he's a weaker Christian, he doesn't have the strong faith that the Gentiles have because they're able to eat anything, he's still holding on to some of these things that support his faith, in that sense it's weak. I agree, Paul says, but if anyone regards something as unclean for him, it's unclean. If your brother's distressed because of what you eat, you're no longer acting in love. Do not, by eating, destroy your brother for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Because anyone who serves Christ in this way pleases God and approved by men. Now, Paul says in verse 14, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. He takes a stand with the people who have strong faith. Even though I don't believe that there's anything wrong with this, I would never try to persuade someone who's convinced God doesn't want them to eat this, to eat this pork, or whatever it is. Because I want them always to have a clear conscience between themselves and God. And if somebody in the church has a conviction about something they should do, as long as it's not immoral or wicked, or something obviously wrong with it in terms of the scripture, we have to be careful to make sure that we don't teach people to do things because we tell them to. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but when people come to be baptized or come to accept Christ as their Lord, I don't ever tell them, OK, now you've accepted Christ your Lord, you've got to be baptized. We had an evangelist here one time doing a revival for us, and somebody had made a commitment to Christ. And I was talking to this person about this, and the guy said, he just kind of butted in and said, No, you've made a commitment to Christ, you have to be baptized. And you should be baptized next week. If the person is baptized next week, who's he doing that in obedience to? A human being. You see, what Paul's telling us is, we must foster in our congregation people who do what they think God wants them to do. Even if it's something that we think may be not quite as spiritually correct as what we do. Because that person belongs to God, and God is guiding them. So we give God the freedom to work in everybody's life at his own pace. So that you don't have quarrels. The spiritually mature people coming along and telling other people what to do so they come to depend on us to tell them what to do instead of depending on Christ to teach them what to do. What Paul was so conscious of is, when the Holy Spirit enters a person's life, he is a reliable guide. And if God has guided you to the place of more maturity, and you look at someone who's not at that place of maturity, don't try to get them to do what you tell them they should do. Help them learn how to listen to God, so he can tell them what they should do. We're trying to teach people how to learn to listen to God. So what I tell people when they make a commitment...