Living in Harmony: Embracing Differences in Faith

I'd like to invite you to turn to Romans chapter 14 this evening. This is another application of what Paul's been talking about, starting with chapter 12, focusing on how we change our attitude not to live like the world lives or think like the world thinks, but instead to focus on living and thinking the way God wants us to think. Now, the passage that it relates to, most of all, above what we've seen, is the passage in chapter 12, verse 9. Love must be sincere, hate what is evil, cling to what's good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, honor one another above yourselves, never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer, share with God's people who are in need, and practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse, rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those that mourn, live in harmony with one another, do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low positions, do not be conceited. And in this section, he's talking about putting the gospel in practice with people that you're around. Now, the background of chapter 14 is that the Roman community is comprised of maybe three groups of people. First there are the Jews, the Jewish people who were converted to Christianity, and they would be deeply rooted in the idea that the Old Testament law that they'd practiced all of their life was critical because it's scripture. So they would be intent on following the scripture, what the Bible said and taught. They taught it, done it all their lives, they practiced it all their lives. Jesus practiced keeping the Old Testament law. So when they came into the Christian faith, they would have a great emphasis on doing the things the Old Testament said a person should do, keeping the Sabbath, eating food, following the dietary laws. And all of their life, they had been challenged to make sure that they ate according to this dietary restriction. No pork, food bled and fixed in a kosher way. And now they're coming into a community where there are non-Jews, and I like that word better than Gentiles. Gentile, do you think of yourself as a Gentile? Do you think of yourself as a non-Jew? Would that be more likely to think that way? Well, I think that would be a better way to say it, so I'm going to try from now on when a word Gentile comes up to say a non-Jew, that kind of gets us. So now, the gospel being proclaimed, there are a lot of non-Jews who suddenly come into the church, and they've never followed these dietary laws. Some of them love pork chops maybe, and they've never gotten into this thing of not eating that sort of food. Now they get in the church, and they're with a group of people who do not eat any pork, follow strict dietary laws, and they're contrary to what these non-Jews have ever done in their life. So when you're in a church, now they're not big churches here, they're small groups, like we might have no more than 50 in a group, but you're in that group, and you see one group of people at the church meals who are eating pork, and you see another group over here who are not eating anything but vegetables, because they can't touch the meat that's on the table, because they're not sure how it's been killed and dressed. They can't eat anything that the blood stays in, and they're not sure if there's any kosher food on that table to eat. So they're going through the line picking up all the vegetables and salads to eat, and they see you across the table from them, heaping your plate up with the pork and the meat, and they're looking at you like, are you really a Christian? And so the debate sets in. That's the context in which Paul's writing this. He's trying to write this to the church, and of course, what tends to happen then is all the Jewish people start saying, you know, I saw Alan eating pork the last time we were up here. I don't wonder about his salvation, you know. And they're getting in their little groups, and the non-Jews are getting in their little groups, and then you have the third group. They're non-Jews, but they came in contact with Jewish people and were attracted by the morality of the Jewish religion. In the ancient world, there's a very immoral world, and a lot of Romans and Greek people looked at the world they were in, it was very immoral, and they wanted to find a religion that was moral. And the Jews, with their Old Testament teachings, with very strict moral law, were very appealing to them. So many of the non-Jewish people joined the Jewish religion, had great price, circumcised as an adult. It's no fun, I'm sure, and not much anesthetic there either. And they had left their family, lived by the strict dietary rules, and now here comes along the proclamation that the Messiah has come, and they're now converted. They've paid the price of ridicule from their family, they've changed their lifestyle, they're keeping the Old Testament law, and now they're brought into this church, and here's a bunch of these other wild people who are piling on the meat and the pork, and not keeping all the laws of the Old Testament. So now they feel like, I left my family's religion, joined this one, and now there's another bunch telling me that I'm wrong because I do these things that I've left my family to do at great ridicule. So Paul's writing to a church that has this in its mixture, and we're not talking about a church of a thousand people, but just a small group of people, in which you might have two or three small kind of home groups. He's trying to address this issue in the church based on what he's talking about before. Whenever you're entering in the kingdom of God, you know how the world acts, what happens in a situation like this in fleshly things. People choose sides. They begin to criticize each other. They begin to talk about, I don't like these people because they don't keep the Old Testament law. It's in the Bible. What do they mean, leaving the Bible? The Bible says this is what you're supposed to do. And the non-Gentiles who became Jews are saying, how can they do this? I've left everything to keep this Old Testament law, and now they're saying they shouldn't do it. And you're having these new converts that say, we're following Christ and living in obedience to Him. We're free to do the things that we think are right in God's eyes. All we have to do is say to God, should we eat only meat? And He says, no, that's not necessary. Everything I've made is clean. They point to the words of Christ. Great conflict among them. So Paul is trying to write to give them principles by which they would know how to address the issue of conflict. Now I want to say that conflicts in your life are not necessarily bad. And for the Christian, conflicts have a great purpose. They help us define what we believe. And whenever you come across a circumstance in which there is problems or trouble in your spiritual life, you have to sit down and think through, what is God's answer to this? And it allows you to define what you believe in a better way than you could without the conflict. If you never had the conflict, that is, you're living your life all the time, you're doing everything you wanted to do, like maybe the Jewish people were doing in this section, and you never came across Gentiles or non-Jews who said, well, I don't think it's necessary to keep the Old Testament law. You would never ask the question. You'd just go on doing what you'd always been doing. But because the question is now asked of you, you have to deal with it. And the non-Jewish people who are free from the law, they're ignoring the law. They have to come to grips with, what do I do with scripture that says I should keep the Sabbath, not eat meat that's not been killed properly, and I should abstain from pork and all the other animals that are listed in the Old Testament? So it gives an opportunity for the church to define what it means to be a follower of Christ. It gives the church an opportunity to define what kind of impact the Old Testament has on us. What hold does it have? I'm sure you've read some of those laws in the Old Testament. What do you do with them? I'm sure that you don't jump up and say, well, I'm not going to eat any more pork all my life. We tend to see, read those things and just ignore them without trying to say, why is it that this is not required of us? What is the issue here that's at stake? So Paul is writing to help them learn how to deal with, these are spiritual issues now. They're issues of the Old Testament, keeping the Old Testament law, or living under the freedom of Christ. That's the two poles here. And the freedom of Christ, does it set you free from the Bible? You don't have to really do what the Bible says? Well that's the issue that Paul's dealing with. Here's what he says, beginning with verse 1. Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Now Paul defines these two groups in terms of someone who's weak, and someone whose faith is weak, and someone whose faith is not weak, or is strong. The weak person he defines here in terms of the faith is the person who keeps the Old Testament law, because the saving grace of God is not adequate. He needs the Old Testament law to give him the sense of following Christ. So he would be then a person who says, okay, I've accepted Christ and received his grace and received his freedom, but I just don't feel good about leaving behind the Jewish heritage that I've had or that I've adopted. So to feel good in my faith, I want to hold on to these Jewish practices so I'll feel like I'm really doing the things that are right. Paul says that the stronger ones are to accept the person with the weak faith. He doesn't say that it's required for them to follow these practices, but he says allow the person to do it. Why? Because there's not anything in the Christian faith that says to a person you should not keep the Old Testament laws. They were not left behind as evil or wicked, so it's acceptable for them to keep them if they want it. It's just that their faith in the saving grace of God is weak enough so that they feel like they need some external support to encourage or support their faith. So you're to allow that person, accept them as they are, not try to change them. Now the people who feel more free in their faith and have trusted that accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord is all they need without keeping a bunch of rules or regulations, they are to open themselves up and not criticize the person who is still keeping the Old Testament law. So their responsibility is to accept them as they are without criticism, and then without passing judgment on disputable matters. Now he sets a framework for it. Disputable matters. Now what would you find would be indisputable in the Old Testament that God would require of us? Okay, idolatry. Not kill a Ten Commandment, yeah. I mean you could read that and say that's pretty clear is what you want to say. Anything in the Old Testament or the New Testament at which there would be no question as to its instruction from God. In the New Testament, for example, Jesus never said now it's okay to kill. He never said it's okay to have idols. So when there's no dispute between the Old Testament and the New Testament, what Jesus was teaching, then they're to pass, we're to leave those aside. There is legitimate reason for discussing things about which there is no dispute. Those things are given to us. It's all this big area in which there is a difference of opinion. Honest people reading the Scripture, praying to God, can come up with different opinions about these matters. Those are disputable instances. Can you think of some things that in the Christian community are disputable? People argue both sides of it, honest Christian people. Baptism, whether or not you should be immersed or not immersed, whether or not it saves you or doesn't save you, confession, tithing, in Southern Baptist life what's coming up is Calvinism. That's a disputable issue. People are not settled one way or the other on that. There's a lot of honest, sincere people. So there are disputable issues that we have in which he's addressing here. Do not pass judgment on disputable matters without passing judgment on disputable matters. We are to refrain from saying about our brothers and sisters that use baptism by sprinkling or other forms of it, we're to refrain from saying they're heathens and they're going to hell. So when there's disputable issues, we are not to write them off as if their actions no longer allow them to be a follower of Christ. Now when you have your doctrines firmly entrenched and you believe they're correct, it's sometimes difficult for people to accept the idea that someone could believe differently about something that's disputable. I think probably in the Catholic tradition you grew up in, when they changed the Friday meat deal, there was a lot of dispute about that. And probably some people thought people that have started eating this meat on Friday just can't go to heaven because they're just black and white on that. And see, it's not necessarily one of the eleventh commandments, thou shalt not eat meat on Friday, you know, but it becomes so entrenched for hundreds of years that people tend to elevate it to the position of God's command when it really isn't. So the difference is you're looking at things that are sort of like that. And I remember when I was a boy and the pastor at our church, his son had a son about my age, and we had a big square out in the backyard and I would plow it up, put a fork in it and turn it over every year and plant okra in there and sell the okra to my folks and he sold it in the store to make some money. So on Sunday afternoon he came home with us after church and I went out and started tilling my little garden. It probably wasn't as big as those tables are, two tables together. And he came out and he really got on me, said, the Bible says you're not supposed to work on Sunday. I said, well it's not work, I enjoy it, I'm having fun out there. And he was trying to condemn me for tilling my little flower bed or vegetable garden, whatever it was. But he saw this as a command that required for us the restraint of keeping the Sabbath day principles, which is what they're talking about, which Paul will talk about in the next section of this. So the first principle is, is the matter that you're discussing disputable? Is there unanimous opinion among all believers that this is something that's wrong? And you can say, hey, we have to hold on to this. You must abide by it. If there's divided opinion about believers who honestly, sincerely trust the Lord. I mean, they don't say, well, I don't think it's right. Or I think it's right. I don't see anything wrong with it. We're not talking about that because a lot of people don't see anything wrong with a lot of things that are pretty wrong, you know. So we're not looking at people just saying, I can make my own mind up about it. But honest people are looking at the scriptures who see no reason why this thing is binding on us. So his first principle is when you run into people who are doing things that are required, they think are required. Don't pass judgment on them. Don't condemn them. So he starts with his condemnation and in the last of the chapter, I started reading about that live in harmony with each other. And we're to not persecute, but bless people and repay anyone evil for evil. We're to be able to be open and accepting of people whose differences of opinion are real. In verse two, he says, one man's faith allows him to eat everything, but other man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. So here he is talking about the faith of a person being strong, meaning that that person says, I believe that Jesus Christ and my trust in him is all I need. So I can place my trust in him and salvation comes by what my trust in Christ is, not the things that I'm doing. So that person has a faith that's strong enough that he doesn't require the support of something else in his life. It allows him to eat everything, but another man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not. Now he goes the other direction. Okay, so you have strong beliefs in eating only vegetables because you can't eat this meat. When you see someone who goes out and eats meat, don't use that as an opportunity to tear down the fact that they're not really a good or strong believer. Now some of the things you talked about a minute ago, we would say if you find someone who's in a church at Sprinkles, don't take the opportunity to say they're going to hell. If you find someone who's a Calvinist and you're not, you don't take the opportunity to say you can't go to heaven because you believe that way. People who have really strong beliefs, he's talking about here, are people who are weaker in faith. They don't trust God enough. They don't feel the freedom to be able to trust God and use God's guidance as a means, as a way of choosing their lifestyle. So the man who does not eat, however, everything, must not condemn the man who does. Now the basis for this principle in verse 3, for God has accepted him. Now the principle that Paul is talking about is faith is the means whereby we receive salvation. And whenever a person has faith, that is trusts Christ, gives his life to Christ, is committed to following Christ, he becomes Christ. And Christ is his Lord and his judge. It is not our responsibility to step in and pass judgment on someone who is responsible only to God. This man has, God has accepted him. He said, now you're my child. He's been adopted into the family of God. And Paul is hitting at the principle here that every single person in the community of faith has the same standing. And this person you're looking at is a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ. And you're to treat them not as if they're less than you, he's already said before, we're not to treat ourselves as we are better than them, and they're not to treat us as if we are worse than them. So we treat each other regardless of our opinions about disputable items as equals, people with the same standing with God, recognizing that if a person does this, they are accountable to God himself. Now, he says, who are you to judge someone else's servant? Recognizing that there is a role in the church and in the community of faith for teaching what's right and wrong and helping people make right choices. But it is not our job to be the judge of people who belong to God. There is a freedom for us. Each one of us is responsible for determining in our own lives what we think are the right things. We don't motivate each other in the community of faith by guilt or shame. What we depend on is every one of us searching our own hearts and saying to God, what do you want me to do about this matter? And if a brother or sister comes to an agreement or in their mind that this is what they ought to do, we encourage them to do that. Sometimes in the church, you know, we tend to manipulate people to get them to do what we want them to do, guilt or shame, accusations. We try to make sure that people are motivated by some other force than simply obedience to Christ. Sometimes this is done with the finances. Sometimes it's done with taking jobs in the church. We push people and press them to do the things we want them to do, trying to make them do what we want instead of encouraging them to find the direction from God. I think our church has been better than a lot of churches that I've been around to try to say to people, we want you to take the job that you feel God wants you to do. And if somebody comes and says, I don't think God wants me to do this anymore, we haven't tried to say, well, you're going to leave us in a bad spot, and if we don't have you in there, I don't know what we're going to do, trying to make people feel guilty about that. What Paul is talking about is we should see each individual as a person responsible to God and trust the fact that they are governed by God, that God himself takes care of them. To his own master, he stands or falls. What Paul is saying is every one of us are judged by God if we belong to him, and he's adequate to be able to tell people when they're wrong and when they're right. He doesn't need our help. And whenever we begin to try to help God, we stand in his way of being able to take care of the responsibility other people has. And if this person is doing what they're doing as a result of their trust in God, then he says the Lord will, he will stand or fall by the Lord. And if he's doing this by his own trust in Christ, then the Lord is able to straighten him out or to make him stand. In other words, if you have a brother or sister in the group who's mixed up about their religious faith and you say, I see that they've got some things that are really mixed up and they're wrong, the best thing you can do for them is to say, God, I think they're disturbed. I trust them into your hands and God will straighten them out. That's his job. It's not our responsibility to play policeman with all the people in the church about issues that are disputable. And when there's a hard and fast rules that we know God has given us and there's no question about it, we have some obligation to help a brother or sister who strays away from that. But if it's an item that can be disputable, then we have the responsibility to say, we turn loose of this person. They work for you, God, and it's your responsibility to straighten them out. That's really a difficult thing to do sometimes. What is difficult about is if I have come to a conclusion about something that I think is right and God has convicted me about it and I see someone else who's doing something that is disputable, some people say one way or the other, we see them doing it, then we want to come in and say, you shouldn't do that because God's told me it's wrong. We have to let people find the truth of God themselves. That's his principle. So in this community of faith, you have people who are eating meat, you have people who are not eating meat. Neither one are to condemn each other. If they work for God or live for God, then they're to be able to find the answer from God. He will correct those that have made a mistake and he'll help those who are making the mistake know how to be able to make it better or right. Now, as we look around ourselves in the world that we're in, what are the things in our church that might cause people to have differences of opinion that are disputable to which we could apply a principle such as this? What about in a Baptist church? We had a couple that came to our church one time. The only time they came, I don't remember now exactly what it was, but at the end of the song or the testimony, the people in the church clapped. I went to see them and said, we're never going to go to a church where they clap. I don't think I've read anywhere, thou shalt not clap. But they had been in a church. It taught that worship was very, very reverent and clapping was worldly. And so when they, the guy told me, he said, when I heard the clapping, I said, okay, this isn't for us. Now he's passed a judgment, said I made a decision about whether or not these people are spiritually directed by whether or not they clap. So practices in churches, being quiet, and that kind of practice can be one thing that can be difficult for people. What other have you seen people have? When I hear the texts that it's nice and independent of them, and they do not believe that when you clap, you should only do it for yourself, and they should not have such a thing for long. Mm-hmm. I remember the big issue that was alive, maybe in the 60s, when guys started getting their hair longer. There's some churches where they wouldn't allow any teenagers, you know, with longer hair, and come to church, and churches would make them get their hair before they came and go to camp. You couldn't have your hair long if you went to camp. And the dress lengths, I remember at Webster Conference Center one time. They had a discussion about that, and said the girls should have their dresses one inch, no more than one inch above their knees. I said, well, I'll volunteer to check them. Nobody in that bunch of preachers laughed at all. They just looked at me like, you weirdo, you. But fads like this, hair length, you're a hippie, you can't be a Christian and have your long hair, dressing styles. One time I was on vacation years ago when I first came, and I asked a guy who was in the area preached over near Lyons to come and preach for me that Sunday, and he preached Sunday morning, and some ladies wore jeans, and so for the evening service, his sermon was why it was a sin to wear jeans. And, of course, everybody was talking about that when I got back. They all remembered that sermon, especially the ones that wore jeans that morning. But you see, there are some scriptures about decency in dress, right? So there are some scriptures about decency in dress. And you could use the idea of decency, which would be not to expose yourself in some way, to say a Christian should be modest in their dress. The Bible does say that. And the difference between what modesty is, is always a line that's measured by cultures. Some culture for women to wear their hair down like yours is like a sexual attraction because women are supposed to have their hair all in a bun at the top. So culture sometimes determines how we would react to circumstances like that, but we are to be gracious with differences of opinion. Can you think of any other issues that come up? I know it's kind of from the church, but it doesn't mean that women can't do it. It was turned around because when Maxine Nicholson's husband died, and we have his funeral, his son came to church, and that was turned out that way. And he said, every time I come to church I read that and it reminds me of my dad's funeral. And so, based on the scripture, that you try to do anything you can to keep people from being offended, I said to him, I tell you what, I'm going to turn that table around. If you come to church, it won't be sticking out there, it won't affect you at all. So I turned it around. He never has come in a long, long time, so I haven't paid any attention to which way it's turned. But I did it to try to remove an excuse from him. Nobody complained about it that I knew about. And again, there's not a verse in the Bible that tells you which way your table for the Lord's Supper is supposed to be facing. It doesn't even tell us that we're supposed to have that on the table. So it's an issue that is disputable about what its place ought to be. You had something. And there are churches that believe that you should not use any instruments in the church, non-instrumental churches. Some believe you can use only the instruments that the scripture says you can use, like harps and lyres and things like that. So in the Church of Christ in the South has Church of Christ instrumental, in which they have an instrument, and then they have Church of Christ non-instrumental. And I was in a town selling Bibles in Alabama where there were an instrumental Church of Christ on one side of the road and right across the street there was a non-instrumental on the other side. They couldn't agree, so they just built two separate churches and had their own way. They considered this an issue without dispute, when most of us would consider it an issue that does have dispute. And the existence of both churches would testify that it was disputable, except each side said it's not disputable, they're heretics. They're pagans. They don't believe the Bible. They don't follow God. And they can be really strong. They divide churches. They divide communities. They divide people. These powerful, powerful issues, and that's what Paul was trying to address. All the way through, Paul believes the idea that if Jesus Christ is the Lord of your people, there will not be this kind of division. His idea is the instrumental group should say to God, what do you want us to do? The non-instrumental should say the same thing, and they should get an answer both of them could live with. That was Paul's conviction. And anything short of that would indicate that one or both sides are not listening to God. This makes it powerful for us to try to learn how to come to some agreement. We can see the instrumental and non-instrumental deal, and it may look funny to us, but it's powerful to those people. We have to look inside of ourselves to say, what are the things that cause conflict between me and others? What causes me to find a need to condemn someone else for the way they live their Christian life? And is there some way by which I can find a way to accept that person as a follower of Christ and trust that God, if they're doing anything wrong, will straighten them out? That's what this conviction is about. God rules the life of his people, and if they're on the wrong side of it, he will straighten them out. Okay, what do you do? You see someone in that circumstance. You say to God, I think this person is living in conflict with what you think is right. That's my conviction about it. I would be willing to address this issue with this person if you raise the opportunity for me. And then if the opportunity is raised, you don't force it, but if they ask you, or they initiate it, or they want to discuss it, then it's the opportunity you have to be of help to God in correcting one of his followers. See, Paul is not against correcting people who've gotten over the line. He is against making this issue in such a fashion that we are condemning each other for doing things that are contrary to what we think is right, but do have differences of opinion about them. What Paul is trying to get to is when Christ is the Lord of this church, the end result will ultimately be oneness, harmony, and unity, because each believer gives the other person the benefit of the doubt, and trust in God to correct them if correction is needed. That requires tremendous confidence in God and patience on our part. It's very difficult to be patient with other people we think are wrong. It's not hard at all to be patient with ourselves when we are wrong. Let's pray. We live in a world of great conflict. We look around us everywhere we see. We see people that can't get along, that are mad at each other, condemn each other. It seems in our world it gets worse and worse, especially in the political arena. Father, help us to be sort of like a spot in this world where people know how to care for each other, live their convictions without compromise, and do not run down and condemn each other, that we might be a place that the world would learn how to follow your convictions and live in harmony and peace with others around us. In the name of Christ we ask this, amen.