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Turn with me please to Romans chapter 14 as we return to Paul's letter and uh begin the what what is often known as the practical or application
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section of uh his letter often his letters. I think scholars make too much of the separation between the theological and
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the application of Paul. Hopefully, we won't fall into that trap. We'll be looking actually for a couple of weeks at the beginning verses, verses uh 1-8
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as a section. This morning I'm going to read verses 1-4. I'd like to ask Tim Failer if you pray for the ministry of the word this morning. Romans 14 beginning in verse one.
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Now except the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats
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vegetables only. vegetables only. Let not him who eats regard with contempt the one who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him
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who eats, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls and
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stand he will. For the Lord is able to make him stand. Let us pray.
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Dear God our father, we come in gladness and thanks for what you have done for your establishment of your kingdom inclusion for the birth and life and death and
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your gift of the Holy Spirit in us as a body. Ask that you open our minds, keep us from being conformed to the world, that you transform us so that we might
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serve you, love you, keep your honor each other, and love each other in the body, and also
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engagement and preaching your word today. Jesus name. To combine the teaching in Sunday school this morning with what I've read here at
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first um in Romans 14. The Holy Spirit does hereby prevent me from preaching a Jeremiah against vegans.
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But he is talking about in the church. So vegans outside the church are fair game. It is an interesting passage that he's dealing with here from a contemporary point of view. We
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don't really have the same issues by any means that Paul was dealing with in the church in Rome or the church in Corenth uh or in Philippi for example.
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um where cultures were coming together within the church. Um not just Jewish and Gentile as if the gentile culture was homogeneous. Well, neither was the
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Jewish. And so there there were a lot of variables in the community of Christ in the first century. And he is now addressing that on the basis of what he has already said in the first 13
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chapters about both the Jew and the Gentile being brought before the judgment seat of God and found wanting and the gospel which is the power of God into salvation. And so the theology that he has laid out in
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Romans is what bolsters the application to the local congregation that he begins with here in chapter 14.
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Back in the 11th century in AD 1054, a longstanding feud between the two major branches of Christianity, the Greek or Eastern branch and the Latin or Western branch,
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finally erupted into what is known historically as the great schism, where the Eastern Greek church divided from the western Latin and now Roman Catholic
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Church. A division that persists to this day. Now there were a number of issues that had caused this eventual break. But one of them in fact one of the most
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important ones was what was known as the fil clause of the apostles creed which was added by the Latin church to express
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their belief that the holy spirit proceeded from both the father and the son to which the Greeks violently reacted to say no the holy spirit
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does that get your goat up? Whether the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father or whether he proceeds from both the Father and the Son, if the elders were to adjudicate that
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and make a official statement, would that cause a great schism in the church today? I don't think so. In fact, when I first
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learned that many years ago, I thought, how incredibly silly. But it was a test of fellowship to the Greek branch of the church. Their view
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of the Trinity and of its function in the salvation of mankind was such that they could not accept the concept of the
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Holy Spirit proceeding from the son, but only from the father. Well, this is a historical example of that thing now known as a test of fellowship.
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Now, we understand that if if we never heard of the fil clause, we understand that there are certain things that happen within a church that become tests
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of fellowship upon which if we are not in agreement, we can no longer fellowship together. fellowship together. And that's what Paul is dealing with here. And so even though the particular
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items that he addresses concerning meat and concerning days may not have application in our life and our culture today, although some still
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do. The principle behind it is timeless and as critical in the church today as it was 2,000 years ago and certainly in
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AD 1054. AD 1054. So the question is on on what basis may we have fellowship as brothers and sisters and within the congregation
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and that's going to be a major point that I want to bring out of this text is that he is not talking about the church universal he's not talking about the concept so popular among many today and that is oh
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we're still brother and sister in the Lord but just not under the same roof not on the same place not in the same place on any given Sunday. No, this is the local congregation he's talking to.
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The the the things that he's talking about and the attitudes that he is inculcating and also speaking against can only be found in the local
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congregation. And so we either dismiss what he's saying altogether or we must apply it to ourselves as a local body of Christ. So on what basis fellowship? Well, Amos 3:3
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may give us a foundation to work with. How can two walk together lest they be agreed? Well, that that does kind of make sense
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and and the passage actually has to do with the destination. How can two walk together unless they agree upon where they're going? they're going? And so there there is definitely a basis
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upon which believers will fellowship together and there's an agreement. But to what degree must we agree?
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What must we agree upon and what do we do with disagreement? Now when there is disagreement within the church congregation that is called
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factions. And when there is disagreement from the local church, that is called schism or today we call it a church split.
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Neither of them are acceptable to Paul. Even a most cursory reading of his letters will indicate that neither of these are according to the Lord. Neither of these please the Holy Spirit or are
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manifestations of the Holy Spirit working within the body. We we know of course what he has to say to the Corinthians concerning factions which was a major problem in that congregation
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and he speaks firmly against it. Here in Romans there may not have been yet a schism and we don't really see many indications of factions although he does
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introduce us to two in this passage. He's warning here where he's he's condemning and judging in Corenth. He's warning in Rome.
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And so for the local congregation today reading these different letters, it's far better to be in the position of Rome than in Corenth. And in our congregation over the
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decades, there have been times when we have been very much closer to Rome, but there have been times when we have been very much closer to Corenth.
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The last church that Angela and I left was in 1987.
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And a question may be asked whether it was for just reasons. Very rare for any professing Christian in the west in the 21st century to not
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have left a church. There is a story about a Baptist abandoned on an island that I will not tell. But needless to say, having been there for 20 years, he
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already had two churches. So when we think about the fact that we have been in other churches and we have
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left them, the question should come to our minds, was our departure on just grounds? the test of fellowship that we
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applied to that situation. Was it truly biblical? And did we make the right decision? Now, in my case, I would say no. The
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elders had fired the music minister, and I was upset. The departure was providential because as I would find out later continuing to read and know different
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denominations I learned that that particular denomination had departed from the gospel many many generations ago but I did not know that then and that was certainly not a factor in our
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decision to depart from that church. So what Paul is saying here does have immediate application to I think just about every believer in the United
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States. Now of course some of you who have grown up in this church, you have not left. And I pray God that you do not leave. But there may come a time when a valid
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test of fellowship would be such that you can no longer walk together because you do not agree upon those things that are essential.
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are essential. But what is interesting in this passage and I think really quite vital, I will say that Romans 14 has become a ve had become a very important passage to me
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very early on in my walk in the church because I find it fascinating as as one who is very interested in true doctrine
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reading another apostle who is really the the kind of the father of Christian doctrine. I find it fascinating that as Paul discusss the weak and the strong
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and the different views that they have, he never once tells us which side was right. He never once adjudicates the matter of
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meat or no meat, of days or no days. He simply states them and moves on to something more important and that is
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unity and peace within the body of Christ. So the issue here we can't turn to such passages and try to prove and to beat one another as to whether or not
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days can be special or all days alike, whether or not meat needs to be kosher or all meats are acceptable. That's not the point.
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the point. This is not a matter of doctrine. It is actually a matter of what is known as adiaphora as adiaphora which is a fancy word that simply means
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matters indifferent. matters indifferent. that when many people come together from different backgrounds and are united by the Holy Spirit within the body of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, there are many things in our lives that are matters indifferent to which Paul says, "Let every man be
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convinced in his own mind." Okay? which means that our minds are not convinced by any other man or woman but rather by the Holy Spirit
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through his word. These are matters indifferent which also imply matters essential. Now the trick within the body of Christ
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has always been figuring out which things go in which categories. And when we don't figure out properly which things go in which categories, we
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end up with church splits and denominations. This is the root cause of why the church in the world today is not a united body.
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Which means that what Paul is teaching here again is timeless. Even if the particular issues no longer apply to our culture, the attitude of
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faction and schism is ever present in every generation of the church because we are all yet
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sinners in our inner man. and we come together with various with various different views of how things ought to be done and even different views on how
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the Lord ought to be worshiped and that that's really kind of the issue here. So adaphora that that long word matters indifferent these
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indifferent these in other words are not tests of I don't know that we truly understand the impact on the church over the ta
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past 400 years at least since the reformation 500 years. The impact of the failure to recognize this principle in
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the local body. The failure to recognize that just because I think something's important doesn't mean that it is. And just because other people aren't
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doing things the way I think they should do doesn't mean I should leave and break
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But let me be quick to say this also implies that there are things that if done the wrong way in an unbiblical way are tests of fellowship and do justify
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The wisdom of God is needed here. And that wisdom comes through the scripture in passages such as Romans 14. But it also comes through the scripture as we read of the life of Israel in the Old
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Testament. We we learn what things were so horrible that the people who committed them were to be cut off from among the
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community. We also learned that within that community there was much grace and there was many ways given to restore
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fellowship. I think the same is true within the church of Jesus Christ within the local body. But again, we've had a lot of teaching over the decades telling us that the church is is global. The church
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is universal. The church is all everywhere. You know where two or three are gathered in my name there I am among them failing to understand that that passage both as Jesus uses it and as it
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is used in the new test in the old testament has to do with judicial decisions. It has to do with judicial decisions within the body of Christ. It's like
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it's a quorum. If two or three are gathered in my name, you have a quorum. I am there with you and you can pass judgment. That's what that's all about. That doesn't mean that two or three make
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a church. a church. That's not the context. And this idea that you know what, I can just go someplace else or I go down the because they're all I mean, we we have people
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now that just do that as a matter of course. We've been told, oh yeah, I go to a different church every Sunday or I go to the same church for a while and then we go to a different church. As if we're
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we're trying a um smorggas board. You know, I go to the salad bar and then I go to the soup bar. I don't think so.
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I don't think we understand how that has emasculated the church and rendered its witness in the world impotent. We just accept it.
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accept it. And I think if we could know by a revelation of the Holy Spirit that that which we consider to be a test of fellowship is really a diaphora.
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We might understand that the unity and harmony of the body was far more important to the Holy Spirit as it was to Paul than our opinions as to what we should have for lunch.
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And so that's what this is all about. And there's a lot of soulsearching involved because the division between the adaphora the adaphora and the matters essential is not one
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that can be pontificated from the pulpit. See, churches have tried to do that, too. Well, we'll just make legal what is okay and we'll make illegal what
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is not okay. will make the decision from above, as it were, as to matters of food and drink, as to where you go, as to what you wear, as to what you do for
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leisure, what you do for work. Can't do that. Because we're going to learn that the the place the the the courtroom where this is adjudicated
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is each believer's conscience. And I think as Americans, we understand that a conscience cannot be legislated
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by another power. That a man's conscience, a woman's conscience belongs solely and independently to themsself. And so that's what makes this passage and this
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whole concept so very difficult because you have two polar opposites that are a tendency. You either have, as I just mentioned, you have the the
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pronouncement from above. You have the churches, we call them legalistic, but what they're doing is they're simply adjudicating that which is matters
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essential. And often times you'll find that some of those churches there aren't a whole lot of 80 orpha left. And some of you, I think, maybe have been in churches like that where
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everything has been already ruled upon and all you have to do is look up the proper precedent in the legal code to find out if you can do it this way. But
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then you have the other side and Paul almost seems to be advocating a sort of moral anarchy where every believer does that which is right in their own eyes.
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Is that what he's have advocating here? that it really doesn't matter that we have any unity or agreement. No, he's not advocating that either. And
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yet what he doesn't give us and so often we wish he would give us is just a straightforward list of on matters essential on the other.
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But I have increasingly become convicted that if he did give us such a list, one would be a lot longer than the other. And it's not the one that most churches
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think. I think the list of 80ora would be very very long indeed and the list of matters essential would be
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incredibly short. In fact, I think you could summarize that list according to Paul with one word,
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gospel. And and so there there's a a challenge and there's difficulty, there's mystery, there's the need for wisdom. And yet, even in that cloud of understanding, we
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do have one shining light. One thing that we can see mattered more than anything else to the apostle and the one thing that he wanted all of his hearers
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and readers to hold to [snorts] faithfully and truly the gospel. And that ends up becoming a light by which we can recognize and differentiate
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between matters essential and matters indifferent. So again, we're not without wisdom here. Even if we can't make a list and give it to you, post it in the bulletin or on
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our website, our website, it's the gospel. And so our understanding and our increasing understanding of the gospel gives us greater discernment concerning
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matters indifferent and matters essential. But even when we understand that, we do tend to think that everything we
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think is important is indeed essential to the gospel. And so it becomes, I think, incumbent upon the elders in any church to
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continually teach and preach the meaning of the gospel according to scripture. so that we might begin to understand that those things that we were taught to
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be so essential to our Christian walk are really matters indifferent. And as long as our conscience is clear in doing it, we're free to do it. But we
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are not free to impose it upon anyone else or to pass judgment for they're not doing it. doing it. And what happens as we grow according to the scripture by the light of the Holy
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Spirit is once again that list in our mind of matters essential becomes shorter because those items get transferred
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almost like a ledger. They get transferred over over to the column of 804. Now they're still important to us. Don't get me wrong. AD4 does not mean
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unimportant. It means in the manner of fellowship they are matters indifferent and each believer should be guided by their own counsel or their own
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conscience and should not pass judgment on anothers. That's essentially what he's saying here. I know I'm summarizing quite a bit, but what what I'm trying to do is get to the heart of the matter so
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that in coming weeks we can start to unpack it and maybe even begin to see in our own lives and in our own fellowship where we have gone astray from Paul's
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principles where we have considered matters to be so important that it has caused factions caused factions and where over time those factions have
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caused schisms. caused schisms. I think we can all understand that faction and schism are not healthy. When you have different factions within
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a body like there were in Corinth, you can easily see by reading it and just by thinking about it that they were acting as mere as mere mortals, as carnal men, but not
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spiritual. And that what they were doing as we finally get to chapter 11 when we read about their love feast and how some would come drunk, some would eat all the food, others would go hungry, we realize
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this place is a hot mess. But what we think is that oh there just were sinners in Corinth and in Ro Rome or in Philippi. No, there were factions.
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That's what he starts with in the letter. That was the root of all the problem was factions. And then of course as we've experienced
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over time those factions lead to schisms and those schisms lead to heartache. They lead to pain, discouragement and even depression.
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It's kind of like what James says about sin. You know, there's a progression that there's temptation that is then given into and eventually there becomes lust which when pursued gives birth to
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sin and sin then brings death. See that progression we're looking at, that's kind of the rubric under which I'm talking when it comes to our own
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opinions that we then hold to be so vitally important to the gospel that we form a faction and then when that faction realizes that it is unsuccessful in bringing about its
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way leaves causing schism which in a sense is a form of death in the body and if you don't feel that or let Put it
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this way. If you don't think Mark and I feel that, you do us great injustice. It is like a death.
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And whereas in my family, my mother will be 100 in June. So by God's grace, we have not witnessed much death in my
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family. Only my father has passed. But in my family over 35 years, there's been much death.
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And this is where it all starts. It all starts not from the pulpit, not from the decisions made, not even from letters
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written. It starts in every believer's heart. So when Paul says here, accept the weak, he's using the same word that he uses to
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describe what God does for every one of us. Just as God has accepted you, you accept the weak in faith.
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If you pull up a commentary on Romans 14, any commentary, close your eyes and just pull one off a shelf in a bookstore and they will spend a great deal of time telling you who the weak and the strong
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were. And that's the way we approach things. We we want to know we want to know who who you talking about. Who are the weak, Paul? Who are the strong? [clears throat] Now, the most common
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evangelical interpretation which considering considering the heritage of true religion is somewhat silly. The weak were the Jews and the
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strong were the Gentiles. Paul never defines them. He defines them in terms of certain
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issues, but it has always been the case that believers can be weak in one point and strong in another. Some believers can be completely weak and some can be very strong, but they
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they're never omnipotent. But it is important to realize a couple of things, not to identify them. You know, you you might look at the matter of meat and say, well, you know, the
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Jews, they had they had their kosher laws, right? And and so they were not some of them would not be able to eat meat that had not been prepared in a
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kosher manner with a clear conscience. Oh, sure that makes sense. But the Gentiles also had their meat sacrificed to idols.
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And it didn't really affect the Jews much because they didn't believe that idols had any significance at all, but were actually empty, inanimate articles of wood and stone. that comes from their
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heritage. So when they went to the grocery store, they wouldn't they might look at the USDA grade, but they didn't look for what God it was offered up to. And most of the meat in the market in a gentile
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town had been offered up to an idol before it went out into the marketplace. Paul deals with this in Corenth where most of the believers were Gentiles. And
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so we see the Jews had an issue with meat. Is it kosher? But Gentiles had an issue with meat. Has it been sacrificed to an idol days? Oh, well, clearly that's Jewish,
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right? Because they got their Sabbath, you know, that's their day. And and so that that's that's going to be their um matters essential. Well, you know, the Gentiles had their days, too. They not
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only had their feasts like the lupricalia and satnelia which we just celebrated but they also had their kins and their ides of every month. Holy days
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sacred time is a part of all ancient religion and and so they would come into Christianity with no less baggage as the Jew. So you can't delineate and say oh
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the weak were the Jews and the strong were the Gentiles. No, that's not the point. Additionally, we need to establish early on that these were all believers.
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Again, this is not a distinction between those outside the church and those inside. And T Wright puts it this way. They all give allegiance to Jesus as
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Lord. And this is this is crucial point. They all believe themselves to be sharing in the life of God's kingdom and the servants of service of the Messiah.
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This to me has been the most difficult analysis of what Paul says here. We tend to read what he's saying and
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these two factions that he gives us are the weak and the strong. And in our minds, we can envision people who are who are kind of just walking weakly with
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a stick and these big hulking brutes of Christ, right? Buff like tooff. No. Or they don't come they come into
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the congregation and and some have stickers that say weak. I'm weak. I'm weak. And other I'm strong. No. How many weak believers in Rome
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thought themselves weak? How many weak believers who are causing factions and schism in the modern church think themselves weak?
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They do not. The strong consider themselves strong in faith to partake. The weak consider themselves strong in faith to resist.
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You see the point? We all think we're serving the Lord. We don't think, "Oh, I I'm just too weak." That would be humility, a refreshing
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thing. And nor would that be condemned by Paul. But in fact, they are weak in faith relative to those who are able to do things that they are not able to do. All
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back in that courtroom of conscience where all of this works out. that each individual believer's conscience is where the weakness or the
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strength matters. But it is always in faith. We are not talking about unbelievers. We're not even talking about young
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believers. We're talking about all believers whose conscience belongs solely to themsel, responsible only to the Holy Spirit
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and not to one another. And our consciences are where we make the decisions that guide our decisions, our lives. Now I want to
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bring this together this morning to talk about just that point the
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What I have experienced in relation to this passage this passage is that many churches and many Christians will use this passage as a bludgeoning stick
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bludgeoning stick to disallow to disallow in others what is biblically permissible. And they do it this way. You can't do that or I will stumble.
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There is a difference between stumbling blocks and stumblers. There is a difference between believers who lorded over others in the liberty of
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their own conscience, essentially becoming bullies becoming bullies and believers who stumble around offended at anything anyone else does.
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Paul is not allowing for either category. He is not he he he does not say who's right and wrong, but he does use two descriptive terms that kind of give away
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the game. Is it better to be weak or strong in faith? Well, clearly strong.
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And yet, no one can be strong in faith with a weak conscience. And so what we learn about the conscience in this whole matter, and I'm
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going to be looking at Romans and Corinthians as we go through these verses, is that the conscience, we we know that the conscience can be seared. He's not talking about that.
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But the conscience can be defiled. And the conscience is defiled whenever it does that for which it does not have
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faith. If the conscience is clear, and as Paul describes it, if what is partaken of is done so with thanksgiving to God, then
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it is perfectly acceptable to God. Because all things are sanctified, he says, through prayer and thanksgiving. But if the conscience is not steady and
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not sure not sure but does something because it sees someone else doing it, someone that it admires, someone that it looks up to,
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then it is not strong. It is actually sinning because Paul will say here everything that is apart from faith is
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sin. So the conscience can be defiled and that is what the strong need to guard against that they not force the weak in conscience to do anything apart from
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faith. But conscience is not static. This is where we've really stumbled in our lives and especially in our
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churches. Conscience did not come down the mount with Moses. It can be trained. It can be developed. It can be guided by the word of God. And the word of God by the power
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of the Holy Spirit can show us where our conscience has been misled. That we have believed according to conscience that certain things were right or wrong. But as we're in the word
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more and more, we realize that that judgment was all wrong to begin with. And as we're in the word, we begin to realize what is okay, what is essential, and our conscience grows.
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Paul never intended for the weak to remain weak. But he neither intended for them simply to do what the strong are doing because the strong are the strong
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and might makes right. No, but rather that by the washing of the water of the word, our consciences might be informed by the Holy Spirit, and that which was
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once forbidden to us becomes acceptable to us in the liberty of conscience. Let us pray. us pray. Father, we do ask that you would guide
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us through this passage and help us to apply it to our lives and especially to our individual consciences. that we would not fall into the trap of
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accepting everything or the opposite trap of adjudicating all things, but rather that we would be open to the guiding of your Holy Spirit through your
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word, and that our consciences would not be defiled, but rather matured, that we might grow into the liberty that we have as sons and daughters of
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Almighty God, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. For we ask this in his
