But anyway, we're going to get
into Romans chapter 14 after we pray. Let's pray. Father,
we pray that according to your grace to your people, chosen
from eternity in the Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior and all
of our hope, the one to whom we look and whom we want to know
and emulate, we pray, Lord, that you would look upon him and receive
us and bless us as you do your people. And we pray this according
to what you revealed in scripture, the prayer of those who felt
their need and knew that it was necessary for you to provide
all for them in Christ. And so they came to you on that
basis, with that warrant, and they pleaded at your throne of
grace and mercy through your son's blood that you might bless
us. And so we come now, Lord, our Father, asking that you would
bless us. and receive us for Christ's sake.
Our children and our friends and our family and all that are
here, we pray you'd work in your people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. A lot of times we'll study a
scripture and wonder how to tie it together and are never quite
sure, but I have found that it's often helpful to go to the end
of the book and read it and find out what the conclusions were,
and then that helps me to anchor the rest of it. So I want to
do that here in Romans 14 by spilling over into Romans 15.
And I've entitled this message belief and practice, or faith
and practice. You'll see why, hopefully, through
this. You can never get into a sermon title, what the full
message of that text of scripture is, but it seems to me that this
chapter is following, as is obvious, the first part of Romans, which
If you were to condense it all down, it is the gospel. The book
of Romans is an exposition of the gospel. A very detailed exposition. So, if you're interested in knowing
what the gospel is, study this book. Memorize this book if it
has to. Word by word, go through it and
look at it and think about it and pray, God, show me what your
word says concerning Christ. Because in the very beginning
of this book, if you look at chapter 1 and just the first
couple of verses in Romans, just to give you an example of the
message Because here the apostle at the outset gives the message. He says that he is a servant
of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle separated unto the
gospel of God. The glad tidings from heaven.
The good news from God. which He had promised before
or afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures. And what was
that message? Concerning His Son, Jesus Christ,
our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the
flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according
to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
It's about Christ. It's about Him coming. as the
son of man, the seed of David and seed of Abraham, and performing
all for us as God and man. Our salvation is in the one who
is God, who made himself of no reputation and took on our nature
and our case before God and our obligations and fulfilled all
for us. And that's what the gospel is. But in Romans 14 now, we
have what I would describe as a feedback loop. And if you don't
know what feedback is, I wish I could draw it on a whiteboard
for you. I was an electrical engineer for a number of years
and this was a common concept that we used so commonly that
it just became intuitive. But if you have a system and
there's input to it, and then it goes through that system and
comes at the output, you need to know whether the output is
what you want based on that reference you have at the input. You have
a reference, you say, I want this, you have an input signal
that comes in, and at the output you say, is it big enough? So
what you do is you take some of that output signal and you
feed it back to the input and compare it with the reference
And if it's not big enough, then you boost the system gain, or
the system amplification, and it increases the signal so you
get more at the output. And if it's too big, then you
lower it, and so on. You use that sampling of the
output back to compare it to the input, and then you feed
that back through the system, tweaking it. It's just kind of
like if I was speaking with a microphone, and I said, can you hear me?
And you would say, nothing. Now I turn up the gain, right?
Turn up the volume. Can you hear me now? And then
it starts ringing. That's too much gain. So you
turn it down. And there's this long delay because
you're telling me what you hear. You're taking some of that output
and you're telling me at the input what to do with the system,
turning it up or down. The book of Romans is giving
us the reference. What is the reference? It's the
Gospel. And what is the message of the
Gospel? It's Christ and Him crucified.
He tells us this because He is the object of our faith. This
is the doctrine that we hold. And so this is the reference
at the input of the system. But the system is our own selves,
our body, our mind, our spirits, and our souls. And God gives
us faith, and that faith has a result in all that we are and
produces an output. And that output is somehow related
to our faith. But it has to be brought back
and compared to Jesus Christ at the input. And when it's not
right, because we look at Christ both for our faith and our practice,
then what happens? An adjustment has to happen.
Well, how does that happen? We look at Christ, and we adjust
the system, or God does, through hearing about Christ, until the
output corresponds to the reference, which is Christ. You see? And
maybe that's too complicated an analogy, but it was the only
one that came to my mind. We threw around terms like gain
and feedback and all that stuff all the time because it was just
the way we talked at work. I'm sure that if you're in the
military, you have your own speak and other disciplines like that. Romans 14 is about the resulting
practice that comes about in looking to Christ in our faith,
in our doctrine. affected by the inward work of
the Spirit of God in our own sinful nature, and that's coming
out in some form. And so God puts Romans 14 and
a lot of the practical parts of the epistles in there in order
to point us back to Christ and see ourselves, and see that the
faith that we have is either weak faith, or it's misguided,
misdirected, and it needs to be pointed back to Christ again.
And so that's the first thing I would say here in this matter
of faith and practice, is that our practice is output, affected
by our own faith, which has to look to Christ, and that faith
has to be adjusted in order to get the output right. And so
whenever we have an error, we can't go tweaking around in the
output. You start doing that, and the whole system's going
to be driving more signal against it if you're tweaking it down
or tweaking it up, and it's just going to make a big mess. So
you want to think about that. And the second thing I want to
say here is in order to understand Romans 14, We want to look at
what Paul, the Apostle, by the Spirit of God says at the end
of the chapter and the next chapter to see how it folds back into
the beginning so we can understand why he said what he did at the
beginning and through this chapter. And so let me take you to that.
He says, first of all, in chapter 15, in verse 1. This is a conclusion. This is
a statement of conclusion. We then that are strong, ought
to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Okay, so that's the correcting.
That's a conclusion that's in a form of correction. Remember,
all scripture is given by God for inspiration, for instruction
in righteousness, for exhortation, for rebuke, and for correction.
And so that's what it does. When we look back to Christ,
it corrects us. So he's going to correct us now by what he
said in 14. In summary, he says, this is
the conclusion. We that are strong are to bear
the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. Verse
2, let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to
edification. Now think about this in the context
of the church. Because we don't go out and please
our neighbors that live next to us for their good. That's
not the focus of our life, although that is part of it. The main
focus of our lives as believers is in the church. It's in the
body of Christ. The gospel and all that we do
together as believers is to edify the body in itself in love until
we all come to a perfect man and to the full measure of the
stature of Christ. Remember Ephesians chapter 4?
until we come into the unity of the faith. Those are the things
we do when we're preaching the gospel, is that we would all
come to the same mind. We would have the same heart,
which would be the mind and heart of our Savior. And here he says,
this is what you ought to do, therefore, is to bear the infirmities
of the weak. Don't please yourselves, but
do what you do in order to edify your neighbor, or your brother
in Christ. to edification. Verse 3, he gives Christ again
as the reference. For even Christ pleased not himself,
but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee
fell on me. Now we see, I remember now, I was a sinner. God placed
my sins upon his son. as my anointed savior, my mediator,
bearing my sins in his own body, he bore the offenses, my sins
that offended God in his own body, in himself, before God
for me to remove those offenses and to make satisfaction in God. I, as a sinner, deserving the
wrath for my sins, the wrath of God for my sins, and was under
the condemnation, and he came, and he did all this when I was
lost. And He did not please Himself.
He says, for even Christ pleased not Himself. If He had, where
would I be? Lost, still. And so, we as believers
follow Christ in this, don't we? We look at Christ as our
Savior, but we also look at Him to see how to treat our brothers
and sisters in the body of Christ. And to treat others, for that
matter. Our family, our children, our husbands and wives, and our
neighbors in the world. Alright, so that's the conclusion.
In other words, it's all about the love that faith produces
in looking to Christ. You see that? It's all about
the love that faith produces in looking to Christ. Now if
we get that, when we go through the rest of the chapter, we won't
get far off. But I also want to bring your
attention to verse 17 of chapter 14. Chapter 14, verse 17, because
this verse also anchors the entire chapter for us. He says, "...for
the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." So if you take the entire
chapter of 14 Romans and the rest of scripture, for that matter,
and you filter it through this narrow point, then you see that
it strips off the things that are unimportant, that we normally
focus on. which is, as you'll see in Romans
14, comparing ourselves, our brother to ourselves, or comparing
ourselves to God's law in some way, or all these things that
we get sinfully wrapped up in our pride, in our sense of self-righteousness,
and he corrects that here in this verse. He says, the kingdom
of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and
joy in the Holy Ghost. First question we have to ask
then is, what is the kingdom of God? Well, the kingdom of
God, if you think back in Luke chapter 17 verse 21, Jesus told
those then. He says, the kingdom of God doesn't
come by observation. Observation means what you can
see. Outwardly. It's not what is external. It's
not observable. It's not something that you can
point to and say, yeah, I can see that rule. We observe that rule or we do
this in our life. That's the kingdom of God. That's
really the important thing here. He says, no, that's not what
the kingdom of God is. The kingdom of God is not outward.
He says, the kingdom of God is within you in Luke 17, 21. The kingdom of God is within
you. And that's what Nicodemus was told in John chapter 3. Remember? Jesus said, unless you have been
born of the Spirit of God, born again, You cannot see the Kingdom
of God, can't perceive it, can't enter it. You haven't yet seen
it or entered it. Unless God's Spirit opens up
that Kingdom to you in seeing Christ and Him crucified and
gives you faith, you won't be able to enter it. So the Kingdom
of God, then, If you take that scripture with Luke 17.21, John
3 and Luke 17.21, you see that the kingdom of God in us is the
revelation of Christ to us by the Spirit of God, given to us
by God's grace. He raises us to spiritual life.
He creates us in Christ Jesus. He births us into His kingdom.
And that creation and that resurrection and that birth result in our
faith in Christ. We see Him. We lay hold on Him.
And we find our all in Him. And this is what God finds. And
so we're in alignment with God's truth in the Gospel. And that's
the work, that's the operation of God's Spirit in us. So that's
the first part of the Kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of God
is more than just our own individual experience of grace in our heart.
Because the Kingdom of God also is that same thing working and
operating in all of God's people. Which means the Kingdom of God
is the Church. In Matthew 16, if you want to
quickly look there, Matthew 16, Jesus asked his disciples in
verse 13, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? Remember? And the disciples said, well,
some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Jeremiah, or
one of the prophets risen from the dead, and so on. And he pointedly
asked them, but whom do you say that I am? In verse 16, he says,
and Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God. Now that one statement there,
Peter could never have come up with that on his own. In fact,
in the verse that follows, Jesus says in verse 17, The kingdom
of God had come to Peter. had entered into his heart, and
the Father himself had revealed to Peter, by the Spirit of God,
that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, the only
Son of God, the unique Son of the only living God, the one
who in his person as the Son of God was appointed and anointed
to be our Savior, the Christ, the mediator, our priest, our
prophet, our priest, and our king, all these things to save
us from our sins. Peter realized that. And he confessed
it. And then Jesus said, verse 18,
And I say to you, Peter, that thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. I'm going to build my church
like a temple, like a building. And the church is compared to
many things, and the temple is one of them. But it's also compared
to a living building, because we're stones that are living,
and we're to grow up. And so this is not just a building
that's lifeless, like buildings we put together, but a living
building. Each person in this building
is a stone, and they're a living stone. Christ dwells in them
by His Spirit, and He builds them up as a dwelling of God.
And that's called the church, his body. We're baptized into
Christ. 1 Corinthians 12, 13. And then Jesus goes on in verse
19, and he says, And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven. So now the Church and the Kingdom
of Heaven are synonymous. And Peter, having the revelation
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is given
the keys to preach the Gospel of who Jesus Christ is. And how,
as Christ, he brings an entrance into the Kingdom of God through
his own redeeming work, his reconciling work for us in his shed blood. You see? And so, the Kingdom
of God is not only within you as an individual believer, but
it's in us as a body of Christ. And the Kingdom of God is also
given to us in its culmination as the will of God As it says
in Matthew 25, 34, Jesus says at the final day, when he separates
the sheep from the goats, he says to the sheep, come, receive
the kingdom prepared for you by my father from the foundation
of the world. So the kingdom is not only Christ
in us now, individually, but we see Christ and live upon him
by faith and find in that faith a growing love for Christ and
his people in obedience to his word, but we also find his body
A body of Christ coming together in a living union through His
Spirit, that we collectively together are gathered and called
out by God through the Gospel, through the working of His Spirit.
And then we're given all the blessings that God promised in
Christ. We possess them now, how? By
faith. And we look for them, how? By faith. Hebrews 11.1.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen. And so we have these things by
faith now, but then they will come in their fulfillment when
we receive them in glory when the Lord Jesus, sitting on his
throne, gives us entrance into heaven in eternal fellowship
and in enjoyment of that kingdom in our own person. So that's
what the kingdom of God is. But there's something else that
we often miss about this kingdom. That we, when we gather together
as a people, believing Christ, what are we saying? Aren't we
saying that we are yielding allegiance to the King? And it's a glad
submission. Remember the demoniac in Mark
chapter 5? He couldn't be tamed. No man
could bind him. He was always in the tombs, in
the place of death, cutting himself and crying day and night. He
was a captive of the kingdom of darkness. And then Jesus comes
along and he runs to him, falls down and worships him. Jesus
commands the demons to depart and the man is sitting at the
feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, happy and willing
to follow Christ wherever he goes. He's happy now. He's under the rule of Christ. And he's happy to have it that
way. And so, what we find that we've come together as a people
called out by God through the gospel. We believe on Christ,
but we've yielded a happy and glad obedience to him through
this faith he's given to us. We don't want it any other way.
We want Christ to be our king, and we declare that together. We declare that we submit to
his word. We believe his truth. He told
Pilate, he says, for this cause came I into the world to bear
witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth
hears me. Remember? Everyone who's of the
truth hears my voice. Because I was sent to bear record
to the truth. He's the king of truth. He is
himself the truth, and the life, and the way. The way, the truth,
and the life. So we as a collective local body
of believers are an evidence, we are the outward manifestation
of the kingdom of God in this world. What a privilege. The
kingdom of God is here now among us. Christ himself promised he
would be with his people when they're gathered together, two
or three are gathered in my name. And so you can see how the kingdom
of God is fulfilled. The term the kingdom of God is
realized in our own personal experience, in the entire body
of Christ, in our blessings from God in Christ, promised and given
to us now by faith, and then received in glory in that eternal
realization of it in heaven. But even as a local body of Christ,
we are the kingdom of God. And we own Christ as our King.
Jesus is Lord. That's what we say and believe
that. And we're happy to have it that way. Like the demoniac
freed from the bondage of sin and Satan, we've been freed and
set at liberty at the cost of Christ's own blood by the liberation
of the power of His resurrecting power in our souls and giving
us this life with Christ living in us and we being able to believe
Him and enjoy Him in peace and joy. So here in verse 17, the
other anchor of this chapter is that the Kingdom of God has
nothing to do, nothing to do in its essence with these physical
outward things. It's not eating. It's not drinking. It's not what you eat and it's
not what you drink. It's not keeping rules. It's
not where you go and how you dress. That's not the kingdom
of God. But that's a large focus of it
in most churches, isn't it? In fact, it's all about external
form. Then you can take it to the extreme. Look at how some
people, they have to dress a certain way, or they have to say certain
things, or they're just not accepted. They have to perform certain
ceremonies. Now, almost every religion has these things in
it. We don't. We meet together around the Gospel,
the Word of God. We call upon the Lord Jesus Christ
because He called upon us. We look to Him to save us and
we look to Him in all of our practical life in order to be
like Him. We want to be like Him. He laid
his life down for his people. In 1 John 3.16 it says, Hereby
perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life
for us. We ought to lay down our lives, therefore, for the
brethren. You see, we want to be like him. He didn't come to be served,
but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. And we
just read this in Romans 15.3, Christ did not please himself.
He did please himself in his eternal will. He didn't live
his life in a comfortable bed. The foxes had holes in the birds'
nests, but he had nowhere to lay his head. He was up long
hours praying, and he suffered, not for his sake, but for our
sake. He did all that he did for the
glory of his God and Father and for the sake of his people. This
was his life, and it still is. And so we see that Christ didn't
please himself. He laid his life down for his
brethren, and in faith we want to be like him. And so in verse
17, this anchors us in this. He says, the kingdom of God,
our life, Christ's life in us, our life connected to his body
by his spirit, all the blessings God gives us by grace, the final
blessing we have in eternity, and as a local body, especially
as a local body now, Life in the kingdom of God is not about
meat and drink, but it's about this. Righteousness, peace, and
joy in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Spirit of God. So what's
important then? Righteousness, peace, joy in
the Holy Spirit. And what is this righteousness?
Is it our own obedience? Is it our own obedience? Is there
our own personal obedience to what God requires of us? Well,
there is a form of righteousness in scripture that's like that,
but that's not what he's talking about here. What is our entrance
into the kingdom of God? What is our access to God? How do we come to God, but by
the blood of Jesus Christ? Hebrews 10, 19. Is there any
other way than Him? John 14, 6. He's the way. So we come by the blood of Jesus.
Christ is the way and he is the end of the law for righteousness.
I will make mention of thy righteousness even of thine only. Psalm 71
16. So all these things teach us that the righteousness by
which we enter the kingdom of God, have access to the throne
of grace, enjoy the blessings of God in that kingdom, and receive
the kingdom to ourselves, and even preach the gospel of the
kingdom, is by the righteousness of the king. It's his righteousness. That is our life. In Romans chapter
8 and verse 10 it says that body is dead because of sin but the
spirit is life. Life because of righteousness. Life is the result of righteousness. Galatians 3 21 is the law then
against the promises of God? No. If there had been a law given
which could have given life, then verily righteousness should
have been by the law. The law could give life, then
how does it come? By the righteousness of Christ.
We have life because of Christ's righteousness. Everything comes
to us because of his righteousness. So the kingdom of God is first
of all righteousness. And if you connect each of these
things to the Holy Spirit, you see that righteousness is connected
to the Holy Spirit in Romans 14, 17. The kingdom of God is
not meat and drink, but righteousness in the Holy Spirit, and peace
in the Holy Spirit, and joy in the Holy Spirit. You see that?
How do we know? that we have no righteousness,
how are we convinced that Christ finished all of the law and that
he finished the will of God for our righteousness, but by the
Holy Spirit? You see, the kingdom of God is
made up of those who have been justified by the justifying righteousness
of Christ and know it by the life-giving power of the Spirit
of God through faith. Does that make sense? Righteousness
is ours in our experience because faith has been given to us by
the Spirit of God. Everyone with that faith is a
member of the Kingdom of God, a member of Christ's Church.
And so this is the kingdom of God. It's about us looking to
Christ and His righteousness. It's not about eating and drinking.
You're all wrapped up about whether you can eat or not, eat these
certain kinds of meats, or drink these certain things, or observe
these certain days, but that's not the issue. It's about Christ
and His righteousness and our faith in Christ. And the peace
he's made for us with God, by his blood. That's the next thing.
Peace in the Holy Spirit. And joy. Joy, he says to his
disciples, that my joy might be fulfilled in you. That your
joy might be full. You see, so his joy in having
fulfilled his course, run his race, and fulfilled his course,
and finished the work for us, and to have us, his joy is fulfilled. Our joy is in the fact that he
rejoices in his old work. Genesis 131, God looked at all
of creation and he said, it's very good. And if he hadn't said
it's very good, we wouldn't be able to say that in God's eyes
it was very good. But he said it. And so God says
of his son, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And he's pleased with him. He
shall look upon the travail of his soul and he shall be satisfied,
you see. Satisfied. In joy. God received
the sacrifice. Christ loved us and gave himself
for us. A sweet smelling sacrifice to
God. God was happy with him. If we
can put it that way. He was pleased with his son.
Pleased with the substitutionary offering of his son in sacrifice
of himself for his people. This is what the kingdom of God
is about. Now, in a practical matter, therefore, going back
to our introduction here, what was the chapter ultimately teaching
us? That it's not about us, it's
about the members of Christ's body and the glory of God. You
see, it's not about us living to please ourselves. Now, at
the beginning of Romans 14, you see why these conclusions were
drawn from this. In the Church of Rome, and in
every church for that matter, because we can't say, well, these
Roman Christians had troubles and we're reading about them
and that's historically interesting to us and we're taking a history
class on the Romans, Christians, and so let's get out our pens
and papers and become really knowledgeable about this church
in Rome. I have no interest in doing that. It bores me to think
about that because I was always bored with school anyway. But
when we talk about the life of Christ and His people and our
eternal salvation in Him, now I'm suddenly interested in that.
Because what really matters is what God thinks. And especially
what He thinks of me. But when I look into the gospel,
I find that what he thinks of me is only going to end in damnation
unless in grace he looks upon his son and thinks of me by considering
his son for me. Now I'm interested. I don't care
about the history and details of the Church of Rome. But as
it helps me understand my salvation in Christ and His own nature
and character. Because it's knowing Him that
we have eternal life. So the Church of Rome had people
in it who were called strong in faith. And those in it who
were called weak in faith. Now the strong in faith people
had knowledge. And by their knowledge they knew
that It doesn't matter about what we eat now. We can eat...
In the Old Testament, God said you had to only eat those clean
animals. They had to part the hoof and
chew the cud. And here's a list of them. Sheep
and goats and so on. But not pigs. Even though they
part the hoof, they don't chew the cud. And so he went through
and he... divided up all the animal kingdom
into clean and unclean. And he said, you can eat these
clean ones, but you can't eat the unclean ones. But the strong
in faith were knowledgeable. They said, no, no, that's fulfilled
now. The unclean animals represented the Gentiles. The unclean among
us. The clean animals represented
the Jews, or more appropriately, the unclean would be us in our
lost condition and the clean animals us covered by Christ's
righteousness. But in Acts chapter 10, when
Peter was in a trance, and God let down this sheet with all
these unclean animals in it, and He told Peter, Peter, rise,
kill and eat. And he said, no, no, I can't
do that. These are unclean. In his conscience, Peter thought,
I cannot eat those animals. There's pigs in there. I'm not
going to eat pork. There's all this stuff in there. It's just
disgusting to me. And even nowadays, people who
call themselves Jews, they get all queasy when you talk about
eating a piece of bacon or something. I feel sorry for them. They don't
have knowledge. They're weak in faith, right?
But that was what the Romans were doing. They're all focused
on this matter of what you can eat, what you can't eat. And
some were so focused that they, some were so much on the side
of being concerned about not eating unclean animals that they
went vegetarian. One man, he says in here, he
says he just eats herbs. That's in verse 2. Another who
is weak eats herbs. So the strong, quote, and the
knowledgeable, they were looking at these people who couldn't
eat things that they were at liberty to eat, and they said,
what's wrong with you? I mean, really, I don't know
if you really have part with us. And they were probably Jewish
people who were weaker in faith, who had for hundreds, even 1,400
or 1,500 years, had lived under this. They grew up. Just think
about in America, if you had a consistent pattern of life
for a couple of hundred years. It's so ingrained in the way
you think. that your great-great-grandparents and their children and so on,
all the way down to you and your schooling and your education,
everything was tied around that pattern of life. You can't just
change it without a lot of internal disruption. And so these people
who were probably either brought up under the Jews' religion or
were Jews themselves, they were probably inclined to having this
weak faith. And the strong, maybe they were
Gentiles who had just heard the gospel and said, we never liked
that. The separation between these animals. He's always eaten
pork. And we're going to continue eating it because in Christ that
law has been fulfilled. It's done away. We Gentiles are
now part of the kingdom of God. By the grace of God, by the work
of Christ. And so he says here, Him that
is weak in the faith, receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. Weak in the faith would be the
poor guy who can't eat these things. You say you have knowledge
and then you look at on this guy who's weak in the faith,
he believes Christ. He said, then receive him. But
don't receive him to arguing about things that are going to
lead to greater doubts. It's not your job to unravel
his things with arguments in order to prove your side. This
is the way the world is. We compare ourselves to one another,
and then we go through this process of trying to argue our case,
and it creates strife, and inflates our pride, and separates people. It creates divisions. It's a
mess. Not in the kingdom of God. That's not what it's about. It's
about Christ's righteousness. And our peace with God because
of that, both before God and in our conscience, but especially
in the church. And our joy because of Christ's
joy. And our joy by faith through
the Spirit of God and our joy with one another because we have
the same Lord, the same Savior, you see. There's this unity of
faith and joy because of Christ's righteousness. So he says, receive
that weak brother, not to doubtful disputations, for one believes
that he may eat all things, another who is weak eats herbs. This
one who is quote strong in faith thinks he can eat anything, and
he can actually. But another is weak, and he only
eats vegetables or herbs. Verse 3. Let not him that eats... Here's this guy over here, he's
pigging out. Let not him that eats despise
him that eats not. And let not him which eateth
not... Now here's a Jewish brother,
let's say, who has refrained from eating this strange meat.
Judge, don't you, you weak in faith, judge this man who has
this liberty, who eats. For God has received him. Both
of them were looking at the other and trying to sideline that believer
by comparing themselves to that believer or by comparing them
to the law or something like that. And they were looking at
the outward behavior, in this case, what they ate or didn't
eat. And so the question arises, because this was ingrained in
them, can what we eat or not eat either make us less acceptable
with God or more acceptable with God? Is that even possible? What
if I eat, or what if I drink wine, for example? If you look
at the end of the chapter, Verse 21, it is good neither to eat
flesh nor drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbles,
or is offended, or is made weak. What about wine? What about all
these things where it's an external thing? Remember when the disciples
were eating and the Pharisees came in Mark chapter 7, and the
Pharisees say, why are you disciples eating without washing their
hands? Don't you know they need to wash your hands before you
eat? You're defiled. That wasn't the issue, remember?
What did Jesus say? It's not what goes into a man
that defiles a man. What does? It's what comes out of the man.
Because Jesus said, from within, out of the heart of man come
murders, fornications, evil thoughts, all these things. That's what
defiles the man. The heart produces these things
and out comes sin, and the man is defiled. We have these hang-ups,
if you will. Because we have a conscience
that's sensitive to the fact that we need to do certain things
in order to maintain our standing with God. We just have this as
part of us. The work of the law is written
in our hearts, according to Romans 2, so that we either accuse or
excuse one another based on our own conscience. And if we do
what our conscience doesn't allow, then we're violating our conscience
and we're actually sinning against God. And so we have to have this
God-given faith that shows us the truth so we can walk in liberty,
not on some presumptuous grounds that we've made up, but on the
Word of God. And so here are these two brothers. One was weak in faith, he wouldn't
eat anything that was meat. Another one was strong in faith,
he'd eat all kinds of meat. And the one who was strong in
faith, one of the weak one in faith, you're really not kind
of part of us anymore. I mean, how can we really have
fellowship? I'm having all these delicious
things and I'm thankful to God that he's made these things for
me. But you cannot partake of it because you're so weak. And
the other guy was saying, well, your problem is that you're presuming,
you're flaunting your liberty, you're making grace an occasion
for just doing what you want to do. And he would accuse him
of being immoral and antinomian, anti-law is what that means.
So you see this conflict, division begins. And it happens in our
own churches, in our own church. We find things that, well, I
don't know. I mean, I remember when Don would smoke his little
cigars or whatever and kind of do it after church. And some
people took offense at that. And some people, that's cool.
I always wanted to smoke, too. And now I can have my chance.
I mean, we do that, don't we? We let other people's behavior
be the thing that guides our conscience. But here's a fundamental
principle. We do not answer to men, right? I don't answer to you, you don't
answer to me, but we both answer to our master, which is our king
and our lord, our savior, you see. So let's go on with that
thought in mind. Let not him that eats, despise
him that eats not, verse 3, and let not him which eat not judge
him that eateth, for God hath received him. If God has received
him, like the sheet let down by God to Peter, he says, what
God has cleansed, don't you call unclean. Are you more holy than
God? God has cleansed it. Don't you
call it unclean. If God has cleansed it, it is
clean. Verse four. Very important verse. Who are
you that judges another man's servant? This is really an excellent
thing for parents to remember because there's always squabbling
in the home. Mom, Ricky just started the shed on fire. Or
whatever. It happens. There's certain times
when it's important to tell on your brother. There's other times
when it's just judging your brother. How can he have that extra piece
of cake when he didn't do the dishes and blah, blah, blah.
Don't judge your brother. Why? Because he's not your servant.
He doesn't answer to you. Then you say, well I don't answer
to him either, so I can do what I want. No, you answer to Christ
too. You both answer to Christ. It's not like you're without
a master. Remember, we're in the Kingdom of God. Christ is
our King, and we're happy to have it that way. We don't live
to ourselves, but to him who loved us and gave himself for
us. So he says, who are you that judges another man's servant?
You're judging that man's servant, really? To his own master he
stands or falls. Yay! Now this is almost like
a correction. No, no, not falls. Yea, he shall
be holden up, for God is able to make him stand. Now, two ways
you can understand this. As a servant, God is able to
maintain him, Christ in this case, is able to maintain him
as his servant. And this is true. Remember the
disciples were asked, Jesus asked them, are you going to leave
me also? Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life. And we believe and are sure you're the Christ,
the Son of God. We're not going to leave you.
Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. We are
not going to depart from him because he's not going to depart
from us. He holds on to us. Hold thou me up and I shall be
saved. Psalm 119, 117. So here we see
that the servant will not fall if his master is Christ. You
see, if I serve a man, I'm bound to fail that man, aren't I? Because
that man can't keep me from falling. I might prove unfaithful to the
man, and the man just cut me off. But that's not the way it
works with Christ's servants. And the other way to understand
it is that not only is it being held up as being maintained as
Christ's servant, but it's being held up in Christ's approval. So that Christ himself approves
of his servants, or disapproves of his servants, and he shall
approve of them. He says here, he shall be holding
up. And how can this be? Again, it gets back to the righteousness.
Because Christ himself has answered for his servant. Remember the
woman taken in adultery, John 8. And all those guys standing
around while Jesus is riding on the ground, stooping down,
riding. He gets up. He that is without sin among
you, let him cast the first stone. He stoops down again, rides again,
stands up. No one's there. And he says,
Woman, where are your accusers? There is no one. Lord, Lord,
there's no man. Neither do I accuse you. Go and
sin no more. I don't condemn you. Go and sin
no more. So Christ is able to justify his people, you see,
and he shall justify them and he shall hold them up. He is
able, Jude 1.24, to keep you from falling and to present you
faultless in the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. That's Christ. That's our Master. So who are you who judges another
man's servant? It goes much higher than eating
and drinking. And think about this. Look at
verse 23. Because it seems like we're running out of time. I
knew this would happen. Verse 23. And he that doubts
is damned if he eats, because he eats not of faith. For whatsoever
is not of faith is sin. Now, this verse has rung through
my mind since I was very young. Because I heard someone quote
it, and it's one of those things that kind of catches you. It's
like a hook. You think, wow, what does that mean? And you
turn it over and over in your mind. But here, God is saying
that if we do anything that's not of faith, it's sin. Right? That's what he says. For whatsoever
is not of faith is sin. And what he's saying here is
that in the matter of eating and drinking or observing days
or not observing days or drinking wine or not drinking wine, these
things that he's listed here and other things, this is not
an all-inclusive list. The point is, is all those external
things, the way you dress, Whether you shop at Walmart or you shop
at some other store. It doesn't matter. Those things
really don't matter, do they? Whether you go to this health
institution or that health institution. Or whether you're a Democrat
or a Republican or an Independent. None of those things really matter,
do they? What matters is the faith given to you in Christ
by the Holy Spirit, your peace with God established by Christ's
blood, the joy that you have because of Christ's joy, and
the joy and the peace that that produces in the body of Christ.
You see, that love that prevails in the body of Christ because
of our faith in Christ who loved us when we were yet without strength.
When we were sinners. When we were utterly weak in
faith, you see. So we have to have that faith
in all that we do. We look at Christ and we see
how he thought, what his ways were, how he spoke, how he acted. And we want to be conformed to
that, don't we? Do you? Do you and I? We want
to be, don't we? We want to be like Christ. I
want to love my brothers as He loved me, or my wife as He loved
me. I want to speak the truth in
love. I want to pray for one another.
I want to do all those things. These are things that Christ
did for His people. He laid His life down for them.
It's more blessed to do what? To give than to receive, you
see. We're always looking to get.
I need to be comforted. Well, you do need to be comforted.
Well, what are you supposed to do when you're comforted? Give
that comfort. Well, how are you going to be
comforted? Well, God's going to comfort you. How will he do
that? As you take that comfort God has given you and you give
it to someone else. You see, in the body of Christ
it's about giving, nurturing each member of the body in order
that the body might edify itself in love and grow up in Christ
into a mature man. But whatever is not of faith
is sin. That means if we're not convinced, if we're not convinced
by God that this is true of Christ, then we ought not be doing this.
Or unless we are convinced we have liberty to do this, we ought
not to do it. So I thought about this. There's
really two ways and it's represented by these two men in this two
cases in this chapter. One thinks I can eat anything.
I don't have to observe any days. I can drink wine. I'm okay with
all these things. Another one's like, no, I'm not
going to drink wine. I am going to observe these certain days
and I am not going to eat just any old kind of meat. In fact,
I'm not going to eat any meat at all. I'm so concerned about
observing these things. Now the first brother, if we're
not careful, if he does what he does without faith, what does
that mean? Think about it. Here's a brother
who says, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going
to do the other thing. God's going to receive me. Man, there's
no reason why he wouldn't receive me. I'm a fine guy. I can just
do these things. I've got liberty. God's good.
He's not going to send anyone to hell. I can just do what I
really want to do. He's fine with that, right? God doesn't
punish people. Look around the world. He's not
taking out people for these things. I can do what I want to do. It's
not about what's going on on the outside. And I really want
to be right with God, so I'm just going to do what I do, and
I'm going to live my life like I want to live, and everything's
okay. That's called presumption without faith. Living like that
is living without faith, and all that you do is sin. Even
though you live at liberty, you're living in sin. Because you're
doing it without any understanding. You're not coming to God by Jesus
Christ only as a sinner. You're coming in your own person,
presuming that you can do these things without inhibition. And you think you're strong in
faith, but you have no faith. You see, so whatever is not of
faith is sin for the man who thinks he can do everything,
but doesn't have faith in Christ. You see, until we see that Christ
has been appointed by God in order to stand for His people
and do all for us, and we put our trust in Him as a needy sinner
and find all of our righteousness in Him and only come to God by
Him, by His Spirit giving us this faith, until we see that
we have no license to do what we want. In fact, we're still
under the law. We still owe God in obedience,
and we still owe God our life, our eternal damnation for our
disobedience. We can't presume that God is
going to accept us apart from Christ. So living without faith
in that case means we're living in sin. But on the other hand,
if we look at God's requirements, and we think we have to keep
them in order to make ourselves favorable to God, then we're
actually disobeying the clear revelation of scripture. Because
even in the law it says, the man that does these things shall
live in them, and we don't do them, therefore we can't live.
Or he says, cursed is everyone who doesn't continue in all things,
and we don't continue in them, so we're under the curse. The
law testifies against us that we cannot be right with God by
what we do. And the prophets tell us that
the just shall live by faith, and the law, our own obedience,
is not of faith. Christ is the one who obeys when
we believe Him. When we come to God by Christ,
by faith, then it's Christ's obedience, not our own obedience,
that God accepts. So you see, this man who looks
at what God requires without faith in Christ and tries to
set about keeping that by not eating this and keeping these
days and not drinking wine or whatever, that man also, living
without faith, sins against not only his conscience, but more
importantly, against God. He's actually disobeying the
Law and the Prophets and the Psalms because he tries to come
to God on the basis of his own obedience. When the Law and the
Prophets and the Psalms all tell us that God justifies sinners
only by the righteousness of Christ. And we're to trust Him
and look to Him only. He's the only righteousness,
the only one good. And so obedience then, the only
obedience God accepts is the obedience of faith because faith
claims that Christ is all my obedience. Faith credits God
with everything and faith comes to God by all that God has done
in Christ and stands before God in all that Christ is. This is
what faith convinces us of. And so anything that's not of
faith is sin. And we ought not live that way.
But we must be convinced in our conscience of something before
we give ourselves liberty to do it. And we also must consider
the fact that what we do is never meritorious. We might be able
to abstain from this and keep that and do all these things,
but it doesn't earn us any favor with God. Look at 1 Corinthians
chapter 8. This was a more difficult situation,
in my opinion, because in 1 Corinthians, the Corinthians wrote Paul and
said, what do we do about meats offered to idols? Can we eat
those? I think we should be able to
eat them. And others said, no, no, no, we can't eat those. Idols are
opposed to God. We're only supposed to worship
Christ. So there was this question that came up in 1 Corinthians
8, verse 8. But meat commendeth us not to
God, for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we
eat not are we the worse. It doesn't matter if you eat
food offered to an idol. That's what he's saying. An idol
is nothing. It's just a block of wood, a hunk of stone. There's
no truth in that idol. Men offer meats to idols. That's
their own stupidity. That's spiritual ignorance and
darkness. You're not in darkness. That
meat is not sacred. It's not violating anything.
The believer understands the idol is nothing. You can eat
that meat. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's probably
a good deal in the marketplace. This is offered to idols. Well,
if it's going to bother you that it's offered to idols, that's
fine. But I think it's good looking meat. I'm going to have some
of it. You see, so the Corinthians were on this same problem that
he's addressing in Rome. And so he tells them, look now,
there's nothing about eating meat that's going to make you
better before God or worse. You can eat or not eat. It's
not going to change your standing before God. Whatever is not of
faith is sin, though. So if a brother who thinks the
idol is something because he came out of idolatry, he used
to bring meat and offer it to idol, and he used to think that
whatever that was was his god, now he's converted to Christ,
he knows that that's not a god. a true God, but he has some doubt
in his mind that if he eats that thing offered to an idol, that
he's somehow acknowledging that idol as being something and it
bothers his conscience. He says, then don't eat. Don't
violate your conscience in that thing. Because if you don't have
God-given faith in Christ to be able to have liberty to do
it, then don't do it. But if you have that liberty
because you see that the idol is nothing and Christ is your
all, Then give God thanks and eat the meat, you see. But it
goes on in 1 Corinthians 8. He says in verse 13, Wherefore,
if meat make my brother to offend, this brother who thought eating
the meat offered to idol was a problem. He says, I will eat
no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
You see what Paul was saying? I understand that some have not
the same maturity and faith. I am not going to wound the conscience
of my brother. I'm not going to separate him
from the fellowship of the gospel. That would be to cut him off
from the bread of life. His soul would wither. He wouldn't
be receiving the benefits of that gospel fellowship in the
church. And he's one for whom Christ
died. I'm not going to do that. And
so he avoided that at all costs. He said, it doesn't matter. Even
though I might want that meat, I won't eat any meat if it means
that my brother is offended. Because love for my brother is
far more important than my own personal liberty, you see. All
right, so back in Romans. So you see, faith is the key. What did God say about Enoch?
Enoch pleased God. Remember, he walked by faith. If doing something without faith
is sin, then what does it mean when we do something by faith?
It means we please God. In Hebrews 11.6, without faith
it is impossible to please Him. And then it catalogs all these
things that all these believers did. By faith, Moses kept the
Passover. By faith, Abraham left this country. By faith, they wandered in tents.
By faith, they did this. By faith, they did that. It was
all about what they did. It was based on what they believed. They were looking at Christ and
they were acting accordingly. Their principles of living were
consistent with the faith in Christ that God had given them.
And so this feedback was in place. And so he's emphasizing that,
and ultimately it has to lead to this. What's more important
is the glory of God. I'll just tie this down with
one scripture here. Sometimes we might ask ourselves this question.
Does a believer do good works? Is it even possible? Because
we're sinners and we have this sinful nature. Can we even do
good works? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 22. Do we provoke
the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? All
things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.
All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. It's the same principle we've
been talking about. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's. It's another's good. Verse 25. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles
that eat, asking no questions for conscience sake. So don't
ask if it was offered to idols. For the earth is the Lord's,
and the fullness thereof. If any of them that believe not
bid you to a feast, and you be disposed to go, whatsoever is
set before you, eat, asking no questions, for conscience' sake.
But if any man say to you, This is offered in sacrifice to idols,
eat not for his sake that showed that to you, and for conscience'
sake. For the earth is the Lord's,
and the fullness thereof. It's not the idols, it's the
Lord's conscience, I say. Not thine own conscience, but
of the other. This other guy's conscience would
be wounded. For why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?
Alright, so he wants to clarify that the conscience he's talking
about here, that might be wounded, would not be his own because
he had liberty, but the conscience is the one who asked the question.
Did you know that was offered to idols? Verse 30. For if I
by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for
which I give thanks? This would be like the weak brother
in Romans 14 judging the strong brother. Verse 31, Wherefore,
here's the conclusion, Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. In other words,
you're doing it by faith, aren't you? You're living your life
by faith in Christ. You're looking at Him. I know
this is kind of a phrase that I don't really care for, what
would Jesus do, but it's really not a bad phrase. It's really, what does Christ
think? What has he said? How did he
do this? And that's throughout scripture.
It's always holy. He said, follow me. Be ye followers
of God as dear children. In 1 Peter 2.21 he says that
we should follow in his steps. There's many things in scripture
that show us to emulate Christ. And here he just sums it up.
He says, whatever you do, do it to the glory of God. You're
doing it by faith. You're wanting to give God glory.
If what we do, we do in unbelief, If we violate the conscience
we have because the faith we have is weak, then we sin. Then
if we act out of faith, if we do what we do, we live our lives
in such a way that whether we eat or drink, or whether we're
praying or giving, or attending the assembly of the saints, or
preaching the gospel, or reading, or meditating, or teaching our
children, or whatever we're doing, going to work, walking outside,
meditating on scriptures, fishing on a boat, it doesn't matter.
Do it to the glory of God. Do it with your whole heart.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength.
Because you're doing it by faith. And if you do it by faith, it's
not sin. You see? It's received for Christ's
sake. And you're received for Christ's
sake. Therefore, you can do it depending on God's strength in
Christ. You can go out and invest all
that He's given you. Like a wild investor. Because
the one who deposited that treasure with you is going to bring a
return to himself. You see? Don't hold back. Give beyond what you have. Give
what Christ has. Speak about him. And encourage
one another in the gospel of Christ. And don't judge one another
based on your own ability or your own knowledge. But seek
the benefit of another one, you see. It's better to give than
to receive. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for
the grace that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to
love Him, and to see Him, and to know you in Him, and to live
with one another in the truth of this faith you've given to
us. we pray that we would do everything for your glory Lord
Jesus and you would take glory to yourself and the work that
we do would be your work in us working out of us and we would
do it by faith in you and you would receive it not for our
merit but because it's the fruit of your spirit produced by your
work in us. You began this work in us you
will perfect it to the end and you will work in us your own
good pleasure and help us by your grace to work this salvation
out And we pray you would conform us to your own image until the
day of Christ. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.