I'm going to see the Lord teach
us and instruct us and correct us. This type of
preaching can frazzle me. It frazzles me. I'm a nervous
wreck because if I'm not careful, I
will piece together text that worked for my purpose If I'm
not careful, I will do things according to what I want to see,
and in some sense can manipulate you into following after my rules
rather than teaching the Word of God faithfully. But the Word
of God is true, and so as we look at this this morning, it
was my decision last week as we sat and listen to Sister Pam
speak. It was my decision last week
to address the issue of unity, to address the issue of forbearance,
and to address the issue of what it means, of what it truly means
to be the church. Now, we have been together, some
of us, since September 25th of 2011. four families here, three families,
some of us. And some of us along the way
have popped in. And what happens in a young church,
and we're a young church, we're officially, what is it, three
and a half, four years old, 15, 16, 17, maybe four, officially. But technically, we're six years
old, and in reality, we're 2,000 years old. We're 2,000 years
old. But we've come together in different
seasons of our lives. We've all gathered together.
We've come, and in most of our minds, we've come to Grace Truth
Church. We attend Grace Truth Church. We are members of Grace Truth
Church, but we're not. We've come to Christ. And we
are the assembled, which is the word for church, the assembled
who gather together in covenant to worship God, to hear His Word,
to pray, to sing songs, to observe the Lord's table, to observe
baptism, which by the way, I'd like to have a baptism this month,
if we could. We have four, five, maybe six
candidates for baptism. Those of you who need baptism
and obedience, let me know. And if you can't do it this month,
it's okay. We've got a portable badger tree now available to us. We'll do
it right here. So we don't have to wait until
the warm weather to get into the snake ponds and things. But we come together and every
week without fail, I promise you this, every week without
fail, in some way, I say something about these things. I say something
about your time in the Word of God. Because if I were not I'm
not saying that I'm worth my weight in salt. Salt's not very
valuable these days. You can buy a lot of it for a
little bit. But if I was even partially a decent shepherd and
did not tell you about your need to be in the Word of God, I would
be no shepherd at all. If you think that the shepherding
of you, individually and collectively, is what I do here, and that's
all you need, you have mistaken what it means to be the church
of Jesus Christ. This is that you may come together and grow,
and look at each other in the face, and know each other by
name, and pray for each other, and to rebuke each other, and
to encourage each other, and to love, and to works, and to
good deeds, and to passionate, affection for the Word of God. So, we must be in the Word of
God. Now, I do not want you to raise
your hand, but I want you to ask the question today, and I
want you to be honest with yourself. Are you in the Word of God during
the week? I'm not asking do you read Oswald Chambers. utmost for His highest. That's
not the Scripture. I'm not asking do you read the
Spurgeon book. I'm asking if you do those things,
does it put you in touch with Scripture? And if you have to
do daily devotions, I recommend the daily devotions that put
you in Scripture. Not the commentaries. Because if we go on those alone,
and we may start there, some of us in our beginning days of
trying to get a habit of being in devotion, a habit of being,
it's okay, I'm not rebuking those things. But we've got to grow
to where we stop looking at the menu, and we stop looking at
the table of contents, and we start looking at the text. We
start looking at the text. So, I will beat that horse until
it dies, rots, decays, and comes back to life again that I might
do it all over. Now your pastor is preaching
about zombie horses. And another thing that I talk
about every week without fail, because it is what I bleed in
my soul. is that as we are in the Word
together and as you are in the Word separately, that it is for
the purpose, guess what, of unity and intimacy. If you are sitting
here this morning that you might have the Word of God do something
just for you, you have mistaken what the Scripture was given
to us for. Let me say that again. If you
sit here this morning thinking that what this preaching is for
is for you personally, you have misunderstood what the Scripture
is for. The Scripture is not written
to me personally. Nowhere does Paul or John or
Peter or James ever say, hey, you guy, I'm writing to you. He writes, they write to the
saints, to the church collective. They write to the assembly. Imagine
what first century church life was like. I mean, think about
this for just a moment. The context in which all of these
letters were written. The ones that we'll go through
today. There was a people who for centuries, millennia, had
never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. had never heard of any
spiritual things. The only idea that they had about
spiritual things was either their own cultist religion, their own
pagan idolatry, or what they observed in the life of the Jewish
people, which was a waste of observation. A waste. The Scripture teaches
that it was a waste of observation. Nothing that the Jews did honored
God salvificly, granting them eternal life. Nothing that they
did ever was intended to be the manner in which we should walk
as the people of God, but it was a shadow of the reality of
who Christ would be that man could not be. Now all of a sudden, the Gospel of
Jesus not only goes out through crazy Weird, gross, unbecoming
people. But the gospel of Jesus Christ
goes out into a culture that is inundated with worldliness
and self-righteousness. We've got the self-righteous
people who call themselves God's chosen ones, who are living demonic
self-righteous lives and think they're okay. and they live in
darkness, and their father is Satan. These aren't my conclusions.
These are exact quotes from Jesus. And then we've got the rest of
the world, as John would say, the world, all the wickedness. The Gentiles, the dogs, the unbelievers. What is it that Jesus talks about? The unclean is the way Jews looked
at the world. Everybody else that wasn't a
Jew. And here's the gospel coming
with power from crazy people, from people who are laying down
their religion, and laying down their practices, and laying down
their lives, and laying down their families, and laying down
their finances, and laying down everything that they once held
dear because God did a work in their heart and transformed them. This is what was happening in
the first century. It wasn't just a little sign going on a
building that said, oh, there's a Christian church. Oh yeah,
remember that guy that they killed and he came back to life supposedly?
I mean, these are people who follow him. Let's go see what
that's about. No, it interrupted society. You know what interrupts society
today? Well-meaning so-called Christians who think they're
righteous. You know what interrupts society today? Political movements. You know what interrupts society
today? When we want to go against the masses and our opinions. The Gospel tore the world up.
Christ destroyed the unity of the world to bring together a
people who could never in their own way ever be unified with
God. And He brought people from every
walk of life. He brought people who thought
it meant to worship is to call on the temple prostitutes. Could
you imagine? He brought people together who
on the other side of that used to walk into the temple of God
every week and offer sacrifices for atoning sins. Could you imagine
those two people getting together? And one saying, you know, my
world view of worship is that, you know, I get to call on a
lady. as I pray. And the other one
said, well, I get to kill a lamb as I pray. What a combination. And someone else says, well,
you know what? We worship this statue. That's what worship is to us.
We worship this statue and we come together worshiping this
statue. Great is the God of Artemis of the Ephesians. Great is Artemis
of the Ephesians. Remember that? Remember what
Paul's preaching did in Ephesus? Now who did he appoint as the
chief elder over the church of Ephesus? Timothy, who was barely
old enough to vote. And he said, don't let people
look down on you because you're young, brother. Just do it. Preach
the Word in season and out of season. Guess what? It's an out
of season for the Word of God right now in America. It's out
of season for the Word of God, sometimes in our own hearts.
But we preach it anyway. And here's the context of this
culture. It caused great division amongst different people. It
caused factions in the home. Where Jesus would even say, if
you love your mother or your father greater than you love
me, you're not worthy of me. Jesus used the illustration,
let the dead go bury the dead, when He talked to the man who
said, I'll follow you, let me bury my father. And some of them go,
well that's just weird. No. Listen, when the Gospel comes
in our lives, when God saves us by His mercy, it splits hairs. And the deeper we grow into our
understanding of why God saved us and keeps us on earth, which
is what we're going to talk about today, the harder it is, the
more difficult it is, the more pressing it is, the more divisive
it is, and people come and they just call you a bigot or a self-righteous
person or they just call you a goody two-shoes just because
you say what the Bible says. Have you ever been called Self-righteous
or, quote, legalistic because you quote Scripture? Try it. Next time someone shows up complaining,
just quote Paul and say, you know, the Bible says do all things
without grumbling and complaining. Wow, what's that going to do?
It's going to cause conflict. And it may not be bad conflict.
You may not go fist to cuffs. You may not get into a verbal
altercation. You may not get into a disagreement
at all. It may be, wow, thank you for that. I pray the Lord
will let me... But either way, it's going to be conflict. It's
going to be a head-on collision with worldviews. That's what
happens. And that's what was happening in the first century
when the church was around. And guess what the outcome of the
gospel was? People who had no business doing
life together, who had nothing in common, at all, all of a sudden
cared more about each other than they ever did their own blood
relatives. You know what the world at large calls that? A
cult. A cult. Why? Because it goes
against the norm of self-interest. It goes against the norm of materialism. It goes against the norm of hedonism,
which is evil. It goes against the norm of seeking
self-glory. It goes against everything that
the flesh is. And you know what? None of the
Christians of that day stood around and said, man, we really
have it together. Look at what we're doing. No. Every letter,
almost, but one. The letter to the Thessalonians,
actually. was addressing sin in the church and the life of
the people who were Christians. Now I said this last week or
the week before, it might even have been on a Wednesday night, but can
you imagine if we lived in a community of faith that way? If Christians
in this community were not divided based on the label of their congregational
setting? or their denominational differences.
But we actually were indeed the body of Christ together. And
the guy that worships over there at the east side of town, or
the west side of town, or the north side of town, or the south
side of town, when they meet in the middle, they are all one
body, and they are all subject to one another, and they're all
subject to the same elders. That's what the church ought
to be. But I don't think it ever will be. I'm not being negative,
I just don't think it ever will be. And I think the true church
of Jesus Christ, those who really start to stick to the Word of
God and really begin to want to live together in intimacy,
will become smaller and smaller and smaller in comparison to
the world's view of what religion and church really looks like. But there is one thing, and Pastor
Jesse read it from the Word of God this morning, there's one
thing that sets the true church of Jesus apart from, well, there's
two things, but there's one outcome that sets us apart from everything
else. And that is that we care and
concern ourselves with the reality that God has saved us by His
grace alone for the sake of our intimacy and unity. I remember growing up and I would
hear all these big statistics. See, I'm a big statistician,
but I hate statistics. I just like to make them up as
I go. And I remember being in forensics club in debate when
I was in high school, and I would just butcher these people. And
it was my turn to speak. You got six minutes, and you
get up and you speak, and they're like, they can't even touch it.
They can't touch it. Why? We had no internet. There was no
fact-checking, and I could just lie. And I can make a bold assertion
and say, 76% of people who do this, this is the outcome. And
they're like, well, man, I can't fight that. I'm not driving to
Atlanta to the library to check it. But of course, my teacher's
like, where'd you get those numbers? Guess? Do it again, I'll fail
you. I mean, you know, that's how
it works. And we could come and we could
Look at the statistics, and I remember growing up and hearing, you know,
divorce in the church is equal as the divorce in the world.
Well, guess what? It's divorce in the world. Because
the very idea of divorce in the church, it just doesn't make
sense, does it? We can't say divorce in the church.
People divorce in the church is because they've divorced out
of the church. Now, we're not talking about divorces anymore.
I'm just using that as an example. And so the response to that statistic
is that we've got to do something to keep people from being like
the world. And let's turn around and let's start classes. Let's
start discipleship ministries. Let's start educational ministries.
And if you were to look at the budgets of most congregations,
and I can speak from experience, the largest portion of budgets
that I've ever had in my ministry has been educational resources.
I remember just in California when we didn't have but 60 people
and the quarterly material I think was about $7,000 just for the
books. Not to count the space we had
to build years ago. When we start growing as our
church, and Church in Brunswick started growing, and we ran out
of room to do Sunday school, so we spent a million dollars,
or less, doesn't matter, on building more rooms to have more space
for more classes. And then everybody had to sign
a card and a five-year covenant that they would give so much
a week for the rest of those five years. Because we need to
teach people. That's the reaction that we have
sometimes. when we see problems in the world.
The church is like, let's transform the world, let's transform behavior,
let's do this. Well, guess what? The business
of teaching, the business of correction, the business of training
in righteousness, the business of doing what God has called
the church to be, and if you weren't here Wednesday night,
go listen to Wednesday night's message on Romans 4. Because
if you ever had any idea of where we believe as a church, or what
the Scripture teaches about where works are, you'll get a clear
idea of where that is. It has nothing to do with salvation.
It's not even related. It's on another planet. It's on another
plane. It's in another cosmos. Salvation
is by grace alone. And everything else that flows
from that is the way we walk through life, ebbing and flowing,
following, not following, striving, not striving, fighting, not fighting. And that's where we are as a
church today. We're going through these ebbs and flows. We're going
through these stretch marks of maturity. We're going through
these things. But friends, Jesus would say
in John 13 verse 34, He says these words, He says, A new commandment
I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have what?
Loved you. You are also to love one another.
That's a commandment. And some people say, well that's
not a commandment. He says, new commandment I give to you. What
is Jesus doing? Jesus is saying, you beloved,
you my people who are saved by grace, are going to be watched
and measured by how you love one another above all things.
Isn't that what He told the Pharisees who came to Jesus and tried to
catch Him in a lie or in blasphemy? And they were like, what's the
greatest of all the laws? You see, if He had picked one
and said, well thou shalt not covet, then they could have said,
blasphemy, He said it's okay to lie. That's blasphemy. Jesus is a
liar. He said it's okay to do this
because He said this was more important than this one. You
see why? If you break one law, you're a lawbreaker. Collectively,
we're not righteous. We fall short of the glory of
God. But He says in verse 35 of John
13, He says, By this, by what? Your love for one another, all
people. You know what He's talking about
right there? Every person that sees you. all
people will know that you are My disciples if you have love
for one another." Now what is a disciple? Did He say that all
people will know that you are born again? No. Did He say that
all people will know that you have eternal life? No! He said,
all people will know that you are My disciples, that you are
following after Me, that you are listening to Me, that you
hear My voice and you know it. And we know there are people
who can fake love, and there are people who can love with self-interest and hide it
forever. But ultimately, what happens in a congregation is
so different than what happens in the world. If we're having
a strife with our boss, we find another job. If our marriage
is deteriorating in the world's ways, and we just cannot get
along, we just file for divorce. If our children are so aggravating,
we just throw them outside. We don't, do we? Why is it that
the standard is so split there? We throw each other out. We throw
our work out. We don't throw our children out. Well, friends, the church is
not immune. It's not immune at all to conflict. As a matter
of fact, God has ordained conflict to be a part of the local assembly.
Do you know why? Because we're people. I wrote
an article years ago from a counseling perspective because during the
holidays, you know, from Reformation Day to New Year's Day, the holiday
season, it seems like I have always been inundated with counseling
issues. No matter where I went, whether
it be in or out of the church, people you meet in town, because
everybody uses the holidays as an opportunity to say, wow, it's
just so hard. These holidays bring back so
much. You know why we have problems at the holidays? Because people that don't belong
in our house are in our house. And people that we love from
afar are not so lovable when they get close. An auntie, or
uncle, or boo-boo, or nini, or meemaw, or whoever she might
be, or pop-pop, or whoever they might be, they all show up, and
it's nice for like six minutes. And then somebody throws some
dirty socks in the wrong spot, or somebody doesn't lift the
toilet lid, or somebody puts the pull-up paper down backward. And then the devil's just camped
out. And we don't say anything. We
just walk in there to our spouse or whatever. You've got to do
something about your mama. She's ruining the holiday. She put such and such in my roast. I mean, you know, how dare she
do that? And in the end, it doesn't matter. So if that's going to
happen with just our household, You know why you cry and you
feel so good and fond of people you only see a few times a year?
Because that's as good as it's going to get. Let them move down
here. See, we've got families that
constantly call, and I want to move to Claxton. We've got some
that are going to be visiting the 21st of January, thinking
of moving here from the Midwest. And they want to meet us all,
and it happens to be a third Sunday, and we're going to do
a churchwide fellowship. I said, great day, we're going
to have a churchwide fellowship that day. But let me tell you,
there's no honeymoon here that last more than a week because
we're real people with real problems and real issues and real lives
and we get together and we escape it all. See, being in the assembly
is like a drug. We get to escape it all and pretend
like it's not happening. But when it comes in, guess what?
It's happening and it's real, y'all. It's easy to talk in theory
about what the Bible teaches about how we handle conflict,
but it is impossible to handle it in our flesh. The Bible is
the standard by which we will judge the circumstances we're
in. And it is the standard through which we will walk in these circumstances. And today, I want to talk about
What it means to have purity of truth as a church. Romans 14. A lot of text. I promise
I'm not going to exegete at all. Romans 14, Paul says, as for
the one who is weak in faith, welcome him. Do not quarrel over
opinions. Is that self-preaching? Do you
know what it is to be weak in faith? To be weak in faith means
that you feel like what you're doing is dishonoring to the Lord
and it really isn't. To be weak in faith is somebody
who's fearful and scared of making a mistake because they are afraid
that God will judge them. Romans 8, Paul has already said,
therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
So we are not condemned when we fail. We are forgiven already. Welcome Him. We welcome those
who are weak in the faith who don't have all the answers when
it comes to understanding right doctrine. We don't throw people
out because they ask good questions. We throw people out when they're
pure heretics. Asking questions, well I don't
understand this, or I'm not sure I believe that, or I don't really
see that. Well great, are you willing to
learn? Sure, show me. We walk together in it and we
mature and we learn. Guys, I learn how to handle doctrine
every single day. And some of it because some of
you ask the right questions. And I realize, wow, the way we've
been looking at that needs to be approached differently. A
weak person should not be pushed away. They should be welcomed
and don't quarrel over opinions. One person believes that he may
eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.
It's funny they're talking about food sacrificed to idols and
how that's wicked. And Paul told Peter he better
eat it. There's nothing wrong. Nothing's
wrong with food. If I sacrifice a pig over a fire
and burn it to the devil and then serve it to you, the church,
you eat it. It's not evil meat, you see. That's the context of what Paul's
saying here. Your conscience cannot say, ooh, that's going
to kill me, God's going to get me. I have a Jewish prayer shawl
that I have been hanging in my offices for seventeen, eighteen
years. And I'll never forget someone
coming in there and says, what are you doing? You holding to the old covenant?
No, I think it's beautiful. I didn't hang up the satanic priest garment. At least it has a biblical context.
But yes, some of us, we don't want pictures of Uncle Billy
up there on the wall and say it's Jesus. That's why we don't
hang pictures in great scripture. We hang scripture. We don't hang
American flags here. Nothing wrong with the American
flag. Whether you sit, stand, squat, backflip, it doesn't matter
to me. Whatever your conscience bears witness to. But we don't
want to hang them in here. Why? Because some people will
love it and adore it. Some people go, wow, that really
interrupts my worship. But either way, when I show up
to some other place and we're worshiping together and there's
a flag there, it's none of my business what those people do.
As long as it's not inappropriate. I've had people put them right
here before on stands, two of them. And I went, no. The one who eats only vegetables.
Thirdly, let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains.
Let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who
eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment
on the slave of another? It is before his own master that he
stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able
to make him stand. What person esteems one day better
than another? Like Christmas? Easter? whatever
it might be that you do, you better do it in a good conscience
before the Lord. And if a brother or sister doesn't like that,
then they communicate that to you, great. But we who might
not like the celebration of an Easter the way you celebrate
it, good. Let's not patch judgment on another because of what we
do. But the minute I get up here and start telling everybody how
they ought or ought not to celebrate a particular day in their household
is when I have failed to follow Scripture. Because the Scripture doesn't
prescribe that. Privately? I'll tell you exactly what I
think about stuff. But I can't charge you and cause
you to obey. Because what I say here, if it's
contextual, you are bound to obey it. You are bound to obey
it. If I preach to you, if Jesse preaches to you, if Brother Dave
comes and preaches to you from the Word of God, we are bound
as the church to obey what is written in the Word of God. When
the Bible says forgive one another and you don't forgive, guess
what happens if you don't forgive? You are brought under discipline.
And the Bible says don't commit adultery. And you commit adultery.
And we tell you not to commit adultery, but to reconcile. And
guess what happens if you don't reconcile? You get brought under
discipline. Why? Because of the purity of the
truth. It's one thing to say we believe something. It's another
thing to actually put it into practice. And we're not talking
about salvation here. We're not talking about eternal
life. We're not talking about redemption or justification. That is a given. We're talking about living life
together as a people who are always conflicting. in the unity
of the faith. Because that is the prime picture
of what Christ did for us, isn't it? When we were far away from
God, Christ brought us to God at the cost of Himself, at the
cost of His flesh, at the cost of His glory, at the cost of
His... He took on flesh. And we spit upon Him, and we
refuse Him, and we reject Him, and God in His mercy saves us
anyway. So therefore we must listen to
this. One esteems a day better than another while another esteems
all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own
mind. This is a matter of conscience. The one who observes the day
observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in the
honor of the Lord. since he gives thanks to God. For the one who
abstains, abstains in the honor of the Lord, and gives thanks
to God. For none of us lives to himself,
and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the
Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we
live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. Beloved, you are
the Lord's. You belong to Christ. And because we belong to Christ,
get this, we belong to each other. What finger would you sacrifice
this morning? What leg would you let go today? What eyeball would you choose
to get plucked out? That sounds a little absurd.
That is the exact imagery of the New Testament as it relates
to the local assembly of saints. Why do you pass judgment on your
brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we all stand
before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, as I live,
says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, and every tongue shall
confess to God. So then each of us will give
an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us not pass judgment
on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a
stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know
that I am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean
in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean."
You know what that means? that some of us are going to
have issues of conscience where we feel like we're dishonoring
God to participate or to do or to say or to speak or to eat.
And we have to bear with that. And in like manner, others have
to bear with us. If your brother is grieved by
what you eat, you're no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy
the one for whom Christ died. I want to read that again. By
what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.
This is the severity of disunity that we mock the gospel of grace,
that we spit in the face of mercy. So do not let what you regard
as good be spoken of as evil. It doesn't mean that we don't
teach people the truth. It doesn't mean that we don't correct weakness.
but we don't disunity, we don't divide over it. And until the
time comes when we can see eye to eye, we do not fight over
it. For the kingdom of God is not
a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace
and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is
acceptable to God and approved by men. So let us pursue what
makes for peace and mutual up-building. Do not for the sake of food destroy
the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but
it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.
It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that
causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep
between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no
reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever
has doubts is condemned if he eats, because he's eating not
from faith, but from whatever does not proceed from faith is
sin. 15.1 it says, We who are strong have
an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not
to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for
his good, to build him up, for Christ did not please himself,
but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell
on me. For whatever was written in former days was written for
our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement
of the Scripture, we might have hope. May the God of endurance
and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one
another, in accord with Jesus Christ, that together you may
with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed
you for the glory of God. There's a lot of texts Jesse
read out of 1 Corinthians 13. The greatest of these is love.
John 13 without love. We're not proving anything. We're not doing anything. We're
not working as a family. In Matthew 5, it talks about
the gift of the altar. It says when we come to bring
a gift of the altar, and we remember that our brother has something
against us. Not that we have something against our brother, but our
brother has something against us. We are to leave the altar
and not present the gift, and then be reconciled first to our
brother, and then come and offer the gift. Paul says the same
thing about the table. That if there's bitterness or
unforgiveness in our hearts and we take of the table, we do so
in an unworthy manner. In the first century, when we
played around, when the church played around with the Lord's
table, God killed Him. And He doesn't do it now because
His mercy's endured. But he did it then, just like
he did the other signed gifts, so that it would show the severity
and the authority of the Word of God and the commands of God.
And those who took the table in an unworthy manner, though
they died in the flesh, they lived eternally. But friends, do we
want to live a life in disunity and displeasure, grumbling and
complaining and frustration? Or do we want to live a life
that's free in Christ? We can say what Paul says, the
choice is ours. And many of us then would say,
well, then what am I supposed to do if I choose to live this
way? Well, guess what? The choice may be ours, but the
power is Christ's. Because today, as we choose to
walk in some way, tomorrow we may choose to not. As Matthew 18 was read this morning,
we will close our time today with that text, but I want to
walk through what I've read here in 14 and 15 of Romans, and I
want to pull it out in the context of how we're to discern how we
bear, forbear, forgive. The first thing we need to understand
is that there is such a thing as a stumbling block. A stumbling
block is anything that causes you to have a sinful spirit if
it's somebody else's fault. You know what that is? It could be anything. It could
be that you see me drinking a glass of wine at Applebee's. I think
they went out of business, so that would be odd. It would also
be odd to see me drinking a glass of wine because I am the teetotaler
of teetotalers, not because it's a sin because I don't want to. But it would be like you seeing
that, and automatically in your spirit it goes, well that's a
sin. Pastors shouldn't drink. And then the whole time you never
say anything, and you never say anything, and you never say anything.
And you're weak. You're weak when you think that. You're weak.
You're weak because you think the liberty of having wine is
a sin. And you were taught in Sunday
school by some ridiculously moronic people that the wine Jesus had
was grape juice and non-fermented, bologna. Those people got plastered
at the wedding in John 2. They were plastered, which is
a sin. But if your conscience bears
witness not to do that, then you don't do it. And if you're
so weak that you think it's a sin for me to do it and it causes
you to have fearfulness and frustration, if you don't tell me, I don't
know. But when you tell me, son, I'll
set the wine jug on fire for your conscience. And then we'll
spend some time training you that it's okay, you don't live
in fear. And whether we ever drink wine together or not is
not the point. The point is that our unity is not going to be
divided and destroyed because of what we want to do. So that's
one way a stumbling block. A stumbling block could also
be somebody who engages in something that causes someone to feel bitterness. Do you know bitterness is a sin?
It's wicked before God. Unforgiveness is a sin. Bearing
false witness is a sin. It's a sin. I mean, nobody in
this room has not done that. Everyone here has lied. You ever been called a liar by
a show of hands? Why do we get mad? We are liars. Why do we get mad? You're a liar.
Don't you call me a liar. You're mama. I mean, you know,
we go back to third grade all of a sudden overnight. In an
instant. You talk about my mama. I mean,
We're liars. And when someone gets in this
position, why is it so hard for us to deal with it? You know
what happens is we really don't understand what the Bible says
about how to deal with conflict and stumbling. In Ephesians 4,
I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner
worthy of the calling to which you have been called. And that
call is effectual. You see what Paul is saying there?
Walk in the work of God. And if you want to hear what
I think about Ephesians 4, I preached it in 2012. It's on the church
website. 521 sermons. They're there. Some of them are terrible. Some
of them are even worse. So go find them. But at least
you know what I think. And walk in this manner that
you've been called, listen, with all humility. What is humility? I don't think one iota about
my thoughts, my feelings, my hurt, my position at all, but
I walk humbly, thinking only about you. With all gentleness. Even when
I have to deal with you, we do it gently. We do it gently because
what do you do? If you have a priceless antique
that you dug up out of the dirt, if you have some piece of furniture
that's worth a bunch of money, either in value or in idolatry
because it's special to you or your family, and you go to clean
it, you clean it nicely. You clean it gently. You deal
with it. You don't take the wire brush to the antique relic and
go... What are you doing? I don't care.
There used to be a face there. It don't matter. No, you want
to maintain the value of this precious thing. Friends, we are
more precious than anything we own. And we ought to be precious
to each other. And we ought to approach each
other with humility and with gentleness. And here's the other
part. What does Paul say? And with patience. You can ask
Abigail what patience means. It means waiting without complaining. Isn't that right? Yep. Waiting. without complaining.
Oh, how wonderful the world would be if we all waited without complaining. Waiting for what? For whatever
it takes. We wait. We wait. We wait. We wait till the weak become
strong. We wait till we become strong. Remember what I said last Sunday?
That every one of us who think we're the strong ones, we're
actually the weak ones. We're the weak ones. Walk with
patience. And how we do that is in the
next part of that text, bearing with one another in love. What
does bearing mean? Well, we can use the negative
context of bearing. If you drop a ton of stuff on me and I'm
like, oh my gosh, I can't hold this. This is too heavy. I'm having to walk with pressure.
I've got to go see Doc here. You know, because our backs are
all cracked up. That's bearing. But we've come
to our culture to think that burying one another in love means
tolerating. While our spirits were like this,
I love Jesus. Really? I love my church. I mean, what is that? That's
not burying. That's complaining. Burying in
love means that you want more piled on your back because you
love the one that's putting it there. It's tough, isn't it? Anybody
got this under handle? Anybody got this in the control
of their lives? And as we do all these things,
we're eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of
peace. The bond that we have is the peace of the Holy Spirit.
And the unity that we have is by God, the Holy Spirit, who
lives in us. Christ in us, who is the hope
of glory. Colossians chapter 2. Colossians
chapter 1. So we need to ask ourselves,
based on this text in Ephesians, based on this text in Romans
14-15, what in the world is this stumbling block? If we are feeling
like there's a stumbling block in our midst, no matter what
it is, we have to ask ourselves, is this a preference? Is this an issue of conscience?
And if the answer is yes, we just forbear it with joy and
thanksgiving and humility. and love, eager to maintain the
unity of the peace. If it's a weakness, then what
do we do? If it's a weakness, then we work
it out by teaching each other patiently. That's not the world's
way, but it's the Word's way. And then the next thing we do,
if it's a preference, and we still need to address it, we need to
ask ourselves, if it's a preference, we can just let it go. We can
just say, get over it. We can just let it go. But if
it is a true sin, we have to ask ourselves, is this a sin
to me because I'm in sin? Or, if it is clearly a sin, then
we first have to ask ourselves what? Am I in sin? Why? Because Jesus Himself commands,
before you take the speck out of your brother's eye, you better
dig the log out of your own. Never, ever should we address
each other in prayer or rebuke before we have addressed our
own sins. Do you know how often I have
to address my own sins? Every hour. Because I pray for you that often,
if not more. And I have to pray for my sins,
for me to be aware and to praise God that those sins have been
handled at the cross so that I might rightly pray. Because
guess what? When we walk in sin and pray, they hit the ceiling. God will never hear a prayer
of someone who harbors resentment. He will not do it. Where do you
get that? Paul says, do not let your prayers
be hindered by the way you treat your wives, husbands. And we pray, God do this, and
we treat each other like trash. God's not going to do it because
He's not going to answer prayers. So are we in sin? How do we know
if we're in sin? What sin are you talking about? My neighbor
bothers me? This church member bothers me
or says something about me? Calls my baby ugly, no matter
what it might be. Tells me that I'm not a vegan,
so I don't love the Lord. I can't believe you'd eat barbeque
potato chips with aspartame in it. That's wicked. That's probably
a good idea not to eat barbeque potato chips with aspartame.
I don't think they make them, but anyway. But it's not sin. But if someone does sin, are
we in sin? What sin could there be? How
about jealousy? Are we in sin because we're jealous? We see
somebody else and they're flaunting what they have. They're talking
about how good life is and they're doing it in a prideful way. And
maybe they don't even notice it, but that's a sin toward us
sometimes, isn't it? But are we also then sinful because
we're jealous? Are we using unwise judgment? Are we unwise in our judgment?
Are we making judgment against one another? Are we bitter? Are we bitter? If we're bitter,
we can never address the sin that has come against us because
of our bitterness. Are we prideful? Are we impatient? Are we self-righteous? Are we
committing the sin of holding people to the standard of our
conscience rather than the correction of Scripture? Are we being selfish? So if we
find sin in ourselves, guess what we need to do? If it's a
sin in ourselves towards someone else, we need to come to that
person and we need to say, I've sinned against you in my heart.
Now some people go, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes, do that. You know why? Because if you
don't do that, your flesh will hold that sin. It can go something as simple
as this. I'll use Brother Micah as an example. He knows this
is an example. I'm upset with Brother Mike and
he's not done anything to deserve it. But my observation or the
way he said something bothered me. And so I'm just resentful.
Yes, if I can put it to death in that moment, great. But if
I'm sitting here stewing over it, I need to go to him and say,
I need you to forgive me because I sinned in my heart toward you
and you've done nothing wrong. But what if He did say, your
mama, at the end of service today? And it hurt my feelings and then
He sinned against me. And then I go to Him, but first I must
go to God, because I've sinned in my heart. And then I go to
Mike. And I don't say, you need to
repent. I need to repent of my sin toward you. And then by the
mercy of Christ, God will say, you know what? Forgive me as
well. It's that easy. I forgive you. You know what forgiveness looks
like? Jesse Reddick. No record of wrong! Somebody sins against me today,
and tonight when the sun goes down, they do the same thing?
Hallelujah! I've never seen it before! That's not what the flesh does,
is it? For three solid years. For three solid decades. 639
times. How many times should we forgive?
7 times? Jesus says no, 77 times. In some
texts, 70 times 7 times. So what is it? 512? 11? 490?
Either way, it's a lot. Have you ever had to forgive
somebody 490 or 511 times? And that's not literally what
it means. It's a number of completion multiplied
exponentially so that we are now learning that we just keep
forgiving, and we keep correcting, and we keep teaching, and we
keep loving, and we do it all. Then we have to ask the question,
I know I'm going a little long, but we have to ask the question, have I really
been sinned against? If I'm sinned, then I'm going
to repent of my sin. I'm going to ask forgiveness.
I'm going to seek reconciliation. Have I really been sinned against?
Ask this question. Can I just forgive them in my
spirit and move on? If the answer is yes, then settled.
It's over. Have I really been sinned against?
Or am I just dealing with pet peeves? Is this something that
bothers me or is it a sin against me? You see the difference? You
can't go to Matthew 18 unless someone has actually sinned against
you and committed a sin against God. See, that's the rub. That's where we don't like. We
want every little thing that bothers us to be a big deal.
Every little situation. Friends, it's going to happen.
If it's a small issue that's not related to the potential
of sin, the word for that is petty. Are we petty people as
God's people? No, we're not petty people. Is it something that can be resolved
through the teaching of others, through the discipleship, through
encouragement, through correction? Yes, then do that. After all,
are we not commanded to do that? As long as it's a call today,
we what? Encourage each other on the works and good deeds?
Does the Scripture not teach us in the letter to the Ephesians
that we ought to speak the truth in love, that we may all grow
into the maturity and the stature of Christ and the full manhood
of Christ? Are we growing that way? But what if it's something serious?
Is it contained to individuals? Then talk to them. Is it a sin
against the Lord? Or against the church? Then confront
it. We confront it. But we do so in humility, with
patience and love, and we bear in the context of that so that
we work out the bond of peace and the Spirit of God in unity.
That's the point. Nobody's saying that we don't
confront conflict. But we don't like it. We run
from it. And running from it is more wicked than dealing with
it or being offended by it to start with. What if it's heresy taught from
the pulpit? Paul would say to the Church of Galatia, I'm astonished
you're deserting Him who called you to the grace of Christ. I'm
astonished. There's no gospel. If there's heresy taught from
the pulpit, you've got to confront it. You can't just let it go.
But if it's not heresy, then there's no confrontation. If
it's the sin of an elder, take two witnesses, bring it to the
elder, take it before the church, the church will decide. If the
pastor repents and it's not something egregious, then it's healed,
it's over. If he doesn't, then we take it
to the next step. The other elders will take him
out. What if it's a toleration of
errors for those in authority? What if it's that we just get
these guest speakers to come in here and start teaching garbage? Are we tolerating that? That's
a reason to make big noise in humility. What about refusal of the authority
of God's Word, or what we call the RPW? The Regulative Principle
of Worship, that the Scripture regulates everything we do within
the confines of this? What if we start doing a bingo
game on a Sunday morning? You better make noise. We want
to do God. We want to do the Bible. We can
go ready. I mean, we'd love that. That'd be so fun. We can do that
on a Friday. But it has no place here. What about sinful lifestyles that are tolerated?
We're all quick to say, well, look at all that sin going on
over there. We'd better do something about it. We'd better do something about it.
We'd better do something about it. We don't tolerate sinful lifestyles,
just like we don't tolerate heresy, just like we don't tolerate false
doctrine. But there's a big difference in someone who's ignorant and
willing to listen to correction and someone who's being divisive.
There's a big difference in someone whose feelings are hurt and being
willing to reconcile and work it out because Christ is in us
and someone that just loses their mind and decides, no, the whole
church is apostate. There's a difference. Sometimes
there are unbiblical polity about how the church operates. We've
got committees and teams. I mean, that's a reason to leave
a church. That's a reason to leave a congregation, biblically. You've got people in leadership
who are given authority that the Bible doesn't give them.
And they're able to make decisions and steer the ship of the congregation
and to exhort and admonish and rebuke and teach and instruct
in righteousness based on what they think is best that's apart
from Scripture. That's not even one of those
areas where you try to work it out. You just get up and you
say, I love y'all and I love you enough to say this isn't
working for me because this is wrong. Now come to that conclusion
in the midst of a called pastorate and then stay three years after
you come to that conclusion and tell them you're going to leave. You forbear and you bear the
burden in love. But you still go. About sinful
abandonment without cause. 2 Thessalonians 3 says, Now we
command you, brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus, that
you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not accord with
the tradition that you receive from us. So we get people who
don't turn from their sin. We have to just anathemize them.
What's that mean? They're not going to sit at Hoodies
and have lunch with me. They're not going to call me on the phone.
They're not going to go fishing with me. And if they go to another
church, we're going to call that church and say, that guy is not
welcome here because of this sin, this sin, and this sin,
this sin, this sin, this sin. That's church discipline. And
we don't like that as a culture, but that is the exact thing that
God commands us to do in Scripture. And unfortunately, and also graciously,
we have had to exercise that last year. Almost a year ago. How about lip service or hypocrisy?
These things are important. But at the end of it all, what do we look for? We look for this. Paul teaches in 1 Thessalonians. I'm going
to teach on these issues next week as well. So if it feels
uneasy, just let the Word of God do its work. If it feels
incomplete, let the Word of God instruct you. Remember I said
that almost every New Testament letter that was written was written
in response to a problem? Except for the Thessalonians.
And even then, there were some false teachers among them infiltrating
them and causing them what? Burdens. It became a stumbling
block to them because people were saying that Christ had already
returned. The second coming had already taken place. And they
were frustrated, they were changing their lifestyles, they were doing
all sorts of stuff because they had just given up hope in some
respects, especially about those who were dying for the faith
amongst them. And Paul commends them for their
love, doesn't he? For each other. He said, I know
that the Gospel has reached you in word, and not just word, but
also in power, because of the great love that you have for
one another. And then He admonishes them. Then He warns them. Then
He encourages them and exhorts them. And He says, I want you.
He prays. And He says, may the Lord, what
does He say? May the Lord make you increase
and abound in love for one another and for all as you already do. Why? so that He may establish your
hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with the saints." What
does he mean? That our love for one another
makes us holy? No. But what are churches known for today? I promise
I'm almost done. I mean, you ask around town,
where do you go to church? Oh, I go to so-and-so. They've got a really
cool praise team. I go to so-and-so, man, they've
got the bouncy thing for the kids. Or I go to so-and-so, I
go to this place, or I go to that place. And you hear people
all the time, well, what do you all do for your teenagers? Well,
we preach at them. And sometimes they get together
and play. What do you do for your children? We teach and preach
in their presence. What do you do for this? What
do you do for that? We just teach and preach. I mean, what do you
want me to say? Oh, y'all have screens? No. Sometimes it's just the Bible. But churches are known for all
the stuff. And some churches are known for what the world
would say. Oh, I would love that church. I have people coming
here constantly. Oh, I love that church. They give me stuff. What was
it I heard yesterday? Oh, that church down the street,
they're so awesome. These people gave me some pocketbooks. That's
one of the best churches in town. They gave me a pocketbook. Was
there any money in it? I wanted to ask, you know. It's
just an empty pocketbook. What does Christ, what does Paul,
what does James, what does John say that the church should be
known for? The truth! Absolutely. That's not an option. If the truth isn't what you're
known for, guess what? You're not the church. Okay? Just because we've got a building,
and a steeple, and a preacher, and a Bible, and some people,
doesn't make us a church. If we're not in the truth, we're
not in Christ. If we believe another gospel,
a gospel of grace plus, a gospel of grace plus a glance inward,
whatever it might be, we're not the church. So we're talking
about the church, that's a given. Yes, got to have. But Ephesus,
the church of Ephesus had true doctrine, didn't they? What does
Jesus say to them in John's writing? But I have this against you,
that you've forsaken your first love. You know what that means? That they didn't love Jesus in
unity. Now how in the world do we know
that? How do you know if I love Christ?
How do I know if you love Christ? Now, we can fake it. I'm just
talking about what we should be known for. This is what we
should be known for. Truth or we're not the church.
Secondarily, what? Our love. Our love. And how is love known? That we forgive. That we forbear. That we reconcile. Hold up our unity above everything
else at the cost of us. I want you to hear me, church. This is the point of my preaching
every week. That we may grow as a family
in unity. That we may grow more in love
with each other because God first loved us. And I say, well, I
do love each other. You don't love each other if
we do not reconcile. We do not love each other if
we are not forgiving and forbearing. Let's pray. Father, help us to be a people
of love. Not the way the world calls it,
but the way your Word shows it. As the illustrations and the
examples are shown to us, that love is giving your life for
each other. That we're able to forgive and
to forbear. And Father, in these next few
weeks, help us to be in a spirit of unity and peace. Coming to a place, Lord, every
day where we're praying for Your purpose in us. Praying that You would work in
us the ability by Your power to forbear. To not be a stumbling
block. to not hold bitterness and unforgiveness. But Lord, because You have forgiven
us at the cost of Jesus, Your Son, who died to satisfy Your
wrath against us. Lord, help us to hold fast by
faith alone to Jesus Christ. and to not even take this teaching
today and think that we can do something in our flesh that would
make it work. God, we cannot do that and we
know it. Lord, if You do not work, we will make a mess of
all of our lives. We will make a mess of our intimacy.
We will ruin and hurt those for whom Christ died. So let us walk as children, standing
before You hopeless, helpless, in need of mercy. In Jesus' name,
Amen.