Romans 14_1-12 - How to Navigate Differences in Christian Liberty and Conviction： Part 1
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Summary
In this sermon, Pastor Ken teaches about the role of the family, the church, and the state in the world, and how we should relate with each other. He uses a metaphor of the church as a "field" and reminds us that the church is not a factory, but a "garden."
Transcript
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Well, we are back in Romans. It feels very good to be back into some expository preaching.
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If you don't know, topical preaching is very difficult because you never know where to start
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and where to end. And so after spending seven weeks on topical teachings on eschatology,
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it's really wonderful to have a piece of text. Now, we are doing 12 verses today. You would
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think that that would make the sermon longer. It's actually not. I'm going to move through
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this pretty quick. My hope, just to give you a heads up, is to finish our study of Romans by
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the end of the summer and to start Genesis chapters 1 through 20 in the fall. I would love
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to do that. So that's my will. We'll see if that's the Lord's will, but that would be a wonderful
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thing to do. Now, if you recall, I want to give you some context here, basically where I'm going.
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If you recall, in Romans chapter 13, we explored the overlap of the family, the church, and the state.
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We saw how Christ restored the authority that was lost in Adam.
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We discussed our duty to submit to rulers and our debt to the government
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and the greater debt of love that we owe one another that can never be fully repaid.
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Then in 1311, Paul called us to wake up to a spiritual urgency
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And that that should change the way you behave today
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And he ended that chapter with a charge to kind of cast off the darkness of sin
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and to walk in the day as Christ slowly brings the light into the world
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Now, in chapter 14, Paul shifts from our Christian witness to the world
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This is a message that will be hitting home and how we relate with each other.
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I believe that this sermon could be summed up in really three virtues.
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A charity in that love covers the offense of sins.
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It's amazing how much offense will be covered by the love of a mother for a child.
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and the reason you don't end up giving up on that child is because of love.
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Humility in that we must remember that we were also once weak or young in faith
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or early on the journey and liberty in that God allows for a range of Christian doctrine
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or a range of Christian convictions on non-essential matters,
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and they are not grounds for condemnation or division.
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So ultimately, this text is hard because it calls for you,
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you, to have grace and patience toward one another.
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Even your own kids, even your own grown children, even your own spouses.
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It calls for you to have grace and patience toward one another.
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But more than that, it reveals that Christ doesn't demand a degree of sameness that we often demand.
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Yes, Jesus prays that, Father, that we are one, or that they are one as we are one.
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and so you get to balance these truths together now the church
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is not a factory the church is a garden and this is a very important metaphor because i'm going to
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use it through the entire sermon the church is not a factory it is a garden in a factory
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everything is the same. Identical parts, precise processes. There's really not much room for
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variation in the factory. Factories value sameness because it makes management easy.
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It makes it easy. But the church isn't a factory. The church is a garden.
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And some plants are strong while others are weak. And some plants are tall while others are small.
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Some plants are different, but they're still in the same soil.
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And as you know, many of you know, I wrote a book on the topic of head coverings.
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Now, I have strong convictions on that doctrine, but you might have also known that I've never taught it at the church.
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People think and assume that he must be the guy that's constantly teaching women to wear head coverings.
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I wrote a book on it and I've never taught it at this church.
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I've simply allowed families to read my position, come to their own conclusions on the matter.
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And I've made myself available for questions when they come.
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Now, I do know two pastors, two pastors who I believe fall in a ditch on this matter.
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One of those pastors requires women to wear head coverings at church.
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The other pastor forbids women from wearing head coverings at church.
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Well, in my opinion, both of these pastors are causing brothers and sisters in their own congregation to violate their own consciences.
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not gardens. They want standardization, and they want uniformity.
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But churches are not factories. They're gardens. There's differences on non-essential
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matters. Now, this isn't some clever illustration either. The scriptures back it up. It's 1 Corinthians
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chapter 3, verses 6 through 7. It says, I planted, and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
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so then neither it is he who plants nor he who waters but god gives the increase
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but it's more than that jeremiah and isaiah literally refer to god's people as a garden
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david calls christians to be like trees planted next to streams of water paul tells us that we
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are shoots grafted into an olive branch or an olive tree. Jesus calls the evangelist a sower
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of seeds. He says that we're a vineyard. He says that he is the vine and that we are the branches
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grafted in. The church, Kingsway, is a garden. And anybody that has done any gardening knows
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how are we to treat other plants in this garden?
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How should the towering oaks relate to the saplings?
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Or the well-nourished to those who have shallow roots?
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As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him.
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And at face value you go, oh it looks pretty simple
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As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome it
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But you're going to see, this is not that simple
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But how often have reformed churches spooked new or young believers?
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How often have reformed churches spooked new believers
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by overwhelming them with a flood of secondary and tertiary positions
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sometimes within the first 30 minutes of meeting somebody
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I'm going to bring you to all these doctrinal positions
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Cage stage. We call that because these people with such strong opinions should be caged.
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Not for their sake, but for the sake of those who are weak in faith or who are new.
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Now, you may have heard the phrase, begin with the end in mind.
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I want you to just turn a page or turn to your Bible,
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and I want you to look at chapter 15, verses 1 and 2.
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I want to skip forward here because this entire topic,
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We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak
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Let each of us please his neighbor for his good and to build him up.
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What a different posture than the cage stager, right?
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But as we will see, this is difficult because every person in that cage stage
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who introduces a visitor to the doctrine of biblical patriarchy
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thinks they're doing the Lord's work to that poor, foolish complementarian.
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Is that you think that you're doing the Lord's work by sharing and projecting
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all these important convictions that you have right on this new believer or this young person
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in the faith. So it really does require charity, humility, and understanding liberty, which requires
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patience. Now Paul is about to give us two practical examples from his time in the areas
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of dietary convictions and religious celebrations.
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That's pretty simple. It says, for God has welcomed him.
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It is before his own master that he stands or falls,
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and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
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All right, contextually, this verse, this passage, it really rests on Acts chapter 10, verses 13 and 15,
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where God reveals to Peter the shift of ceremonial cleanliness among the Jews.
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And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.
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It's after he's seen all these different animals.
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Peter said, By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.
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And a voice came to him a second time, What God has made clean, do not call common.
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So this is a very big shift, especially if you're a Jewish convert.
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The dietary laws were about personal holiness.
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They were about the anticipation of the Messiah who would ultimately make us clean.
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Jesus even says in Mark chapter 7, 8 through 9, he says,
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Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him?
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Now Paul does not specify in this text whether he's talking about Jews that are struggling
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with the kind of sensitivities they've converted to Christ, but they still have sensitivities
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to the Old Testament on the dietary laws. He doesn't say if it's that or
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if it's the Gentile converts that are struggling with the old pagan rituals of
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the idolatry of eating meat that were sacrificed to temples. He doesn't say.
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But my anticipation is that it's probably a little bit of both.
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In matters of Christian liberty, this kind of
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non-essential category. The mature must not look down upon the weak, and the weak must not judge
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the liberties of the strong, because God has welcomed them both. As many of you know, we allow
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alcohol at our men's gatherings. We do. Whiskey, beer, cigars, and the Bible, right? We have a fun
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time. Over the years, I've had men who are weak in this area condemn those men who have liberty
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in that area. It's happened several times. I've also seen men who have liberty in this area
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stumble those who are weak in this area. That has also happened several times.
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Now, you know what the tendency is for most churches?
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We hate dealing with the indifference of the garden.
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that that brother over there has the freedom and liberty to drink
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and not having to struggle to stumble into drunkenness.
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But that brother over there can't do the same thing
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instead of dealing with the indifference of the garden.
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That's sidestepping the conversation and the difficulty and the discernment
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and the relational patience that eliminate the responsibility to grow with one another.
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Paul doesn't tell us, how about you just make sure that nobody eats meat?
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hey, if eating meat stumbles, my brother, I'm not going to ever eat meat again.
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That's a totally different sermon on the idea of limiting your liberties
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for the sake of another brother because you love them.
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But that is certainly a parallel that you have to take in consideration.
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In verse 3, Paul essentially makes the point, he says,
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if God has accepted him, who are you to reject him?
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when paul says reject him he's actually speaking of like a removal of the church like a kind of a
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kicking out maybe possibly even a condemnation that guy's not saved look at him
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what a fool he doesn't understand this doctrine
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paul says that it's not our place to make such a judgment
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it would be like walking into someone else's house
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their justification now to make this again more tricky
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this does not mean that we do not judge other believers ever
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because paul also wrote first corinthians chapter 5
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12 through 13 it says for what have i have to do with judging outsiders
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is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge
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So we're to judge members of the church on matters of morality.
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We're supposed to judge people on matters of essential doctrine.
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But we are not to condemn members of the church on non-essential matters.
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and I'll tell you what, the Reformed world has a lot of non-essential matters.
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I think R.C. Sproul sums up this section nicely with a little commentary.
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The tendency of those who better understand the gospel is to be impatient with the inhibitions of the weak as legalistic bondage.
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the temptations of the weak is to condemn the strong for behavior that seems to them
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to be lawless license these mistaken responses should yield to that light of god's gracious
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acceptance of both the weak and the strong both the guy who can drink and the guy who can't drink
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both the woman who wears a head covering and the woman who does not wear a head covering
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Then Paul takes this principle of doctrinal humility
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One person esteems one day as better than another
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While another esteems all days that are to be alike
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Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
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The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.
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The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God.
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While the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God as well.
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This is not, by the way, talking about the Lord's Day.
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This is talking about other religious holidays that are going on in the early church.
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The transition of eras between the Old Testament feasts and festivals and the pagan rituals that were going on in this area at this time in Rome.
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Now, when you think about this, you have Jews that have just converted to Christianity.
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And they're probably struggling to disconnect from practices that they've been raised with their entire life.
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Passover, the ceremony of the feasts, other religious celebrations.
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Now, Paul teaches that the believer who observes certain days out of sincere but uninformed,
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And neither is the believer who, understanding Christ's fulfillment of those feasts,
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It simply means that we have to exercise patience and grace on that journey as people are learning to understand the complexities and the beauty and the magnitude of the gospel.
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for example we actually had a church or so we had a family in this church some time ago
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who celebrated passover and refused to celebrate christmas you've met these people before not
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that particular family this is a group of people there's a huge group of people that do this we
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hate christmas and we want to celebrate the passover and we call ourselves christians
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And as a pastor, my role is to gently and humbly and patiently guide them to understand that celebrating the Passover is no longer necessary under the new covenant.
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and that celebrating Christmas while not commanded
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is both permissible and spiritually beneficial for the church.
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because people have strong convictions on these matters.
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with all of our statements of confessions and exegetical commentaries,
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we need to remember this principle of incremental growth.
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A great way to follow Christ is to shepherd people the way that Christ has shepherded you.
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How long did it take you to form your eschatology?
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so i don't expect for someone to jump from their position that took them five years to get to
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to shift positions in six months it may happen the lord may bring a revelation of sanctification
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and shift that person's position it may not it may take much prayer and much discussions
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Well, it happens going exegetically through the Word of God.
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to your brothers and sisters as you have your strong opinions and
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Proverbs 15, 28 says, The heart of the righteous ponders how
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It says, But the mouth of the wicked pours out evil thoughts.
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it, right? He goes, there are many things that if I drop them on you right now, it would
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be like a fire hose and you're not ready for them. Okay. You as a member of this church
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need to know when to introduce a particular doctrine to a particular person with a particular
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position of force. I remember hearing when we first planted this church,
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in a house, no actually we were in this building, so it might have been a year and a half ago.
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We had a visiting family, and there was another family
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that was a part of our church at that time, and the visiting family came up,
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and the family that was here at our church asked
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a full blown conversation in the lobby. Deep end of the
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pool, we are going to fit our 45, our, you know, 10-month discussion into this five-minute
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We need to be patient with one another as we introduce these positions and also while
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Then in verse 7 through 9, Paul demonstrates God's sovereignty over the lives of all believers.
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For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.
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For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.
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So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
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For to this end, Christ died and lived again, and that he might be both Lord of the dead and of the living.
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None of us lives to ourselves, and none of us dies to ourselves.
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Every word that comes out of your mouth is to be in subjection to the Lord.
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All that we do is to be in submission to the Lord.
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Even what we eat, and what we drink, and how we talk, and how we behave,
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So whether you eat or whether you drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
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And because each of us are going to stand and will stand before the Lord on Judgment Day,
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who has all authority in heaven and on earth, because he is the only mediator between God and man,
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we ought not to see that Christ, or we ought not to see ourselves in the position that Christ is
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to judge the souls of other believers. And I'll tell you what, if you don't believe that some
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people condemn other people to hell based off of non-essential doctrine, you just haven't been on
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Twitter, okay? That's it, all right? Because it happens all day, every day. The Anglicans condemning
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the Baptists, and the Baptists condemning the Lutherans, and the Lutherans condemning the
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Catholics and the Catholics condemning the Presbyterians. And it's just over and over and
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over again, not about the Trinity, no, not about justification by faith alone, but about the most
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ridiculous things that you would think of and also worthy discussions to have. But the ruthlessness
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brings us to verse 10 it says why do you pass judgment on your brother
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for we will all stand before the judgment seat of god for it is written
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as i live says the lord every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to god
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so then each of us will give an account of himself to god to play judge
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You might not say it out loud, but you might be thinking, I don't think that guy's saved.
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How many times have you said that in your own heart?
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To play judge over another man's soul is to rob Christ of the cost he paid to be that judge.
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walk right past the judge's bench, walk right past the jury,
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and declare someone guilty on a capital trial having no idea what's going on.
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Well, man can only see the outside, but it's the Lord that sees the heart.
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Do you know how many people I've probably thought that aren't saved that actually are?
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Do you know how many people that I've heard
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And the most ridiculous statements they've made
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I go, ha, that person can't be a Christian
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It was the Lord that was working in this tiny little seed
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And so you've got to be able to take in consideration
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We don't need to be talking about head coverings
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That's probably not the priority conversation at this point.
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Let's talk about the fundamentals of the gospel.
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You get there and you do Berean style ministry.
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it says and the lord's servant must not be quarrelsome
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there's a lot of fights that go on in christendom a lot some of them are worthy
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some of them are unworthy in fact a lot of them are unworthy it takes a lot of restraint to hold
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your tongue to not get involved and some of the quarreling that's going on now this can happen
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locally at a particular table at our fellowship meal. But the reality is the Lord's servant must
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not be quarrelsome. And it says, but kind to everyone, kind to everyone. And then it says,
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that's hard how good are you at patiently enduring evil
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that's a difficult command patiently enduring evil
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i just think of jesus on the cross patiently enduring evil
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And then it says, comma, correcting his opponents with gentleness.
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Man, I don't know about you, that's very difficult.
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When you're in an argument around doctrine, especially as a man with testosterone, it's pretty easy to forget that verse.
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how many people have left a local church because of the inflexibility around non-essential matters
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probably a lot you walk in you get spooked because people have all types of convictions
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you never even heard of and it makes it feel like you need to have this conviction to even come back
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truly the reformed world needs to understand this doctrine patiently walk with one another
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as people come into this church nurture them shepherd them guide them with love and humility
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ultimately and i'll close with this embrace the variety of the garden amen amen let's pray
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Lord, we know that out of selfishness, we want to make policies and standardize and make us all the same, Lord.
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Lord, that there are many members and there is one body and that we all have different functions.
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And, Lord, we know that we have to sit in the midst of this, Lord, and we ask that you would give us patience.
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they would not be afraid because of the projection of non-essential matters right out the gate.