Episode Transcript
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If you're able to remain standing,
please turn your attention with me to Romans
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chapter fourteen. We are continuing in
this portion of God's word. I'm been
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sure when I started preaching through Romans, but it's been all long enough to
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forget when I guess. But here
we're in Romans fourteen, coming toward the
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end, and we're going to cover
a large section this morning. Feel free
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to sit if you need to,
but this is Romans fourteen through chapter fifteen,
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verse seven. So one chapter and
then a little bit of fifteen.
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Here God gives us instructions on how
we ought to deal with minor disagreements in
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the church. Let's give our attention
to God's word. As for the one
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who is weak in faith, welcome
him, but not to quarrel over opinions.
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One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only
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vegetables. Let not the one who
eats despise the one who abstains, and
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let not the one who abstains pass
judgment on the one who eats, for
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God has welcomed him. Who are
you to pass judgment on the Servant of
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another? It is before his own
master that he stands or falls. And
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he will be upheld, for the
Lord is able to make him stand.
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One person esteems one day as better
than another, while another esteems all days
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alike. Each one should be fully
convinced in his own mind. The one
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who observes the day observes it in
honor of the Lord, the one who
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eats eats in honor of the Lord, get since he gives thanks to God,
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while the one who abstains abstains in
honor to the Lord and gives thanks
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to God. For none of US
lives to himself, none of us dies
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to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and
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if we die, we die to
the Lord. So then, whether we
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live or whether we die, we
are the Lords. For to this end,
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Christ died and lived again that he
might be Lord both of the dead
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and of the living. Why do
you pass judgment on your brother or you?
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Why do you pass judgment on your
brother? For we will all stand
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before the judgment seed of God.
For it is written as I live,
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says the Lord, every Nie shall
bow to me and every tongue shall confess
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to God. So then, each
of us will give an account of himself
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to God. Therefore, let us
not pass judgment on one another any longer,
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but rather decide never to put a
stumbling block or hindrance in the way
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of a brother. I know,
and I am persuaded in the Lord Jesus,
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that nothing is unclean in itself,
but it is unclean for any one
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who thinks it's uncle clean. For
if your brother is grieved by what you
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eat, and you are no longer
walking in love, but what you eat,
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by what you eat, do not
destroy the one for whom Christ died.
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Do Not let what you regard as
good be spoken of as evil,
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for the Kingdom of God is not
a matter of eating and drinking, but
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of righteousness and peace and joy in
the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ
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is acceptable to God and approved by
men. So then, let us pursue
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what makes for peace and for mutual
up you up building. Do not,
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for the sake of food, destroy
the work of God. Everything is indeed
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clean, but it is wrong for
anyone to make another stumble by what he
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eats. It is good not to
eat meat or drink wine or do anything
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that causes your brother to stumble.
The faith that you have keep between yourself
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and God. Blessed is the one
who has no reason to pass judgment on
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himself, or what do you proves? But whoever has doubts is condemned if
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he eats, because his eating is
not from faith, for whatever does not
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proceed from faith is sin. We
who are strong have an obligation to bear
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with the failings of the weak and
not to please ourselves. Let each of
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us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up, for Christ
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did not please himself. But it
is written the reproaches of those who reproached
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you fell on me, for whatever
was written in former days was written for
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our instruction that, through endurance and
through the encouragement of the scriptures, we
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might have hope. May the God
of Endurance and encouragement grant you to live
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in such harmony with one another,
in accord with Christ Jesus, that together
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you may glorify, that together you
may, with one voice, glorify the
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God and father of our Lord,
Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as
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Christ has welcomed you, for the
glory of God. Amen. He may
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be seated. When was the last
time that you had perfect agreement on an
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issue with every single person on the
on the planet? Never write what about
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within the O P? See,
when is the last time that you agreed
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on just one issue with every single
person in our denomination? Again, never.
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What about here in our own church
or another church? Have you ever
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belonged to a church where every person
thought all the same things about every detail
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of God's will for your live,
for our lives? No, of course
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not. Even in our church,
which is relatively small and happy and unified,
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we don't all agree about everything.
Let's narrow the circle war. What
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about your family or, if you're
married, you and your spouse? Do
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you agree about every single point of
Christian living, not just the topics,
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but the details, how they play
out? What works, what doesn't,
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what's right, what's not right,
what's proportionate, and so on and so
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forth. Let's narrow it yet one
more time. What about with yourself?
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Do you agree with yourself on every
single thing? Do you have a hundred
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percent certainty exactly where the boundaries of
God's will are, what freedoms you have
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and what you don't, or do
you find that occasionally, even inside,
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even just with one person, you're
a little bit divided and unsure? Can
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you say that you have every you
thought through, every single issue, that
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you've studied every biblical opinion, that
you're perfectly and confidently single minded about any
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possible thing revealed in God's will.
Well, of course not. I don't
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feel that way and I don't see
how any of us can. We suffer
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with sin, we suffer with blindness. We're always growing. SANCTIFICATION is a
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process. So we're starting with a
little humility this morning, and I point
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this out because I want you to
see how necessary this passage is for our
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lives today. Paul himself says that. He says in Verse Four of Chapter
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Fifteen, whatever was written in former
days was written for our instruction. They
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are. He's most likely speaking of
the Old Testament as it applies to these
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Christians here in Rome, but it
also applies to the things he says to
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them and as it comes to us
now. These things are given for us,
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for our instruction, and obviously so. The situation that the Roman Christians
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found themselves in are is the same
situation that we find in not just here
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in this church, but in every
church. Disagreements about minor things as a
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normal part of the Christian life.
There will be some that are right and
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some that are wrong. There will
be mature people and immature people. There
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will be people that are strong in
their faith, as Paul describes them,
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in those that are weak. These
words Paul uses to talk about the freedom
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that people feel on certain matters.
Those who are strong no God's will in
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certain points and know that they have
freedom and exercise them, where those that
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are weak in faith, as Paul
uses the term here, tend to judge
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themselves and others more strictly than God
does. They put rules and requirements on
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themselves where God doesn't. Now,
of course, in life, in the
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Christian life in particular, some things
are nonnegotiable. There are disagreements that you
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simply can't tolerate. But not every
disagreement a can and I'm sorry, not
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every dissimate agreement can be ignored.
But there's the but, but some can.
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That's what Paul says here. He
says that there are examples, and
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he gives three examples concerning food,
concerning drink and concern and concerning the observance
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of days. But it applies to
other things as well. He says that
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if we want to learn true faithfulness
to Christ, then we will have to
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learn about flexibility and minor things and
he wants us to understand how we ought
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to do that. Let's first consider
some of the things in this passage and
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the way Paul gives them to us. These words strong and weak. Will
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start with those. Strong and weak
are not neutral terms, as Paul uses
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them here. They're not equal side, sort of equally good options. Should
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I paint the room blue or should
I paint the room read? They are
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there are sort of morally loaded terms. Right one is good, strong,
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one is bad, weak, as
Paul brings up these different questions food,
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drink and question about what defiles you
and what doesn't, whether you should abstain
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from Jewish feast days or not.
These questions I've split people in the congregation.
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Some who are strong in faith believed
that they had freedom. They believed
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that, for example, in the
case of food, God had given everything
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and it was good and okay,
that they're standing before Christ would not be
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changed, that they could not be
defiled by the things that they put in
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their mouths, as as Jesus put
it, and Paul commends them for this
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several times. He affirms this opinion. He says this is the right way,
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first by calling them strong and then
saying it explicitly. For example,
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in Verse Twenty, he says in
affirms everything indeed is clean. He tells
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a certain people in the church.
You have the correct opinion about this.
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There's nothing wrong per se with eating
meat and abstaining, for vet from vegetables,
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or abstaining from meat and eating only
vegetables, is not required by God's
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will. Other Christians, whom Paul
calls weak in faith, believed wrongly that
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defilement was possible. They had a
wrong thought and they had a wrong practice.
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Same with the observance of days.
The strong and faith believed that they
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were not constrained by God's will to
observe certain days unto the Lord. The
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weak and faith believed wrongly that God
did constrain them, and Paul corrects this.
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So these these these terms strong and
weak, as I say, we
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can summarize in this way. Strong
Christians, is Paul uses the word here,
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are ones who recognize and enjoy the
things God has given them without feeling
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guilty. They look upowered on the
earth and they see the things in the
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gifts God has given them and they
enjoy them without feeling ashamed or embarrassed.
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Their conscience doesn't bother them. Weak
Christians are ones whose conscience does bother them,
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but unnecessarily so. The conscience is
a reality with them. It pricks
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them, it makes them feel guilty, even though it shouldn't. Weak Christians
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are ones who feel unnecessarily guilty and
require of themselves more than God does.
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And so, as I say,
these are not morally equal terms, strong
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and weak. One's right and the
others prong. And as you see,
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as you can see, these issues
are important in the mind of Paul,
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though they're minor. He doesn't say
it doesn't matter. He never says eat
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what you eat or what you do, don't drink doesn't matter at all,
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but he prioritizes them. He uses
these loaded words to encourage us to correct
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positions. But while these issues are
important and of course touch on some basic
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things about Christian living, eating,
drinking, the observance of days, Paul
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also wants us to understand that their
minor compared with a higher goal. There's
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something more at stake, there's something
bigger, there's something more important, and
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that is Christian unity. Going back
to verse twenty, listen to how he
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says it. He says do not
for the sake of food destroy the work
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of God. You see, that's
a priority, a decision about priorities that
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he's making, or to continue on. Everything is indeed clean, but it
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is wrong for anyone to make another
person stumble by what he eats. Now
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by this, Paul doesn't just mean
that if someone somewhere happens to be offended
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by what you do, that you
can't do it. He's speaking in stronger
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terms, for example later when he
talks about destroying the person whom God has
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saved. The question is, if
there's someone in your life that is going
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to go and do something against their
conscience, they're pushing themselves, or perhaps
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they're feeling forced by what you do
to go do something against what they believe
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is against God's will, well then
you better stop. And Paul says that's
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a good thing. In Verse Fifteen
he says we who are of strong have
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an obligation to bear with the failings
of the week. Isn't that strong language?
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You would think there's would be a
kind of Christian argument that could be
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made against this point, Christian sounding, an argument that says they are wrong,
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they are disobedient in an aspect of
God's will. Paul himself describes them
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as weak. They are disobeying God. Are we ever supposed to be tolerant
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of disobedience? Are we ever supposed
to bear with sin? He says.
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Yes, he says we who are
strong, have an obligation to bear with
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the failings of the week. How
can that be? It's because of priorities.
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Listen to the end of Verse Fifteen
and or a chapter, or the
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section that I've read for fifteen,
verse five. This is what he wants.
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This is what God is after as
we bear with one another, may
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the God of endurance and encouragement grant
you to live in such harmony with one
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another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may, with one
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voice, glorify the God and the
father of our Lord, Jesus, Christ,
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welcome one another as Christ has welcomed
you. We'll discuss this a little
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bit more later, but I'll just
ask it here, since I read the
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verse. Does Christ welcome us when
we have it all together? Does Christ
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welcome us when we are no longer
sinning, when we know every aspect of
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God's will and we have our lives
perfectly in order and are no longer weak?
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Of course he doesn't. He welcomes
us all. We are still weak,
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while we are still sinners. He
bears with the failings of the week.
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It's not that he overlooks sin or
doesn't care about sin or doesn't want
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people to follow his will, but
it's that he's working in them, but
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he's doing it in a way that
is characterized by grace, and we should
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do the same things. These are
the goals that God has and he wants
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us to have these goals as well. When we think about our disagreements,
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these normal disagreements that happen in the
Christian Life, God wants us to be
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flexible, not because, well,
everything is right or that things don't matter.
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He wants us to be flexible because
of this higher goal that he wants
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harmony and unity. The strong ought
to refrain from despising the weak, and
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the weak ought to refrain from judging
the strong. Not because no one is
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right, but for two reasons.
One, because acting according to the conscience
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matters to God. God would rather
have someone act according to their wrong conscience
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with faith that they are being obedient
to God, then having that purse that
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same person forced to go against something
they believe. Would be dis or to
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do something they believe is disobedient to
God. It's about the heart, you
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see, God wants people's hearts aimed
at him, wanting to serve him.
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That's why he uses the language here
of servants and Masters, and he wants
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us to have that perspective with other
people, because acting according to the conscience
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matters to God, it should matter
to us as well. And so when
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we meet a brother or a sister
who we find there as in disagreement with
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us, what are we to do? Well, we can help, we
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can instruct, we can encourage,
as God does with us. We can
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give good examples, but we should
also allow them liberty of conscience, freedom
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in these minor things. Unity matters
to God, even when uniformity is not
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always possible, and that means unity
and flexibility should matter to us. You
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might think of it this way.
We are to be faithful in being flexible
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about minor things, because we're submitting
to and maintaining the priorities that God himself
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has set, the things that he
himself has been has commanded. Those who
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reject God's priorities act in a way
that disregards God's will in the matter,
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and that's kind of ironic to be
pressing someone for their disobedience against God's will
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when you yourself have been told to
be flexible about perhaps that particular thing.
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Of course, not everything, but
in these things I'll tell you, Paul
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knows how to speak strongly. He
knows where the lines are. He says,
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for example, and Galacians, of
those people that were demanding circumcision of
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Gentile Christians in order to be saved, he says let them be accursed.
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That's not flexibility, that's drawing a
line in the sand, and that's important
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and necessary. But what Paul says
here is not on everything, not on
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everything, and that's why I said
earlier that being inflexible in some things may
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look like strict faithfulness, but it's
actually unfaithfulness to God. I want to
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explore that a little bit with you
about the kind of air ways that we
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can err on either side of this
command. Some people that think that flex
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ability is all of what it means
to be faithful to God. As long
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as they're flexible with other people,
as long as they're open to other ideas,
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fluid in their opinions, they will
always be on the right side with
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man. And if they care,
perhaps also God. This is not what
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Paul is talking about. He's not
talking about being unfaithful. He's not saying
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that flexibility is the highest mark of
all of virtues and that everything must bow
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to that. For folks that think
this way, faithfulness is only found in
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flexibility, because they believe that the
only standard that matters is an internal one.
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Faithfulness outside of one's own sort of
personal feelings about things they wrongly think
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doesn't matter because for them there's no
objective truth. This is how some people
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fall on this side of things.
They use a passage like this to say
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that flexibility is faithfulness. Carrie popper
as an investigative journalist who investigates claims of,
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as she puts it, the paranormal
and miraculous, and she described people
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like this well, I think,
in a recent interview. There are people,
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and she's an unbeliever. She says
there are people like herself that deal
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with the world on what she calls
an odor truth level or objective reality,
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and this includes Orthodox Christians like us. I'm to quote from her. She
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says some people talk to me about
their religious and paranormal beliefs. In this
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sense, they're really saying there are
ghosts or Jesus rose from the dead,
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and I have evidence for this and
I'm willing to talk to you on a
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scientific basis. I want to engage
with you on let level and if that's
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the level they want to talk on, game on, she says. But
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sometimes people talk about their beliefs not
on this outer truth level but on an
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inner truth level, and people like
this safe to me. I believe Jesus
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rose from the dead and carry if
you don't believe that, that's okay.
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If that reality doesn't click for you, that's fine. I'm not trying to
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foist it on you. That's an
inner truth for them, she says.
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She goes on to make this comment. I think a lot of unbelievers,
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like me, make this mistake of
trying to force them then to discuss it
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on an outer truth level. If
this sort of inner world that they're living
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and where they don't want to have
engagement well and they want to be a
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personal I just try to leave it
there. So she's recognizing, and she
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cares rightly about truth with a capital
Ta for people that operate on this level,
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that flexibility is everything and anybody can
believe what they want, while she
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just sort of moves on. She
says, I'm not going to waste my
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time dealing with somebody who thinks about
truth in this way. She, I
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think, is trying to be charitable, but she sounds a little frustrated to
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me. She wants to talk about
truth with a capitalty, as she should.
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God has made a real world and
is entered into it in real time
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and real space. The incarnation of
Christ is not a metaphor for living incarnationally,
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incarnationally with people. The incarnation of
Christ is not a metaphor for living
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presently with others. It was an
event in which, on a particular day
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in history, the divine son of
God took on real humanity. In Christianity
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there are truths that must, must, must, be believed, and there's
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a way of life that must,
must, must, correspond with those doctrines.
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Flexibility Without faithfulness is not real flexibility, because flexibility implies limits. We
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are to be like the branch of
a tree, rooted but movable, not
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like chaff that's carried away by every
foolish wind. Chaff is not flexible.
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Just moving around a tree that's blowing
in the wind, that's flexible. The
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point is is we can't take a
passage like this, where Paul says don't
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judge other people in these minor things, and and assume that he means that
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about everything, as though there was
no capitalty truths. He himself operates an
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acts in that way. In other
instances he commands people to do things,
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to believe the certain things, and
we must follow in that. But it's
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time to discuss another error. If
some are by thinking that flexibility is all
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of faithfulness, others are by thinking
that you can have faithfulness without flexibility,
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and I believe that genuine Christians tend
to air most on this point. Folks
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that think you can be faithful without
being flexible are those who give no thought
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to getting along, but only to
getting it right. Rarely do they try
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to see the other side, give
the benefit of the doubt, reevaluate or
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read, read something they thought they
knew, or simply be willing to live
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with a certain amount of messiness in
the Christian life. People like this are
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often very critical. They often have
something to say, an opinion, a
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way to fix things. They often
have something to say, but it's rarely
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encouraging, unless, of course,
it allows them to talk about one of
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their hobby horses again and then they'll
go for it. People like this are
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always trying to fix things, always
trying to fix people. Their mind is
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constantly busy about policing the world.
They see everything that's wrong, and perhaps
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they even see it rightly, but
they're anxious, they're unsettled, they're unhappy,
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impatient and unloving. They never think
of this kind of flexibility that Paul
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talks about, this harmonious living,
this one voice praising as a virtue.
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They rarely strive to bear with others
or enjoy even bearing with one another's one
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another. And when you see it, the lack of love is often obvious,
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but it's hard to point out because
what they often do is they quickly
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construct a wall of self righteousness.
They corry out all of these things in
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God's law and say, well,
isn't this important, isn't this important,
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and how could you possibly deny this
aspect of God's will? And they caught.
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They build this big wall so that
you don't see the lack of love
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that standing behind it, so that
they can ignore and distract themselves from what
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God wants. This is, of
course, not a good situation or a
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happy situation. The truth is that
John Us is the flexibility of the faithless
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is not real flexibility. The faithlessness
or sorry, the faithfulness of the inflexible,
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is not real faithfulness. It pretends
a faithfulness by being strict in all
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matters of God's will, but it
misses the mark because it doesn't prioritize the
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things in the way that God prioritizes
them. You might find this somewhat shocking.
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I'm telling you that there are times
when God wants us to live in
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harmony with one another, even when
one of those sides is wrong. This
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is the main message. This is
Paul's point here. When we can't agree
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about minor things, God still wants
us to live in peace with one another.
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He wants us to find unity,
even when uniformity is sometimes impossible on.
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When we consider all of this and
the requirements that God has placed on
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us, we can quickly see that
we're all messing it up a lot.
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None of us has a perfect understanding
of God's will. None of us has
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a keen eye and every boundary and
a word of wisdom and in media inside
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into how every situation not to be
played out, on how every thing ought
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to be decided and even when we
have clear understandings, that necessit doesn't necessarily
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mean that we follow it. How
many times can you say that you knew
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the right thing to do but then
didn't do it? Who among us can
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say that we are a shiny example
of doing everything that God has asked us
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to do, that we have never
gone against our conscience so that we can
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maybe look more for you than we
really feel, or that we've never forced
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someone else's conscience so that we can
make them stronger? Those of you who
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know freedom, have you ever flaunted
it? Those of you who know that
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your conscience is unnecessarily bound, you
pass judgment on other people? Do you
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judge others in areas that you're maybe
a little uncertain about? We could go
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on and on. The truth is
is that we're a mess. We're a
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real mess when it comes to living
God's will for our lives and for the
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ways that we treat one another.
But that's exactly why God has given Jesus
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to us in the way that he
has. He's given us a savior freely,
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not after we have lived our lives
perfectly before him. God, of
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course, cares about every single aspect
of his will. It's his will,
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and everything that God wills is perfect, Holy, good, beautiful, wonderful,
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perfectly balanced, proportioned. Everything you
could possibly say that is positive about
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God's will is true. God does
care about it, he should care about
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it, he wants us to care
about it. But it's because he knows
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how utterly short we fall of his
perfect will that he comes to save us
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while we are still sinners, while
we are still weak. He brings us
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into union with Jesus, who has
fulfilled every single aspect of God's will.
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For US listen to Paul's words here. Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed
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you. For the glory of God. It glorifies God to do that,
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not just because it's obedient, but
because God is the one who is enabling
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that to happen. God is the
one who unites us to Christ. God
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is the one who uses his spirit
to work in us, to create these
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communities of relative harmony. Sometimes I
stand back and I am amazed that the
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Church hasn't imploded a thousand time.
Aims over. Have you ever been in
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a congregational meeting or had an email
exchanged? Are just talking with a friend
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and where you're wondering how can this
possibly end? Well? How many millions
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of times has that happened in the
history of the Church? And yet we're
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still here. That's a miracle.
It's a miracle what God has done.
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This preserve a preserving preservation power.
That happens because we are united to Christ,
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who is perfect, who sanctifying us
and working in us. In other
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words, God has not just granted
you peace and harmony with him by uniting
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you to the body of Christ,
he has given you peace and harmony with
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the brothers and sisters who are sitting
around you today. This means that we
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don't have to wait until everyone gets
their theology perfect and their lives perfect before
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God brings us together into communities that, despite our mess and despite our disobunity,
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our disunity, are still able to
glorify him with one harmonious voice.
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That's amazing. It's a man.
Perhaps you have a body right now that
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certain parts don't work quite like they
ought to, and yet you're still alive,
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yet you're still functioning, yet you
are still moving forward in the things
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that God has called you to do, perhaps not with the efficiency that you'd
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like, perhaps not with the strength
that you'd like, perhaps not with the
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beauty that you'd like or the sharpness
of mind or whatever, but you are
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still you. The priority of you, the more important thing of you,
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is still there. And it's the
same with the church. There's a mess,
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eyes don't work, fingers are broken, people are out of breath.
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The body of Christ in some ways
is not all that beautiful, but because
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it's the body of Christ, because
we are united to him, he makes
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us beautiful, he makes us work, he gives to us a harmony in
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the church that we can glorify God. That's a blessing. We should praise
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him for it. This is possible
not because we are so loving, but
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because he is. We are held
together by the powerful love of Christ and
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the eternal bond that we have in
the Holy Spirit. In line of that
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fact, is it any surprise that
he calls us to act in a similar
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way, that the character of Christian
living should match the character of Christ?
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We are united to him. We
are not an assembly line designed to produce
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as much holiness as efficiently as possible, throwing aside anyone or anything that gets
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in our way. No, we
are a body that it is designed to
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work together, loving every part,
even the weak and dishonorable parts. So
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I'll finish with these questions. How
High, given what Christ has done,
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given what he has done for you
and done for us, how high a
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priority is it in your life to
have unity with your brothers and sisters?
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Is it an afterthought? Is it
something you think about occasionally when it happens
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to come up, or are you
looking for what Paul says, mutual upbuilding?
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Are you looking for ways to encourage? Are you always the teacher or
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you sometimes the student? Do you
merely tolerate the differing opinions of our other
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of others, or do you ever
support them in them even as you protect
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your own freedom? Do you love, forbear and serve, or do you
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flaunt, despise and force? These
are the kind of heart questions that we
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have to ask ourselves when Paul gives
us these kinds of instructions. But given
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to us that he but given the
fact that he gives them to us in
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the great context of the Gospel,
in the context of what Jesus does and
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is love and is welcoming and is
holding us together, we ought ought to
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merely stop with the questions but continue
on with repentance and praise and faith.
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Brothers and sisters, if you have
in your mind a church that has these
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things perfectly balanced, faithfulness and flexibility, a church that recognizes the reality of
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00:37:31.019 --> 00:37:36.380
normal disagreements in the Christian life and
is able to live to the glory of
408
00:37:36.460 --> 00:37:42.500
God in spite of them, then
where are we going to go for the
409
00:37:42.579 --> 00:37:46.449
power and the strength to be that
kind of church? There's only one place.
410
00:37:47.449 --> 00:37:52.250
We can only go to Jesus,
because he's the only one who saves
411
00:37:52.289 --> 00:37:55.690
us in this way. He's the
only one who unites us together in this
412
00:37:55.889 --> 00:38:00.599
way until the church is glorified on
the last day. There are going to
413
00:38:00.679 --> 00:38:07.440
be disagreements about how Christians ought to
live. Some of these will be major
414
00:38:07.199 --> 00:38:14.190
and some wrong views and practices cannot
be tolerated, but many disagreements are minor
415
00:38:14.269 --> 00:38:19.750
and in these toleration is required.
But if we are to have this kind
416
00:38:19.829 --> 00:38:22.590
of church, if we are to
live with the unity and the harmony and
417
00:38:22.710 --> 00:38:28.980
the joy that Paul describes the Kingdom
of God is having, then we must
418
00:38:29.019 --> 00:38:36.099
look to Christ, who reconciles all
things, even disagreeable Christians, to Himself
419
00:38:36.179 -->
Amend
