No Man Lives unto Himslf

All righty, I have yet another food illustration to start off. I apologize. Last night we had fondue, but tonight we're gonna be talking, or tonight, this morning we're gonna be talking about fondue, fondote, and fond liberty. You're used to the do's and the don'ts, but we also need to take a look at this morning's Christian Liberty. If you'll read along with me on the screen here, we're going to read Romans 14, chapter 14, verses 1 through 7.

Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him.

Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord. For he gives thanks to God, and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God. For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself. All righty, that is a Very thematically consistent passage. It's going to be a lot smoother to go through that in one hour's time than some of the previous chunks.

First question I have is, what is Christian liberty? Is everybody familiar with the term Christian liberty? It's something that we should definitely have established before we dig into this passage. The believer is called to live a life of abiding, a life by faith. Is this something that we've gone over before? That we need to be living a life of faith by the mercies of God? The things that we've discussed, starting in earlier parts of Romans for sure, but definitely clarified in Romans 12.

Whatever we do is done in the context of abiding and in the context of liberty, except where there are specific commands given. When I had to teach through 12, 9 through 16, there was a list of things that were instructions as normative Christian living. That is an example of a command that might be given.

Adultery is definitely a no-no. Hospitality is definitely something that was stated as should be part of the Christian life. Outside of that, liberty as we walk in faith, is the normal part of the Christian life. When you think of what does the normal Christian life look like, it's contrasting the law that we're used to seeing in the Old Testament saints.

Obviously, in the Galatians class that's going on in the main service, there's a big focus on grace and not law. Earlier this week, I actually ran into a lesson by a guy who was basically a Judaizer, and he had this whole rabbit trail and bunch of hoops that he went through, talking about how we're still under the law through Galatians. I was like, how did you manage that? It was a bit of a stretch, as you might imagine.

But I want to make sure that when we talk about Christian liberty you're familiar with the concept that if there is not a specific commandment stating that you should or should not do something, the content and context in the New Testament is liberty. Now we need to think of some examples so that you can have a solid understanding of that so that there's not any mystery about it. Here's a list that I came up with and you could probably think of some other ones. There are no specific New Testament commands about drinking, smoking, makeup, playing cards, driving cars.

Can you imagine that? Paul writing about cars. That would be awesome. You're reading through here, the first century saints are reading. What is this cars business? Surfing the interwebs or the internet. Listening to music of various sorts. Does Paul say no listening to Beethoven or anything classical of that sort? or anything more contemporary. Dietary choices.

Obviously, as we just read through the passage, that was one of the main things. How about clothes? Does Paul write about what we should be wearing? Have you been to Amish country? I have not, but I've seen many pictures and they have very specific and strict rules about the type of clothing that they wear.

As believers, we're not commanded that, which is good because Paul didn't know about cars. He also didn't know about dockers. or various other things like that. That would have been a very interesting New Testament to confuse people. What is this Docker's business?

Reading fiction books is something we have liberty to do. How about television? There's good television, there's bad television, and then there's most of what's put out. Which is just really sad. There's reality television. But Christian liberty, any of those things are opportunities as believers.

Is it really good for us to be smoking a lot or at all? Medically speaking, it's probably not a great choice over long term, but the New Testament doesn't command one way or another. I've seen a lot of people under a lot of legalism and bondage over smoking. I'm not suggesting that anyone smoke, but it is something that's there. Sure.

Well we're actually going to get into that and that's that's a good point with the believer and the non-believer you have it in this context we have a strong and a weak believer but we're also going to take a brief look at the non-believer as well because it is an important element that plays into the I don't think we could say that the non-believer is under grace. No, they're under law, but they're still non-specified elements of the law. That's why Congress continues to make new ones. And there's also various other elements in the fact that Well, we're going to get there. No, that's fine. That's good. I'm glad. Hey, if you think of something and you get there before we have it on the PowerPoint slides, at least I know that we're all on the same page. Now, let's take another quick side trip and talk about truth.

What's the difference between objective truth and subjective truth? Is everybody familiar with objectivity and subjectivity? Just to make sure we've got our bases covered. Objective truth is truth that is outside of your opinion. Subjective truth is opinion truth. If I say I love vanilla ice cream, is that objective truth or subjective truth? It's subjective.

It's important that when Paul's writing about what you choose to do here in this passage, that we make a distinguishment between God's word as truth telling us what to do in a commandment sense and subjective truth which is part of Christian liberty. There are things that in our own conscience are going to be subjective.

I choose not to smoke. There are times I choose to consume small quantities of alcohol. I'm not smoking and drinking and losing myself to either of those things because one, I need to be abiding in the Holy Spirit and being in self-control. But it's a personal choice, and I don't condemn anybody else if they choose to do those things.

I have relatives that do both, and that's their call. So I just want to take a quick look at subjective and objective truth. Let's dig into the passage here. Romans 14.1 says, Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. Here we go. Starting off with accept. Accept the one.

Take that person into fellowship. What is the immediate reaction for us when we come to meet somebody that's new? As a human being, what's our normal reaction if we're just walking down the street and we see somebody new? Is it our normal reaction to just warmly welcome somebody and say, oh, hey, come here. I want to know you.

Or is part of our culture has been this be careful because you don't know where the next nut job is going to come out of the woodworks. You don't know this person. Keep yourself distanced. As long as you keep a safe distance, nobody has to know that you're weird and you don't have to know that they're weird. accept the one who is weak in faith.

So accepting is the first part. There has to be an attitude of acceptance for us assuming that we are not the one that's weak in faith. So acceptance is immediately part of there. And the context is within the fellowship. Is this something that we do corporately or individually? That's a trick question. It's individually, but as each one part of the body, we do it corporately.

Roger here is our resident elder in this class. Part of his responsibility as an elder is in keeping track of the sheep and the body. And that means that he has to come in there acceptingly. Mike has said several times that The worst part of being in the sheep is the stuff you step in. With the flock there, sometimes you get to get in there in the muck and do things. My grandparents actually had sheep on their farm and I've been through that stuff. If you want to pet the sheep, and as a little kid I wanted to pet the sheep, you've got to step in the junk.

But there's acceptance there. There are some compromises you have to make on your own preferences in the short term to come in and accept. as a stronger believer. Now the next part there, of course, is the one who is weak in faith. That's somebody whose faith has faltered. Somebody whose faith is not relying on what? Somebody whose faith is not relying on what element of the Christian life? At least one main element. Sure, well there's going to be a knowledge or maturity issues that are going to be there.

Really in this issue there's often a lack of understanding of grace. and certainly along with that, Christian liberty. If you've known the law your whole life, and definitely in the case of many New Testament believers, the law was very normal to their life before Christ. You come into the faith and people are wearing clothes you're not used to, or they're consuming alcohol in some context, or they're doing something that's part of Christian liberty, that's an affront to everything you know. Now we're going to take a look at that affront being an issue and how does Paul address that, but it's faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and an understanding of grace that allows for maturity to come in interaction between believers.

It's really important. Have any of you, or all of you hopefully, been keeping track of the grace series that Mike's been teaching in the other classroom? It's really been fantastic and I strongly recommend downloading it or finding out about getting it in some format you can listen to because it's been really, really, it's been impressive for me and there's going to be a few points that we're going to talk this morning that are going to be right out of that because it directly applies. So this person who's weak, we're supposed to accept them in as hopefully more strong or mature believers and not passing judgment on this person's opinion.

How easy is it to not pass judgment on another believer? Isn't it just our normal reaction when you see something to pass judgment? Now, does this mean to shut off discernment? Don't have any discernment any time you meet somebody new. That's certainly not what he's saying. However, he's saying we're not supposed to be accepting them for the purpose of hitting him over the head with a two-by-four. And here I'm going to fix all your doctrine. It's not going to be pretty.

I used to go around doing that because I was more righteous than everybody else I knew. I used to chastise my brother like nobody's business. I remember I would beat him over the head because he was listening to some music that I didn't deem as godly music. And therefore he was walking in sin.

I didn't really want to accept him. There was no acceptance there whatsoever. It was an actual rejection of him and my purpose for that was because I was passing judgment on what he was doing. That wasn't loving my brother, literally my brother. That was me passing judgment on him and using that to promote myself. Paul says, hey Randy, that's a bad choice. Maybe you don't want to do that.

So, not passing judgment, not quarreling, not bringing about division. That's pretty important. Where it talks about opinions there, looking at the Greek, it's your reasoning, why you would be thinking or doing something. Don't pass judgment on their rationale for doing things. That's not what you're here for. We're going to get into having discernment. We definitely don't want to just be mindless about this.

Why would Paul be inspired by the Holy Spirit to give us truth if it wasn't for having discernment? There's food for that for our growth. The last thing I've got in there is a question. Does doctrine divide? That should hopefully be an easy yes or no question. The answer is a resounding yes. I've been in lots of churches and then not been in lots of churches because of doctrinal division that comes about. Doctrine does divide.

We talked about subjective and objective truth. Unfortunately, when it comes to God's Word, there are many people that teach theology is subjective truth. It's this concept that doctrine is subjective. I can make God's Word say whatever I want it to say, and because I can do that, it's subjective. Now the truth of the matter is that God's Word doesn't say just whatever we want it to say.

God had an intended purpose, and as expositors of God's Word, as students of God's Word, we want to find the singular truth. There may be many applications, in this case of Christian liberty. I showed you that list and we talked about it. There's many applications of Christian liberty. But the truth of the message, the singular truth, is that there is Christian liberty. So doctrine divides, but we need to make sure that when doctrine is dividing in cases, that subjectivity is not the element of that division. That instead it's the objective truth of God's word.

Do you have a question, Don? No? Okay. Any other thoughts on that before we move forward? Sure. As we grow and grow, there's enough part of this process of recognizing ourselves. It's only natural nature for that. That's when we can do all this correction. And if we're wanting to break in, I think as we grow, we recognize we're doing the same thing to ourselves. We're judging ourselves and saying, we've got to do this, we've got to do that. We're undervolved. Sure, it's easy to get legalistic. until the Lord brings us to that point in sanctification. We're talking, go ahead. We do, and God uses that.

Romans 8.28, the all things, there is the junky stuff as well as the good stuff. I used to reinterpret all as the things that I could see use in. All not being inclusive of everything, but all being the things that I could figure out. And that's not what God's Word says.

But definitely, the Lord brings things into our lives, even if it's the, hey Randy, you spent years beating your brother up emotionally about spiritual things that were wrong. And I've apologized to my brother for that since, because boy, is that a bad thing to do. But God still uses that, even if it's in this short-term case of me having that as an unfortunate illustration.

We need to take a look at the strong believer. The strong believer walks in faith. That is the modus operandi for the strong believer. You walk in faith. Your focus is on heavenly things. That's actually the last point. Setting your mind on things above. Colossians 3, 1-3. That's the way the strong believer lives.

If you're setting your mind on things above, How are you viewing earthly things? What's your perspective? Is your perspective from your position or your condition? Hopefully it'll be a positional perspective. I'm looking down on the junk that I dealt with at work from a heavenly perspective instead of being distracted by being in the midst of it conditionally. How can I look at it?

The strong believer, and I'm hoping in this case that I'm the strong believer, walks in confidence of his or her position. Concerns over condition are met with rest. Oh no, this conditional thing is nasty. And it is. It may be really bad. We talked about our prayer request for Herb Langford. He's resting in Christ. He knows where he's going to go. Doesn't mean that he's chuckling the whole time. I know in the case of Hal, there was suffering involved. It wasn't just, you know, happy party time the whole time. But he was resting and he had his mind set on things above. And he kept saying, hey, pray for the Lord to bring people in for me to minister to at the hospital.

What a different perspective. And this next point here is definitely from the grace class. Grace is seen as the free, unmerited, unlimited gift of God. When the strong believer looks at the life of himself and all those around him or herself, grace is there. It's unmerited and unlimited. You're not constantly looking for those nitpicky little things where you say, oh, grace doesn't go there.

One, because grace goes there, but two, because that's not the mindset of a gracious person. Again, does the believer have discernment? You're still called to have discernment, but it's that understanding of grace in conditions where you come alongside the believer that may be wallowing in the muck and lovingly and graciously encouraging them to a life of righteousness focused on the Lord. Is your attention drawn on the sin issue, if there's a sin issue that they're wallowing in, or is your focus set heavenly? Strong believer come alongside, hey, let's set our minds on things above.

Instead of, well here you need to read these 20 books on how to deal with this sin issue. There have been many of those written and I sold them at the Christian bookstore in college. A lot of them have a lot of psychological games that you can play for yourself. One of them talked about the pink elephant. You need to associate the pink elephant with your sin issue. And so, every time you think of that sin issue, you think of the pink elephant, and you think, no, I shouldn't do that.

Rather than set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated in the heavenlies. Instead of psychological games, the mature believer comes alongside and says, let's walk by faith. Let's grow, and let's focus on the Lord. Again, and I said this already, Romans 8.28, all things really means all things. It's not some things. It's not just the junky ones or just the good ones. It's all things.

How many of you are familiar with the concept of the Christian spiritual desert or the valleys and the mountains? I used to do this all the time where I'm not feeling anything. I must be in the spiritual desert. God, please bring me out of the desert. I don't know where I am. Because I didn't see all things. God's got me right where He wants me to be. He's using this right now in this time that doesn't feel like a high. He's using it.

But I didn't know that because nobody ever taught Romans 8.28 like all things. It was always the second half of the verse. For those who love the Lord, do you love the Lord? Whack! Have some law. You know, that's not the context. The strong believer is not there. Now, let's talk about the weak believer. Well, that didn't fade in like it's supposed to. That's the answers right there. So nobody look at these right here. What two areas are most commonly symptomatic or symptomatically weak in the life of a weak believer?

And Art mentioned one of them earlier. Knowledge of God's Word and sanctificational immaturity. Does the immature believer know God's Word Or does the weak believer know God's word well? Not necessarily. Especially if they haven't read this passage. We're just talking about Christian liberty.

And how about sanctificational immaturity? They're immature in the process of sanctification. Positionally and conditionally at salvation, they were sanctified. But as they go throughout life, God is in the process of maturing them and developing them. I have had many opportunities in my own life to grow sanctificationally, growing in maturity.

But I started out in the junkie side of things, and like I said, beating my brother up is an example of, you know, you're not listening to the right kind of music. God's not going to bless you. I wasn't setting my mind on things above. The Lord allowed me to go through the junkie experiences, developing and using those for my growth.

Again, the trials and suffering concept, where, listen, this is an opportunity for growth, but unless you see it as that way, it's usually you're not going to grow. The weak believer, as a mature believer, how can we come along a weak believer and address these two issues or two areas? Any thoughts on how we can do that without beating somebody up with legalism? Hopefully you appeal to the weak believer and you try to teach him, rather than pull him up and try to teach him. You say, well, have you looked at this? Have you considered that? Don't beat him over the head. You point him back to God's Word and hopefully instruct him. Yeah, you definitely want to do that.

One of the areas that I am personally interested in learning about myself is spiritual discipleship. How do I come alongside a younger believer because I'll be 30 this year, so I'm feeling like suddenly there are more younger believers than there used to be. And how do you come along the side of a younger believer and help them grow and mature? One of the areas that really rocked my world was just teaching somebody about the concept of sanctification.

Teach them about the idea that you are going to grow and God is going to use trials and sufferings. God is going to use life events sometimes to get our attention. He doesn't place neon signs out in front of your front yard. Sometimes the neon sign is the event. And teaching the believer about maturity and growth and what does that look like. teach them about relationship.

By doing any of those things, you're going to have to go to God's Word, and you're going to help their knowledge of God's Word, but you don't necessarily start out by addressing the legalism on the one little focal point. It may be that you say, okay, I disagree with you, but let's not go there because that's not where the issue is. And you, as a mature believer, can come along and say, hey, let's talk about race. this is really where this is rooted in. We need to have you learn about grace or whatever the area may be.

Any thoughts on the weak believer here before we jump to the non-believer? Sure. As I was reading this passage I was thinking, I think most believers, whether weak or strong, think of themselves as strong believers when they read this passage. Yeah, you sure want to do that. Right there is maybe a key point.

We should be careful that the strong believer may still have areas where he needs to grow in grace. I see myself as a strong believer, but is that really true in all situations? Many times it's not. So I think the tendency is I'm the strong believer. I'm going to help him out and get him on the right path.

And you know what, I think that humility as a believer, knowing that we're not strong in all things all the time, and that because sanctification is progressive, like I just said earlier, the grace class has been phenomenal. Some of those concepts in the grace class, I've never heard before, and it's like, why have I had 25 or so years of being a believer not hearing grace like this. Because God knew that this is the time. Is the term strong believer synonymous with mature believer?

I think it's a pretty safe assumption but I also would say that as a mature believer you also know that you have areas of weakness and I think that's really the crux of the point there. Roger made that point and I have to agree strongly that there's an area in my own life where I'm sure I haven't learned that I'm weak yet.

Gail. It reminds me of chapter 12 verse 3 where it says not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. Not to think soberly. We're supposed to be objective. In evaluating our own spiritual condition where we're at with the Lord and thinking in what we say. to another person as we try to bring them along.

For instance, I have a friend that has a pretty severe family problem that is not changing over years and years. How does she stay there and cope with that? And how do I be a threat and encourage her to rely on the word of God? That's really a valuable mindset. That's very important. I wish that I had had that kind of understanding and maturity younger in my own life, and the Lord continues to show me ways that I don't embrace that attitude in various areas in my own life. And it's been humbling. It's a powerful concept.

Randy, that's one of the more difficult things, I think, is as you grow in the Lord, to communicate that to a younger believer that it may take time. Yeah. And some people have a problem arbitrary time thing but it's not that we're imposing that it's just because it doesn't seem to work I mean from personal experience and from God's Word you know you're to grow in grace and knowledge and that that implies time. It just does take time. Even though many young believers are anxious to move on and let's get to the next step and go on. Many times it's just not going to happen until the Lord has a trial or whatever it might be.

The taking time for me was liberating. Because it was like, well, I'm seeing all these other people. I think that they're mature. Why am I unable to do those things? And when somebody said, no, it's going to take time. Your walk with the Lord isn't instantaneous with that. It's going to be progressive, and you're going to learn and grow. That was liberating and encouraging. That actually gave me hope. Because instead of seeing constant failure, it was, no, I'm seeing small steps of progress. And that's important.

OK, so process, not an event? Yes, yes. And the events? Sure. It allows us to see the events as useful, but it doesn't make it doesn't make the event the end-all be-all solution. Yeah. No, they're iterative and they're continual until we get to be in heaven. What were you going to say, Roy? Okay, yeah. Sure. as we're growing, right?

Yeah. In that essence, we become, in our thinking, aware of how people and nature is. Sure. And we recognize that we're discouraged, that really our nature is discouraged. Yeah. Based on Christ. Yeah. And we have His mind, and so we ought to be rejoicing. But that didn't work out the way we wanted it to. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a godly attitude. When the failure happens, we rejoice in the failure because it's God's victory, even if it doesn't fit into our plans. And I've had lots of plans fail miserably to God's glorification. We could probably talk about this kind of a thing for a long time. Let's take a look at the non-believer, just to have that context. Art brought that up earlier. The non-believer has the same mindset as the weak believer.

They think that they need to change things, do things, or determine a solid baseline for works to either be good enough to be a Christian or earn God's salvation. How many times have you run into the non-Christian, you present the gospel and they say, I'm just not good enough. I'm not good enough to go to church. I'll go into church and the building will collapse on me because I'm so evil. Once I get good enough, then I'll become a Christian. Have you run into that before? Maybe no one else has, but I've certainly run into that several times. The non-believer often has that very same mindset of the weak believer.

There's a list of things I've got to do or don't do, and that dominates their focus. They're not setting their mind on things above, they're setting their mind on their to-do list. And there's some really good to-do list software out there, and people are getting better and better at doing it every day. They manage their lives by to-do lists. And you know what? As a believer, you're allowed to use a to-do list. That's Christian liberty. But you don't have to live your entire life by a to-do list. So the non-believer there... The immature believer carries these very non-believer notions into their believing life.

That's part of the maturity process. You've lived your whole life one way. You've lived your whole life with one set of rules and set of standards. Well, maybe those have changed when you went to college or something, but there's generally this pattern, and you've got this pattern of legalism. You've built your whole life, and you come in to know the Lord, and you're like, oh, this grace thing is great. I'm going to heaven. Let's get back to this list. And that's when the maturity takes place and you start to realize this list is a list of failures over and over again. I need to be abiding. I need to be setting my mind on things above.

Walking in faith by the mercies of God. As a believer in your own life, do you feel comfortable saying that you brought in some baggage of legalism? But the Lord, as He's grown you, has brought about an understanding of grace and liberty in those areas. When you discover liberty in your life, does it make you want to rejoice? For my own self, there's been a lot of times of rejoicing when I realized, wow, I have just been beating myself up for something Christ died for. I've been beating myself up for something that's not an issue, that I made an issue of my own accord. And it was like, oh, wow.

My to-do list is one item long and it's to abide. It's to walk in faith. That's an easy to-do list item. It doesn't go outside of that. He'll deal with the moment-by-moment issues. Any other thoughts on the non-believer? Because there's no way we're going to actually get through the rest of the verses in a timely fashion. But we'll just go through until we're out of time. I think everybody gets the gist of verses 1 through 7 already in the concept here.

Practically speaking, the strong believer is to receive, welcome, embrace, and be accepting of the weaker believer. Like we said, we may not be strong in all occasions, in all areas. So sometimes we're going to be the weaker believer that gets accepted in. And there have been plenty of times in the three years I've been at Holly Hills that I have been the weaker believer. And someone has graciously welcomed me in and fellowshiped with me and then said, hey, as I said something, sticking my foot in my mouth, because I do that often enough, are you sure that's the right perspective? Let's look at that. And they've helped me grow in that area. So I'll definitely claim weaker believer state in many scenarios.

A debt of love, Romans 13.8, is owed to the weaker believer. Welcome this weaker believer in, not to pass judgment, but to love. We talked about that earlier. Bob got to talk about that last week. So, we're embracing, we're welcoming in with a debt of love. We didn't really spend a lot of time talking about debt of love. We talked about other debt more.

But a debt of love, it's love that they're never going to be repaying you back and you're never going to be paying them back enough because that's the way love works. Paul uses the financial vocabulary almost to indicate that this is unsatisfactory in a financial situation.

We're used to finances where you pay it back. It's trillions of dollars or billions or millions or thousands or whatever it is of dollars. This is love. It's a debt of love. It'll never be repaid back. Stop thinking about it in a tangible sense. Think of it as an ongoing mindset.

So the stronger believer welcomes in the weaker believer with this ongoing mindset of, I'm going to love you no matter how much you might kick and scream. Yeah, I can't do it by myself. I'm gonna abide and I'm gonna love you indefinitely While we go through the kicking and screaming times listen as a father of a 20 month or 21 month old I get to experience the kicking and screaming now. She's hit the terrible twos early and she's decided that this temper tantrum is a great way to get things done and It's been ineffective yet, but for some reason she's still trying to see if that route's going to work. And lovingly embracing her as a father, okay, it's time for you to do the screaming. There may be discipline, there may be what needs to go on, but we're going to get past this stage. We're going to do it.

And hopefully, as a strong parent in this context, Abiding in Christ as I deal with it so I don't laugh too much when she's silly. I don't want to hurt her feelings and cause her to have a lifetime of thinking, my dad just thinks I'm a weirdo. But embracing her. Embracing the weaker believer like Christ embraced us when we were infants in Christ as well. Recognizing that hopefully as stronger believers we were there.

Often those are those very same lessons that you see in the other person going through. And it's like, oh, I've been there. Just like Gail said, you've got this friend and you're like, listen to me, I've been here. But you want to do it graciously and say, Lord, bend their heart this way. Lend their ear this direction and may they hear it and finally get it. The pieces will click.

Recognizing that Christ embraced us in that infantile state. And maturity comes over time. Let's ask a quick question since maturity comes over time. What happens if somebody becomes a believer and dies shortly thereafter? Did they not reach maturity? Actually, they reach maturity faster than we did. Because once they're unified with Christ, it's there.

That's the whole process. Wait a minute. They had five days of process and I've been going through this for years. Awesome. They're perfected now. Just like that. So, with sanctification, that's definitely an important part. Remember, we're enabled by the mercies of God to do this, as we abide, as we live out the life of Christ.

Sorry, Nike being victory there. I always think of putting shoes on the lesson, so that's practical, you get to walk it out and see it. So for some reason I thought, hey, there's a Greek joke. We're not going to get to go through all of the slides here, but we'll keep going. Romans 14, 2.

One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. You'll see the guy on the left has sushi, and that's the most faith-based meat eating you can do. I've had various kinds of sushi in the past, and I ate it, and the whole time thinking, Lord, Please don't let me get a disease from this, or whatever it is. Ironically, when I got these parasites that I got, I got it from eating cooked food that somebody just didn't have good hygiene before me. It's one of those things where it's kind of like, you spend your life in fear of something like sushi, and then you eat cooked food, and that's when you get sick. So one person has faith that they can eat all things. All things, there's that word all again. What do you think about when you think eating all things? What do you think the Romans thought about when they thought about eating all things? When you see fish, most often in the New Testament, it was usually a fermented fish paste. Because unless you lived right on a body of water, The fish was not fresh fish.

There's not, you know, delivery airplanes hauling it from Alaska to get it here fresh. No, no, no. When it gets here, it's fermented. They would ferment it on the ocean, or the sea, or body of water, and then they'd transport it fermented, because just like alcohol, it was going to keep...

It's already done rotting. Here you go. You want seconds? Eat all things. They had issues with idolatry. Again, the meat market there, you might get idolatrous meat. Meat offered to an idol. A strong believer goes, idol is fake. It's to nothing. It's to a god of sex, which I know doesn't exist because my god made sex and he didn't mean it for that purpose.

I like it medium. And so they take the meat and they eat it. Not a problem. Just not concerned there. The Uyghur believers say, hey, I'm a vegetarian. I got in a big discussion with a relative of mine some time ago, because she's a vegetarian. And I got all legal on her. This was some time ago. And God got to teach me about, hey, that's probably a bad choice. Vegetables only here. The strong weaker and the weak weaver.

Let's ask a really important question. How important is what food you're eating to your sanctification? When I sit down, if I went out to lunch with somebody, or I had you over to my house and we ate together, I'm going to ask if you have allergies, because I do. I'm going to do that just because that's the way I operate.

But it's not legalism. It's not me going, oh, you're eating corn in front of me. That hurts my feelings. I don't care. Have corn. Have two. You know, as long as it's not gluttony, enjoy the corn. It's not an issue for me. I'm not going to worry about it.

But for the person who grew up a Jew their whole life, told don't touch that food. Do not mix the meat and the cheese together because that's against the fondue there. That's against the law. Don't do that. You don't boil a goat in its mother's milk. You don't mess with this stuff. You don't break this law. For us, we look at this and we go, what's the big deal? We live in affluent America where I can go to any number of ethnic restaurants within 10 minutes of driving in this area. and we could eat any of it and we don't think about it.

But in their context that's not the case. Our temples of idolatry are completely different. When you walk into Best Buy and the wall from floor to ceiling is covered in a large screen television, you know, that's maybe our modern temple of idolatry. For me, I go into the Apple store and I just drool, you know, whatever it is. And then I go, okay, Lord, help me to abide and not buy the iPhone or whatever it is. Okay, that's three times I've mentioned the iPhone while teaching. I apologize.

But a person must walk by faith whether they're eating all things? What if they're not eating all things? Are they still having to walk by faith or should they still be walking by faith? That's the answer. Yes, walking by faith. We're gonna skip down to that because I think that's an important point. Oh, here's a good one.

Romans 14.4 Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand for the Lord, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Who is the other believer's master? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. You are not that master.

Therefore, if you try to do it, when a believer attempts to judge another believer who is acting in Christian liberty, the judging believer usurps the authority of God. That's not okay. Hopefully we don't think, I want to do that. We don't want to usurp the authority of God. That's pretty heavy. When you judge, you're not only putting a burden on that person, but you're taking God's authority as your own. That's pretty weighty. For me, that brings I'm resting in grace, but that's a lot of conviction for all the legalism I tried to whack on other people in my life. Hopefully as I move forward I'll be not legalistic at all, but if I stumble and fall, that's what I'm doing. I'm also becoming the weaker believer.

We really need to close. I think the second bell rang and I didn't even realize it. The clock certainly thinks that the second bell should have rung Any other thoughts or questions? We'll close in prayer and then we can talk about this some more actually.

Sure. Do you go as a believer and try to be a light in the bad scenario, or do you not go because you say, hey, this is a problem? And this is definitely an area of Christian liberty. For us, as the attendee, the people who are getting married, the believer should definitely, if they're... Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's important.

As believers, we still, in our liberty, wait on the Lord and wait for his direction. Let's close in prayer and then we'll see what other things are to discuss after we're done. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you for liberty. Thank you for grace. And Lord, thank you for humility. Help us to identify when we are the weaker believer Help us to identify when we are the stronger believer and allow us to humbly submit to you in either case and learn and grow through all these things. Thank you in Jesus name. Amen.