Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 14
Mike Doyle · Aug 13, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 31
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492664511288

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're on lesson 14 and Courtney had gotten down to, I think, question 8. Just let me set up here. What we're doing is that we're taking a look at some of the principles that operate under the heading of grace. Because what we've learned so far is that a lot of the operating system or operating function under grace is not specifically spelled out in the Bible. So God has given us a lot of leeway. He's given us a lot of freedom. And so rather than have specific rules about a lot of things, we have principles to follow.

And so what we're doing now is we're kind of going through the principles that will help us make good judgments about how we should respond in kind, in grace to situations that we run into. The first one we talked about last week was what? What's the first principle?

First Corinthians 6.12, the last phrase, what does it say?

So whatever it is, does it master me? Now we seem to think that right away we think well master me means it's got to be something bad or it's got to be some bad habit that I have or it's or something that's like being a bronco fan, a fanatical fan where you wear orange on Sunday and go to the games. But there's a lot of other subtle things that control us that we don't think about, that we actually would admire.

As an example, how about if I was just a believer, but I absolutely loved teaching history. Could that be a master? Let's say that I was a concert pianist. And that was the most important thing to me. Does it master me? It might. So why wouldn't I, under the first principle, does it master me, would that be a problem for me? The reason is I already have a master.

I already got one. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. And so anything that supplants him, even the really good stuff, is not functioning under grace. He's it. And if you think about it in your life, in my life, I mean, there have been a lot of things that have mastered me.

I used to love to run, and I got to thinking one day, I'm out in Cherry Creek, about four miles out from my house, thinking, this kind of masters me. I really like doing this. I'm out every day. I'm grumpy if I don't get out here. I really like running. And I thought, well, I can continue to run, but it can't be a master for me.

And I'm sure you all know people that are believers, but there's something else in their life that masters them, that that's what they're about. My first exposure to that as a young Christian was the first time I played in the Young Life Golf Tournament. And I got there early and I went to the driving range and I'm hitting balls and the guy next to me, who worked for Young Life, he was on staff, was just smacking the ball way down, straight as an arrow, you know. I forget his name now, but I said to him, boy, you can really hit a ball. He said, golf is my thing. And I said to him, I thought Jesus Christ was your thing. Golf is my thing. Ministry in and of itself can be my thing.

Do you see that? It can master me because I'm not doing it because I'm prompted by grace and the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm doing it for recognition. I'm doing it so people will know that I'm this super Christian. So it isn't necessarily that I like to drink beer. or go to bronco games, it can be something so subtle that gets in the way of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So first principle is, does it master me? Question 7 says, and the answer is, the best question to ask yourself is, does it master me and why? If it does, I'm probably out of line because I already have a master who is the Lord Jesus Christ and nothing else should master me at all. Him. Him alone. So can I apply the principle to someone else?

Let's say that I look at one of you and I think, you know what? You really like fooling around with motorcycles. Can I come and talk to you about you being mastered by motorcycles? What do you think? Do I have a right, do I have an open door to come and talk to you about what I think masters you? I gotta know. Maybe you as an elder might. Oh wow, I didn't think of that. I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. I personally don't think I do.

I don't have the right to do it because the principles apply to me. When you have principles in play that aren't laws, they apply to me individually, to you individually, because you may be free to do something that I'm not free to do. If I'm an alcoholic, I'm not free to drink, but you are, and I can't apply what I am on top of you.

You see that? Now, there are specific commands that we're all under. And the one I like the most is we are commanded as believers to rejoice always. How are we doing with that one? Now, can I come talk to you about not being joyful? I think I can. But we don't ever talk about that. There's a command that says rejoice always. And we don't ever think about it. It's not a principle, it's a command. Wow, that's quite a command, isn't it?

But when it comes to principles, I do not have the liberty to come and apply my principles to you. Do you have the privilege of praying for them? Oh, you can absolutely pray for them, sure. But I don't think it's appropriate for me to come and and say something to you. Like if you weigh 350 pounds, I can't come to you and say, look, you need to go on a diet because cheeseburgers are mastering you. I don't have the right to do that, but I can pray for you. Sure. But I can't impose my principles that I'm convinced about from the Lord and transpose them on you. Can't do it.

So what happens, what if you run into a believer who has no principles? Kind of like Roy in the back there. What if you run into a believer who has no principles? Now let me explain who this guy might be. This guy might be a reformed guy that operates totally under the law and doesn't have any principles at all. Or he's one of those Mazarin kind of guys that don't think he sins anymore, so he's just free and loose. And he just does what he thinks is fine. What do you do about that guy?

Clean him up for the Lord. Can you go talk to him and say, hey, you need to clean up your life here, buddy. Can you do that? Answer no, you can't. None of your business. Unless it affects you or affects your body of believers or there's a bad witness there. But if you don't have any principles, if you go to them and talk to them about, look, here's some principles you ought to implement in your life. What have you just done? You laid a law on them. It's not grace. It's not grace.

What you can do, if you're teaching and he is part of the congregation, you can certainly emphasize that as a way of teaching him, but not directly. Sure. Sure. And when we get to the next lesson, we'll talk a little bit about weak and strong believers. So let's say there's somebody in the congregation. We could encourage him to go to Sunday school, where he might learn something or two. The fact that we teach identification truths and position here would indicate to me that if he got that understanding then principles would be the next thing that he would be interested in.

Do you and I need to have restrictions outside of the Word of God? Do I? Do I need to have restrictions on me outside the Word of God? Yes. Like what? Wasteful. But that's in the Word of God. It's all there. That's there. Civil authorities. That's in the Word. And the parents. That's in the Word. Let's say that I want to discipline myself with transcendental meditation. Is that within the word of God? No, it's not. Let's say that... Don't leave it there. Is that good or bad? Say it louder. Is that good or bad? What? Transcendental meditation?

Well, if you know about it, you know it's something you shouldn't do. Because what you're doing is inviting someone to come and take you over. That's what spiritual formation does. So though I had the right to go to my niece and say, look, you better watch out for that spiritual formation stuff they're teaching in your college. Just stay away from it. Here's a couple of papers on it. Make up your own mind. I got the right to do that. Yeah, we gave that to Jake.

Because I'm afraid that maybe that's what they're doing at Biola. Well, it's exactly what they're doing at Biola, our nephews at Biola. Same thing, the same thing at Westmont, doing the same thing. You go to Denver Seminary, you go to half of the megachurches in Denver, they have a course on spiritual formation.

Mike, what about this verse we just covered? Is it where you're going in your comment, you know, do we have regulations? In that verse it says I can do all things what I'm permitted, but they're not all profitable, they're not beneficial. Isn't that a discerning by the Holy Spirit's work in us? To me. They're not all profitable to me and they're not all... This would be in the area that God is working with us as individuals. With me, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I have principles that I operate on in my life that I'm sure that you don't have and vice versa. That you do certain things because you think that's the way the Lord would have me do them.

And you can call it self-discipline under grace, but I can't go to you and say, hey, I'm doing this, you need to be doing it. And even as an elder, I can't tell you to do that. Unless you're not rejoicing, then I'll be over. Or lie not to one another.

How simple is that? It's real simple. So the expediency of the freedom I have, what's the principle here? That I modify my behavior for the benefit of you. That's really what it comes down to. And when we get to the next one here, principle number two is a really interesting one and it actually gets to be a little bit dicey in terms of what can I do and what can I not do.

Should we tell God how he should or shouldn't have done it? Have we ever done that? I've done it. Have I ever gone to God and said, look, I don't like how you're doing this, you need to do it this way. Don't we a lot of times when we pray, we not only tell them what the problem is, but we tell them how to fix it? Sure, I do that. I've done that a lot. Haven't you?

If you haven't, you're more spiritual than me. And you know what God says to me? Hey, if you read my word, my opinion or my dictate is there. I have laid out what I think, what I'm telling you that you should do or not do. And I've also implemented principles to help you to live under grace. So he's already spoken. So I don't have the right to go tell him how he ought to do something.

I remember one time talking to Cornelia Stanford. This is a great line. And we were talking about a young woman we knew that spent a month with her in the summer, in the springs. And she was a believer, but she was a college student. So she'd come in late sometimes. And Cornelia would never, you know, or anything like that. I was talking to her one day at lunch.

She said, oh boy, I'm praying for so-and-so. I said, what are you praying? How are you praying for him? She said, when it comes time for God to grow her up, I hope he's gentle. Wow. She knew that spiritual growth was coming, and she knew that it's difficult But she wanted God to be gentle with her. I thought that was great.

So the last question is, what's our judgment to be based on? When we make a judgment about ourself or about somebody else, what should it be based on? That's right. My judgment is only as good as my biblical knowledge. That's as far as it goes. It doesn't go beyond that.

People say to me that, well, when Courtney first came here, he said, well, I have the spiritual gift of discernment. I said, no you don't. He said, well yeah, I can tell things about people. I said, that's not the spiritual gift of discernment. It's just with a good memory of who's sitting behind you in a restaurant.

I said, spiritual discernment for the believer is based on how well he knows the word of God. That's where the discernment comes from and the fact that the spirit of God is in his life and implementing the word of God in his everyday activity. That's where the discernment comes from, from there.

So it took him a while before he believed me. But I still, like I had lunch with him a week ago, and you sit in a restaurant with him and say, what's the color of the shirt the guy's got on behind you? He knows for some reason he's got this radar about people that are around him. He thinks that's a spiritual gift.

I think we do have some discernment based on your life experiences for protective reasons. Yeah, for yourself. I think so too. I think so too. I noticed, like I grew up in an alcoholic family and there are certain characteristics you learn as a child in an alcoholic family about how you interact with people.

And it's different than somebody who grows up in a family that doesn't have addiction. There are defense mechanisms that you develop. You don't think about it, but you're protecting yourself is what you're doing. And the other thing that will happen is that when you get old enough to look around for a mate, you'll find somebody who's familiar with what your experience is and you'll be attracted to them because they think like you do.

Well, they probably grew up in an alcoholic family too. It's interesting how it propagates. So it's interesting. Yeah, we do. We do develop defense mechanisms. The problem is that they're not spiritual gifts. They're defense mechanisms. Okay, any questions on Lesson 14? Alright,

15. Everybody got a copy of 15? So, now the second principle And I think next week, I think there are five altogether and probably in the next couple of weeks we'll get through them all. I've only got eight or nine questions here.

The second principle is 1 Corinthians 8.13. Somebody read it.

Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat again, for I will not cause my brother to stumble. So, the first one is, I won't be mastered. Second principle is I don't want to ever do anything that causes my brother to stumble. So two says to stumble. What is stumble? Anybody else's version have some word other than stumble? Minds that offend make my brother to offend. Okay, we'll address that in a second. Anybody else? Stumble is pretty much the fall. Fall. Fall is a really good word.

What's that? Group transgressions offends them in some way in that verse. How do I say this? That my actions directly cause my brother to sin. Okay? That my actions directly cause my brother to sin. Now, Macaulay did a very interesting thing here. He delineated between stumble and offend. The word stumble in this verse doesn't mean that I offended my brother, I may have, but I did cause him to sin and we'll get into some verses in a second. What's the difference, let's run down to question 4 and then we'll come back. What's the difference between stumble and offend?

In this English translation of the Greek word, the Greek word is really the word which we get scandalous. The Greek word that they are translating offend is the word we get scandalized from. Scandalized, okay. Alright, well that fits what I'm going to say then. If I cause you to stumble, I've scandalized, I have caused you to commit a sin, the word means that the person was progressing and I did something to cause them to sin in their Christian life. Offend, on the other hand, means that I may have scratched the sensitivity of your legal ego. So maybe put it this way, if I'm offending you, what I have done is I've caused you to get bent out of shape.

Is that a sin for me? No, it's not. Because who made the decision to get bent out of shape? You did. Now that doesn't mean I can go around offending you. That's not what it means. But the point is that if I did something that caused you to get bent out of shape, at that point you're responsible for your behavior. I'm not.

That's a hard one, isn't it? It really is a hard one. Well, and I'm thinking as you're talking there about, you know, you talk about strong believers and weak believers, which we haven't gotten there, but a weak believer could be offended by something that you said.

Oh, absolutely. But then, you know, maybe it would have been better for you to teach them rather than... It would have been? Right? Absolutely. So it sounds like these principles only work if you're in the word of God. That's true. Right? That's true.

And it sounds like you're saying that it's a worse thing to stumble than it is to offend, to make them stumble than it is to offend them. Now, you know, sometimes you can offend them so bad that they do sin and it's your, you know, you really made them really mad. But they decided. going to say in sodiatus that it's scandalize or however you would say this, is to commit that which leads to the fall or ruin of someone.

So it sounds like it's a... Yeah. So let's say that I came up to you and said, you know, you got to get rid of the mustache. I think it looks stupid. And you get really offended, right? Yeah. Well, you decided to be offended. Yes. You know, because I said something about your mustache.

But you know what's interesting about this verse? In Christian circles, people use this verse to just beat the heck out of other Christians. They really do. I can slug my brother to death with this verse. We're not going to make a rule about this, but we're sure going to beat you up about it.

Q. Don't they do that with watering down the doctrine as well?

A. That's exactly right.

Q. What was the sentence you said, defend scratch sensitivity with legal or something?

A. Stumble or offend. What did I do with this? Oh. It means that the person's legal ego sensitivity was offended. Now, I have to tell you, I have offended lots and lots of Christians in my life, haven't you? If you have any sort of a grasp on grace, or identification, or the principle of position, or how faith really works, and you talk to somebody who is a reformer about it, you offend them. And I mean, they get bent out of shape, really out of shape.

If you have the chutzpah to tell somebody that whatever doctrine that they hold so dear isn't quite right or it's not right at all, you've offended them. Their fault, not yours. Their fault. Right? Again, when we talk about this, I have to reemphasize, you don't have the liberty to go around offending anybody anytime you want to do it because sooner or later you're going to cause them to sin.

However, Donna brought up the fact that what's the difference or what's the characteristic of a strong believer and what's the characteristic of a weak believer? What distinguishes or divides those two? What's a strong believer? What is a strong believer? Oh, by the way, every time I ask this question, I know that everybody in the room I ask it to automatically assumes they're strong. So what is a strong believer?

You understand the word. Someone who understands the word, who spends time in it, who's growing in it, studies it and has an intimacy with the Lord Jesus. So what's a weak believer? He just hasn't gotten to that level yet. Well, we're all growing at some level. What's a weak believer? Those other people, not like you. What is a weak believer? someone who still has value in something other than what's in the Word. Okay. And they're not very well taught in the Word.

Now, if I took this class over to the Third Reformed Church over there, which is Dutch Reformed, and we sat down with the pastor of that church, would you consider him a strong believer or a weak one? I would consider him a weak believer. Even though he's got a seminary degree and he's been a pastor. Why? Because all he teaches is law. He's weak. Okay. Strong believer, weak believer.

Do you have an obligation to this person? Spiritual obligation? I think so. What would it be? To do what? To come beside them and teach them. You teach them. That's what makes them strong. Does this person have an obligation to you? To change you to a reformed believer? Is that what you're saying? No, they have one obligation, not to judge you.

They should listen. And again, before the Lord and depending on the Spirit, they have to make up their mind. So a strong believer's best tool is to come alongside a weak believer and teach them. That doesn't mean wad it up and shove it down their throat. It means teach them. You will find sometimes that if you do that, you're going to offend them. You see that? You might offend them. So what does it cause you to do? It causes you to think about how you're going to do it.

So I remember years ago I called up Miles Stanford one day and I said, well I've got a lot of this information and I want to be involved in the body of Christ. When am I going to be able to do it? He said, here's a really good answer. He said, it takes the Lord a long time to teach you the truth and then it takes Him twice as long to teach you how and when to give it to somebody else. That wisdom has stuck with me. I don't know if I'm going to live long enough to learn the how and when. But it's really important as you come alongside a believer, the how you do it and the when you do it. I have a tendency to go too fast, to shove too much information in them too quickly. And then I see them choking. Or they're offended. Can you offend the new man? Everybody hear that question? No. Can you offend the new man in Christ? I'd say no, but the old man is pretty good at being offended. That's right.

Now under this circumstance, when I caused my brother to stumble, really what I've done is I've caused him to revert back to the old man and sin. That's really what I've done. Okay? I was thinking, you know, people that are very prolific swears and take the Lord's name in vain. Right. That can be offensive. Yeah, you know, being a Marine, It took the Lord a long time to kind of clean up my language. Ed Sundine one time sent me a little note that told me to clean up my act. It was great. Did it offend you? No, I said thank you. I don't know.

As a young believer sometimes you don't know. You look around at other believers and how they operate and that kind of thing. If I used a dam or a hell or that kind of thing, it offended him. But then I began to understand because If people around me took the Lord's name in vain, oh man, this is the one who gave his life and saved me.

Am I offended? Yeah. Did I sin? Probably not. I was offended. I am offended when I hear that. But some of the other stuff, some of the other vulgarity, But that's how non-believers talk. So if you're offended, then how can you help or preach the word? Sure. Well, you come to the Tuesday Bible study, right?

There's Navy guys and Air Force guys. You should hear them talk. Especially the Navy guys. They've been around the Marines too long. That's right. They've only got one Marine in the room. It's me. So I've never offended because they can't rise to the level that the way Marines cuss. But even that, you know, even that, what comes out of my mouth should be indicative of what's going on, what's inside of me. You know, so. But I do see a couple of places in the New Testament where Paul took license with the language. So. We talked about the weak believer. If you look at 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there.

1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we'll talk about different things there. 1 Corinthians 8, 9-12, and I'll read it and we But meat commands us not to God, for neither if meat are we better, neither if we eat not are we worse. But take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours becomes a stumbling block."

And I put in there, to the weak. A weak believer is one who gets bent out of shape by what another does. 10 For if a man sees you who has knowledge sitting at meat in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be emboldened to eat things sacrificed to idols? Answer, Yea, he would be. 11 For through your knowledge he that is weak perishes for the brother for whose sake Christ died and thus sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak you sin against Christ.

Now let's put this in context. What are you reading from? That's King James. Well, I kind of put a few things in there. Somebody else. Go ahead and read somebody else. Read it from whatever American standard, whatever you got. Take care of the disliberty of yours is not somehow become a stumbling block to a week or someone sees you.

You have knowledge dining in an idol's temple will not will. Will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge, he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And so by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience, The basic premise here, and the town of Corinth is a good example, here's a guy that was hanging out at the temple and he becomes a believer and he knows that you're a believer and he sees you up at the temple restaurant eating burgers that were sacrificed to the idol. Now that doesn't seem like a big deal. What makes it a big deal here that isn't apparent?

One of the big things about the temple was the thousand prostitutes. Men would go up to the temple and pay to have sex up there. In their minds, anything that has to do with that temple has to do with sex. So here I am sitting there eating meat that's sacrificed to an idol at the temple.

Where does that guy's mind go immediately? Back to the temple. What did he do at the temple? He didn't go up there for lunch, he went up there for something else. So he's got that Pavlov dog syndrome where, oh yeah, temple sex, temple sex, temple sex, because that's all he did. And it was promoted by the temple. That's how one of the fundraisers they had. Imagine that. You got a thousand prostitutes and their whole job is to raise money for the temple. So they're cruising around town and they're doing their thing.

The point here is that it isn't so much that you have violated the guys. He doesn't have enough knowledge to understand like you have where it says that you have knowledge that meat offered to idols is just meat. It doesn't matter what it's been offered to or where it went or where it started or where it came from. If it's good, we're going to eat it, right? But this guy doesn't. I'll give you a contemporary thing.

The Catholic Church believes in this doctrine called transubstantiation. They believe that when the bread and the wine are consecrated by the priest, even though the physical substance doesn't change, they think that's really the blood and body of Christ. That's what they think. So the average parishioner can't touch it, shouldn't eat it, unless he's offered it at their communion service. So here's a guy who's a Catholic, And he comes here and we're doing the Lord's Table and we're drinking the juice and eating the crackers and maybe I take two.

And if I told him, oh we got all these from the Catholic Church, would he be offended? Because of the lack of knowledge he would be. I might cause him to stumble. I remember one time growing up, the priest tried to give my mother the host of mist and it fell on the floor. Only the priest could pick it up.

So there are all kinds of things like that, and Paul uses an example out of the temple, out of a pagan temple, where you have a mindset about something And you, the more mature believer, don't have the same mindset because you've either grown past it or you weren't part of that. And here you are sitting in a temple restaurant and you're chowing down on food that you know and he knows was offered to idols. It isn't the food that offends you so much, it's the connection between that and sex. And it triggers this guy to go up this afternoon and visit one of his prostitutes. I've caused him to sin. See that? Especially if I understood. Now, what should I do in that circumstance?

Go to a different restaurant. Don't eat the meat if my brother's there. It's the same thing like in our society with alcohol. If you come and have lunch with me and I know that you've got a problem with alcohol, the last thing I'm going to do is order a beer. That's the last thing I'm going to do. Or say, oh you're a Christian now, you don't have to worry about it here, have a beer. Hello.

It's that kind of thing. And so I'm careful as a believer under this principle. I know that your conscience isn't that strong and that you're convicted by things that don't convict me, but I'm careful. I'm very careful about that. Because I don't want to ever be in a position where I've caused you to sin. stumble sin.

Okay? Yeah. I was thinking that if Paul hadn't explained this, that just on my arm I would think, man, this makes a bulk of all this stuff. I don't think I would want to be eating it. In other words, it just seems like it's associated with something that's totally against God. And so, it is a tricky... Yeah, but Paul is very careful to explain, you know, at the beginning he said, I'm free to do anything. And I'm not free when it comes to causing you to stumble.

And he uses those examples, which means that he can eat anything he wants. You know, he just has to be careful or be aware that whatever he's doing doesn't cause someone who has a weak conscience to take what you're doing and cause them to sin. Next week maybe you'll talk about that verse 11 word. In one translation it says, cause the weak brother to perish and then in here under the Greek word it's destroyed. That's exactly what does he mean there. I think what he means is that it doesn't cause the believer who's weak to lose his salvation, but it causes him to lose, it sears his conscience about stuff.

He may go back and be involved in the temple again for a while. And Paul very clearly says, look, Christ died for that guy, and he's your brother in the Lord. And you have separated him from fellowship with the Lord. He's not going to perish because he's already in Christ, but he may walk for some time outside of fellowship because of what you did.

But isn't the world one big stumbling stone for the believer? Sure is. There's no question it is. It's an interesting line that we walk as Christians. We're concerned about our life being pleasing to the Lord in all aspects. But it isn't immediately apparent that my life also is noticeable to those who are around me. You know, I tell people, you don't have to evangelize, you just have to live.

Because a guy lives across the street and his wife are watching you. At work, they're watching you. The people in your sphere of influence, they're watching you. They know you're a Christian and they're watching your behavior. They're paying attention. Because you're different. And they want to see if it's real or they're looking for an opportunity to criticize you for their own aggrandizement. And you know with us there's a lot to criticize sometimes. Okay well I didn't quite get through Courtney or whoever will have to pick up next week on six. No we already did that. Seven. Okay, let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word and how careful you are to guide us and teach us the principles. And we recognize that the principles really are based on our understanding and knowledge of your word, and even to a greater extent, our intimacy with your Son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.