For the Sake of Joy
Notes
Transcript
For the Sake of Joy
For the Sake of Joy
Jesus says to us,
11 “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
And having fulfilled a mission, Paul and Barnabas went on their way, and we read:
52 And the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
Clearly joy is Jesus’ goal for us; it is his purpose for coming, and the Holy Spirit is a dispenser of joy into our hearts when we fulfil the purposes God has set for us.
Yet in relationships between Christians, we have often lives our lives as if we are in competition for God’s blessing, often in judging, sometimes in setting up traps to catch others in something we can then say is sin. We better take a good look at Romans 14 again to get our hearts set straight.
Learning to Live in Relationship
Learning to Live in Relationship
I last preached a few weeks ago with the sermon titled “Relationship Without Pride,” dealing with the first half of Romans 14. In that message, I trust you heard the heart of the Gospel in Romans: Welcome anyone whose faith seems more fragile than yours, because God has accepted him. Paul wrote,
4 Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand.
And remember our new reality of faith, for any and all that believe that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and that he was raised to life again to be our everlasting Lord. Paul said it this way:
7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
The main point we must always remember, of which I am absolutely convinced, is that love expressed in relationship is the most important value shown to us in the whole of the Bible. We need to be reminded of the importance of relationship in a world gone awry because of the patterns of pride and selfishness that are so rampant in so many who are supposed to be our leaders and our heroes and our mentors.
We are brought back to the reality that God has a better plan for us. We are not saved to live our lives alone. We are saved to live our lives in a new and healed relationship with God, and a continually developing change in our relationships with other believers. John the Apostle put it this way:
3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
We believe the Gospel of God’s love, and as believers together in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we have a new fellowship together, based on our fellowship with the Father and the Son. This is holy ground, the territory of God’s people. It should never be treated as any one person’s private playground for pride.
Paul writes to us more about the principles of living together as disciples as we read on in Romans 14, starting with verse 13.
Don’t Trip Up Anyone
Don’t Trip Up Anyone
13 Therefore, let us no longer judge one another. Instead decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in the way of your brother or sister.
Don’t judge?? Paul says. “therefore, let’s not do that anymore.” Why?
We have to see what’s this there for: we’ll catch it by backing up just one verse:
12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Aah. We are responsible to God for how we judge and why we judge and how we accept the faith of another person.
So,
13 Therefore, let us no longer judge one another. Instead decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in the way of your brother or sister.
We have a new choice, a new decision. Paul offers — well, directly instructs us — to never trip up or trap another believer. Don’t play with another’s conscience by tossing a rock in front of their feet while they are learning to walk with Jesus. Don’t test their faith by building a trap they might fall into and never get back out of, just to see if they have a faith that is as strong, or mature, or as refined, as yours.
Instead of judging, planning, plotting, dishonoring, and disregarding another’s conscience as they serve Christ, make a new choice. For the sake of Christ, protect the conscience of another Christian. Encourage their walk with Christ. Lead them in their pursuit of a better holiness, not by challenging their choices of conscience, but by entering into their walk with Christ.
Balancing Principle and Priorities
Balancing Principle and Priorities
14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.
Paul states an important conviction he has learned over the years of his walk with Christ: All God’s creation is good. Nothing by its being is unclean.
Jesus said this to his disciples about food and defilement:
17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?
How did the dietary rules become a dividing point?
All food is good, because it comes from God. But some things are used in ways that desecrate the creation or one of God’s created people. Some things are used in idol worship in a way that has made that thing, that food, that animal, something that God’s people should avoid.
The Kosher laws for the Jewish diet in the Old Testament have their beginnings with the basic laws that God gave Noah and his family when they got off the Ark at the end of the flood that wiped out the rest of humanity as the animals were rescued to repopulate the earth, along with Noah’s family.
Before the flood, everyone was a vegetarian. In fact, even the animals were, according to
29 God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, 30 for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Just think how that protected the animals and the family of Noah on the Ark for a year! No hungry lions looking for a little sheep snack, no cooks getting ready to make a great big rump roast out of one of the cattle brought aboard.
But then, after the flood,
3 Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything. 4 However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it.
As humanity again began to populate the earth, the fear of man was in all wild animals, because anyone of them could be killed and eaten…and many were.
But there came a time when the people of God needed to show they were obedient to God, to show they were different than those populations that did not worship Yahweh God, and to live a little healthier because of food choices.
Some living creatures became unclean because they may carry disease, as with the vultures that fed on carrion. Some things from the sea may carry a deadly bacteria, like a red tide we hear about from time to time. Swine typically carry a parasite that can cause disease if not cooked to death, but also, some of the unclean animals were used in pagan sacrifice, so those were hands off for the people of God.
You can read through the lists of unclean animals in Leviticus chapter 11 and Deuteronomy chapter 14. By the time of Jesus, dietary laws were one of the things that the Gentiles knew the Jews did to prove they are separate from the world. And Jews treated those rules as reasons to avoid any fellowship with the Gentiles—the non-Jews.
Here in Romans 14:14 , Paul reminds us that God deals differently with each of us. The Holy Spirit inspects our hearts and motives and informs our consciences of what each of us needs to focus on. What is a matter of freedom for you may be a diversion towards destruction for me. The key point of this is in the last part of verse 14:
14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.
“But it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.” It is not the thing that is unclean, but how the Holy Spirit teaches us freedom or restraint in regards to how we treat something that may be an issue for us.
What is right is not about a list that is made to reign in our behaviors. God gets to make the lists, like the 10 commandments, which define some of the limits of faithful behavior. Each of us must learn to listen to our consciences to find out what the Holy Spirit is telling us about what is OK and what is not.
So if there may still be an issue of conscience about what is on the dinner table, how should we treat it? For me, a really good pork roast is a treat; but for anyone with a commitment to avoid pork, it can present a crisis. After all, the decision is not based on taste or smell, but on training and choice for important, often spiritual, reasons.
Remember Paul had to deal with Jewish and Gentile Christians. For the Jewish Christians, their salvation in Christ did not dismiss them from their covenant to eat only Kosher meals. For the Gentile Christians, there may have been no common rules on what was unacceptable on the dinner table.
We may think we are beyond that, but we really should not think so. There are still ethnic Hindu or Buddhist vegetarians, or Muslim or Jewish people who avoid pork; or anyone who has made a commitment to a certain diet, or needs a controlled diet, like no sugar or carbs for a diabetic. We are to share the Gospel with all of them, and we need to be able to share a meal and later Christian fellowship.
How do we handle it? Paul teaches us this:
Live For Christ, Not Rights
Live For Christ, Not Rights
15 For if your brother or sister is hurt by what you eat, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy, by what you eat, someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore, do not let your good be slandered, 17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The rule for us must be based on one overarching principle:
Walking according to love.
So, If your brother or sister is hurt by what you eat--Do not destroy, for sake of pride of diet, one for whom Christ died.
That is pretty strongly stated, don’t you think?
Don’t hurt your brother or sister: that’s not love.
How do we hurt them by what we may put on our plates?
Well, if a believer doubts that it’s OK to eat something, she will not be able to freely give God thanks; In verse 5 Paul said, about things we have freedom to do or not do, “Be fully convinced in one’s own mind.” If we overturn the conviction of what is right and wrong, we are in danger of upsetting the faith that brought them to Christ.
Or maybe when another believer thinks something is sinful, then the doer of the act is thought of as sinning, not saved. That’s part of the slander of verse 16. And if that same tender believer decides to follow us, unbridled freedom without the conviction of the Holy Spirit will lead us right back to the selfish, sinful actions of the unsaved.
Do not destroy the faith or religious practice of one who is under grace.
Don’t let your freedom of conscience end up in reproach because your pride of your own freedom causes harm to others.
Why? Because the life of faith is about our freedom surrendered to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Our surrendered selves experience freedom IN CHRIST; not license to do all we want.
Paul is talking about food here only to give us a context for all our relational behavior. Does something we do hurt another Christian? Does something we do dishonor the name of Christ, whether before or after someone becomes Christian?
In the Roman church that would first read this letter, there were conflicts between the Gentile and Jewish believers based on what was allowed for a Christian.
And so the battle lines were drawn, as we saw in the first verse of this chapter:
1 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.
There is a better approach that is an approach of living in relationship without personal pride getting in the way.
C.K. Barrett says it this way: To insist upon one’s freedom without regard to the scruples of others is not only to fail in the primary Christian virtue of love but to misunderstand the real basis of the Christian faith. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Faith is not ‘faith to eat all things’ (v. 2); Christian privilege is not the privilege of being able to eat and drink what one likes.
What are you about? Yourself or others? Yourself or the Kingdom of God?
Does your life show you stand for Christ or only that you stand for yourself?
The problem is,
My Rights = Conflict; What’s Right = Joy
My Rights = Conflict; What’s Right = Joy
16 Therefore, do not let your good be slandered, 17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Verse 16 reminds us that if we are operating out of a prideful sense of our freedom in Christ, it will end up disparaging the name of Jesus Christ and in fact all Christians. That’s what happens when we put personal rights before what is right to do.
I can’t help but think that this is one of the biggest problems we have in our own country. In this time of Covid-19 restrictions, safety protocols, distancing and mask wearing, as well as staying away from others if we are ill, people begin to put personal freedom before what is right to do for the sake of others.
We have seen over and over again, in Los Angeles County, San Bernardino County, in much of the rest of California as well as in many other states in our nation, how exercising personal rights instead of doing what will help keep others well has led to continued lockdowns, increased infection rates, and a continued death toll from a virus we didn’t even know about 10 months ago.
Who are you living for? Just yourself? If you don’t wear a mask because you don’t like the inconvenience of foggy glasses or some difficulties breathing, you are exercising a personal right to ignore the guidelines of health and government officials. And in doing so, increasing your own odds of becoming infected, which will increase the odds you will infect someone else, which will increase the odds that you may become responsible for infecting someone who will die from the virus.
In a week, I will be doing a memorial for a mother and grandmother who was infected while in a nursing home where she ended up after a broken hip. She died without her family around her. Her family arranged the cremation in July, but only now will they have a small chance to come together to for a memorial. That is one of 230,000 stories in our nation alone. It is important, not to simply prove we have freedom to exercise our rights, but more importantly prove that we have freedom to do what’s right.
Rights over what’s right is a black hole for division and conflict. The opposite approach is to put Kingdom values ahead of personal freedoms.
If who we are is about the Kingdom of God, we won’t create issues about what we drink, or what we eat. The kingdom of God is about life; Paul shares three facets of it here:
Righteousness means we make God and His Kingdom and His People more important than ourselves. When we are saved, we are declared righteous by God when we are justified on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice; then we are made righteous by the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying and empowering presence in our life; then we move on in life by living rightly for God as we practice the new life in Christ. Righteousness is not behaving like we have no limits; righteousness is practicing our new freedom from sin to live for God and others.
Peace as a Kingdom value means we take part with God in bringing wholeness to life and relationship. First in our own lives, then in the lives of those we touch. Peace between people happens when we set aside our opinions and our pride, surrender ourselves to Jesus Christ completely, and actively care for one another.
Joy is mentioned here for the first time in Romans. This is what happens at our core when Christ has control; this is the emotion evoked by peace in the presence of righteousness. It all happens because of the presence of the Spirit in our lives. It is the Spirit which allows us to discover joy even in the hardest trials of life—for we know that God has us in the palm of His hand.
For the sake of Joy, set aside rights and do what is right. This is a Kingdom result we can experience right here and right now. We need not wait for any flash from heaven or sound of the trumpet to experience God’s joy now, and to experience it with active relationship with one another.
And Paul tells us we get an added bonus in ...
Serving Christ Instead
Serving Christ Instead
18 Whoever serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and receives human approval.
Verse 12 told us we will all give account of ourselves to God. Here in verse 18, we have a positive way to put a smile on God’s face. Live for God, serve others, don’t live from personal pride or stomp on anyone else as you exercise your rights.
Instead, live out the values of the Kingdom right now. Love, righteousness, peace, and joy. It is service to Christ when we serve one another. And not only is God pleased, but other people will take note of the value we place on one another.
Paul now moves to a “so then..”
Promote Peace, Build Up Others
Promote Peace, Build Up Others
19 So then, let us pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another. 20 Do not tear down God’s work because of food. Everything is clean, but it is wrong to make someone fall by what he eats.
This is nailing down the purposes of this passage. Pursue what promotes peace.
Do the things that build up, not tear down.
Don’t be so stinkin’ selfish that your own rights of freedom make a mockery of Christ’s sacrifice for others, just so you can have a ham sandwich.
The reality is unchanged: Everything is clean.
But our behaviour is still essential: It is wrong to make someone fall just for food.
As I said, food is used just to illustrate the issue of living out Kingdom values in our relationships with one another. It stands in for all kinds of behaviors: what we eat, or what we drink. How we dress, or how we drive. Our careful use of language and our care for others. The humility of service because we know we are Christ’s and are not diminished by getting our hands dirty.
Promote peace. Build up one another. Do it by doing what is right, by making peace, by encouraging Joy. Do it not for pride, but for God. For the sake of Joy.
So instead of what not to do, lets be sure we know what we need to be doing. Paul restates the principles to tell us what IS good to do as we are...
Practicing the Principles of the Kingdom
Practicing the Principles of the Kingdom
21 It is a good thing not to eat meat, or drink wine, or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. 22 Whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.
What is a good thing?
To practice abstinence from anything that puts a stumbling block in the path of someone who is discovering what it means to be a disciple of Christ.
So it is good to lay off the meat in their presence. Leave the wine alone too. When we practice the principles of living as subjects of the King of Kings, we don’t flaunt our freedoms. We fix our hearts on serving one another as a way to serve Christ, as verse 18 reminds us.
Balancing freedom and service is always a challenge for us. We have trouble with this thing I’ve been talking about—setting aside our personal rights in order to do what is right for others.
Paul tells us not only not to flaunt our freedoms, he tells us to be quite about them. In verse 22, he says keep it between yourself and God. The same Holy Spirit that teaches us what we are able to allow for ourselves without harming our relationship with Christ help us know when to just shut up and serve another.
Instead of telling another, especially a new or fragile Christian, what your freedom in Christ allows you to do, ask that new or weaker Christian what their preferences are. What do they normally eat? What do they normally drink? How has their life changed since they have discovered their new life in Christ?
For each Christian, the rule is “Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind” (14:5). In the first half of this chapter, the liberty of the mature believer cannot be a reason to judge. But as Paul finishes this theme, we find out that the freedoms of the mature must not scandalize the souls of the saints. Having set aside the right or the tendency to judge, it is now our responsibility to love one another well enough to build them up, not tear them down.
Paul says we are blessed if we keep ourselves from dishonoring the Christian faith by our restraint over our freedoms.
The rule stands about the Holy Spirit’s work in our conscience. As we end this chapter, we are instructed about...
The Importance of Faith
The Importance of Faith
23 But whoever doubts stands condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and everything that is not from faith is sin.
We are reminded once again that we must be personally convinced of our freedoms in Christ.
God may choose to keep you or to make you a vegetarian. God may seal in your soul the needed diet for your own life or health. God may convince you of the importance of staying on a diabetic or heart-healthy diet. Anyone who has been on a weight loss diet knows just how much help is needed to stick with it.
The truly important feature is faith. Faith is what make a believer strong. Faith is what allows us to listen to the Holy Spirit.
It is faith that allows us to serve one another with joy. Without faith our actions will become sin. Why? Our selfishness will take over from the love God intends, and our faith will become absent from our actions. And the Bibles says we won’t escape sin.
Discover Faith. Discover Love. Discover Righteousness in Christ. And for the sake of joy, serve the saints.