Romans No.30 My Brother's Keeper

But now we're moving a little bit more quickly because we're on the practical areas of our subject matter and perhaps it's a wee bit more easy for us to comprehend. So Romans 14, let's read it through, shall we? Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables.

The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand, praise God. One man considers one day more sacred than another.

Another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special does so to the Lord.

He who eats meat eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God. And he who abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord.

If we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. I think Paul would have been smacking his lips when he put that down because it's so characteristic of him to heap glory to the Lord and to get praise to God in every situation.

For this very reason Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written, as surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, every tongue will confess to God.

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way.

As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love.

Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and of drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.

All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall. So whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God.

Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith. And everything that does not come from faith is sin.

And here's a couple of verses tucked away in the beginning of Genesis. The fourth chapter, when you discover Cain responding to a question from God. Verse 8. No, it starts with verse 9. As I say, these printers just don't print as heavily these days as they used to do.

Then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother Abel? I don't know. He replied, am I my brother's keeper? Thank God for the clarity of the Ten Commandments. One lady who objected to them being read in church because she thought that they put too many wrong things into the minds of people.

But at least you know where you are with the Ten Commandments, don't you? Not to steal, not to envy, not to murder, not to commit adultery, honouring your father and mother, recognising that true worship should be given to God and that the Lord should not be represented by any idol at all. You know where you are with the Ten Commandments, it's straight, clear-cut teaching and you'd have to be pretty stupid not to be able to understand at least the gist of what the Lord is conveying. But in the Christian life, everything is not quite as easy as that in terms of controlling our behaviour.

There are certain things that crop up, they did in the apostolic times, they do so perhaps even more now, perhaps we've got even greater numbers of permutations of areas where it's not always easy to know just how Christians ought to behave. And so you've had the ongoing debate as to whether it's right for Christians to drink or abstain from alcohol. I'm old enough to remember the advent of the television and the problems that it brought to some people when my dad actually bought a television to our own home.

The problems weren't so much in the home but Christian people who thought that that was rather a retrograde step. Well perhaps it was, I don't know, but I'm just giving you areas where Christian people have had problems in determining what is right and what is wrong, what is helpful and what is unhelpful, what is compatible with the Christian faith and what perhaps is incompatible. Now as I say, these sort of areas of difficulty are not just a modern child, they were present in the early church.

The Apostle Paul is actually answering the question that Cain raised many, many centuries before when he said, am I my brother's keeper? And you'll discover that the Apostle Paul has some very interesting things to say not only about conduct in areas where it's not too easy to be precise as to the way that we ought to behave, but he has a great deal of important, perhaps even more important teaching of the responsibilities that each one of us has towards our fellow brother and sister. So in the opening verses of this chapter he raises what in effect are two contentious matters and the first is regarding whether or not you should eat meat. Should an evangelical Christian be a vegetarian? Well, I'm tempted to answer yes, though I haven't quite got practically to that position in as much as I do eat meat, but I think out of choice if I really thought it through I'd leave it on one side, but not for Christian principles, simply because I don't like the way that they farm animals in these days.

I can't stand animal cruelty and it's about time I think more Christians were raising their protests about what is allowed to happen to animals in the interests of a so-called thriving economy. But that, by the way, in Paul's day the problem was basically this, that if you went down to the local Sainsbury's and you got your couple of pork chops – well, not if you went down to the local Sainsbury's and you got your couple of pork chops – well, much more coolly, much more calmly – and said, well, these idols, they represent gods that don't exist, so how can the idols in any way contaminate the meat? So we've perfect freedom to eat our chops or mutton as we please – it's not really a religious issue at all. So there was an area of contention, not only in regard to meat, what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, but also in regard to days, holy days, what particular festivals ought you to be keeping? Not just on an annual cycle, but let's reduce it, shall we, to the weekly observance of the Sabbath day, because the people to whom Paul is directing his remarks in the Roman Epistle were probably a mixed congregation.

I mean by that they were a mixture of Jew and Gentile. Presumably Gentile were the major constituent element of the congregation, but there were a lot of Jews. Now, if you were reared in Judaism and you converted to Christianity, it wouldn't be too easy for you to leave off the lifetime practice of attending a synagogue on the Sabbath day.

And the argument was put that actually this wasn't an option, it was mandatory. Not only the Sabbath day, even if you allow the significance of the Sabbath was transferred to the Sunday in Christian estimation because the Lord was raised from the dead on the Sunday. But the argument also was in regard to the special feast days of the Old Testament calendar that occurred annually.

How were believers to respond to this? The whole issue of Sabbatarianism has been a point of contention in Evangelicalism in the West for quite a long time, hasn't it? Should we observe our Sunday in the same way as the Old Testament Jews looked upon the Sabbath? The older generations, Victorian generations and the centuries preceding were fairly strong on this. It's only in more recent times and perhaps there has been a more lax approach. The theology in terms of reinterpreting this is simply that, well, the apostle here seems to suggest that when a man becomes a Christian every day is special to the Lord.

And the suggestion also is that when you become a Christian you enter into the rest of God in terms of knowing the peace of God. All that the Sabbath day symbolises is redeemed by the Christian as he enters into a faith relationship with the Lord Jesus. So every day is special for the Christian and not just a holy day.

Well that's the other side of the coin, it's the other side of the argument, you see, and it's this that the apostle is addressing in the fifth verse. One considers one day more sacred than another, another man considers every day alike. Well you would expect the apostle, wouldn't you, because after all he does speak under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

You would expect the apostle to lay down a definitive line, but he doesn't. It's rather annoying that he doesn't really. And so because he hasn't, other people have.

And there have been many people throughout the centuries, and they're with us today, who are quite happy to tell other Christians that they should see these issues in the way that they perceive them. And if you don't follow our particular conviction then you must be wrong. Now I say it's very interesting to see how the apostle Paul handles this, because whatever contentious matter you might raise as an example, maybe vegetarianism is no problem to you.

Maybe Sabbatarianism is no problem to you. But there are equally divisive issues that crop up in the churches today, and they are a problem to you. Then how are you to handle it when people differ? When people don't see secondary issues in the same light as you see them? And it seems to me that when you put up that question, you can come to the 14th chapter of Romans, even though it's not dealing specifically with a subject that is causing you some difficulty, and you can gather their principles in the way that you are to relate to people who think differently from yourself.

So I say that in our opening verses you get Paul making reference to two contentious matters. Now as he deals in principle with these issues, it seems to me, and I'm sure that you can find other things in the chapter but our time is limited, there are at least four significant requests that Paul makes of mature Christians, and therefore he makes them of ourselves in dealing with this problem of the twilight areas where things are not black and white, where there could be a variation in opinion. He's assuming, as we will do, that in some of these issues some believers are weaker than others.

That's what he says in verse 1. He thinks that the man who has less liberty can be kindly described as a weak person. Now says the apostle, those of you who feel much more liberty, those of you who feel much more mature as you approach the issue of meat, you've got no difficulties, you can eat your meat without any bad conscience at all. You have got to realise that the man who disagrees with you is to be accepted for what he is as a brother in the Lord.

And because he's a fellow believer, you are to esteem him. My dear brothers and sisters, that applies to us today in areas where people disagree with us about something that you might consider to be very precious. Never forget that your area of fundamental agreement, that Jesus is Lord, and you're part of the family of God, is a far greater consequence than the topic on which you differ.

Accept the weaker brother, says the apostle Paul, and following up, but putting it a little bit more strongly, he offers this advice, don't look down on him. Verse 3, the man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not. The Pharisees were always looking down their noses at people, weren't they? They felt that they were three or four rungs further up the ladder.

And one of the most obnoxious things in evangelicalism, if it ever exists, and I'm sure it has from time to time, maybe it does here to some degree, I don't know, it's up to you to judge your own heart, is the Christian who looks down on the other person. You know, they've got truth, but they don't quite see it with my clarity. One day, God helping them, they may arrive at the position that, in my wisdom, I find myself at.

No, that's entirely wrong. If God has given you greater knowledge, if you have a greater understanding, and if your growth in grace has been a biblical one, it will have also meant a maturing in your personality, so that you'll thank God for the knowledge that you have, and you will, in your attitude to others, never be condescending and patronising, but always loving and sympathetic. Don't look down on him.

What's more, says the apostle, because we're not dealing with key issues. We're not dealing with salvation, damnation issues. We're dealing with secondary issues.

He says, don't judge. Verse four, who are you to judge someone else's servant? We're all servants of the Lord Jesus. When a man is a servant, he's judged.

The only one who has right to pontificate is his master, says the apostle Paul, clinching the beautiful logic in his argument, speaking of our Lord Jesus in the latter part of verse four, that our Lord, when he judges people, will do it in such a kindly fashion that he'll still ensure that those who perhaps have got it wrong in certain areas of doctrine will still stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Accept the weak brother. Don't look down on him.

Don't judge him. But be sure of your own position. One man considers one day more sacred than another, verse five.

Another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. All right, you've heard Sargent in this area before, but you see, I'm justified because scripture makes the point.

We as evangelicals are not abandoned to a sea of emotion. Emotion is part of our religious experience, and one has no need to apologise for that. But truth affects the mind in the first instance.

Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. You see, we're not just as sheep following human shepherds. We're as sheep following the Lord, and we're not just looking over the shoulder to see what he's doing or what she's doing.

What we have to have in the forefront of our convictions as we think about our own personal discipleship is what the Lord wants me to do. Think that one through. You see, one of the dangers of being a Christian leader, and I do speak very sincerely and very humbly here, one of the dangers is that people may be following you, and you know that you're a man with feet of clay.

And it's most important that Christian people have their eyes upon the Lord Jesus and that they're thinking through issues themselves. This is why last evening when having a very delightful time with some of our young people, I was imploring them, when you come to church on a Sunday and you listen to Tim or myself or anyone else preach, bring your Bible. Check us out.

Think through what we're saying in the light of Holy Scripture and form your conclusions as the Holy Spirit plays upon your mind. Each one should be convinced fully in his own mind. You don't abandon your reason and you don't put your reason within the province of someone else.

What you do with your reason is you offer it to the Lord and ask him to firm up convictions in your own experience. You see, this is the Apostle carrying through his teaching in the twelfth chapter, is it not, on the second verse, when he says, do not be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed. By what? Well, by the renewing of your mind.

Think these things through, whether it's vegetarianism, whether it's sabbatarianism, whether it's your understanding of the doctrine of the Spirit or the second coming of the Lord Jesus or what have you. Get to grips with the word of God yourself. Listen to good men, listen to good women, consult the commentaries, read the books, but most of all, be into the Scripture and be before the Lord and ask the Lord to firm up in your mind those things which become your deeply held convictions.

So just pause for a moment and ask yourself if you're doing that. Are you using your God-given intellect? Well, do so because it's one of the most precious things outside of salvation that the Lord has given you. Well, four significant requests following the raising of two contentious issues leads us on to three undisputable or indisputable facts, and the first actually we've almost touched on.

The weaker brother is in the family of God. About this there can be no question at all, can you? Verse one, accept him whose faith is weak. Accept the person.

Why should you accept your Christian brother? Well, because God has accepted him or her. Not only is it a fact that the weaker brother is in the family of God, but he is doing what he is doing out of regard for the Lord. Look at verse six, where reference is made to abstaining from or partaking in meals, or rather in the keeping of days that are special, or the recognition of every day that is special.

He who regards one day as special does so to the Lord. He who eats meat eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God. He who abstains does so for the Lord, and gives thanks to God.

So recognise the sincerity of people. Isn't it sometimes the case, my brothers and sisters, that we look for people's more obnoxious points than what we look for the good in one another? I didn't express that terribly elegantly, but you know what I'm saying. It's much easier to make the pinpricks and to see the pimples and the what's than what it is to see the good things.

Look for the good in one another. This is what the Apostle Paul is saying. This is what the Apostle is doing.

Be positive. And this isn't a special plea on my part, but here is an illustration. I could sometimes stack the letters of complaint over against the letters of encouragement.

And generally speaking, the complaints outnumber the encouragements. How often do you, brothers and sisters, who've got children, and they come to one of the TABS classes or part of the TABS youth work, how often do you go to one of the leaders and say, thank you. You know, you've done a good job.

It's a tremendous encouragement to them when you pick out the good. Now this is what the Apostle is doing here. He's not resolving the issue.

One person is not eating meat, another person is eating meat, but they're both praising the Lord. So says the Apostle, well, thank God for that. The weaker brothers in the family of God is doing what he does out of regard for the Lord.

The bottom line is that he, like you, is answerable to God. Not so. Look at verse 10, where the Apostle makes it quite clear.

You then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we'll all stand before God's judgment seat. We Christian people have to stand before the Lord and give an account as to the way that we've lived our lives, don't we? That we are warned in Scripture. So the Apostle has addressed these two categories of people, that the weaker folk who find themselves still bound, maybe because of the remnants of Judaism in regard to these issues that he's cited.

And he's also got in mind those who take a viewpoint that's much more liberal. Now before he's through, he's got to pull the whole thing together, because these Christians are living not in compartments, they're living in community. He's dealt with them in a sort of academic fashion, now he brings them together.

So you've got your man, who loves to sink his teeth into his juicy steak, can you see it there sizzling in the pan, just waiting for you to, some of you perhaps haven't eaten this evening, you think I'm being cruel at the moment. And he finds himself in the company of a man who'll only have lettuce and yoghurt. So the interaction, I set it up as an amusing thing, but this is actually what the Apostle is dealing with.

What happens when these two, the strong and the weak, so to speak, come together? Well the Apostle gives sets of instructions to the weak, he says, well, he's not to behave how he pleases. He's not to exploit the total areas of his freedom. Martin Luther, I quote, sees no contradictions in two statements, let me read them out to you.

A Christian is a most free Lord of all, subject to no man. He whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Now Luther's got no problem in following that sentence with this one.

He is a most dutiful servant of all, subject to all. We do have freedoms. The Apostle Paul is one of the freest men that there ever was.

Listen to F.F. Bruce, he quotes this extremely eloquently in his commentary on Romans. Paul enjoyed his Christian liberty to the full. Never was there a Christian more thoroughly emancipated from unchristian inhibitions and taboos.

So completely emancipated was he from spiritual bondage that he was not even in bondage to his emancipation. He was not even in bondage to his emancipation. What does it mean? Well, when Paul is back in Jerusalem, he'll shave his head.

If it helps the Jews, he couldn't care two less, two hoots, whether he's got his hair down to his shoulders or whether he's as bald as a badger. If it helps other people, then he will surrender what seems to be a liberty for them. Now, it's this principle that comes through in the 13th verse, you see, and onwards when the Apostle makes reference to how these Christians behave when they come together, these two categories.

The stronger believer might put off the weaker brother in this whole area of what he eats and what the other is unprepared to eat. Therefore, verse 15, if your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died.

There's more to the kingdom of God than eating and drinking, partying and going to McDonald's. The end objective of the kingdom of God is that you'll know righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Now, if your stake is going to reduce the joy that this brother will have, then do without your stake.

That's basically what the Apostle is saying. If you feel some degree of freedom in the area of drinking wine and others don't feel that same degree of freedom and you are in their company, then you do not offend them. That's not a surrender of your liberty.

That's a recognition of your human responsibilities as Christian people, one towards another. Now, the Apostle is arguing, you see, in one sense against himself. I mean by that that he is a member, if you like, of the stronger party.

I mean, he says in verse 14, as one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. That's my position. But says the Apostle, I'll qualify my activity if by so doing I can enhance someone else's joy in the Lord.

Isn't that wonderful? No, really. I mean, here is this illustrious Apostle and we learn so much from him. He's got such a tender heart.

I was never more annoyed, and I've mentioned this before, that when I heard someone on the radio or on the television parade their theological ignorance about the Apostle Paul and say that he was a hard-hearted, embittered man, devoid of all emotions. And I thought, well, you've never read the Roman Epistle and you've never actually read the Acts of the Apostles where you find the Apostle Paul in tears on one occasion. So he speaks to these people who are in a stronger position, if you like, than others.

And in effect what he's doing is setting down what he said in the 13th verse of the 8th chapter of the 1st Epistle to Corinthians, therefore if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again. I will never eat meat again. I will never do, if it's an unimportant area of my Christian liberty, I will never engage in that if I am causing someone else to stumble.

And that's a height of maturity, isn't it? And then finally, to the weak, well, Paul keeps these with an oversensitive conscience very much in his mind. After all, they do have a real problem. If they feel that they ought to be bullied into eating meat and yet their conscience, if they do that, is not going to give them peace, says the Apostle, that's wrong.

Now he doesn't concede that it's wrong to eat meat. What he concedes is that it's wrong to do anything that sears your conscience. You see, your conscience is a very important part of your spiritual equipment.

And the Apostle wants you to know peace. He wants you to know peace of mind. It's part of the legacy that's yours in Christ Jesus.

Therefore if there are things that actually trouble, disturb your conscience, even though for other people there's utter freedom when they're engaged in doing this, don't force yourself into their position and lose your lack of peace as a result. You don't indulge in those things. But on the other hand, simply because you don't indulge, don't start criticising them for so doing.

You don't have that right, you see. If you please the Apostle, he's putting the boot on the other foot in his argument. The basic thing that matters more than anything else is that Christian people, whether of a strong mentality or of a weaker disposition, the most important thing is that they know this joy and peace that there is in the Holy Ghost.

So to conclude, and most of you will be surprised that I've kept you under the half hour, to conclude, the sentence, the question that Cain put up centuries before the Apostle Paul lived finds a very full and a very final answer in the 14th chapter of Romans. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, we are. We have a responsibility to one another and we should act out our lives with a view to encouraging other people's comfort and spiritual maturity.

So the Apostle helps us, doesn't he? I hope you think that he does and I hope that you will live by the teaching that he brings us. There are important subjects about which there can be no differences of opinion allowable within the Church of God at all, but there are areas where God wants you to use your own mind and form your own judgment. You see, the Jews in our Lord's day, they weren't like that, were they? They had the Ten Commandments and then they had grown up over the centuries a great amount of oral tradition.

They called it the Tradition of the Elders and from the moment that they rose in a morning to the moment that they went to bed at night, they had reference to the most minute legislation telling them what to do, how to wash the cups, how to cook a meal and so on and so forth, how far they could travel on a Sunday, on a Sabbath day, you name it, they got it in their tradition. But the Christian dispensation doesn't allow for that. It says that you, yourself, have got to work some of these things out before the Heavenly Father with an open book.

You're to form your convictions and you are to hold your convictions in love, not in arrogance, not with the personality of a Pharisee, but as a brother who loves your fellow brothers, as a sister who loves your sisters, so that together we can help one another and we can maintain peace within the Kingdom of God because where there is unity and peace amongst brothers and sisters, there God commands blessing. We'll walk the land with hearts on fire, and every step will be a prayer. Hope is rising, new day dawning, sound of singing fills the air.

Two thousand years until the flame keeps burning bright across the land. Hearts are waiting, longing, aching, all are waiting once again. In the hearts of the darkness there is light.

Let the song grow louder, let the love grow stronger, let it shine, let it shine. We'll walk the truth, speak out for love, in Jesus' name we shall be drawn. To lift the fallen, to slay the children, to save the nation, to bring us home.

Let the flame grow brighter in the hearts of the darkness, let it die into glorious day. Let the song grow louder, let the love grow stronger, let it shine, let it shine. Let the flame grow brighter in the hearts of the darkness, let it die into glorious day.

Let the song grow louder, let the love grow stronger, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Let the flame grow brighter in the hearts of the darkness, Let the song grow louder, let the love grow stronger, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.