Sermon Transcript
Pastor Dave talked to— mentioned that we’re going to be talking about differences today. And when I was younger, maybe 3 or 4, I remember my older sister, who’s a couple years older than me, telling me not to stare at people who are different than me. I think it was probably the first time I saw somebody, like, in a wheelchair, or somebody who was maybe missing a limb or something, and I would point at them, oh my goodness, I can’t believe how different that person is. And she’d say, that’s not a good idea, to stare at them and to tell how different they are from you. But I’m going to have you stare at one another here in just a moment.
I’m going to give you permission to do this. We are in a room filled with differences and diversity, so where you are, just— you don’t have to stand, you don’t have to move around. I just want you to take just a few moments to look around the room at all the differences, all the diversity, all the variety that we have here. You may want to stare a little bit longer at a couple people to make them feel a little bit more uncomfortable and awkward. And if you’re visiting with us, we don’t do this all the time, but seriously, look at all the differences, look at all the variety.
Most of us only see the external differences. One of the first things that stands out in a room like this, in this particular place in the United States, is the ethnic diversity, the cultural diversity that we have here. You can walk into almost any church in America and not see this type of ethnic and cultural diversity. I’ve been in a variety of churches, and perhaps you have too. There are many churches that look a lot like one another, where people pretty much look the same, they’re all pretty much homogeneous.
This is not one of those churches. That’s one of the things Shannon and I love about being here with you all. But there are also other differences that you may not see. Differences of marital status. You may have differences of income level.
Somebody may make more than you, considerably more than you, perhaps. Some of you may have a different profession than somebody else here in the room. We have differences in terms of where some of you come from. Some of you have been in the area a long time. You’ve been here your entire life.
Others of us have just, you know, recently come in the last few years, and you call this home now. And some of us come from large families, some of us come from smaller families. These are just, again, in the large scheme of things, trivial differences. But let’s be honest, every culture, every group, every business, every organization, every church has a variety of differences. And as Pastor Dave alluded to, these differences can cause us friction.
It can cause us disunity and discord if you allow it to. And when that happens, we’ve got work to do. And so we’re going to do a little bit of work today talking about how we work through our differences within the body of Christ. You don’t just say, well, you’re different than me, I’m going to walk away. Just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean that I walk away.
It means that we work through our differences together and we Seek unity, especially within the body of Christ. This diversity that we have, this variety that we have, is God-given. God made us different. If he wanted us to all be the same, he would have made us all the same. And it’s one thing to get along with somebody who’s exactly like you, but it’s much, much harder and depends upon the power and the grace of God to help us to get along with somebody who’s not like you, who disagrees with you, who has different preferences and opinions than you.
And we’re going to take a look today at a something in Romans chapter 14, a group of people whose differences were dividing them, and it was causing discord and friction and problems within the body of Christ. And so the Apostle Paul writes them to talk about this. And Romans chapter 14, looking in, starting in verse 1, the first 5 verses here, Paul says this to the Roman church in chapter 14, except the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. You have a group of people who are quarreling, they’re fighting, they’re not getting along because of what Paul says are disputable matters. What are these disputable matters?
Well, one of them, verse 2, one person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. You have some people who say it’s okay to eat anything, that there aren’t restrictions on that. There are other people who have a conviction that might be different, that says that whether because of kosher laws or because of their own personal conviction, maybe this is food that could have been sacrificed to a pagan idol. Whatever their conviction, they’re saying that I can’t just eat anything. And so you have these 2 different groups.
Verse 2 says that one person’s faith allows them to do this. The other person whose faith is weak, this person eats only vegetables. Verse 3, the one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not. And the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Verse 4, who are you to judge someone else’s servant?
To their own master servants stand or fall, and they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Verse 5, one person considers one day more sacred than another. So here’s another disputable matter. We had the matter of what to eat, and here you have a group of people, or I don’t know how large the group was who thought that one day was perhaps more sacred than another. Verse 5, another considers every day alike.
So some people say one day is more sacred than another. You can only worship on this day. For them, it was the Sabbath, which was a Saturday. Can you imagine going to church on a Saturday? Some of you can’t even imagine such a thing.
But for them, they were saying Saturday was the day to worship, and then others were saying no, every day is alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. I want to stop there for a moment. What is Paul saying here in these first 5 verses? One of the principles we can draw out of this that is, I think, patently clear in these first 5 verses is don’t let your personal opinions and personal preferences get in the way of unity, period.
Don’t let your own personal preferences and opinions get in the way of unity. What’s more important than your personal preferences and your opinions and your convictions? What’s Well, it’s unity. It’s getting along. It’s being perfectly one.
Don’t let your differences divide you. Don’t let anything get in the way of you being one, perfectly one, as Jesus prayed that we would be. Don’t let anything divide you all. And here we have a group of people that were on the verge of splitting because of certain convictions that they had— what to eat, what day is more sacred than another. Some of you may hear that and go, well, that’s silly.
Who would divide over such a thing? Really? You people can’t work this out?
Especially for those who are younger here in the room, like, you hear something like that and you think, I can’t imagine that that would cause quarrels and fights. But you need to know, young people, that within, again, every organization, there’s a sort of a culture of, well, this is how we do things. And there’s people with their preferences and opinions. And even within churches, every church is a little bit different in terms of how they do things. And we too, here within Bridges Community Church, have a variety of things that we would potentially quarrel about, disputable matters.
For instance, we might dispute about preferences, and people have their own preferences about things, preferences about what happens here on a Sunday morning, how long the church service should be. Some of you want me to preach for 5 minutes, others of you want a little bit more than that. Some of you want a worship service that has loud drums and electric guitars. Other people don’t want that. They want an orchestra.
Some people want something where you’re standing and you’re out of the hymnal. Other people want words on a screen. Some people, whenever you are in a group of some sort, you want a group that teaches and leads in a specific way. And then there’s other people who want a different type of group experience where there’s just— maybe you’re working through a curriculum, or maybe it’s more of a facilitating of a conversation. Every group is different.
People have preferences when it comes to how facilities get used. Well, how should we use the gym? Listen, every week I can tell you we get questions about what we can and can’t use the gym for, and it’s like, listen, like, we don’t want to create a bunch of rules here and stuff, but people have their opinions and their preferences about what we can and can’t use our facilities for, and people battle about what rooms that they want here. Doesn’t this seem silly? Is it any different though than talking about what to eat and what not to eat.
Like, we have preferences. Some people have strong convictions and preferences about how we as a church and as Christians should honor our country and should honor our nation. Some churches are praying for their leaders every single week. Some people display their flag in a prominent way. Other people say, really, is this that big of a deal?
Everybody has preferences. So that’s one thing that can divide us. We have differences of opinion on our preferences. Another area is we have differences of opinion about personalities. Personalities.
In Paul’s day, especially in the Corinthian church, he was writing a letter to a group of people and he said, some of you say, I follow Paul. Others say, I follow the Apostle Peter. Some people say, I follow this person. We have that within this church. Certain leaders that you connect with perhaps more than others, people that you might prefer would preach instead of me, or somebody that you would rather have teach instead of another person, or Whatever it is, personalities can divide if you’re not careful about it.
But in addition to that, you also have preferences and opinions about power, for lack of a better term. I’m using the letter P here, as you can see here, but power. Basically, we have opinions about who should get to make the call on various things. When a person makes a decision, is it the pastor? Is it the group of pastors?
Is it the elders? Who makes this decision on whatever that is within the church? Every church is different. Maybe you’ve been a part of a church where one person made the decision and that was, that was it. But some of us come from churches where it’s a more diplomatic, democratic thing where, well, you have to check with this group and this group and this group and this group and this group.
Who has power? Who has influence in this group of people? So that’s something that we can divide over. We also sometimes divide over issues related to our pocketbook. What is the church going to spend the money that it receives on?
What does the budget look like? And there are people with strong convictions and strongly held preferences and opinions about the church should spend its money on this and not on that. So you see, we have a variety of things. We have different priorities.
And what Paul is saying here is when you have these things Don’t let this divide you. You notice I didn’t say anything here about morality. I didn’t even mention matters having to do with sin or fundamental doctrines of the church. And Paul here in Romans 14, he’s not talking about that stuff either. He’s talking about secondary matters, non-essentials.
There aren’t any absolutes here in what he’s saying. He calls them disputable matters, and we would call them gray areas, something that Scripture doesn’t specifically say that you can or can’t do this, and so a person feels a freedom one way or the other, but then you have another person or group who sees it in black and white and says, no, you can’t do that. And then you have one group that sees gray for what it is and says, really, I don’t see that this is that big of a deal. It’s dividing the Roman Church here, so Paul’s writing about it, and it can divide us when you have 2 groups with different opinions. Black and white?
Is it gray? Either way, Paul is saying don’t let that divide you. And you’re hearing this, some of you may say, but this is important to me, whatever that conviction is, whatever your opinion is, it’s important to you. Paul is saying, listen, keep your opinion, keep your preference, that’s fine. Verse 5 says this is between you and the Lord.
You need to be fully convinced in your own mind here. Just don’t let your conviction divide you from another believer with a different conviction. That’s more important. Don’t let those things divide you. And if you look across the scope of church history, you’ll see what divides churches are typically not fundamental doctrines.
It’s often these secondary matters of preferences and personalities and power and issues related to the pocketbook. And Paul’s saying, don’t let that divide you. Our unity is too important. Verse 6, says this: Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord, and whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God. And whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.
For none of us lives for ourselves alone, none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live, whether we die, we belong to the Lord. 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, verse 10, why do you judge your brother?
Why do you judge your sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. One of the things that Paul is saying here is that you have this group who has a specific conviction before God, and this group has another conviction and opinion. That’s fine, but don’t condemn believers with whom you have differing opinions on disputable matters.
You have another person who doesn’t agree with you, don’t condemn or treat that person with contempt. It says there in verse 3, don’t treat them with contempt. That particular phrase, treat with contempt, means to despise, to look down upon. He’s saying don’t look down upon or treat as a second-class citizen somebody who disagrees with you on a disputable matter. You say, well, what’s a disputable matter?
How do I know What’s a primary issue and what’s a secondary issue? General rule of thumb is, would this conviction qualify or disqualify a person from becoming a Christ follower? That’s a pretty fundamental thing. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, for I delivered to you as of first importance what was passed on to me, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, that He was buried, that He was raised on the first day according to the Scripture. Those things are primary.
There’s one way to heaven, and that’s through Jesus Christ. A person is saved by grace through faith, not as a result of a person’s works. That’s primary. Jesus is God in the flesh. That’s primary because it has to do between our relationship with God.
But ultimately, he’s saying, don’t condemn your, your neighbor, your brother, your sister in Christ over these disputable matters, these secondary matters that are not as important. I don’t know about you, I was raised— nobody taught me this, I was just sort of raised with the type of thinking, and maybe you can identify with this, that there’s a right kind of a Christian and there’s a wrong kind of a Christian. I have a secret for you, I always put myself in the right category, and you do too. Like, let’s just be honest, I’m the right kind of a Christian. The right kind of a Christian does this, says this, acts a certain way.
The wrong kind of Christian doesn’t do this, they’re less mature, they’re spiritually careless, whatever. And so we look down our nose at that person and we judge them because they have a different set of convictions or opinions. Paul’s saying, stop that. Don’t do that. Don’t judge one another.
We have to have unity in the essentials, the primary matters of the church, but diversity in the other stuff is great because God made us to be one in spite of our differences and in spite of our diversity.
So diversity in that is great, and the conviction that you have, verse 5, you have before the Lord. You need to be fully convinced in your own mind of your own opinion, fully convinced that your conviction, your belief, your practice, whatever your opinion is on that particular secondary matter, fully convinced that that is what is most honoring to God between you and Him. And then verse 10, Paul says, don’t judge, because that’s God’s job, it’s not ours. We will all one day stand before the judgment seat of God, And I won’t be called to account based on your convictions. You won’t be called to account based on my convictions and preferences.
We will have more than enough to answer for, trust me, when we stand before the Lord.
But let’s leave the judging to the Lord. He handles all of that. Don’t despise, don’t mistreat, don’t condemn, just looking down your nose at somebody with whom you disagree on disputable matters. I want to read, though, for this 3rd principle, I’m going to reread verses 1 and 3 here to bring out an important principle. Because what’s the opposite of judging?
What’s the opposite of condemning? Verse 1 again of chapter 14, it’s the word except. Underline that word, highlight, circle, whatever you need to do. Except the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. Verse 3, the one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not The one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has— again, underline, highlight— accepted them.
The next chapter, chapter 15, verse 7, he’s still talking about our differences. He says this, accept— highlight that word— accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. That’d be a great verse to memorize. It’s short enough that you and I could do that. Accept one another, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
What’s he saying here? He’s saying accept one another just as Christ accepted you. That’s one of the principles here that he wants to get through. Instead of judging, accept one another just as Christ accepted you. And we see that word accept, and some of us sit up and we go, I like that word.
And so we think of the word tolerate. I’m to tolerate this person. You need to tolerate me. And if you judge me because of my beliefs and my opinions on things, you’re you’re an intolerant person. But that’s not what that’s saying there.
It’s not saying to tolerate one another. The word accept has a definition that is more closely aligned to warmly welcoming somebody like you would into your own home. Hopefully, you would welcome somebody warmly into your own home. To receive another person warmly as you would into your family. When Shannon and I adopted our kids, we didn’t come up with a list of rules that they needed in order to become a part of the Duran family.
They were just ours by the miracle of adoption. We’re to accept one another in that type of a way, and each of us can identify with what it’s like to walk into a room or to be around a group of people, even Christians, and to know what it’s like to feel unwelcome. You ever, you ever had that experience? You walk into a place and you’re like, I’m not welcome here. This person, this group does not accept me.
I don’t feel like I can be myself. Maybe you’ve walked into a home and you felt that way. It’s stifling. Nobody wants to be a part of that. You contrast that with the times that you have felt accepted, you have felt welcomed for who you are.
Don’t you want to be a part of that kind of a church? I know I do.
It doesn’t mean that we agree on everything, by the way. We have our— Shannon and I talk about this all the time with our kids. Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean that I don’t accept you. We can disagree on disputable matters, but let’s accept one another, warmly accepting one another in the way that Christ has accepted us. And that’s an important phrase, just as Christ accepted you.
How did Christ— if you’re a Christ follower, You have made a profession of faith. How did Christ accept you?
Did Christ accept you because you had a certain conviction? Did Christ accept you because you had a particular opinion or preference? Did Christ accept you because of something you’ve done? No. Scripture keeps it simple.
Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. And just as Jesus gave Himself for us, His sacrificial example makes it possible for us to be accepted into God’s family. If you say yes, to what Jesus has done for you on the cross. You don’t put trust in your own, your own good works, your own good deeds, but in what Jesus did for you. And that’s how you’re accepted— by grace through faith, period.
And in that same way, you were to accept your Christian brother and sister. You’re not to despise them. You’re not to reject them. You’re not to insist upon your way. You’re not to treat them as a second-class citizen.
You’re to accept one another. I’m to accept you. You’re to accept me. Even in the midst of our differences, just as Christ accepted you.
And this reminds me of, I guess it was about 4 years ago, almost to the day, that we as a church— some of you were here, you may remember that we had a congregational matter that we put before you as leaders of the church for your consideration regarding something having to do with baptism. In our bylaws. If you weren’t here at the time, there was brought to our— it was brought to our attention that there was something specifically in the bylaws that restricted somebody from being a member of Bridges Community Church if you had been baptized after you had become a Christian, but if you’d been baptized by some other way than by immersion. Meaning you’re a Christ follower, God has already accepted you, and yet you were accepted— or excuse me, you were baptized by some other means, maybe by sprinkling or something else, as a Christ follower. I’m not talking about infant baptism.
I’m talking about as a Christ follower, you made a profession of faith, you were baptized, and perhaps there wasn’t enough water there or whatever the circumstances were. And we were saying, nope, you need to be fully dunked in order to be a member of Bridges Community Church. We’re basically saying, you need to, before you can be accepted by us, kind of follow the rules here. And nobody meant any harm by that, but it was causing harm. It was causing disunity.
And we looked at that, and it was brought to our attention saying, Our acceptance of one another is more restrictive than God’s. That doesn’t make sense. Why would we do that? And we put it before you all as a church, and we had many, many conversations about convictions and preferences, but I think wisely, the church unanimous— or, well, almost unanimously. I mean, it was a pretty large segment of people who spoke up and said, we agree with the leaders of the church.
This isn’t right. We need to change that. A person could become a member of Bridges Community Church if they were baptized as a Christ follower by some other means. And that to me is getting at the heart of what we’re talking about here. Our acceptance of other Christians should not be more restrictive than God’s.
And why do we accept one another? It says there in verse 7 of chapter 15, in order to bring praise to God. We do this in order to bring praise to God. That’s our focus. We adjust our preferences.
We make room for one another. We accept one another in order to bring praise to God. We’re not tolerating one another, we’re accepting one another, warmly receiving, warmly accepting, warmly welcoming other brothers and sisters in Christ into our life in spite of our differences, because that’s how Christ accepted us in order to bring praise to God. There’s one other matter I want to bring before you, and it’s back in chapter 14, verses 19 through 21. Let us therefore, therefore meaning In light of all that we’re talking about, let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
That word edification there is a construction term used back in Paul’s day that described the process of making a building stronger. So he’s saying, let’s do what we need to, to make every effort to do what leads to peace and to building up of one another, to building up this edifice. Of the body of Christ. Verse 20, don’t destroy the work of God for the sake of food, or for the sake of whatever your conviction is. He’s saying all food is clean, but it’s wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.
Meaning you can have the right conviction, but you can go about it in the wrong way. You can let that divide. He’s saying don’t do that. Verse 21, it is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall. What’s he saying?
Again, verse 19, he’s saying make every effort to do what leads to peace and to building up of one another. That’s what’s important. That should be our priority. Make every effort to see the body of Christ built up, because verse 20 says God’s doing a work. He was doing a work in the lives of the Roman Christians there, and he’s doing a work in our midst.
And he’s saying, don’t tear that down because of your preference. Don’t allow your opinion on a disputable matter to destroy the work that God wants to do. Have you ever been a part of a church experience like that where somebody’s preference— maybe it was your own— or somebody’s opinion on something wasn’t shared by other people and it was destroying the work that God wanted to do to unify? I’ve seen that. I’ve experienced that.
And Paul is saying, let’s not do that. If your conviction is causing somebody else to stumble, if your conviction is causing disunity, it’s better to not practice your conviction. It— because people are more important than your preference. Relationships are more important than the rules. That’s what matters.
Our priority needs to be on living in such a way in order to bring praise to God, but also in order to the building up of one another. And so, well, what is it that leads to peace? Make every effort to do what leads to peace. Well, it’s all the things we’ve talked about. During this Perfectly One series.
We offer forgiveness, we practice humility, we seek to be one as Christ prayed that we would be one. We set aside our preferences in order to make room for other people. We accept one another. These are the things that lead to peace. What doesn’t lead to peace is when we gossip about this person that we’re different from and we go over here to this group, or we ignore somebody, or we reject them because of this difference of conviction.
What doesn’t lead to peace is whenever we ignore one another. He’s saying, do what leads to peace, do what leads to the building up of this work, because the church is not just a building. In fact, it’s really not a building at all. It’s the people of God. This is just a building.
We could meet anywhere, but it’s the people of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, and we want to see a work of God continue. And disunity destroys that and tears that at the very fabric of who we are.
As I was studying and thinking about these verses, I was thinking about a story that I was going to share in one of our life group videos that some of you have been observing in our Perfectly One series. Pastor Dave and Dan and I sitting on stools each week as part of this Perfectly One series talking about these different topics, and hope that some of you have found these videos to be helpful. If you haven’t seen these videos, or you haven’t seen all of them, they’re available online at the website. You just click on the Perfectly One link, and we just sit around and we talk about some of the practicals involving these different topics that we’re covering in Perfectly One. One story I was going to share and ended up it didn’t make it on the tape was over Thanksgiving.
I had the chance and the privilege and the honor of being a part of a group of— I think there were 18 to 20 of us from the church that went to go serve a Thanksgiving meal the day before Thanksgiving. Up in Santa Rosa. There was a church up there that a few people had made a connection with, and Sujana and Suresh were part of this group, and there were a few of us. Many of you baked and cooked and served, and, and so we went up to this church to Santa Rosa where the wildfires had been in the fall, and it was our desire to be one with this body of believers up there in Santa Rosa with whom many of us didn’t really have any relationship. They didn’t know much about us, we didn’t know much about them, but we were going to try to serve the community there by people who’d been affected by the wildfires.
And it was just a few minutes before we left that I got a call from the pastor of the church saying, hey, can you come and you— Steve, you’re a pastor, like, can you preach to our people? I said, yeah, I can share a word. What would you like? He said, 25, 30 minutes. Like, okay, well, I I’m gonna drive by myself up to Santa Rosa, and I’ll think about what I’m gonna share.
And he was so gracious. This guy, again, had never met me. He wanted me to just sort of share with the people and present a gospel message. And it was a powerful night. It was a wonderful time to be all together.
And there were people at the end who made a profession of faith and said that they’d like to become a Christ follower that night. It wasn’t because of me. I think it was because of the work that God was doing, right? It’s just God was unifying us as the body of Christ and bringing something more powerful about them than what would have happened had that church just done their own thing, or had we done our own thing. It was powerful.
Had we not been one, or had we allowed our preferences and our differences between us and this church to divide us, I don’t think that the work of God that was done would have been done to quite that same degree, or maybe even at all. So praise God for that. I think it brought delight to God. By how He unified us through that experience. And I think that that’s a perfect example of what Paul here is talking about.
I want to just simply ask, as we’re talking about this, I know that somebody’s been brought to your mind, somebody that’s different than you within the body of Christ. And so, to whom is it that God would have you to extend grace in light of today’s message? Who is it to whom God would have you humbly accept that person? Who does God want you to accept as you’ve been accepted? Who does God want you to extend peace to as it’s been extended to you?
This is a convicting message. What adjustments do you need to make for the sake of the greater unity? What is not worth fighting over and splitting over for the sake of the unity of the body of Christ? It’s going to come up. It comes up all the time.
Let’s not let these debatable matters, these secondary matters, divide us. Things that are, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential compared to what Jesus did for us on the cross. That’s what’s primary. Let’s bow our heads and let’s pray.
Father, we come to You.
With one mind and with one heart, thanking You, Lord, that You have accepted us through Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross.
I know I and my brothers and sisters in Christ here in this room have nothing to boast in except in what Jesus did for us.
We can’t come to You by any other way than through what Jesus has done for us. And I pray that if there is anyone here in this room, God, that is not yet part of the body of Christ, and maybe something today has just caused them, Lord, to see that they desire to be accepted into Your family, I pray that today would be that day that they would make that decision. I pray that we would be one and that we would look for ways to prefer one another, to accept one another as we have been accepted, in order to bring praise to you. Show us areas where our differences are causing us disunity or are leading to a divide within the church. God, I pray that we would humbly once again follow Jesus’ sacrificial example, who— Jesus, Lord, who had the mindset that he was not going to prefer himself But he was going to look to serve others.
Pray, God, that that would be our mindset this week and in the days to come. Make us one. We pray in your Son’s name. Amen.
