Welcome Before You Judge

Transcript

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[0:00] Good morning. Our reading kind of, it's a little bit flipped order today because I'm going to preach on the introduction to the section that Adele just read. But I'm quite excited. I was very excited about our passage this morning because it's about food.

[0:30] For those of you who know me, I'm pretty food obsessed. And this summer, I got to go back to Malaysia for two weeks. Many of you know I was born in Malaysia and the majority of my extended family on both my mom's side and my dad's side are still there. And if you know anything about Malaysians, when we get together, we eat.

[0:56] Our food is just so good. And it's delicious. It is totally our love language. And so pretty much for 14 days straight, we went from one meal to the next. And it was a feat of human endurance, but I did it, you know. And when our family gets together, we gather around food because it's our heritage. It's a time of extending hospitality to each other. It's a time of sharing memories. And creating new ones. Most of our memories are around food. And when we get to gather around the table, especially because we've been, you know, so far apart most of the time, when we get together around the table, we get to be family again with all of our senses. And so, yeah, when I read our passage today, I was excited. Let me read it for us. Romans chapter 14, starting at verse 1.

[2:04] Accept the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the food he eats. 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 all.

[2:38] Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To their own master, servant's stand, or fall? And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. One person considers one day more sacred than another. Another considers every day alike.

[3:01] Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. 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, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or 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.

[3:50] You then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? 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 acknowledge God. So then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

[4:17] Let's pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you. Would you minister to us now? In Jesus' name, Amen. So, kind of like our family meals, in our passage today, food is important.

[4:45] Somehow, it's important enough for the believers in the Roman church to have been quarreling over. But the core issue is family, right? And how they're behaving at the table. Who is my family? How do I regard the members of my family? And most especially, how do I treat family members who I disagree with? And ultimately, these issues in our text are resolved by looking at the senior members of the family. The father and Jesus, the eldest brother.

[5:28] And how they connect the rest of us together. So that's how I'm going to tackle our passage today. I'll go food, then God, then family. All right? So, food, God, and family. So, let's start with food. This is the fun part. Well, complicated part, actually. What's the deal with the food?

[5:54] One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. Paul is not giving vegans a hard time. And he's not engaging in some kind of toxic masculinity that says strong people eat meat.

[6:15] But food was actually a very big issue for the early Romans. And it was a very big issue for the early Christian church. If we go back to the Roman Empire, and even before, actually, Jews and Gentiles never ate together. You would never see a Jew and a Gentile at the same table. And actually, Jews almost never entered Gentile homes. And that is because under the Jewish law, it was really important for Jews to never touch or eat anything that was unclean under the law. And unclean food could be the wrong kind of meat. So, no pork or shellfish, for example. They were unclean under the law. Or it could be meat offered to idols. And in Gentile society, pretty much any meat sold at the market would have been first offered to idols in the temple worship of the Gentile world.

[7:20] And so some of you might know the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. When Peter sees this vision of a sheet coming down from heaven with all kinds of animals on the sheet. And God says, Peter, take up and eat. And then Peter goes to the house of Cornelius, a Roman general, to share the gospel.

[7:45] That was a revolutionary moment. In both Jewish and Christian. And Gentile history. Because that sort of thing never happened. And so we can imagine this group of little house churches in Rome. Some of them made up of Gentile believers who had found new life in Jesus. And maybe for some of them, I don't know, maybe for some of them their meat just tasted better. Because they knew Jesus and life was good. You know? But I could also imagine within some of those groups. There might have been some Gentile believers who might have been nervous. I'm a Christian now. Is it okay for me to eat this meat if it was offered at the temple of, I don't know, Athena, for example. Because, you know, I'm a Christian now.

[8:38] And in the house churches comprised of Jewish believers, the stakes were probably even higher. Because it would have been so counterintuitive to them. To eat non-kosher meat. I have a friend. Actually I have several friends. But this one friend in particular. I have a friend who's a vegetarian. That's just how she was brought up. And she married a man who loves his meat. And they've been married for more than ten years now. And they still cook separate meals. And it's not because she thinks it's immoral to eat meat. Her palate just can't handle it. Like she just has not done this before.

[9:19] So how much harder would it be to change something as fundamental as what you eat when all of your life you've been taught this is unclean. And scholars suspect the food issue here that we're talking about in our passage was more with the Jewish believers.

[9:40] But it seems, regardless of whether it was the Jewish or the Gentile believers, it seems to have been impacting how they viewed each other. Both within the Jewish churches and possibly how they were viewing the Gentile believers as well.

[9:58] It was giving rise to unrest, quarreling between the believers of the church. And so you can just imagine in the Roman churches, people are all over the map in working out the relationship between their faith and their food. So someone is eating meat. Right?

[10:23] Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? trust in Jesus. They were just still in process figuring out the full implications of their faith. Actually this food issue is still very much alive in the church today. Globally, Chinese and other East Asian Christians, including myself, we ask ourselves should we participate in the ancestral celebrations that our families are participating in and should we then eat the food? Can I do that as a Christian? That's a very live and real question.

[11:26] Closer to home, I think, think about all the differing opinions we have amongst Christians about whether we can drink alcohol, right? So just take a minute, I just want to invite all of us to just take a minute to think what are other issues today where Christians have different opinions and it's coming between us. Just give you a minute or so and I'll ask for some feedback.

[12:02] Yeah, yeah caring for our bodies like can we can we eat junk food or should we should we be very vegetarians? Thank you George. Any other things that are kind of dividing us? That we can think of? Yeah, Brian? How would regard so-called Christian nationalism?

[12:22] Politics, yeah. Christian nationalism in the United States, but I think actually globally politics in general can be very divisive. Steve, were you gonna say something? What kind of movies and books, whether or not you can name them or not? Culture, yes. I actually have Christian friends who won't let their kids read Harry Potter. And Christian friends who love Harry Potter, right? Yeah, yeah. So, Yuki?

[12:57] Yeah, music. Music has divided us. There are denominations I believe where you're not allowed to have instruments, musical instruments in church and it's very important to those groups. Last one, Karen. I know, absolutely. We would be in trouble this Sunday, today, if we were not allowed in the pulpit between me and Victoria and Adele. Yeah. All right, so that is the food part. There are all kinds of things that can come between us as Christians, right? So, now I want to look at God. Or rather, to fill it out a little bit more, God's righteousness, which is the whole theme of the letter to the Romans.

[13:54] Because this is really where Paul goes and this is the foundation of Paul's teaching in chapter 14. Paul says the answer to this bickering lies in the righteousness of God. That is the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creator of all things, reveals his righteousness in the Son, Jesus Christ, who died and rose again. And those who put their trust in him will rise again with him, even if they die.

[14:35] I think this is what Paul is getting at when he says those who live, live for the Lord and those who die for him. die, die for the Lord. There will come a judgment. If creation is to be restored to justice, there must be a judgment. And it is only the Lord Jesus who is able to make us stand. And so this phrase that we see, make us stand, was an early Christian phrase meaning the resurrection. Only Jesus can make us rise again from the dead. Notice what this means though. The person with weak faith needs Jesus to stand. But the person with strong faith also needs Jesus to make them stand. The person's ability to eat meat is not what will make them stand. The person with strong faith needs Jesus as much as they can. It would be the person with weak faith who would be the first to stand with the Lord in the resurrection. All of us need Jesus in order to be saved. And God accepts all who trust in Jesus.

[16:05] And actually the Greek word here that's translated in the NIV accepts, it actually also has this beautiful meaning of welcome. So we can also read this text and other translations do this, so to read it to say, welcome the one whose faith is weak because God has welcomed them. Which brings us to family, our third point, family. In verse 10, Paul asks, why do you judge your brother or your sister? And I don't think this family reference is a casual one and it comes out much more in the rest of the chapter. Because when Paul looks at what God is doing, when he looks at the outworking of the gospel, which is God's righteousness, he sees that God is building his family.

[17:06] God is building his family. And there is only one way that any one of us, Jew or Gentile, weak or strong, can stand before God and that is trusting in Jesus. And all of us who trust in Jesus are connected to each other through him. And scripture tells us that the relationship created amongst us is one of family.

[17:35] So, one of my students, I was talking about this with one of my students once, not that long ago, and he said to me, you know, I really struggle with this idea of God's family because to be honest, family can be the most dysfunctional group of all, right? And I'm like, that is so real and so true. I think of all the things that go unsaid in my family.

[18:05] And, you know, he talked about the Righteous Righteous Righteous Righteous always recognition that you are a member of my family. And in our family, there are adoptions, there are people who've married in, and all of their families. I'm trying to think of how many ethnicities are now in our family through marriage. There are very close friends who've been welcomed into the family, and once they're family, they are always family. And Paul is saying the family of God should do better.

[19:10] Should do better than this. He says, don't look down on each other, or judge each other, or quarrel with each other over these disputable matters. I'll talk about that in a second. But matters that don't disqualify people from family.

[19:32] Don't. Don't quarrel over those things. Rather, welcome each other. Recognizing that all of us can only stand in Christ Jesus. And that if we are in Christ Jesus, God welcomes us. This is not a cheap grace that we're talking about here, right? Paul uses the language of slave and master. Jesus is our master. We're answerable to him as if we were slaves. That's a very confronting image. And it would have been even more so if you were in the Roman church back then.

[20:17] And then he says in verse 5, each of us should be fully convinced in our own mind that what we're doing is right. That takes work. And we need to recognize that in each other, we're not alone. We're each other. Each of us are on this journey in the Lord, trying to figure out what it means to say Jesus is Lord over all the different aspects of our lives. And so we need to see in each other that the Holy Spirit is at work in each one of us, bringing to the forefront of our lives the different things that he wants us to figure out. So what does it mean to say that Jesus is Lord over my career? What does it mean to say that Jesus is Lord over my relationship with my best friend? Or my relationship, more to the point, with my worst enemy?

[21:12] What does it mean to say that Jesus is Lord over what I eat or drink? Or my relationship with the environment? Or my sexuality? Or my relationship with the government? And to recognize that the person beside me is probably being called by God to work on something totally different to what God is calling me to work on right now.

[21:38] So there's no room for either arrogance or judgment amongst us in the family of God. How does that change how we see each other? How does that change how we treat each other? What does it look like for me, I'm talking to myself here, to sit at the meal table with my brother and my sister who, for example, votes differently to me? And to realize that God welcomes them to his table?

[22:15] How does that change how I see them? Before we close, I just quickly want to say something about disputable matters. What we see in this passage is that there are matters where Christians can legitimately disagree.

[22:35] And they should not cause us to break fellowship with each other. There are other passages in the Bible, like 1 Corinthians, for example, that do show us that there are boundaries to our faith. And so this passage is not saying, it doesn't matter what you believe. Just be sincere about it and you're good. That is not what this text is saying. It's not a free-for-all. But there is a question about where do we draw the lines? And so, for example, in 1 Corinthians, one boundary seems to be that there is a point of breaching sexual ethics that goes too far. And so Paul has a very specific example in that church. You know, the first Corinthians, the first time, you know, the example of the man who was having relations with his father's wife. Paul's like, okay, that's too far.

[23:33] And of course, historically, the church has split over all sorts of things, right? So the big schism between the Western church and the Eastern Orthodox church happened over one word in the Nicene Creed. Filioque, of the Son. Does the Holy Spirit proceed only from the Father or from the Father and the Son?

[24:01] The church split over the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which is super sad, I think. We are part of the fruit of the Reformation, the covenant denomination, which was a group of a cluster of schisms that happened over, I guess, ecclesial authority might be kind of one way to sum it up. And in Protestantism, there are all kinds of splinters.

[24:32] More recently, we have very public examples of people leaving churches because of, like, relational toxicity. So some of you might have read about Beth Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention over sexism in that denomination. And I'm not here to say, like, what breakaway was okay and what was not. That would be judging, so that would be kind of not the right thing to do. But what's disputable and what isn't, that is a big question that the church has to wrestle with.

[25:10] And there does seem to be times when it is appropriate to break away. But I suspect that we break away more than God would like us to. And even if we don't, I suspect that we judge each other way more than God would like us to.

[25:35] The idea that we all stand equal before God in Christ is revolutionary. The vision of Jews and Gentiles eating together at the same table, of people of every tongue, tribe, and nation worshiping together, of the weak and the strong standing side by side, welcoming each other in anticipation of God's welcome to us is revolutionary.

[26:12] It's a revolutionary sign to the powers of Caesar, to Congress, to parliaments, to dictators, that Jesus is Lord, not them. And this is what Paul is getting at in verse 10 with his repeated references to Jesus as Lord. In the context of the Roman Empire, to say Jesus is Lord was to say that Caesar is not, and that could get you killed.

[26:48] That is what we need to do. That's what is at stake. Christian unity is a sign of the kingdom of God. It's a witness to the Lordship of Christ over all else. This is the family that God is building. A family that through our welcome of each other, we point to God's welcome to all people through Jesus Christ.

[27:21] Through our welcome of each other, we bear witness to a different kingdom, the kingdom of God. This is Paul's heart, and this is God's heart for us as his children. I want to close by giving us a time of silent reflection. I'll walk us through some steps, but this is just time for each one of us as individuals before God.

[28:01] Let me just open us with a time of prayer, and then I'll just walk us through some questions. Let's pray. Dear Jesus, we ask that by your Spirit you would speak to us and guide us now. I just want to invite us to listen to the Holy Spirit and to ask God, is there anyone who would like to know who God wants to bring to our minds, who we are either looking down on or judging?

[28:56] Just wait and see if God wants to reveal anyone to us. I invite you now to imagine that you're not alone. You're sitting down to a meal with that person or those people, and that the one who brings you to the table is Jesus.

[29:57] And you start to see that both of you need Jesus to stand before God. How does this change how you see this person? Right now you see Jesus. Right now you see Jesus. Right now you see Jesus. As you sit, at this table together, is the Holy Spirit inviting you to repent of anything or to forgive anything in relation to this person?

[31:29] Let's take a minute to talk to God about this. Let's take a minute to talk to God about this. That God is inviting you to take with this person. And if there is, what is it? And maybe take a minute to ask God to help you to do it.

[32:54] Amen. So just before the day is over, I just encourage you, if there was a step that God was inviting you to take with your friend, or the person on your mind, share that with someone you trust before the end of today. And just receive some encouragement from them and also get a little bit of accountability with them in stepping out in faith like this. So thank you.