Romans 14:18–23Scripture
Romans chapter 14, we close out this chapter today. I'm going to back up a smidge, we'll look at verses 18– 23. For those of you who are here every Sunday, not every person is, and that is understandable, it certainly is abnormal. I grew up in a time where everybody was trying to get their little Sunday school pin, so everybody was here most of the weeks. Those traditions of yesterday don't necessarily apply today. We have busied ourselves to such a degree, and not inside the church but outside the church, that irregularity in church attendance has become commonplace for many, not only believers but many people today in our society, particularly in America. And so, but if you're someone who makes it, a habit to be here every Sunday, then you would be well aware of where we are and where we have been. If you're someone who attends on Sunday but then also a small group, then you're more informed. If you do your Bible study before you go to small group, you're triple informed. And if you have some extracurricular because you lead a group and you do that group as well, then you're mega informed. So by the time you then come on Sunday, hopefully you have wrestled with the text to some measure, to some degree. And I really want to just hit on something that I think is very important.
I want to make, maybe I want to remind us of a few things to properly contextualize this thing so we don't go off the rails too much in our personal, wrestling
Introduction
With the text. But I'll read our assignment today, 14:18–23, knowing that many of you have already gone through this, discussed this, and such, so I'm not, i'm just going to read it and then I'm going to move on and talk about what I need to talk about today. It says this: "Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is not wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats, but it is wrong." I threw a "not" in there that is not there. "It is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God." I think this is pertinent. I will stop here, because some people want to vocalize every little thing that they've got going on in that little head of theirs, all of their convictions, they want to make sure everyone knows. Do you know that if our relationship with the Lord involves intimacy of any sort, there are some things that should just be left between us and him? That's intimacy. And I am afraid that in our society today we don't know how to be intimate with anyone. We plaster everything we experience and think and contemplate everywhere. There is nothing private at all, and nothing more of God's glory than to declare your intimate thoughts to the world when it really should just be between you and him. I love that: keep it between yourself and God. Notice there, it doesn't say husband or wife either. There are some things that are between you and God, that's okay. "Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith." Now here Paul comes with the uppercut. It is the knockout punch. It is the complete TKO. It is the being down for the ten count, right? "For whatever," in case you're wondering who
Point 1Whatever is not from faith is sin
This applies to, all of this whole talk in chapter 14, "for whatever," the original Greek doesn't say "whatever," it says "everything," "for everything that does not proceed from faith is sin." Wow, that expands this thing a lot. So I want to talk about things, maybe just some considerations regarding sin. Today I have four of them. Before I go into them, I want to make sure that I mention a few things regarding sin. Psalm 32:1–2 says this, we'll go Old Testament and then I'll go New Testament, we'll look at two different things regarding the fact that we're supposed to be, blessedness is our discourse as believers. Notice there, it doesn't say happiness, it says blessedness. It says, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit." That those who are forgiven are blessed. They're blessed. That's good news.
Romans 4:7–8 says this: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven." How many of you are thankful that your sins are forgiven? Right? For all of us have fallen short of the glory of God, we have all broken the law, and "blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin," and I would throw in there an asterisk, "against him or her." Therefore we can agree that by implication, the reverse would inform those who are not forgiven that they are unfortunate, miserable souls doomed to hell. That's a big deal. So at the same time, in other words, what I'm saying is that at one point, for those who are saved, for those whose sins are forgiven, they are blessed, but at the same time those who are not are doomed. Those who are forgiven are blessed, and those who are not are the opposite of blessed. The word we might choose is cursed. And at every single church across the nation and the world, in every single city across the nation and the world, there are people inside and outside of the church who are both blessed and cursed.
Just because you're in here today doesn't mean you're blessed, because what saves you is not coming to church on Sunday.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:54
I would encourage you to do that. I think it's helpful, and Jesus died for the church and he cares about the structure of the church. That's why he sent the apostles to structure it. For community, it's important, it's mandated, it's encouraged, and it is essential for your growth.
However, even though you are in church, you can still be cursed, because simple church attendance does not save you. Faith in Christ saves you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 8:35
Oh man, and you can say, and there are people who say all the time, they have faith in Christ, but their life argues against what they profess with their lips. Monday through Friday, and even Saturday, even right before they get into Sunday, and some on the drive here on Sunday, we deny with our lives that who we profess with our lips is actually who we love. "Even if the unrepentant and unforgiving sinner prospers in this age, we may be sure on the authority of God's Word that this person will not escape judgment." That's what it's talking about in chapter 14. In other words, the apostle Paul is encouraging us: let these people that you seem to be so concerned about judging, leave them to God. He's got it, right? He judges the living and the dead. So those people living around you that you're so concerned about, he's got it, and although they seem to prosper around you, when you've declared that they're actually the devil, that those people who seem to get a leg up even though you know they've got problems, leave those people to God.
They're not your problem. They're not your problem at all. They're God's problem.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 10:04
Romans 2:4–5 says this, as a reminder: "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." If you are someone here today who is considering whether or not you are one of the saved, one of the blessed, or one of the cursed, know that is an important and serious question to contemplate. So Paul then gives us, at the very end of this, in verse 23, he gives us a very clear idea of those who live in sin versus those who don't. He gives us a clear idea of what sin is, and honestly, ladies and gentlemen, it is very different than what I even learned in theology school. Although we have grown up hearing that sin is missing the mark, and although there is great truth in that makes sin relegated down to a list of things or a target set that you have to hit, and although in part that is accurate, it's not that simple, it goes further than that there are deeper root issues involved, that really, that anything outside of faith is sin. This is paramount. This is a radical way of thinking. This is unbelievable. I'll first start off by saying this, because there seemed to be a lot of conversation, before I go into my four points, I want to bring some clarity on something. I have tried to bring clarity on this over and over again, on Sunday. I don't really think that I've done that great of a job, because the question keeps emerging. Two things real quick, two points before my four points. My four points will go quick, but just listen to this: uncleanliness resides in the conscience and the motive, not in the food. This is what I've been trying to explain. Brook and I have been having wonderful conversations about this, multiple of us have. So does the food become unclean? No. The uncleanliness that it talks about because of your conscience is found in your conscience and your motives, not in the food itself. God already says the food is clean, so what he declares doesn't change because of your conscience. So what is sovereign, your conscience or God? Okay, so the sin is not applied to the food, never. God's declared it is clean, it doesn't become unclean. That's not what he's saying. The uncleanliness resides in the conscience, meaning if your conscience is unclean, if your conscience has a different motive, going against that is where the uncleanliness resides. Or another way of saying it would be the sin resides. The clean is unclean for anyone who thinks it's unclean. That's what it says. It's because uncleanness doesn't reside in the food but in the conscience and motive. "The only thing that could make eating clean things wrong would be that one is not acting in faith." That's what it says in 23, that is, not acting out of the overflow of contentment in God, all right, out of trust in God, out of complete satisfaction and joy and restfulness in Christ. If we are acting out of the overflow of contentment in God, then there wouldn't be any overpowering desire to do something we feel is wrong. We would relax in God's sufficiency. We would say, I don't do that, I don't participate in that, I don't indulge in that, I don't believe it's right for me to do that, and we would be content because God is all-sufficient, all-satisfying, all-wonderful, all that we need.
It's easy to say no because we've said yes to who is everything to us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 15:22
If he's everything, then something can't be more than everything, and I feel no compelling pressure to do it, because God is my portion, not God plus this is my portion.
Okay, here we go. Oh man, I've been praying about this, right? I'm going to do this because this is just, y'all love it when I'm culturally relevant. Some of the teens hate it because they're like, that's actually twenty years past being culturally relevant. I'll say a word I think is culturally relevant and they're like, "that's two decades late, brother." All right, listen.
I'm trying to figure out how to say this without just being picky. There is this phrase now, okay, and Cameron started this. This is Cameron's fault, y'all can talk to him after service. I'll actually set up an email for him, Cameron at echochurch.tv, I'll set it up on Monday, you're welcome to email him. But he kicked this off on Wednesday, so I'm going to talk about this. But one of the things that's so disturbing to me is not the fact that people listen to Taylor Swift's music, that's not the issue. It's semi an issue that she took over the NFL during the season, and then there were more young girls watching football games than in the history of mankind. I thought that was strange, because Taylor Swift was on there. But beyond all of that, beyond all of that, I have heard people from all ages and all walks of life call themselves and identify themselves as swifties. Let me ask you this question: if God is your portion, if you are made new in him, if he's made you a new creation, if he is your entire portion, whose are you? And why do we then in our culture identify not with God but with passing trends and men or women?
Why would we identify ourselves as a Swiftie but not a child of God?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:19
Why? And I understand, I know that's nitpicky. Some of you, like some of the girls, are like, "Well, I wish you'd come at my dad for identifying himself with his car.
All he does is wash his car and take care of his car and fix his car and fiddle with his car, and that's all he does. Why do you not pick on him for hot-rodding it up all the time?" I don't know what you guys do. I mean, I feel like, guys, all we do is moan, work, and help out with chores, so we don't, because we just don't have a lot of time to do it. The week, so it's like the weekend comes and I'm doing chores and trying to be helpful, and then I go to work and then I do that, and not a lot of time for hobbies. Actually, I did go play golf, and some people sacrifice their children on the altar of golf, I guess that'd be similar. There are some men who get married young, or get married young, and then they're in this softball league, this basketball league, this golf league, this, you know, one league after another, and then they never see their kids. They don't even see their kids grow up because they're so involved in the next league that's coming along. And I just want to say something: that's what's the difference between being a Swiftie and identifying yourself with that versus all the other stuff.
Either God is your portion or he is not.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:05
But when we declare with our mouth who we identify with, it should not be somebody here on earth that we're not really sure if they're even a believer or not. It should be God. Is he your portion, or is he your portion when it's convenient on Sunday and Wednesday, but through the week Taylor's your portion? Are you with me today? I mean, that's busting chops and stuff. I try to be nice, and I shaved my beard so you would think I'm nicer. Yeah, right, yeah. So I mean, do I look like I actually smile? I smile like this all the time, you never see it, because this somebody actually said, "You're so happy, like, since you shaved your beard." I'm always happy, you can't see it. Can't see it. And I'm not trying to pick on you, but listen, is God your portion?
Anything outside of faith in him is sin.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 21:11
Oh, do you see where that begins to go in our culture? Because many of us have faith in men but not God, and that's
Point 2Sin is a failure to trust God
Sin. Oh man. So four things for us to consider about sin regarding it being anything outside of faith, and they are broken down like this. What is sin? What is sin? "The most penetrating and devastating definition of sin that I am aware of in Scripture is in the Scripture we read today in Romans 14:23: 'Whatever is not from faith is sin.' The reason why this penetrates to the heart of the issue is that it goes from the root, it goes to the root of every single sinful action you could ever imagine, not only the actions that come but the attitudes of those actions, namely failure," and you should write this down, "to trust in God." From all my times of study and consideration in this text, that's really how I break this down: failure to trust God. Oh, think about times of crisis, just for a moment with me, just reflect, just consider. Many of you might be in them now, many of you might be springing out of a time of concern and trouble, but who do you trust in those moments of crisis most? What do you trust in?
Anything outside of trusting in God is sin.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 22:46
Do you trust in your job, in your paycheck, in those moments of crisis? Do you trust in the counsel of your parents and your friends? Do you trust in, the counselor you call? I'm not saying that's bad, but do you put all your trust in that, or do you find yourself in times of crisis first and foremost and only trusting in God? Who do you turn to first, and what do you turn to first? Anything outside of trusting in him is sin. Is he your all-consuming passion? "And the reason it is devastating is that it sweeps away all our lists of dos and don'ts and makes anything from preaching to house painting a candidate for sin." Everything. And this is why at times people come to Jesus and say, "What is sin?" And he would say, "Well, do not do this, do not do this," and he would say, and they would respond by saying, "Yeah, I've done all that. Give me the list of what I can't do." "Yeah, I don't do that." And then the apostle Paul throws this in there and says even the good things that you do, if you do them outside of faith, those are sin. I mean, he just throws a grenade in there. It just throws a grenade in there. "In the original language this is stressed even more, that everything which is not from faith is sin. Anything, absolutely any act or attitude which is owing to a lack of trust in God is sin, no matter how moral it may appear to men." God looks at the heart. This is why you can't judge whether someone's in sin or not, because they can be doing all the right things and still be doing it outside of faith, and it still be sin. This is why in Matthew it says many people will get up and they will declare all the good, godly-looking things they did, and God will say, "That was all done outside of faith in me. There was an ulterior, an underlying motive to the good things you did, to the godly-looking things you did, that perverted it and made that which looked good to men sinful to me." That's crazy. That's crazy. "And this is very illuminating for the morality of Christian behavior. It shows us that what matters in Christian behavior is not just doing certain things or not doing certain things, like eating meat or not eating meat, or what day you worship on. What matters is whether we act from faith. What does our behavior say about our hearts, our faith? Does it say that our hearts are resting in God as our portion, as our satisfaction, as our sufficiency? Is he our treasure, truly our treasure, or do our actions betray a loss of trust and satisfaction in him? And does it show we are actually satisfied, most satisfied, in that which we participate in outside of him? Do our actions show we are now treasuring a behavior we disapprove of more than we treasure God?" That's what sin is. Number two, another thing to consider
Point 3Sin always prioritizes our own happiness
About sin: sin always and inevitably prioritizes happiness. That's why today in our culture, in many churches today, in many conferences you go to, they will preach about your happiness now that you're in Christ.
But I came to tell you, God doesn't prioritize your happiness.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:02
As a matter of fact, you're almost guaranteed that happiness will not be your number one discourse in life if you are his, because it cost you your life, the life you're fighting to make happy. Are you with me today? Oh man, I mean, Paul really just, you know, he just threw himself on the line for God.
He was for God. If he was a cheerleader, he'd do a herkie, touch his toes, and he'd take his pom-poms and he would cheer, "Give me a J, give me an E, give me an S." I don't even know how to do this. I can get, there are people trying out for cheerleading in our youth group and that's, I guess that's why it's in my brain. "What's that spell? Jesus!" What? Jesus. Are you with me? We think people cheered at Paul, signed up on Christ's team, but then what happened to Paul's happiness? Because he was beaten with rods and he was stoned and left half dead and thrown in prisons and shipwrecked, and it was kind of a bummer life. I thought if you had faith in God, if you had enough faith in God, you would be able to stop the ship from wrecking. He must not have been in God's will or his faith must have been weak. Thank goodness he started the church, right? I thought if he had faith in God that he would just, you know, when somebody came to stone him, he'd be like, the rocks coming to his face and such, and he's like, "Stop!" Like the matrix, and the rock just starts floating in the air and falls to the ground because his faith stopped it from penetrating his happiness. Where's that in the Bible? Where's that? I'll tell you where it is: it's on the other side of men fashioning a god to their liking because they actually hate the God of the Bible. That's where it is. That there is a difference between the god you fashioned being all sufficient and being your portion and the God of the Bible being all sufficient and being your portion. Those are two completely different things. When you're shipwrecked in your life, is the God of the Bible still your portion, or is the God of the Bible only your portion when he behaves like the god you fashioned in your mind or imagination?
See, sin prioritizes happiness. Righteousness does not. Righteousness understands that your life in Christ comes at a cost.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 30:32
It comes at a cost. "If we can answer this question, we can know more precisely what Paul means by faith in verse 23, and in turn what the nature of sin is. Why is it that when we are not acting from faith, when we go ahead and do something we think might be wrong, the answer jumps out at us, I think, when we ask another question, namely, why do we go ahead and do something we think may be wrong or harmful to others? Isn't the answer that we feel that if we don't do it we're not going to be so happy anymore? We are willing to risk hurting someone or doing what we feel may be wrong because that course of action seems to hold out to us being most happy. We do what we do because we think doing it will make life more pleasant or less unbearable." Oh listen, I don't know if this has ever happened to you recently, but yesterday I had a hard time peopling. I mean, maybe this is just too honest and transparent for a pastor. I mean, I don't know, you ever had one of those days? Like, I actually saw somebody yesterday at a soccer game with a T-shirt that said, "I just can't people today." I say, please take it off and give it to me, I need that shirt today. Yet God kept sending people, and no offense to the people who hung out at my house, I'm glad you're there. God sent you. He sent you to my house, because i'd done peopled out myself yesterday, and then I pulled down my driveway, down my road, there was party after party. It's like everybody in my neighborhood decided they were going to have a party, and that's fine, I love people, just not yesterday. Yesterday was a hard day, I don't even know why. And go figure, there's a bunch of cars in my driveway, I couldn't pull my car in there, and Brook goes, "Hey, by the way, you know, some people asked if they could park there," and I didn't care, I didn't care necessarily, I just wanted to park my car.
So I parked my car, and then people came from other parties down the way and they hung out in my driveway, and then they came in my house, and I was glad I invited them in. I invited them in because I know how God is, he's like, that's what he's doing, and I know what he's doing, and so I invited them in, and we enjoyed each other's company, and it was wonderful, and I, please don't come over to my house anytime. Yesterday was unique, right? Come over to my house anytime, you're always welcome at my house. I'll even give you my address, just pop in, I'll make you a cup of coffee, and most of the time I'll be cordial and nice, and I was probably nice yesterday. I was probably nice yesterday, but it is just one of those things sometimes where you realize your life is not your own, and that's good. That's good. That's good. It's not about your happiness. See, sin, if sin reigns, it's not that you can't have a day where peopling's hard, it's that peopling being hard can't rule the decisions you make. Can you invite people in when you want to put a shirt on that says "I can't deal with you today"?
What reigns in you? Does God and his love for people reign, or does your happiness and bath time reign? Which reigns? Are you with me today?
And it is not easy sometimes to do the right thing when the wrong thing makes you happy.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:01
It's not easy. "Sin is any act or any
Emotion or attitude that does not sprout
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:31
from the soil of such confidence in the God of hope. Whatever is not from faith is
Point 4Unbelief is the root of all sin
Sin." Another thing to consider about sin is the unbelief found in it. Unbelief is the root cause of sin. "Unbelief is at the heart of all sin.
Let there be no confusion here. By unbelief I do not mean a refusal to accept the truths of the Bible. We are not saved by giving mental assent to the promises of God, to those things that he declares in his Word, those things that we know to be true. There are non-believers who know what is right and what is wrong, but they do the opposite anyway. Knowledge or mental assent is not the thing I'm referring to here regarding belief. They understand and they believe that there are some things that are good and some things that are bad. That's not what I'm referring to. We are saved by whether we hope with our hearts in those promises, not knowledge of those promises, but hope in our heart in those promises. The failure of the heart to be confident in the promises of God and to rejoice and find pleasure in his provision for the future is the root and essence of all sin. Unbelief is what mainly displeases God in every sinful act." Hebrews 11:6 says, "Without faith it is impossible to please him." And rightly so, because unbelief is a terrible insult to a holy God. "How insulting it is to take and trust in that or whom, that whom is feeble and whom is a sinner, rather than a holy, righteous, awesome God. This is the insult of all insults." No friend, let's see here. "To put your trust in someone else rather than God is to insult his integrity and rob him of his honor, and there is just cause for animosity against you that rises in his heart. Moreover, the offensiveness of your insult would increase in direct proportion to the dignity of your friend. If you tell your friend, 'I can't trust you with something that affects your friendship,' and the more honorable and trustworthy that friend is, when you tell him you can't trust him, it's more insulting." Are you with me now? Take that, apply that to God. It would affect your relationship if you did that to a person who's very trustworthy, proving to be trustworthy, and you tell them you can't trust them, that would break the relationship apart. Now imagine that with God. How trustworthy is this God that we serve? "This helps me feel a little bit of how horrid sin is, because God is infinitely wise and infinitely honorable and infinitely dependable, and he's paid an infinite price to put all this at our disposal for our good. What an intolerable offense it is, then, for a puny little human, absolutely dependent on this God's grace for every breath he takes, to say with his behavior to God, 'I don't really think you can be counted on to make a better future for me than I can in following my own way and pursuing my own happiness and doing what I please.' If such unbelief persists, there will be judgment." That's what the Bible says. "A failure to delight and trust in the promises of God is the greatest insult you can pay to God, and therefore the primary offense in every sin." Think about your life for a moment: how often do you believe you insult God by trusting in something else, by believing in something else less
Point 5Sin is more than a list of rules
Sufficient? "Unbelief, lack of belief in God and greater belief in something else temporal, is sinfulness times a thousand." The last one: sin is not a list of dos and don'ts. Some of you are like, "What?" Yeah. "The second implication of Romans 14:23 is that we cannot view sin anymore merely as breaking the Ten Commandments or transgressing a list of dos and don'ts. Everything that is not from faith is sin." So track with me here, I'm going to put this in perspective for you: coming to church every Sunday may be a sin if it's outside of faith. "Give me an example, break that down for me, how does that work?" I don't know. Do you come for your happiness? Is that why you come here? Giving could be a sin. Why do you give? What's at the heart of your giving? Is it because everything comes from him and you're happy to be generous because he's generous to you, or is it because you hope that he's going to help you get a raise, he'll open the floodgates of heaven and pour out such a blessing on you that you won't have, you won't have storehouses to hold it? That was used out of context, because it ain't about your happiness, and it's not about you getting anything. That's not what it's about. And you can be tithing or giving generously and you could be doing it in sin. "Staying home may be a sin, coming to church may be a sin, eating steak may be a sin, and not eating steak may be a sin. Sexual intercourse with your own wife may be a sin, and the refusal of sexual relationships with your wife or husband may be a sin." Okay, that's too personal, we're moving on. That's stressful, everybody just sweated, probably everybody's like, just pit it out, my shirt in three seconds.
"One of Satan's most successful lies is that sin can be limited to a manageable list of dos and don'ts, but Paul expands it and says anything outside of faith is sin."
Pastor Shawn Gray · 42:37
Oh man, what a punk, right? What a punk move, because if it's just a list of dos and don'ts, I mean, that's way easier, man, that's way easier. "The reason this is so satanic is that it causes thousands of churchgoers to think that things are okay between them and God because they avoid one list of dos and don'ts and they practice another, much shorter list of dos, but in fact may be sinning all the day long, incurring all the day long the wrath of God, because their attitudes and actions do not come from faith but rather come from selfishness. And they'll stand before God and God will say, 'I don't know you.' 'But I was in church, but I didn't do the list, but I did the list that you told me to do.' And he'll say, 'But you did it outside of faith.'"
And that's moralism, and moralism does not save. It does not save.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 43:55
Please don't think that this cannot happen to you just because you're in this church. Paul wrote the letter to the Thessalonians when he says, "When I could bear it no longer, I sent that I might know your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor would be in vain." Among churchgoers, "Satan is primarily in the business of replacing vital faith with mere morality," and much of our discussion has centered around that. Are you with me today? "He loves to take a life flowing from happy confidence in God and turn it into a perfunctory religious regimen. Don't let him do it, for whatever is not from faith is sin, including religious activity. The real battle of life is not fought at the lowly delta where the river of our inclinations flows into action, but at the high, less accessible spring of faith. If the stream doesn't start in the spring of faith, it does not matter where it flows, it will issue in sin."
Therefore, this is why the proverb says, and I close, "Keep your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life." There's a lot to contemplate regarding sin, these four things specifically, and it is not bad, contrary to what you might have been told, it is not bad to contemplate your own life. It's important that we do.