See We Do Nothing to Cause Our Brother to Stumble

I had wanted to mention any announcements, and I didn't, so I want to make sure I mention it now just briefly. My wife had a chance to visit with Verna Newby earlier today, and she says a big hello. So hello from Verna Newby. And also, she does appreciate visits, if you have a chance to go there. She's at the Delta Sutter Valley Hospital there at Antioch, and I will put the address over there on the table. I'm not sure how long she'll be there. Her son James is coming to see her tonight. She is going through a difficult trial, so please do pray for her. She's been struggling, as we said, for quite some time.

So please do keep her in your prayers.

Well, last week I talked about a relationship between two beings, and two beings. And I promised they made to one another before the foundation of the world. And in this message, we talked about the fact that not only did this promise give us the hope of salvation that we have, but it also set an example for us of humility and mutual submission one to another because of Christ's sacrifice and what he was willing to do by giving up his Godhead to become a man subject to our condition and then ultimately be killed.

And today I'd like to build on this subject of submission and steaming others greater than ourselves and really thinking about others ahead of our own interests by looking at a teaching of the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans, and specifically looking at what he taught there about how we are not to judge the actions or behaviors of our brothers in the Church. And in this same context, we're also going to see a false argument that's made against observing God's law, by some, anyway, who will use this same teaching to say that. In fact, a lot of times when we go to Romans 14, and we'll get there in a moment, you might turn there, but we'll get to Romans 14 in a moment, when people go and think about Romans 14, a lot of times they will actually go and focus so much on that that they lose the larger and more important teaching.

And so by way of introduction, I want to talk about the upcoming day of Pentecost, because next week, next Sunday, we're going to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, as we've said, which pictures the coming of the Holy Spirit, which then is giving us that direction and that power to be able to prepare now to be kings and priests in the Kingdom of God.

And we keep the day of Pentecost as per instructions in Leviticus 23, as we know. It says, these are the feasts of the Eternal. And in fact, in verse 15, we won't turn there, but 15 and 16, it actually says, you know, count seven Sabbaths from the time when you bring this wave-sheaf offering, and so you count seven Sabbaths, and then later it says, count 50 days. And so we actually do that. We look at the calendar and we go through that process.

And so, you know, unfortunately, mainstream Christians do not do this. What mainstream Christians do is they count 49 days from Easter, and that's how they get Passover. So they don't count 50 days, as Leviticus 23 says, they count 49 days. And they keep the Sunday, seven Sundays from Easter Sunday as the day of Pentecost. And this year, interestingly enough, it actually corresponds to the same day that we celebrate. So that's just a coincidence.

And one of the scriptures used to justify not keeping the Holy Days, not keeping the Sabbath, is Romans 14 and verse 5. So if you go over to Romans 14 and verse 5, and I'm going to read Romans 14 verse 5 in the Living Bible. I don't have the Living Bible with me, but I have it in my notes. So I'm going to read it from the Living Bible, and I want you to follow along in your Bible and see some differences between what I'm going to read in the Living Bible and what you're going to read in your Bible. Here we go. Romans 14 verse 5. Some think that Christians should observe the Jewish holidays as special days to worship God, but others say it is wrong and foolish to go to all that trouble, for every day alike belongs to God. On questions of this kind, everyone must decide for himself.

It's a little different than yours, isn't it? But I think you see my point, right? If you are using the Living Bible and you're reading Romans 14, you're like, well, there you go! All those strange people in the United Church of God meeting in this strange place up here in the garden center, you know, as far as I'm concerned, they might say, well, all the day is alike and I'm just going to decide for myself not to keep the Sabbath or not to keep the day of Pentecost. And then if you go down to verse 14, and this I'm going to read from the New King James, you can see it also says, I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. And so some people might say, well, look at there, you know, I'm Jimmy Dean, you know, I'm on my way, bacon in the morning. It sounds pretty good to me. And so, you know, a lot of times people, you know, they'll go to these kinds of scriptures and they'll pull these out and they'll read things into them. But in actual fact, as we're going to see here, that's not what these scriptures are talking about. And so even though I really would like to talk about what Romans 14 is really getting to, we have to kind of clear away the fog a little bit from verse 5, verse 14, and verse 20 to make sure that we ourselves are not confused by that. So today we're going to talk about why Paul is not talking about God's holy days and dietary laws. And we're going to talk about what Paul is really talking about, the real point of Romans 14. So let's go back to verse 1 in Romans 14. Romans 14, verse 1. And let's read what it says and let's kind of walk through this. Romans 14, verse 1 says, receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. So Paul comes right out of the very beginning and he says something which can be a little tough to take. He says that some people in the congregation have a faith that is weaker than others. Right? And that's not us, right? My faith is better than yours. I mean, this is an interesting way of putting it because nobody wants to be in the category of I've got weaker faith than you, right? We always want to be and I have stronger faith. And so it's interesting that he would decide to start it out that way. But he does mention that context. And if we can just think about who he was writing to. He was writing to the church in Rome. This is not a little church, you know, kind of in the corner of the empire. This is the center of the world. I've mentioned this before. All roads lead to Rome.

This is the center of the world. And the church in Rome was probably one of the most diverse churches in terms of people's backgrounds, people's ethnicity, because you had people who would come all the way from, you know, from Turkey and Syria and even as far as India, right? People going all the way over here. And you have people, you know, who might even be coming from Spain and certainly into France and so forth. And so you had people from all ethnicities, you had people from all sorts of different backgrounds, and all these different people would have certainly, God would have been calling people from all these different backgrounds into this church area. And so this church would have been quite a diverse congregation. And you can imagine that people would be coming in, and they would be coming in with certain ideas about things, about the way things were supposed to operate. And so some would say that what he's referring here to is that, you know, these things, these doubtful things are God's law, you know, keeping the Sabbath or the Day of Pentecost or clean and unclean meats. But I think it'd be very strange for the Apostle Paul to actually refer to God's law as something doubtful. I like the way the Jerusalem Bible puts verse 1. The Jerusalem Bible says, give a welcome to anyone whose faith is not strong, but do not get into arguments about doubtful points. And so I think that's actually relevant for us because you can imagine there's a congregation and, you know, visitors come in. And we've had visitors practically every week.

You know, I'm looking around and see if we have visitors today, but we typically will have visitors every week. They come in and they're coming in with their worldview, right? They're coming in with their whatever, you know, home they grew up in, whatever faith or faith tradition they grew up in.

They're going to come in with all of their hopes and fears and doubts and so forth. And, you know, they're going to share those in our congregation. And they might say, you know, that there's some hidden planet, you know, or the world is flat, or they might say that. And I'm not trying to put these things down, okay? I'm saying people come in and they have ideas. And they're going to share those things. They're going to say, you know, I think that we should keep the Sabbath based upon the new moon's schedule.

And so you can have a Sabbath on a Thursday. And, you know, I think we can have, you know, whatever it might be, they're going to share those things. And so, you know, I think Paul is sharing with the Romans here that whoever comes in, receive them, you know, recognize them, you know, welcome. It's good to have you here. And if they come in with different ideas, don't get into disputes over these doubtful things, but welcome them in the faith.

And we also then begin to get an idea that he's not necessarily talking about somebody who's been in the congregation for 20 years and saying, well, that poor person that had been in the congregation for 20 years, their faith is so weak, right, he might actually be talking about people who are coming in new, who are new in the faith. And so this new and weak, you can begin to make some connections between these two.

And so if somebody is new in the faith, if their faith is not strong, you know, that can happen to us. We can all be going through various trials at different times that shake our faith. And so, you know, our faith can go like this too, right? And so we might be susceptible, we might be in a difficult time in our lives where our faith is shaken.

And if our faith is shaken, we might be susceptible to all sorts of different ideas, and then we start talking about those, right? And then, you know, we start getting into disputes with other people in the congregation or into these discussions. And Paul's saying, don't do that. Don't do that. So that he's really setting the context for what is going to, what's going to follow after this, these disputes over doubtful matters. And so, in verse 2, it says, for one believes that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables.

And so he's now going to get into a very specific issue that he's seeing. And most commentaries and biblical scholars don't believe these verses are referring to dietary laws of clean and unclean meats or pork and shellfish and so forth. I'll quote one, just as a reference, W.J. Coneybear and J.S. Housen in their book, The Life and Epistles of St.

Paul on page 530, says, vegetarians were likely members who feared lest they should eat meat which had been offered to idols or was otherwise ceremonially unclean so that they abstained from meat altogether. So, according to Coneybear and Housen, these vegetarians here were not vegetarians you might meet where you work. These were not people who were thinking about health concerns. These were not people who maybe had a health issue and they weren't eating meat for that reason.

Very likely these people didn't have a problem eating meat per se, but they were so concerned about the fact that that meat could have been sacrificed to an idol that they did not want to eat meat for that reason. Because what would happen is the people would come and they would bring the meat to the temple, they would offer it as a sacrifice, and then they would take the meat and then the temple would resell the meat.

And so you wouldn't know whether that meat had been offered to an idol and it's just been resold or whether that meat had not been offered to an idol. And so these people would decide that they just weren't going to eat meat at all because they just didn't want to have the risk that they might be eating meat that was offered to an idol or before an idol.

And so the context here, again I'm quoting Coney Bear and Housen, is those people who were concerned about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Today some consider being a vegetarian a better way of living. And they see examples like Daniel and his three friends who were taking me before Nebuchadnezzar and some would argue that they were just vegetarians period.

My kids went to a 70 Adventist school and most of the functions were vegetarian, where they just served vegetarian food because a lot of 70 Adventists are vegetarian. And there's nothing wrong with being vegetarian per se. And so we also don't want to read in here that vegetarians are weak in the faith.

That's not what he's saying. He's talking about something very specific to the people in Rome because, again, think about Rome, right? You are at the center of pretty much all of the idol worship of the empire. And that's what the concern was here. So if we continue, it says, let not him who eats despise him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has received him. And then in verse 4, who are you to judge another servant? To his own master, he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. And so Paul tells us that we should not be judging another man's servant. We should not be telling...and this really is telling us that, you know, we're not here to sort of pass judgment on the person who's sitting next to us, right? You know, I'm really surprised they ended up doing that, you know, I'm really surprised. I'm really disappointed, right? Or, you know, did you see him? He just went and bought that meat. He didn't ask any questions. He didn't ask any questions at all, whether that meat had been offered to an idol. He just took it. I mean, can you believe that?

That's so cavalier with God's way, right? That's what he's saying is, don't get into that kind of judgmental attitude or approach. And that's really where we're going to see is kind of the core piece of this. And so then we get to verse 5, which we just read, and I'm going to read it now in the New King James. One person is steams one day above another, another is steams every day alike, let each be fully convinced in his own mind. So if you're with the translators of the Living Bible, you might construe this to be indeed the Sabbath or the day of Pentecost or other these types of days. But the question you have to ask is, if he really meant to say that, he could have been more specific. Colossians 2 verse 16. Let's go over to Colossians 2 verse 16 for a moment.

You can keep your place there in Romans. Paul was specific when he wanted to be specific, and we've gone through Colossians 2.16 before, where Paul just came out and talked about concerns about judging one another over how a Sabbath day was observed or a new moon was observed. Colossians 2.16 says, therefore, let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. So Paul, and again, we've talked about this context here about the way in which we are observing these things. We are not to be judged. But if Paul wanted to be specific about that, he could have mentioned it, and he chose not to. So why would Paul say he delights in the law of God?

Why would he say the law is holy, just, and good when, in actual fact, it's really for us to decide sort of what's right and what's wrong. If we go back to Romans 14 verse 5, I want to read a quote from the Expositor's Bible Commentary. Expositor's Bible Commentary, this is, their positions are generally aligned with mainstream Protestant thinking. So whenever I use a commentary, I always keep in mind kind of what their biases might be. But I'm just going to read from the citation regarding Romans 14 verse 5, because I think they make this very clear.

This is on page 146. It says, even so, if the day of worship is in view, that is, if this is a Sabbath or a holy day, it is strange that any believer could be said to consider every day alike.

The close contextual association with eating suggests that Paul has in mind a special day set aside for observance as a time of feasting or as a time of fasting. And so, you know, the scholarship here of Expositor's Bible Commentary is really just one of many that will point out, verse 5 is in no way referring to a Jewish holiday, but is rather referring to a special day of feasting or fasting that might have been set aside by some sort of local custom.

I find it especially interesting that the Living Bible, which was translated in the 1970s, might even have been the late 60s, comes up with that, but the New Living Translation does not.

So when they did the New Living Translation, they backed off that kind of commentary.

So given that Paul and the New Testament Church kept the Sabbath, that they used holy days as markers for time, and I'll just give you a few references, and if you want to write in your Bible next to verse 5, you can also write these in. Acts 27, verse 9 speaks of the Day of Atonement. He was marking time by the Day of Atonement. Acts 18, verse 21 speaks of the Feast of Tabernacles. 1 Corinthians 5, verse 6 speaks of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

And then if you look at Acts 20, you'll see the Feast of Pentecost mentioned extensively.

So there's lots of holy days in the Bible that are used to mark time, and even again, even the scholars here will point out that the close juxtaposition or close approximation, or proximity to verse 2, would indicate that verse 5 is really referring to days of feasting and fasting. Verses 7 through 13 really gets into the crux of what we're saying here, but let's read verse 6 here, we'll just stay in the flow. He who observes the day, and again now we're understanding is a day of feasting or fasting, observes it to the Lord. And he who does not observe the day to the Lord, he does not observe it. He who eats eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks, and he who does not eat to the Lord, who does not eat, and he gives God thanks.

And as I said, verse 7 to 13 gets to the crux, which I want to get to here in a moment.

But let's go to verse 14 now, and let's read this again in context.

I know, and am convinced by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Now some would say, again, this is that key verse that says that you can have your your bacon in the morning and so forth.

But again, we just need to dispel some of these things so we can get to the to the main point of the message. So the key is to understand in the New Testament there's two concepts for the notion of unclean. One refers to something that is unclean that is not intended to be used for food.

There's actually a word for that in Greek called Athratos, a-k-a-t-h-r-a-t-o-s.

A-k-a-t-r-a-o-t-o-s, a-k-t-r-o-s, and this is referring to something that is unclean, like an animal.

And the second concept of uncleanness is something that's ceremonially unclean. Gentiles, for example, were considered unclean. Nobody was thinking about eating them for food, but they were ceremonially unclean at that time. And the word in Greek that was used there is koinos, k-o-i-n-o-s.

And we see that word koinos used in Acts 10 verse 14 when Peter had his vision.

And he says in response, he says, I've never eaten anything impure, koinos, which is a ceremonial impureness, meat offered to idols and so forth, or unclean, a-k-r-a-th-r-o-s. So he had not eaten anything ceremonially impure or also anything truly unclean. He had not eaten shellfish or river fish or these types of things. And so what's being referred to here in verse 14 is this koinos.

This is something that's ceremonially unclean. He says, then I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing ceremonially unclean of itself, but to him who considers anything to be ceremonially unclean, to him it is unclean. So some people really at that time had an issue with the possibility that meat might have been offered to idols. Now, if it had been offered to idols, there's instructions here that would tell us that you shouldn't have that. That was ceremonially unclean. But if you didn't know and you asked and they said, you know what we don't know, basically Paul's saying, that's okay. It's okay. You know, you can have that. But some people would say, no, that's not okay. And he's like, don't have disputes over these doubtful things.

Don't get into that level of detail with these people. It's just going to leave you, lead to problems. It says, yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, that is, you know, here you got this meat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with food the one for whom Christ died. Do not destroy with food the one for whom Christ died. Therefore, do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore, let us pursue the things which make for peace, the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things, indeed, are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine, nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. And so this is really his point. Let's not cause offense to our brother by taking these things that were offered to idols or saying, well, you know, you're observing this fast day, which really is, you know, not important to do, or you're observing this day of feasting. It's not really important to do. I've spoken to people who've questioned why I observed the Fourth of July. What does it mean to observe the Fourth of July? I'm thankful for the United States of America, but some people feel uncomfortable observing the Fourth of July. There's all sorts of things. Why do we observe the day of Thanksgiving? And where does that go back to? And what was the original thing behind Thanksgiving Day? What was the original thinking behind the Fourth of July? And why was that day chosen?

Wasn't it the Second of July when they signed it? And, you know, there's all sorts of things you can start getting into around these sort of practices. So we'll have a little bit of time during the open mic. You can think about your questions around that. But again, I wanted to kind of go through some of those, but I want to use the time I have remaining to really go back to verse 7, because a lot of times we'll focus on what it's not saying instead of what it is saying. So let's really think about what Paul is saying and what this means for us. For none of us lives to himself verse 7, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. And this is an important concept here, because sometimes we can feel like we're on our own. Sometimes we can feel like, well, you know, I'm making my decisions here, and this isn't impacting others, and you know, God has given me free will for a reason. But in actual fact, our decisions, our lives, are intricately bound with one another. And they're bound with one another here in this room, not because, you know, we're married in some way, or we're, you know, somehow connected, like, you know, I'm going to show up in Mr. Tucker's house every day, right? That's not... But we're bound one to another because we have God's Holy Spirit, and so we are all part of the body of Christ, and therefore we live and die in Christ. And as we live and die in Christ, we have a responsibility to one another and to God.

And this is basically his framework. We're here because we're called. And in verse 8, he says, For to this end Christ died, and rose and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. And why do you judge your brother? So if God died for us, if we are living our life in Christ, why would we judge our brother because of these things? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. That is, I am going to have to answer to Jesus Christ and God the Father at that time. You are going to have to answer at that time. We'll all stand before that judgment seat. Now, we understand that we're being judged now, right? And so we have a responsibility to to God the Father and Jesus Christ right now to live a life worthy of the calling that we've been given. And some, we don't know, who are with us, they might answer at a different time.

And some maybe came in amongst our midst and were never part of us. And then they'll be in the second resurrection and they'll answer at that time. The point being that we all individually answer for our actions. And I want to read something out of the Phillips translation because I like the way that they put that. Verse 10 here, it says, why then criticize your brother's actions?

Why try to make him look small? We shall all be judged one day, not by one another's standards or even our own, but by the judgment of God. It is written, as I live, said the Lord, to me, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God. It is to God alone that we have to answer for our actions. Therefore, let us stop turning critical eyes on one another.

If we must be critical, let us be critical of our own conduct and see that we do not we do nothing to make a brother stumble or fall. This is really the point of what he's trying to share. So how would this apply to us? How would this apply to us?

Let me give you just a few examples to think about. A simple example might be in our dress, how we dress. For women, the use of jewelry.

Many years ago, my wife and I visited a man in prison.

If you've ever been on a prison visit, it's kind of scary. You go there and you wait in line, you wait in the waiting room, and you put in your ID, and then you go through various levels, and then you get in front of the glass, and the other person comes.

Anyway, we were having this visit, and the person remarked that my wife was wearing jewelry.

This person told us that he felt that that was wrong for a woman to wear jewelry.

We said, well, okay, we don't necessarily consider that way, but we respect your concerns.

And what we did was we noted that when we would visit that man the next time, that my wife would not wear jewelry. Why do we need to do that? This man was interested in the church. He had asked for a visit. We had gone there to see him. Why do we need to put this in his face on the second visit or the first visit? So that's love. I'm not going to judge the man why he said that. Maybe he had a difficult experience early in his life. Maybe at some point in the future, God would make it clear that maybe he needs to study that topic more.

So that's perhaps a simple example we can all hopefully relate to. We obviously have had questions around how one another we keep the Sabbath. That's a classic we've talked about, right? Some people might think it's fine to go get some ice cream on a Friday night, and other people think that's commerce, right? And so we need to respect the fact that if we're staying with someone's home and we recognize that they've prepared a nice meal and they don't really feel comfortable going out, we just don't say, hey, I'm going over to Baskin and Robbins to get some ice cream. They might be like, well, okay, do you really have to? Can we just...

But where it gets a little bit more tricky is when we get into things like, let's say, generational differences. Generational differences get to be much more sensitive.

Right? So, you know, what somebody who has lived a long life, you know, let's call them aging baby boomers or the silent generation, right? You have a certain life experience, and you might see a young person, maybe a millennial, even a Gen X-er like myself, and you might wonder why they're doing the things that they're doing.

And sometimes you might forget that when you were young, you know, sometimes you made decisions that weren't that smart. And in fact, maybe this young person is much farther along than you are when you were that age, but you've forgotten because that was 50 years ago, right? Or whatever it is.

And so it's sometimes easy to look at a younger generation and say, you know, what about, you know, have you heard their music or have you seen what they're wearing or have you seen what they're saying or how they're, you know, and so it's easy to begin to judge across generations. And if we're younger, it's also easy to feel judged by an older generation. It's also easy to say, well, man, they, you know, they think they're so smart, right? They think they know it all, you know, why are they coming down heavy on me, right? And so that now we're getting a little bit more sensitive, right, about what might happen in a congregation. So if we, you know, are a little bit older, we need to recognize that a younger generation, young people in the church or young adults, they might be going through things in their life that might cause them to make decisions that are poor decisions, maybe even decisions they'll regret later in life. But that doesn't mean they're not converted.

That doesn't mean they're dumb. It just means they're learning and they need an opportunity to fail. And if you have a relationship with that person, well, then it's perfectly fine to talk about that, right? But if you don't, then don't go there. It's not your job, right? They will stand before God, as is described. And, you know, if you think about ethnic or family differences, right, we all have different backgrounds. We come from different life experiences.

Many here are immigrants. Many people grew up in Midwest states, right? We have different life experiences depending on the families we grew up in. And the thing that we often just don't realize is that we are unique in our way of seeing things, in our way of viewing things. And so what may be perfectly acceptable for us may be unacceptable for someone else. I had this experience. We ended up on Memorial Day. We went over to a KOA here near south of Half Moon Bay. And I was unhooking the trailer. And the man next to me was, you know, in the campsite next to me said, hi, how's it going? And I was like, who are you talking to? You know, I mean, because here you don't necessarily walk up to somebody, right, and do that. That's kind of like, hey, you know, like, are you going to rob me? Or, you know, I mean, I'm just not used to that, right? I'm like, oh, he's a very friendly man, you know? Okay. And then I realized that's kind of the that was kind of the vibe in the KOA.

It was kind of a friendly place, you know, you walked around, you nodded at people, you waved at people. And I thought, oh, I kind of like this. But, you know, depending on where you're from, that may be unusual for you. And so, you know, we may consider somebody to be rude because they don't say hello, because they don't wave, because they don't, you know, they don't say anything to us. And so we, what a rude person, you know? They didn't really get brought up very well. I wonder what their parents missed, you know? So we can, you know, even something simple like that. So you can imagine the Romans from all the different places they came, the languages they spoke, the way that they interacted. This must, this Roman church must have been a really interesting congregation, a real melting pot of different people and life experiences. Music, movies, right? You know, how people, you know, think about the kinds of movies that they watch, the kinds of music that they listen to. You know, sometimes a real beating tone, you know, with it might come across strange to some people, other people like are really getting into it, right? So, you know, there's all sorts of different ways that people kind of think about their life experience. The point is here is Paul is attempting to pull all of these questions about who people were into perspective, that they should not have disputes about these doubtful things. And if you think about Paul himself, right? Paul himself was a murderer. He was a murderer. So, you know, he, in his own background, he persecuted the church before he was converted, and he had to repent of that. He had to change.

And, you know, people in the church had to give him the opportunity to change.

And we in God's church need to give each other the opportunity to change, the opportunity to grow, the opportunity to be different. You know, the Tim Peberth of 1985 is not the Tim Peberth of 2019, right? I hope you don't judge me by the way I was in 1985. I hope I don't look at you and say, well, I remember, you know, so-and-so in 1992. And you can't believe what they did in 1992, right?

We don't want to live that way. We don't want to judge one another in any way, shape, or form like that. So Paul is digging deep into how God is working with each one of us, each one of the people there in the Roman Church, and he's asking hard questions about how we should love. You know, when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 about love, if you really read it, it's actually fairly corrective, right? You know, you might think you're really smart in this. You might really think you've really got this together, but really, without love, none of this really matters. When we are not dealing with our own sin and we're not working on our own relationship with God, then we'll be at risk of looking down on others and to start to judge others and to fall in a trap. Paul is admonishing these people and us to change our views on judging others, that we have to stand before God individually, as we've read. So we, as a member of God's body, of the body of Christ, we are not to judge one another, but we are to respect one another. We are to esteem one another greater than ourselves, even if we might do something. Even if I might do something, you find kind of strange, right? And hopefully, at some point, we have enough of a relationship that we can just ask if, you know, hey, I noticed this. It doesn't mean that we let somebody go off and, you know, go off into oblivion, right, and just let them do something that's completely inappropriate. But the point is that if we don't have the relationship, and that's why we're building these relationships with one another, to be able to do that. And so I hope that this is helpful as we think about what Romans 14 is talking about, that we can have a good discussion around it. Again, the point is we should not be focused on what it doesn't say, right? It doesn't talk about the Holy Days. It doesn't talk about clean and unclean meats. But what it does talk about is how we relate one to another, that we all will bow before Christ, and we will all live before Christ, and we need to live in a way that is according to God's laws, and according to the way that He would want us to live, and that we will make mistakes. And when we make mistakes, it's not time to be judged by somebody else or to judge others. And I hope they find that helpful.