Love Over Liberty

Well, good morning, church family. What a joy to be with you today, especially those of you who are joining us online. Glad to have you with us today. Would love to have you in the room sometime if you're available to do that. If you have your Bible, we'd love to invite you to Romans chapter 14 this morning, Romans chapter 14. We'll be there in just a moment. Hey, Easter is two weeks away from today, all right? So I am super excited for what God is going to do here that Sunday. And again, there's invite cards on the back of the seat in front of you. We just kind of sang our theme song that we're going to have for that Sunday. And our theme that day is, it wasn't the end. And we're going to be talking about God's hope for our future because of what happened at the resurrection of Jesus. So we'd love for you to invite a friend to be a part of that day. Without using Google, does anybody know the state motto of Alabama? Except for my wife, because she leads a civic organization over here. So all right, Mike knows, okay. We dare defend our rights, okay? That's correct, sir. You win a chocolate bunny today or something, all right? So good job. How many of you did not know that? All right, yes. All of us that failed Alabama history in the room. So yeah, we dare defend our rights. It was proposed by a lady named Marie Bankhead Owens, who led the Alabama Department of Archives in 1923 when the Alabama Code of Arms was being reshaped and redesigned. She adapted it, by the way, from a poem from 1781 by a guy named Sir William Jones, often known by its opening called, What Constitutes a State?

And Jones wrote it this way. He said, men who their duties know, but know their rights and knowing, dare maintain. The main purpose of his poem is to argue that the state is not made up of walls or forts in his day or grand capital buildings like we often think about in government, but he argues that the foundation of a nation really has to do more with the character of its people. In other words, it isn't just about demanding or even defending our rights, but it's also about understanding our duties and our responsibilities to our fellow citizens, because a healthy society depends on people who practice virtue and responsibility and public-mindedness, not just self-interests, because yes, I'm afforded certain rights under the Constitution, but those rights come with responsibilities, do they not? If we aren't careful though, phrases like, we dare defend our rights, can be used for self-interest just to get what I want. Now I'm grateful for our nation, I'm grateful we have a Bill of Rights, praise God for that, that should guarantee certain protections, but the irony of a phrase that is the state motto of Alabama was also used to trample the rights of others in self-interest, justify oppression, and enforce segregation. What about the other's rights? See, rights without duties can become selfish, and duties without rights can become oppression. You gotta have both. And we're still trying to work all that out in our society. And we got a long way to go. But as Christians, how do we think about those tensions between rights, or maybe we're gonna use the word freedoms today, and our responsibilities, or our duties to one another, because the way we think about things shapes our behavior. We can defend our rights while at the same time trampling over a brother or sister.

And how I live and enjoy those rights and freedoms in the Lord has given me incredible blessing, but also there's incredible danger that we need to be careful in thinking about. Because inherently, we can be selfish people, can't we? We want what we want. But selfishness isn't acting in love, it's acting in the self's interests. Love for self. And when you take an organization made up of people from all nations, and races, and ethnicities, and cultures, and you put them in relationship to one another, they're gonna see and understand things very differently, with different perspectives. And if everyone has dug their heels in defending their rights, how will they serve one another in love? How will they listen to each other? How will they work towards the good of the other? And this was certainly one of the dynamics that Paul is addressing here in Romans chapter 14. The church in Rome was an eclectic group of people, because Rome was a crossroads of the world. You've heard the phrase, all roads lead to Rome. Literally, that was the case. Which meant that it was a multicultural, multi-ethnic society. And some in the church, the church is now growing in the city of Rome. It's amazing that the church took root and grew there.

And what you have is a church made up of some people who have a Jewish background in the church. And their story is very strong cultural and religious heritage that had to do with the Passover, and the promised land, and the law of Moses, and certain feast days, and dietary restrictions that many of them had grown up with their entire lives. Their worldview was very specific, and rooted in what we know to be the Old Testament. Yet they'd come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, but it didn't mean everything that they had practiced their whole life just vanished overnight. They still carried that narrative with them. And at the same time, you had many people in this church who had a Roman background, Roman Christians, who didn't share any of that Jewish background story. Yes, they too believed in Jesus as their savior, but their worldview was very different than their Jewish brothers and sisters, because they came from a polytheistic background with lots of temples to various gods on every corner. There were different holidays, and traditions, and even dietary ways of approaching food that were very different. And this evidently had reached an unhealthy tension in the young church that existed there in Rome. Particularly around a couple of things. Diet was a big deal if you read the Old Testament. Just read Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus. And a Jewish person, if you've ever had a Jewish friend,

it's a big deal if something is kosher or not. In fact, the questions they would have been asking in Rome would, if they go to the meat market, they would be asking, has this piece of meat been sacrificed in a temple to an idol, and then was brought down here to the meat market to be sold, and a Jewish person was having to ask that question. Like, I don't wanna participate in eating meat that's been sacrificed to an idol and defile my conscience. And sometimes they wouldn't know where things came from. Can you imagine having to go to Winn-Dixie, or, well, that doesn't exist anymore, Walmart, or Aldi, and ask, like, where is the origin of this piece of meat here? You can imagine the complexities of that. And even though Jesus had declared. all foods clean, if you grew up having ingrained in your mind that eating pork is sinful, or shrimp, or all kinds of catfish, all kinds of other things, right? You're going to have a dilemma with your Roman brothers and sisters when they invite you over for Easter lunch and they serve ham. Another tension in the church here was about the recognition of certain holidays. The Jewish calendar revolved around very specific holidays that God instituted Himself. And there were specific ways that He wanted those holidays celebrated. Take Passover, for example. But what happens when that narrative, you didn't grow up Jewish, and that narrative isn't your narrative? How does the church stay unified when the Roman brothers and sisters had other holy days when their culture, and they're trying to stay unified? What holds all of that together? What's the glue that keeps it from fracturing?

And Romans 12 through 15 is all about living in biblical community and the relationship. Paul's trying to help them navigate all of these various tensions that are going on in the church in Rome. And in particular, Romans 14 is about what does sacrificial love look like when there are places of contention or arguments that have broken out. So here we are in the text together today, Romans 14 verse 1. Except the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. Now, you know, Americans, we love to quarrel over stuff, don't we? We love to fight and fuss about everything, and the world's churches split over everything. And so a good question for us to ask is, what is a disputable matter? A disputable matter would be the things in which, like, there's not a black and white on this. It's kind of a gray area. It may be an issue where you're like, well, is this right or is this wrong? And you might say, well, it depends on the context. Like, it depends on what's going on there. And people might have different opinions or interpretations or maybe situational. But we like black and white things. We'd just rather somebody say, tell me if it's right or tell me if it's wrong. Not, it depends. That answer often frustrates us. But when Paul says there are disputable matters, it means there are some matters that are indisputable. It's a mistake, first of all, as we get into this passage today, to read every issue into the text. What unites them as believers in Jesus is indisputable, i.e., the incarnation of Jesus, the death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God. Salvation is found in no one else. Like, these are not the disputable matters. Those are the indisputable matters that we have to have unity and complete understanding on together. Those matters are not situational. Those are not the it depends matters. Paul has very specific issues in mind when he writes about disputable matters. And here are the specific issues. Verse 2, one person's faith allows them to eat anything,

but another whose faith is weak eats only vegetables because they're afraid of going into the meat market and eating a piece of meat that's been sacrificed to an idol. 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. One person considers one day more sacred than another. Another considers every day alike. 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 give 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. So notice Paul's emphasis here on who we're living for. It's not me. I'm not living for me. Jesus is so magnificent and so grand and so amazing that he can... pulled a church together of people from different backgrounds and cultures and ethnicities and different stories. Our unity isn't based on our being identical in certain position statements, but on being one in Christ. The issues may be different that we're arguing and fighting and fussing over in America in 2026 than 2,000 years ago in the early church, but the human propensity for broken community is the same. And the question here that Paul is asking them is, can you accept the other side? Paul says, verse 3, God has accepted that person, can you accept them? When one of our brothers or sisters sees the world or a specific issue differently, our tendency, at least in our culture today, is we like to place labels on people. You're a liberal, you're a conservative, you're this.

And we put people in boxes and we write them off. And Paul says, if you do that, you're operating out of individual entitlement about what you think is right on the issue and you've lost sight of the kingdom for which Christ died. Because the kingdom of God is bigger than you. And it is also bigger than whatever the little disputable matters that we fight about over. Paul says, be careful, otherwise you have inserted yourself as judge in the place of God himself and have allowed the issue, small issue, not big issue, Jesus is Lord, you've allowed the small issue to divide and split the community and fracture it. So Paul says, in your conviction, be charitable with one another. Charity is another word we could use for love here. In your conviction, be loving. Paul doesn't say the issue doesn't matter. He doesn't say that you can't maintain your position. He says we're to be graceful with one another when we see differently in the gray areas. They're still my brother and sister. They're still someone for whom Christ died. And they also want to honor Jesus in their conviction. So I can hold my conviction firmly while treating other people gently. And sometimes we get that mixed up, that we think to hold our conviction firmly means we have to be angry and forceful with other people. I'm afraid we've lost the ability to do this. We've allowed the way of politics to become the way of the church. We've allowed the poisonous way that people are treated to infect us. And we've got to repent of that. People are not to be trampled on to prove ourselves right on whatever issue is at hand. We aren't trying to own them or destroy them or embarrass them because that is not the way of love. He continues, verse 13. Therefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of

a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person, it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. In other words, this is the primary principle that governs the people of God, that we act in love towards one another. And when you have decided your right to do something is more important than you destroy the other person and you fracture the community. Now notice here in the previous verses, 13 and 14, he says, I'm convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. That goes back to Acts chapter 10 and 11, where Peter has a vision of a sheep being let down from heaven. And here's Jesus say, I've decided, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. declared all foods clean. Now notice here in the previous verses, 13 and 14, he says, I'm convinced, being fully This is where that comes from. But not everybody may understand that or get that or still wanna practice that. And so Paul says, those of you who are fully convinced, including himself, are to be gracious and kind and charitable to those people who may not be there yet. And so this is an important issue because in other words, what Paul is putting here is relationship over rights. You may have the right to do something, in this case, eat any food because Jesus declared all foods clean, but if it destroys your brother or sister in the process,

you've stopped loving and you've stopped honoring Christ. And now in your freedom, you've stumbled into a pit of sin and you drove a wedge in the body of Christ over an issue. But the primary command of Jesus is that we would love one another. We looked at this a few weeks ago. How will the world know who we live for? By the way that we love one another. And when we stop doing that, we can be right on the issue and stop representing Christ. I care about you so much and maintaining unity so much that I will self-sacrifice my rights for the good of others. Let me put some skin on this and give you an example I think a lot of people can relate to. Let's use for this morning, the use of alcohol. Scripture's command is to avoid drunkenness because when we are toasted and controlled by the spirit of alcohol, you can't be controlled by the spirit of Christ. So there's the line. But Paul doesn't outright prohibit the use of alcohol. Jesus, as often people will say, turn water into wine. Communion meal would have been using real wine, not grape juice. And many Christians see their right to drink without a problem because scripture gives that freedom. In fact, if you travel to a lot of different cultures, European cultures, especially ordering a glass of whatever is like ordering a soda. Like it's just commonplace and everywhere, not a big deal.

However, many other Christians view alcohol as a very destructive force. Perhaps they grew up in an alcoholic or abusive home and so just being around it makes them have incredible trauma because of what they've been through in their background. Perhaps they lost a loved one to alcohol abuse. And so they don't want to go anywhere near the stuff because it floods them with terrible memories. Not only that, some people know that they don't have great self-control when it comes to it and the temptation is too great so they've chosen to stay away completely. And for them, for that person to participate would be sinful. So who's right? Those who participate or those who abstain? Well, Paul says, let each of them hold their own conviction. But for those of you who feel a freedom to drink, you have an added responsibility. What is it? That if someone were to drink around them who's holding that conviction and cause them to struggle either by temptation or flooding them with anxiety and bad memories, that person who argues for freedom could say, well, there's no law against drinking. Jesus didn't prohibit it. And he or she would be correct, but if I act that way without regard for my brother

or sister or the person who struggles with alcohol, then I've stopped loving and started using my freedom to be selfish. So don't purposefully put a stumbling block in somebody else's path. Don't elevate the issue over the relationship. He continues, verse 20. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food or for the sake of whatever the issue you wanna fill in the blank with there. Don't destroy, don't upend what God is doing amongst us. because you are defending your right. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It's better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall. So whatever you believe about these things, this is interesting, keep between yourself and God. How do you do that in a Facebook and Instagram world? Because when everybody has a conviction, they want to let you know what their conviction is. The goal here is not to win you over to my position, even if I think I'm right, because you can be wrong if you want to, but I know, like, the position, right? So I've got a conviction. What is the goal? The goal is love and unity that honors Jesus. You know, Paul here never asks either side to change their position. He never says, you people who don't eat meat, y'all need to get with the program. Don't you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or this special holiday, or whatever the issue is.

He doesn't ask them to change their conviction. He says, don't let the issue be what defines the church. Remember, Jesus said, they will know that you are my disciples based on the love that you have for one another, not your position on the issue. Because the issue changes about every six months, doesn't it? The things that we fight and fuss over. Therefore, I can keep my position to myself, being content that I have the freedom to do something. But if I have chosen not to exercise that freedom because I love you too much, then Jesus gets the glory for that. You know, we often, in Christianity, can be guilty of emphasizing the rules and what we can do, what we can't do, and what people like to do is create rules around the rules on the issues that they're convicted about. And Jesus emphasizes relationship to one another. So instead of drawing lines, what if we started asking ourselves, what does love require of me in community? Because you can be correct on the issue and in your theology and be very immature. Maturity is shown when we carry out that truth in love for one another. So here's an application. You can self-restrain for others' sake. In other words, I'm not forcing you or telling you not to do or to do something, but you can choose of your own accord to say, I know I have the right or the freedom to do this thing, fill in the blank, but because I know that that might purposely harm my brother or sister in Christ, I am, for their sake, going to choose to not participate in this thing. You see what an act of love that is? You're saying that you care more about people than you care about your right. You may have the right to do something, but you also have the responsibility to choose what's in the best interest of the community. And that will frustrate some of us sometimes, because it's like, well, why do they get to

control then? Or where's the line? And we start going back and forth, and that opens a lot of questions. I realized that that's why maturity is needed. Now just a black and white answer, is it right or is it wrong? It's needed maturity, a person full of the Spirit in consideration of what's going on in the community around us. Are there going to be times where you do something that you didn't realize was hurtful to a brother or sister? Absolutely. That's why we come together and work things out and talk things through. What's important that Paul's asking us to remember is that when you stand on different sides of an issue with a brother or sister, that we are to remember Jesus died for that brother or sister. Why would I want to destroy them or cause them to struggle? More importantly, when you push your freedom in doing so, you destroy the work of God. In other words, the very thing that you claim to care about, i.e. the work of God, you may undermine if you run over other people. Because Jesus laid down His life, I've got to be with Him. willing to lay down my preferences, my privileges, and even my legitimate rights. So here's a couple of things for us to think about this morning as we wrap up. Number one, have I made the wrong thing the main thing? Man, this can be so consuming when we allow kind of the cultural moment around us to infiltrate our hearts and minds so that we take on their narrative rather than the narrative of Jesus. I can be worried so much about being right on the issue

that I've neglected or even harmed my brother and sister. Verse 13 says, stop passing judgment on one another. So we need a healthy awareness of our own tendencies. So now we're talking about your heart and I'm talking about my heart. That we start looking inside and say, when are the moments around me as I go about my day or I'm in community with other people in which I am tempted to think they are such an idiot. Why would they hold that position? They're so, and then we get all worked up and angry and then like that animosity just infects all of our other relationships. Do you see how we're allowing the cultural ethos that we live in to define? I think it's just good to say, be careful that you haven't made the wrong thing the main thing. What's the main thing? The main thing is, am I loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and am I loving my brother or sister as myself? And when do I struggle the most with poor attitudes with other people? And have I allowed the issue to become more important than the person? If so, then I've got some work to do. Number two is that we need to filter our liberties through love. Before exercising a freedom, it'll be helpful to ask,

if I do this, is this gonna cause a problem for somebody else? The American in me is taught to think that's their problem, let them worry about themselves. That's just not biblical though. Am I forcing my way to prove a point? Am I trying to spend so much time arguing with people to convince them of my position and my side? Rather, we ought to retrain ourselves to ask this question, what is the loving thing to do? And if we do that, we'll avoid a lot of destruction and division. By the way, your choice of cable news channel will not tell you to do that. You're gonna have to be transformed by the teaching of Jesus to have that in your brain. And if we do that, if we live that way, if our main objective and our main goal is how will Jesus be glorified in me and in us together, if our ethos is, yeah, I don't see it that way, the way that he or she sees it, but I can tell you Jesus loves them just as much as he loves me, and that's my brother or sister, and therefore, as a result, I'm going to accept one another, and we're gonna still love one another and have fellowship together. You know what, when the world sees that, they'll say that's something I wanna be a part of.

And that's our goal, I think that's what Jesus would want for us. If you want that church this morning, say amen. Let's stand to our feet. Amen. Lord, you know, as humans, this is a hard one for us because we're so divisive, we're so selfish, we want our way, we wanna be right, we wanna be proved right, we don't mind running over other people if it means we get our way, and so, Lord, we pray today that you would call us towards repentance, that the Holy Spirit would be at work in us, Father, to cause us to see love is the primary issue, Lord. I pray, Father, that in the gray areas, in the disputable matters, Lord, would you give us grace and charity towards one another. God, would we resist the culture that we live in that wants us to put down and destroy other people who might see things differently or disagree. God, help your church to live, to be different, Father, that we would today rise above all of the other noise, God, and that love would be what binds us together in perfect unity, and we pray this today, Father, in the name of Jesus, amen.