The efforts and prayers of my week reach a fevered pitch every Sunday morning around 11:20 am. I enjoy prayers, Bible reading, and music with my spiritual siblings prior to that time; but as 11:30 approaches, my heart beats faster, my palms get sweaty, my internal prayers become more excited and often terror grips me. You would think that I am about to stand before thousands to give the speech of my life, but no, I am just getting ready to open God’s Word, the Bible, up to a small group of people that I love dearly and who (at least I suppose) think the same way about me for the most part. “Why the stress?” you might ask. “Have you not been doing this for several years now?” In this specific assembly it has been about 8 years of this every week. “Will it ever get easier?” I do not know, but really that does not matter. The trembling comes with the awesome fear and joy of opening up the very Revelation of God and with Divine authority declaring, “This is what God says!” to God’s people who have God’s Spirit and God’s favor upon them. So yes, I am terrified to preach. “Why do you do it?” Because God’s holy grace demands it. He has chosen weak people (not to mention foolish and often sinful) to expound the eternal and living truths of who God is and what He wants. How can you say no to God and retain your sanity?
In my short experience of preaching God’s Spirit-empowered Word to God’s Spirit-enabled people for the past few years, I have discovered some things are easier to preach than others and some things are harder to preach than others. Sometimes it is difficult to preach the Word of God because the text of Scripture is hard to understand. Sometimes, it is hard to preach a sermon because you are acutely aware of your own obvious defects and sinful choices and you feel like a hypocrite for that hour. Sometimes it is hard to preach a text of Scripture because language and often translated phrases have muddied rather than clarified the original intent. Sometimes it is hard to preach a sermon because no one wants to hear about the topic of the text and it is rather offensive to everyone’s sensibilities. And sometimes it is hard to preach a text of Scripture because 2000 years of church history, national and cultural differences, religious offshoots abundantly confusing matters, varieties of expositors with their equally various opinions, hardened traditions and ways of thinking, family backgrounds and loyalties to institutions and feelings of comfort in the “way it has always been done” make it difficult to preach a text of Scripture. This last sentence is why I have primarily struggled preaching the text of Romans 14 and 15 as I make my way through this important Apostolic letter on Sunday’s at Grace Baptist Church. To be honest with you, I have found Romans 14 harder to digest and present than the clearly offensive railing against moral depravity in Romans 1; the linguistic intricacies of Romans 4,5, and 6; and the issue of Divine sovereignty in Romans 9,10,11. It has not been the content of God’s Word that has made preaching this text difficult, but rather the certainty that I have had that every time I will be speaking these next several weeks, someone is sure to misunderstand, misrepresent, or misapply the teachings concerning Christian liberty. I am not blaming God’s church and his people, by no means! Rather I am thinking out loud as to how 2000 years of history since the penning of this Biblical letter has changed the cultural, political, intellectual, and theological landscape necessary to properly understand and apply this Biblical literature.
To put it succinctly (I know you think I jest by even typing the word “succinct”), if only the issue today was meats vs. vegetables. As society has marched on, how Christians interact with society and culture has grown complicated. This is not to say that it was not complicated in the first century. We have a lot of New Testament Scripture which points to this debate and struggle of the early church to make appropriate applications to their life in Christ with their life in the culture (social, familial, geo-political, religious, etc). Romans 14 and part of 15 is about their early interactions with culture as now citizens of heaven while still citizens on earth (and the issues that go along with that -e.g. meat vs. vegetables, holy days or common days) and our interactions with our culture as citizens of heaven and citizens on earth and the issues that accompany that relationship. And yet, Romans 14 (and 15) is not really about that! It is not a source to determine what we should or should not do, what practices are acceptable for Christians, what the latest “hot-button” issue is and where we stand on it. But Romans 14 and 15 is a beautiful text of Scripture with the Apostle pleading to the Assembly at Rome to welcome your brother and sister to yourself with warmth, compassion, and joy. This passage of Scripture is about how we interact and connect with one another in the church when we disagree and are tempted to quarrel over our various opinions, personal standards, traditions, and cultural mores.
The question is not, “Will Christians within the holy assembly disagree and argue over secondary doctrines and practices?” But, “Will the local Christian church exhibit the aroma of their Triune God through their gracious and brotherly interactions with one another even when they differ on these tertiary points of possible (often) contention?” Christ seems to think it important that the church be unified and loving in its relationships among each other. It is what he prayed for with his last words in the Garden. But when you preach or write about unity, two voices seem to loudly (metaphorically speaking) roar from the floor. The one voice decries “unity” as compromise and softness-there is to much of a pursuit of unity and what we really need are militant separatists to take the mic. This voice demands unity on almost all points of possible disagreement. The other voice that echoes in the chamber is the one that complains that there is no unity in the church, and we need more unity by putting aside our denominational and doctrinal differences. The first is a “separate over what seems like everything,” the second will separate (or so it seems) over nothing. Hence, it is difficult to preach such a passage because metaphorically speaking, it feels like you have to preach above the sound of these two opposing positions on the pendulum. And so I have found myself at times trying to be careful to walk the thin line of balancing doctrinal and orthodox purity and upholding the principle of separation from those who would undermine the faith with that of pursuing peace, unity, brotherhood, and mutual acceptance of those with whom we might disagree. Which also is undermining the faith if the non-eternal, tertiary issues are the focus.
So what are we to do? Well, I am doing my best in preaching expositionally through Romans 14 and 15. In my sermons, there is much that I have not said that I should have; and much I should have not said, but I did as I am preaching these texts. You can listen for yourself and make your own judgments (www.dgministry.com). So now we come to the end of my ramblings and I can finally explain the point of this blog post. I am writing a series of articles that will address areas that I believe are some of the greatest hindrances to obeying the command for the church found in Romans 14 and 15–Receive one another! What often stands in the way of our receiving one another is our own immaturity and sinful pride, yet even more specifically, certain out-workings of our pride and immaturity have a devastating effect on our willingness and ability to welcome one another warmly. So I apologize. I am sorry that this long rambling blog post was merely a way to introduce these series of articles. I hope that you will read the next several posts as I hope they have far more valuable content than this post.
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