Gooding, David: 8 - The Magnitude of the Gospel

It has been a great pleasure for me to be with you in these past weeks. Particularly pleasurable has been your cooperation in the question times afterwards. I have felt that often your questions and contributions have been the more profitable part of the evening. It is an exceedingly happy thing when we as Christians feel free enough with each other to expose our ignorance by the questions we ask, and are humble enough to seek the help from one another that we so much need. I'm sorry that the limited time has so often made it necessary for me to make broad statements that really ought to be qualified and explained in more detail, but then to attempt to expound even the leading themes of a major epistle like the Epistle to the Romans in eight weeks is, of course, in some sense attempting the impossible. Now, I just hope that this series of meetings, particularly for those who are younger, has, if it has done nothing else, stimulated their interest in this epistle. The maximum benefit you will gain from it, I am sure, will be if it leads you to go away and yourself read this carefully in the presence of God and wait on him for his personal instruction. Now, tonight, shall we read some verses from chapter fourteen? Chapter fourteen. Beginning at verse one. But him that is weak in faith, receive ye, yet not to doubtful disputations. One man hath faith to eat all things, but he that is weak eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth set at naught him that eateth not, and let not him that eateth, eateth not judge him that eateth, for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? To his own Lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be made to stand, for the Lord hath power to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above another. Another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. He that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, for he giveth God thanks, and he that eateth not, unto the Lord he eateth not and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end, Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? Or thou again, why dost thou set at naught thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, as I live, saith the Lord, to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God. So then, each one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not therefore judge one another anymore, but judge ye this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way, or an occasion of falling. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself, s- save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. For if because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of, for the kingdom of God is not in eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that herein serveth Christ is well pleasing to God and approved of men. So then, let us follow after things which make for peace and things whereby we may edify one another. Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of God. All things indeed are clean. Howbeit it is evil for that man who eateth with offense. It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth. The faith which thou hast, have thou to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth. But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith, and whatsoever is not of faith is sin. The Lord guide us in our meditation on his word. For this last study of our epistle to the Romans, I wish to pick out two leading themes that are to be found in the final chapters. Namely, what God and his salvation have to say to the Christian community. His concern for that community's welfare, its peace, togetherness, and harmony. And we shall find that God's care for the individual and the sacredness of his personality is a something that is not unlinked with this other problem, the problem of the peace and harmony and togetherness of the Christian community. Now, last week we were seeing from chapter twelve, God pleads with us by his mercy to give him our bodies and our minds. And one of the ways in which this self-sacrifice is expressed is in our being willing to give ourselves wholeheartedly and fully to the particular tasks that God has meted out to each one of us. There are, of course, general duties, and the second half of chapter twelve and the whole of chapter thirteen are given over to describing these general duties that fall upon us all alike. We are all to love one another. We are all to be diligent in business. We are all to obey the state. We are all to be exercised, to make no provision for the flesh, but to put on the Lord Jesus. But in addition to these general duties that come to us all, there are specific and particular tasks. We are members of the, of a body, says the apostle, and we do not all have the same gift, but each a differing gift. And along with the gift that God has given you comes the faith that you will need to do that task, and comes the ability that you will need to do that task. It's no good my trying to do your task. I haven't got your faith, and I haven't got your ability, and it is a positive mistake for any of us to think that we've got to make ourselves like somebody else and do exactly the same kind of work that he does, or else we are no good. That is quite a mistake. Every single member of the body is different, each of them valuable in his own right. We are asked not to conform ourselves to someone else, but each to discover his own God-given gift and to give himself to the doing of it. As we do that, we shall prove that God has given us the faith necessary to the job and the ability necessary to the job. And what is more, as we found last week, we shall find in experience that as we do our own particular task for the Lord, the very discipline involved in that task will, by God's wisdom and grace, turn itself into a means of furthering our own personality, our own spiritual development. And it is on that line of God's interest in us as separate individual personalities that I want to begin our study this evening. It is one of the most delightful things about God that he is interested in the individual as an individual. Not one is forgotten before God. How the Savior loved to emphasize it, didn't he? Two sparrows sold for a farthing, five sparrows for two farthings, the odd, uh, make weight sparrow thrown in for a bargain, even that one is not forgotten before God. The very hairs of your head are numbered, the Savior used to say. Giving us to see something of the tremendous greatness of God. So far from his greatness me- meaning that he hasn't time for us little folk. His greatness means he is so big that he can compass all of us and all of us individually, so big he is. So is his capacity for detail. And God himself will stand up, and does stand up in his word, to protect against all comers the sacredness of the individual's personality and moral judgment. Religious people have not always seen that. It is possible for religion of one kind and another, instead of developing people's personalities, to crush them. So let us come to this chapter fourteen and try and gather what it is all about. It deals with this basic problem that there are many things in life over which scripture has not given explicit rules and guidance. In the ancient world, the things, uh, that were prominent in the discussions of the early Christians were things like this: should you eat meat, or should you be a vegetarian and eat only herbs? And should you keep the Sabbath day, or shouldn't you keep the Sabbath day? Should you drink wine? Was it wrong to drink wine? Should you drink only water? What happened if an unconverted man asked you to go to dinner? Ought you to say, no, no, I, I don't mix with the world, or should you go to dinner? One hundred and one questions there were then, of course, and are still, in which the Bible has not laid down any explicit rule or regulation. In that, the Bible is very different from the Jewish books. The Jews, as you may know, were not content to have the Old Testament. They wrote for themselves various commentaries on the Old Testament, and one in particular that gathers up the wisdom of the ages, so to speak, called the Talmud. It is full of rules and regulations that the rabbis down the centuries made for the Jewish people. They weren't content for the Bible to say you shall do no work on the Sabbath, for instance, but they wrote a whole book to try and tell you exactly what was work and what wasn't work. How far you might carry a parcel on a Sabbath day, uh, without its being work, and how far you, uh, you would carry it so that now would become work. Uh, they weren't content with the Bible injunctions in the Old Testament that you were to guard things from getting defiled. But they wrote whole books on it to tell you exactly what defiled this, uh, and what defiled that. And in the end, they produced so many rules and regulations that nowadays they fill thirty five volumes, thirty four volumes to be exact. Some of those volumes numbering up to seven hundred pages apiece of rules and regulations. No wonder the Lord talked about, uh, these Pharisees who taught as doctrines the commandments of men. And no wonder Peter described it as a yoke of bondage put on the necks of their fathers that they could not possibly bear. And yet, you know, there have been Christian folk who have wished that the New Testament would have done for us, uh, what the Jewish Talmud did for them. Many folks, when they have been perplexed about whether they ought or ought not to do this or that, have wished that they could turn up a, a verse in the Bible that told them exactly what they might do and what they might not do in any one given particular situation. I'd like it to be like a, a brochure that you get from Ford's, if you can get one from Ford's ever, um, along with your new car, if you can get a new car from Ford's. You know, where you want to know how do you change the bulb? So you look up page so and so, and ah, there it says it. How do you change the tires? You look up rule number so and so, and there it says it. Many of us, I suppose, in our lazier moments, have been tempted to think, wouldn't it make life so much easier if we had a rule for everything you had to do in life, we could be sure of the Lord's guidance then and know exactly what to do. And wouldn't it be desperately dull? And in the end, wouldn't it defeat the very object that God has set his heart on? For God has set his heart not on making us like machines, but in developing us as people. Not saving us from ever having to use our minds and moral judgments, but rather making us use our minds and our moral judgments. Not saving us from having to make decisions, but training us to make decisions. For God is not after machines. He is after producing human beings, real personalities with a will and a mind and a moral judgment. That doesn't do things automatically, but does things intelligently with thought and with free moral choice. Anything less than that would not be human. But of course, since God is after that, since he has left so many things open to our decision, it does mean that not all Christian people will always come to the same decision all the time. In early Christianity, for instance, one man thought you could eat herbs, and another man thought you oughtn't to. One man thought it was wrong to drink wine, desperately wrong to drink wine. The other man saw no, uh, difficulty in it at all. Either of them, of course, would believe in getting drunk. One man would hold you oughtn't to touch it at all, and another man would hold it was perfectly normal. What were these Christians to do when genuine Christian believers sincerely came to different opinions over these different matters? The word of God is exceedingly clear. Him that is weak in faith, receive ye. God hath received him. You receive him. Wherefore receive ye one another. The word of God is clear and direct. This at least is not left to our preference or our own decision. This is told us we must receive such a one. Even when we do not agree with his judgment. And it is interesting to notice which way round the Bible puts it. It isn't telling the, uh, um, weak man to receive the strong one. It's telling the strong one to receive the weak one. Curious, isn't it? The strong man has faith enough to see that it is perfectly all right to eat meat. You don't have to be a vegetarian. The weak one, possibly brought up in Jewish circles, has a conscience about eating meat or certain kinds of meat. And because he was brought up from his babyhood to believe this, this conscience lingers with him, and he has a bad conscience and a niggling feeling if he were to eat meat. The strong man is told that he must receive the weak man. Him that is weak in faith, I judge to be the right translation, not him that is weak in the faith. Him that is weak is in faith, too weak in faith to dare claim his liberty in Christ and go and eat the meat. Nevertheless, says the Word of God, you are to receive him. In what sense receive him? In all that fullness of sense in which God has received him. Indeed, we are to receive him on that very basis, for we are told God has received him, therefore you receive him. It would be too bad, wouldn't it, if when God received a man, we weren't prepared to. Should we not be making ourselves out to be holier than God? It is a very curious thing, isn't it, that from time to time there have been people that have made themselves out to be more holy than God. The most notorious instance of it were the people who lived in the time of our Lord. You might have asked a half a dozen Pharisees and more what they thought of Jesus Christ, and they would have all told you that they were much holier than he was. He went to be the guest of publicans and sinners. He appeared to break the Sabbath. He did this and he did that that they disapproved of. Many of them, I say, would have regarded themselves holier than Christ. Of course, their supposed holiness was completely bogus. It wasn't true holiness. So that if ever we should find ourselves appearing to act or think in ways that suggested we were holier than God, and we were not prepared to receive people that God has received, then we do well to question our thinking, if it makes us out to be holier than God, then it's we that must be wrong, our brand of holiness bogus. In what way receive him? Receive him not to doubtful disputations. In other words, reception has to be wholehearted, not everlastingly on the man's barrow, niggling at him to come round to our point of view. Not in order that we might have endless debates on the subject, but receive him and allow his spiritual progress to proceed naturally under God's good guidance and leading. And then receive each other. Both sides over these matters are warned against the sin that they will find easiest. The weak brother. He hasn't faith to claim his liberty in Christ, and therefore he feels it wrong to eat certain kinds of meat, it may be. He feels he must keep the Sabbath, and so forth and so on. This weak brother, his tendency will be to judge the strong brother. He will say, isn't it awful? You know what Mr. So-and-so does, and he actually ate a piece of beef. His tendency will be to judge the strong brother. The strong brother, on the other hand, his tendency will be not to judge the weaker brother, but to despise him. Oh, he'll say, oh, bother the man. Why is he so pernickety? Oh, why is he so little-minded? All these little things he bothers about, and they're so unimportant. Uh. And in his criticisms, there's a hint, isn't there, of the fact that he despised this narrow-minded man. And both sides are urged to remember that receiving men as God receives them means that the weak must not judge the strong, and the strong must not despise the weak. For God, when he receives us, oh, how great is his mercy. He is prepared to receive me as I am because I have trusted his Son. And not judge me and cast me out if I do not come immediately up to his pattern of behavior. Nor to despise me in my blindness of my slowness at learning. He receives me first and teaches me afterwards. And then Paul gives us various other considerations. Why I should refrain from despising the weak brother, and the weak brother did, uh, refrain from judging the strong brother. Why mustn't it be done? Well, first of all, says Paul, for you to judge another Christian in this kind of matter is sheer impertinence. Let it be said, and let it be said again. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? It is not godliness, it is impertinence. Well, if I came down to your factory where you pay the employees and started criticizing the men and told them what to do and what not to do, I fancy you'd soon be on my barrel, wouldn't you? If I came into your home one of these days and I started chastising the children and ordering them to bed or telling them not to do this and telling them to do the other, uh, presently you would have a word in my ear, wouldn't you, and say, now look here, old fellow, we're delighted to have you in our home, but please, you must understand, if there's any direction and training and chastising of the children to be done, we will do it. We're the child's parents. We'll thank you not to interfere in something that is nothing to do with you. Oh, what spiritual busybodies we do tend to be. With our own shoulders so heavily laden with the responsibility of judging ourselves, we somehow find it much more attractive, don't we, very often, to judge other people, and it is positive impertinence against the Lord. It isn't godliness. And in the second place, says Paul, to his own Lord he standeth or falleth. In fact, don't you be so sure he's so weak as all that, because the Lord can make him stand anyway. He might in the end make him a more brilliant Christian than you are. Do be careful in your judgments, won't you? But in the second place, says Paul, one man esteemeth one day above another, another man esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. You will notice, won't you, the tremendous emphasis on the individual's own personal decision. This is the valuable thing. God doesn't want us making up other people's minds for them. He wants each man to make up his own mind, to be fully assured in his own mind. You see, what God is trying to do, as I said before, is to build into us a strong, healthy moral judgment. Judgment. So that I will be able to reach godly, God-fearing decisions myself. Why, if other folks are always going to demand to do my deciding for me, in the end, instead of helping me, instead of helping me to grow up, they leave me a spiritual infant. I wonder if you've ever been in a home, and in this home perhaps there are two boys. One is six, he's just had about nine months of school. The other lad is ten, he's been at school now five years, he thinks he's almost learned it all. And you're there, and uh, six-year-old after tea is telling mum and dad what he's learned. He's been discovering the mysteries of two plus two, two plus three, marvelous things. And he's trying to spit it out before dad, and dad's saying, now come on now, and uh, what's two and two? And six-year-old is doing some meditation, and he's making it five, and he's making it three, and he's making it minus eight, and everything under the sun. And And father's was being very patient with the laddie. He's working this sum out, you see. To him it's a great difficulty. But ten-year-old, oh, ten-year-old, he knows it all, and he can't resist the temptation. He wants to tell, you see. There's a little chap saying, now, now, two and two, oh, it's five. Oh, he wants to say, no, no, no, you're wrong. See, he knows. And Father, of course, Father doesn't despise the fact that ten-year-old knows what Johnny well ought to know, anyway, but he doesn't want ten-year-old telling six-year-old. What good will that be? You'll see. Six-year-old's got to learn to do, to work it out himself. If he doesn't learn to work it out himself, but when he gets a grown man and out in this big world by himself, he'll be utterly at a loss, won't he? Sometimes we're tempted, with the very best will in the world, to make other people's decisions for them, and we fail to see that we're doing them a tremendous harm. Oh, of course, we've got to give them godly guidance, and I'm far from saying that young folks can do without shepherding. Of course, we have to give them guidance, but in all the guidance that we give, oh, let us see to it that it's the kind of guidance that is guiding the person concerned to make his own decision for himself in view of the facts, and enlightened by the word of God, so that his own conscience does the work on the thing, and he comes to his own decision. One can see young folks come up to a university from situations where they have never been allowed to make up their own minds. Is it right to play tennis, or isn't it right to play? Is it right to do this, or isn't it right to do that? Instead of being allowed to come to their own reasoned, personal, conscientious decisions, they've just been, um, made to conform by the pressure of group psychology. And then, alas, when they get on out by themselves into the world without mum and dad and the elders near them, they have never learned to take a real moral decision for themselves. And the pressure of home being removed and not having any moral stamina and decision-making powers themselves, they are bowled over. It never was their personal conviction anyway. They never saw the reasons for it. It was merely the other man's point of view heavily enforced. And there are tremendous dangers there. God is preparing us for the great responsibilities, not only of this life, but of eternity. And not God himself will write a book where all the details of life are headed under rules so that we have no choice. He would destroy the very thing he's trying to produce. He wants us to learn to make the decisions. Isn't that so? You fathers here present. If your six-year-old wanted to come and help you do the garden, well, of course, you might say I have to keep a six-year-old on a right tight rein here because he'll be pulling up the crookses if we're not careful. So you might expect him to come and ask you every five minutes what to do, wouldn't you? But you would be heartily sick if your twenty-year-old son came in every five minutes and asked you what to do. You would expect a twenty-year-old son now to be able to make decisions himself in the light of what he knows about you and your general desires and your general principles. And a twenty-year-old boy that would need your explicit, personal, vocal guidance every little inch of the way wouldn't be a man, he would be an infant. We mustn't expect sort of guidance out of the blue all the time, may we? For this very reason that the Lord wants us spiritual grown men and women and not infants. Any more reasons? Yes. Uh, it says next, he that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, for he giveth God thanks. And he that eateth not unto the Lord, he eateth not and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord, both the living and the dead. Now we turn our attention from the man himself to his Lord. And the Lord expressly forbids us to judge this good man because he wants to be the man's Lord. That's why. Doesn't want me to be the man's Lord. He wants to be the man's Lord. For that reason, the Blessed Lord died and rose again, because he has his heart set on being that man's Lord. There's not a thing actually in life that that man does, but what the Blessed Lord Jesus wants the man to do it as unto the Lord. Really so. And you will observe that Paul is not preaching spiritual license, do as you like, kick over the traces. He's not encouraging young folks to take no notice of their seniors and just go gaily and do as they please. No, no, the very reverse. What he is wanting is that every one of us, instead of living carelessly, shall live every moment to the Lord. And that not by, uh, mere wordage, but in all reality. Now, because that is the scheme, then the Lord wants it that the Lord shall be the controller. He wants us, each one, to take each, uh, detail of life, each decision, major and minor. And as best we know how, the light of his word, in the light of the Holy Spirit's guidance, in the light of any advice we like to seek, but in the end he wants us to make up our minds with this predominant motive. Now, I think this is what the Lord would want me do. Oh, my brother, you don't do good, you do harm. If you step in here and override that man's decision, and he does what he does, not really to please the Lord out of conviction that this is what the Lord would have him do, but he does it because you make him do what you want him to do. You may think the result is much better. It might even be that according to your lives, what he does because you tell him to do it is the right thing in itself. It might even be that. Take this matter of meat. You might tell the man, now there's no harm in eating meat, eating meat, you do it, and he does it because you make him do it. Or it might be the other way around. The man might feel it quite perfectly all right to eat meat, and he could eat meat to the glory of God, but you think it's wrong for him to eat meat, and you insist that he refrain from eating meat. All right, then to please you, he doesn't eat the meat, and you say, there, he's done the right thing now, so he hasn't eaten meat. Oh, but my brother, you may have gained one little thing, but you have lost the biggest thing. Instead of the man pleasing the Lord. Now he's pleasing you. And that isn't a very clever thing to have done. One of these days, may I say it with all due respect? One of these days, you'll be wrong. And the man, because you've got him into the habit of doing what you say, will do what you say, and he'll be wrong. Whereas you ought to have trained him in the last analysis to be guided by what he feels the Lord would have him do. Do it. This is the last barrier, so to speak. But God shall have his control. If you break that as a habit, you have opened the possibilities to all sorts of regrettable things. Because that is so, my good brother, when it comes to things like this over which scripture hasn't explicitly stated, but deliberately leaves it to a man's individual judgment, I'd rather the man get the answer wrong, but in all honesty get it wrong because he really feels that he's doing the Lord's will, than I would have him get the answer right, as you may think it, simply because you tell him what to do and he's obeying you. Actually, in many of these things that the apostle later goes on to tell us, you can't say there's a right or a wrong in it. Doesn't matter what you do. You can eat if you like, or you didn't eat if you like. The big thing is whether you've done it to please the Lord. Whether you have done it in faith, with a clear conscience before the Lord. Or you can do a thing that in itself is right, says the apostle at the end of this chapter, yet if you don't do it in faith, then for you it has become wrong. Then one final consideration along this line. I mustn't interfere. I must let my brother make his own decisions before the Lord, so the Lord controls him. Final consideration along this line is this. Why then does you, do you judge your brother or set him at naught? We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God, Christ, if you like, for as it is written, as I live, saith the Lord, to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God. We have one day to stand before the La- Lord's judgment seat. The account we shall render will be for ourselves. Everybody must give his own account. The issue at stake is whether we have or have not obeyed the Lord, live for the Lord. That is so solemn, my brother. You cannot afford, in the last analysis, to act otherwise than to please the Lord. Won't do in that final day to say, well, Lord, I thought it was all right to do this. I believed you wanted me to do it, but brother so and so and brother so and so said I mustn't. That won't do. The Lord might say, but would you obey brother so and so before you'd obey me? Because we must give account to the Lord for ourselves, and in these things it is the Lord whom we must obey. So does God hedge around the individual's personality and his right of private judgment and his responsibility to exercise his moral judgment. This is an exceedingly important part in his spiritual development. We are not to judge, but then the second paragraph says we're to judge ourselves in this respect and to come to this kind of judgment. Let me read again verse thirteen. Let us not therefore judge one another anymore, but judge ye this, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way or an occasion of falling. If I'm going to judge, says this paragraph, if I may paraphrase it, let my judgment be based on true values. You say, what do you mean by that? Well, in your relationship with your brother, as you look on your brother, what is the most important thing about your brother to you? I am to judge this, that I mustn't stumble that brother. I mustn't occasion him to fall. I mustn't do anything to a- get him to act against his conscience. It doesn't mean I'm not free to join in discussion with him and he with me, and to talk over things in the light of God's word, to see what God's word does say. We all need our consciences constantly regulated in the light of God's word, just as our clocks need to be, um, regulated against Greenwich Mean Time or whatever it is. The clock doesn't tell the truth unless it's, um, regulated according to the standard time. Nor do our consciences tell the truth or give us the right guidance unless our consciences are regulated by the word of God. But never at any time may we go against our conscience. And if I make a brother of mine go against his conscience, I am destroying the most valuable thing in that brother. I'm destroying that watchdog that God has put in that man's personality. But when the man is going to do something that is wrong, or he thinks is wrong, the watchdog comes out to bar the word. But what a mercy it is we've got a thing called conscience. Why, if we had no conscience, if our conscience by constant disobedience or flagrant defiance of God and his word were to become seared, there isn't any sin that we wouldn't be capable of. You know, I have an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are funny things. Sometimes, if you're not careful to adjust them to, and they're funny things to adjust, uh, uh, but uh, if you're not careful to adjust them to the appropriate hour when you get into bed, they'll have the ghastly habit of going off at some mark like half past five in the morning, stupid things. So you have to adjust them. But they have another funny habit. If on Monday morning the thing, uh, goes off at half past seven and you don't take any notice. Well, then, uh, Tuesday morning it'll go off again, a- and you don't take any notice. By Saturday morning, the old alarm clock has developed the habit of going off without letting you hear it. Have you ever had that experience? In other words, if you defy the old alarm too many times, you, you'll get into the habit of not hearing it. And if we defy conscience too many times, we shall get into the habit of not hearing it anymore. There isn't anything we couldn't do. It's a terrible thing to do to a man, to weaken the force of his conscience. Regulate it, yes, if you can, but do let him turn the hands, won't you? Don't you do the turning of the hands for him. Do let him turn the hands so that it goes right according to the word of God. Regulate, yes, but never make him go against conscience. For a man without a conscience, how is he better than an animal? Why, he's worse, for an animal has a, has a, has a inbuilt mechanism, but a man without a conscience is a variable ship without a rudder. I mustn't stumble him, therefore, and if he be weak, I must be very careful how my, how I use my liberty. I must do it discreetly. And I must judge on this basis that my brother and his spiritual welfare are valuables far exceeding any temporary pleasure of mine. And then I must have another attitude to life. If I'm going to judge, well, judge this way round. What is the chief thing about Christianity? What is it all about, my brother? What would you say? What are the marks of true holy Christian living? What are the things that we are aiming at in our ministry, in our prayer meetings, in our Bible readings? These are the things. Righteousness, joy, and peace. These are the big things. Not whether a man eats carrots or, or beef steaks. Oh, how easily we could be sidetracked, couldn't we? Into imagining godliness was not listening to radio, keeping the Sabbath, not drinking wine, and all sorts of rules and regulations. Whereas the main things about Christianity are righteousness, sheer moral integrity. Possible for a man to do like the Pharisees did, keep a lot of religious rules, and yet to be far from moral integrity in the running of everyday life. And the main thing about Christianity is joy and peace. You can't judge a congregation when it's looking up at a speaker, you know, because their very effort of concentration makes them look, I dare tell you how. They say it makes the preacher look likewise. But if Christianity doesn't minister to your joy, my brother, joy, I said joy, and doesn't minister your peace, then you might be well advised to have a look at what you've got is Christianity, or whether it's another version of religion. These are the main things that God is after. If our petty rules and regulations do not promote righteousness, sheer honest goodness, and joy and peace, if they should promote, like they promoted with the Pharisees, endless disputations, splitting hairs about rules and regulations to the tune of thirty four solid volumes, as I aforementioned, then, brethren, we might well be advised to scrap it. So then, in our judgments, let our values underlying them be true and healthy. And in the end, practical rule, happy is the man that judgeth not himself in the thing that he approveth. That is to say, a man has no misgivings of conscience when he does what he has decided is right in the sight of the law. If there is any doubt, if my conscience is unsatisfied, then I can't do it by faith. Then let me not do it. Oh, what tremendous practical sense there is in it. Those of us who are younger, we do well to to take it as a can- kind of a general side post. Are you in doubt? Then if you are in doubt about the rightness of a thing, don't do it. The thing might itself be right, but unless and until you can do it in faith that it's right, don't do it. There isn't any pleasure or any task or any career or opening an opportunity that is worth the having if it involves your getting an unhappy conscience with the Lord. Therefore, we are to have patience one with another, the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak. After the pattern of Christ, and finally on this line, hear the command of scripture. Wherefore, receive one another. I shall only, uh, use my special privilege tonight in a modest amount, though by your generosity you gave it to me. The other main emphasis, as I perceive it, in the final chapters of this epistle to the Romans, is God's concern for the Christian community. For if God is concerned for the individual, God is also concerned for the community, and for its togetherness, and for its harmony. And you will observe, if you read carefully through the rest of chapter fifteen, particularly in some of sixteen, that beneath all Paul's constant outbursts of praise, there is an underlying concern about what was in his day a very difficult and practical problem. The problem, the potential for division among the early Christians. The very biggest potential lay just here, in the difference of outlook and temperament and background between Jews on the one hand and Gentiles on the other hand. You know, it's all very fine for them, more for us, to pay lip service to the fact that there is no difference, or all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. When it comes to living with people in close spiritual association, then background, and allow me to say it without offense, nationality, and temperament play a bigger part than sometimes we realize. So that we all have to keep a check on ourselves, don't we, as to whether what we're doing is indeed the word of God and his command, or whether it is my own temperament and inclination. The Jews with their special background, all their privileges, their endless rules and regulations under the old economy would find it very difficult to settle in happy church fellowship and social fellowship with Gentiles. You think of the scrupulous way the Jews dealt with their pots and platters and their laws of cleanliness and the way they killed their meat. Do you imagine a Jew being asked to a table to eat with a Gentile whose meat hadn't been killed the right way round, smelled too much of pork? Why, all the Jews past would raise up against him. You imagine a man brought up under so many rules and regulations that if he didn't do one of them, he got a sort of an uncomfortable feeling. Why, the Gentile, with his apparent carelessness of rules and regulations, would frighten the life out of him or disgust him. This was no imaginary problem. Even saintly men like James found it a very difficult one to face when it came down to brass tacks. Actually to sit at meat with a Gentile. Peter, though in his mind persuaded that you ought to do it, hadn't always the moral courage to do it because of a fear what the brethren might say. Remember the famous occasion, don't you, when he drew back at Antioch? Oh, what prisoners we are of group psychologies and pressures, aren't we? In fact, the problem was big enough so that it not only threatened social isolation, but it threatened to gnaw away at the very vitals of the gospel. As Paul saw at Antioch, didn't he? When Peter withdrew and wouldn't eat with Gentiles, Paul made a public issue of it. He didn't say, oh, well, look, the Jews have a conscience about this, and we mustn't grieve them. The Jewish Christians have a conscience about eating with Gentiles, and we mustn't grieve them, so we'll let Peter withdraw, you see, we won't make him eat with these Gentiles. No, says Paul, over this matter, Peter, you have to eat with Gentiles. Because underlying here is a very basic, fundamental principle of the gospel. There are not two levels of Christians. There are not two kinds of Christians. Jews, a special kind of Christian, Gentile, a second class kind of Christian. God welcomes all on the same grounds. Peter, if you're not prepared to eat with all, you are fouling the fundamental principle of the gospel, aren't you, Peter? How easy it would have been in those days for Christianity to be split in two right down the middle, right from the very start, and to have developed into two Christianities, one Jewish, one Gentile, and what a tragedy it would have been. Therefore, you will see Paul in his final paragraphs, quietly letting us observe how he is striving with all his spiritual know-how and grace to prevent that tragedy and to unite God's people and to prevent them dividing. And he does it, first of all, by his ministry. He talks to them of Christ. This is no mere sentiment. I say that Christ has been made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, that he might confirm the promises given unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. He ministers Christ. It is in Christ where we lose our backgrounds and our prejudices. In Christ, we all stand equal. The Jew will say, ah, there you are, though, Paul, you were always careless and loose in your way of going on. Oh, no, no, no. Christ was made a minister of the circumcision. None more loyal than he to the laws of God's word under that older dispensation. He became a minister of the circumcision, lived out his life under Jewish law, that he might confirm the promises given to the fathers. This was the valuable thing in Judaism, the promises made to the fathers. That blessed Lord who kept that law made it honorable. Let every Jew observe him going and receiving even the Greeks that came up to the feast. Let them observe him now since Pentecost, opening his arms wide to, to those other sheep that were not of the Jewish fold and bringing them in, that there might be one fold, one flock in the one shepherd. And what will the Gentiles find in Christ? Ah, they will find in Christ his mercy. Wait a minute, you exalted Jew. Will you come to this Christ and boast your attainment in the law. The great Pharisee Saul has to come and admit that if it's a question of the law, Christ has kept it, he hasn't kept it, and he must learn to depend on the mercy of Christ every bit as much as the Gentile dog. And this blessed and holy epistle affirms and reaffirms and affirms it again. This is not mere theoretical theology, that there is no difference. If God has received you, friend, he's received you on the same terms as he's received anybody else. He received you as a bankrupt sinner, wholly dependent on his mercy. In Christ, all are received alike. And Paul shows us how he would cement the togetherness of God's people by his tactics as a servant of the Lord. He's going to write to a Gentile church. How easy for Paul, as he hints himself, being an apostle, to use the big stick and to command people. There did come occasions when, as an apostle, he had to use his apostolic rod and authority and command men. But a man like Paul, whom bo- suppose, I suppose many folks would have been prepared to bow to his rod, he preferred not to use the rod. Much more concerned, as we have seen earlier, developing people's own personalities. So here he is talking to the church at Rome. My brethren, he said, I'm persuaded of you that you yourselves are full of goodness, I say, filled with all knowledge, able to admonish one another. I don't think it was, uh, insincerity either, do you? Here was Paul genuinely convicted that the saints in Rome were able to stand on their own feet. He dared trust their godliness, dared trust God's spirit in them, dared trust their gifts. It's a very poor thing, you know, when we can't trust the Lord in our fellow believer. When we think everything would go to bits if it weren't for me holding the fort and demanding my way. Oh, my brother, if you're the only one left that God can rely on, then I say in all reference, pity God. We mustn't get like Elijah, may we? And I, only I am left. For the Lord will soon rebuke us and tell us he's got seven thousand in the most unlikely places that haven't bowed their knee to Baal. We must learn to trust God's work in the other man. And God is able to make them stand. He's writing to Gentiles. He is himself a Jew. Just a little bit ticklish, isn't it? Background, personalities. How will he endear his way to those hearts of those Gentiles, that they will listen to his instruction or hear him? I would have liked to come to visit you before in, in Rome. But I have been out trekking the distant parts, taking the gospel to Gentiles. Multitudes of Gentiles will come up to God as an offering pleasing to God. I've had to be out doing the pioneer work. Isn't that how you win men's respect? Not just by demanding to have the last word and to have the say. It's the men that get up and do, and preach, and sacrifice, and work to bring others to the Lord, to help them through their spiritual problems, their moral problems, their nervous and mental problems, their material problems. These are the men who have established that kind of authority that people will respect. And finally, though there's much more to it. In this matter of getting Jew and Gentile together, Paul will not despise practical expressions of fellowship. And so he spent hours and hours and hours in the midst of a busy missionary life organizing a gift from the Gentile churches to the Jewish churches. A gift of money with which to buy food and relieve the famine conditions for the believers in Jerusalem. And what a magnificent gesture it was. It came from Gentiles. Once hostile in their hearts to Jews, that would often have persecuted the Jews in their Jewish ghettos in the mi- in the big Roman cities of the Mediterranean. Now these Gentiles, converted and cleansed by God's Holy Spirit, are reaching out a gift of LSD over the barriers of centuries to Jews they've never seen before. Oh, what a wonderful fellowship it is to be in. We have the same privilege to our brethren in Korea, in Vietnam, the world round. Oh, what a great big family God has put us in, and we have a privilege of reaping, reaching over the great gulfs of politics. God helps to do it. And war and strife and misunderstanding and the divisions of sin. To express brotherliness and concern. And says Paul, as he opens his heart to these Gentiles, I want you to pray for me. For what a big man Paul is. He's not afraid to let the Gentiles see he's worried. He's worried about his own Jewish brethren. I want you to pray that when I take that gift that I've collected from these Gentiles, many of them exceedingly poor, I want you to pray that my Jewish Christian brethren will have the grace before God not to throw that gift back in their face. There were some brethren at Jerusalem, our among us, would have taken that gift and thrown it back. We don't take anything from Gentiles. Oh wow. If then that was Paul's great concern, concern to guard the individual's personality, concerned that all Christians should learn to live together in harmony, if they were his twin concerns, the Lord promoting our breasts a similar concern. And we shall find that the two concerns are not opposed. It is precisely God's concern to guard what is unique about the individual, to give him his full individual liberty of moral judgment, to receive him as an individual respecting his individuality. It is that very concern for the individual that makes the individual possible to live together with other individuals in a harmonious whole. It is when I see how the great God of heaven not only loves me and has saved me from hell, but genuinely values me as an individual and my personality, in spite of all my quirks and failures and limitations and slow progress. It is when I see how God values me as an individual that there arises in my heart some of the love of God, and I learn to respect my brother as an individual and his moral judgment and his personality, and on such respect that grows from genuine love is built this wonderful thing, the harmony harmony of of true true Christian Christian lasting. lasting fellowship.