09-11-11 Freedom and Rules Pt. 3

We return this morning

to our study of Paul’s comments to us

about the use and abuse of our freedom in Christ.

We are studying the 14^th and 15^th chapters of Romans,

a passage in which Paul talks with us

about the rules that govern our Christian lives,

and especially about what we should do

when we discover that our rules

differ from those of our fellow Christians.

We’ve been in this study for two weeks already now,

and we used most of those two weeks

to provide us with background for the passage we’re moving into.

We have seen so far

that every one of us have our own unique rules structure in place in our lives,

rules that have entered our lives

from a number of different sources.

Some of those rules are healthy and valuable,

some are simply convenient,

and some are actually hostile to the heart of true Christian living.

Part of the growth and healing process

brought about in our lives by the Spirit of God

is that process by which He frees us from those rules

that are actually working against what He is seeking to do in and through us.

Freedom, true freedom is so different than we think it is.

Our world, of course, defines freedom

as having the right to do

whatever we want to do

without anyone infringing on that right.

That isn’t really freedom at all.

It’s simply a cultural mask for our slavery.

We find ourselves driven into all sorts of destructive behaviors in life.

We’re powerless to remove them ourselves,

powerless to break free from their domination in our lives,

and so, to make us feel a little better

about these destructive drives within us,

we fiercely wave our All American banner of our individual RIGHT

to live anyway we choose to live.

And the more fiercely we wave the banner

the easier it is for us to hide the truth from ourselves,

the truth that having the “freedom” to do something

is not the same thing as being free.

Being truly free

comes only when we have within ourselves

the freedom to walk away from those forces in our lives

that seek to drive and dominate us.

In one single, remarkable sentence

Peter perfectly captured the goal set before us in our Christian lives.

He says,

1PE 2:16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.

When correctly lived,

the Christian life radiates freedom,

the kind of freedom that draws a world caught in bondage,

wether it is bondage to immorality,

or bondage to religion.

And yet, Peter goes on to tell us

that this freedom he calls us to

is not a game,

it’s not a hiding place for all of our own unresolved bondage.

When correctly understood

it is what provides us with the ability to allow Christ to live out His life through us.

But learning how to “act as free men”

is no easy process for any of us.

We all bring our preferred forms of bondage with us into our walk with Christ,

and frequently we are so accustomed to our chains

that we don’t even recognize them for what they are

until something comes along to yank on them and show us we’re tethered.

I finished my schooling when I was 22 years old.

It was the summer of 1969,

I was staying with my parents

during the final few months

before I headed to the Island of Trinidad with The Evangelical Alliance Mission.

I remember one afternoon

I’d gone up to North City,

a little shopping community a few blocks from my parents’ house in North Seattle.

I was walking down the sidewalk

and I suddenly realized I recognized the fellow walking toward me.

His name was Stuart.

He and I had gone to the same Jr. High School together.

Now, for you to appreciate this encounter,

I need to give you a little more information.

I hadn’t seen this fellow for at least nine years,

and the last time we’d seen each other

both our worlds were altogether different.

I was one of the little kids in Jr. High.

I didn’t start growing until well into my teens,

and my voice didn’t change until high school.

And then, of course, being a classic non-talker,

I was quiet.

I survived my Jr. High years

by being the quiet little kid that no one noticed.

Stewart, on the other hand, had been huge in Jr. High.

He’d grown early,

and then, too, he’d repeated a grade or two.

And he was mean,

he smoked,

he said all sorts of bad words,

he got into fights behind the gym,

and he was as far from me on the other end of the Jr. High social spectrum as he could get.

And now, here we were,

after nine years,

meeting as adults.

One of the first things I noticed

was that I was bigger than he was.

In fact, it didn’t appear as though he’d grown at all in the past nine years.

He recognized me too,

and we stopped there on the sidewalk and started talking.

He was still living right there in North City,

still smoking,

working, as I recall,

at one of the gas stations.

He was remarkably warm and friendly to me.

He laughed about those “crazy days of Jr. High”,

those days when Stewart was the undisputed ruler of the kingdom.

He obviously wanted to talk -

he wanted friendship.

And as I listened to him

I began to realize

that Stewart’s life had peaked out in Jr. High.

Can you imagine a more tragic life

than one that peaks out in Jr. High?

That’s like saying, “Well, the best three years I ever lived were those three years I spent in Hell.”

He asked where I’d been,

what I was doing,

where I was going,

and then, after few more minute of conversation on the sidewalk

he suddenly said,

“Hey Larry! Come on...I’ll buy you beer...”

And that, of course, is where everything came to a screeching halt.

I was a “Missionary”,

preparing to go to the “Mission Field”.

I didn’t drink beer,

and I certainly didn’t go into taverns.

We parted ways,

and I never saw Stewart again.

And my brief contact with him

simply reconfirmed what he certainly already believed,

that the good news of Jesus Christ

is mostly about keeping the rules,

something Stewart knew he could never do.

If I could go back and live that moment over again

I’d answer differently.

I’d say, “Hey Stu, I’m free all afternoon. Ya, let’s find someplace to talk.”

All he really wanted was the hope of some answers,

and, even through the fog of my religion,

I think he was able to see something in me

that made him think I might have been able to help.

1PE 2:16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.

OK, so far in our study of this passage

we’ve seen that we all begin our walk with the King

with a mixture of rules within us.

Some of them are just pure religious facade.

Some are precious protective fences

built into our lives by the Spirit of God

to guard us in those areas where we are weak.

We’ve seen, too, that no two believers ever have identical sets of rules.

And then, as we entered this passage,

we heard Paul telling us

that we are not to pass judgement on the rules of others,

but rather, stronger Christians

are to support and encourage the ones weaker in faith.

And, as long as I’m continuing to offer random introductory thoughts here,

I’m going to toss one more into the mix

simply because I find it fascinating.

We saw two weeks ago

that Paul begins this 6^th principle

in verses 1-3 of Romans 14

by telling us that, if we are truly maturing in our walk with Christ

under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,

we will see a pattern forming

in which our rules are being replaced more and more by our ability to hear and follow the voice of our Lord in our lives.

True Christian growth moves us away from rules and into relationship with God Himself.

But I want to add one additional qualification to that truth.

Given what I just said,

you might then think

that the absence of rules in a person’s life is proof of Christian maturity.

And it is not.

It is not the absence of rules that indicates maturity,

it is the growing ability to hear and trust the voice of our God.

The truth is,

the two most opposite forces in existence

can both bring about a loss of rules in a person’s life.

Both love for and submission to Jesus Christ

and rejection of Him and rebellion against Him

will remove rules.

With the first, the rules are replaced by the voice of God Himself,

resulting in a higher degree of righteous living.

With the second

the rules are thrown out

in an attempt to deal with the guilt and shame that immorality always brings.

Now, in our remaining time this morning,

I want to take us through the first 12 verses of Romans 14

so that we can see how Paul develops his major principles

in this whole business of freedom and rules.

And the easiest way for me to do this

is to give you the basic outline of the passage.

We have looked at the first 4 verses already,

but actually the first 5 verses fit together as a unit.

Paul opens the passage by stating the first basic principle he wants us to grasp:

ROM 14:1 Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions.

Stronger Christians

are to use their strength

not to gloat in their freedom,

but rather to hold up and protect their weaker brothers.

Then, just so that there can be no misunderstanding about what he means,

Paul takes the next 4 verses

to offer 3 practical illustrations

right out of the life of the early Church.

Illustration #1:

ROM 14:2 One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only.

ROM 14:3 Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him.

Now, folks,

this has nothing to do with eating red meat as opposed to being a vegetarian.

Paul was talking here

about a common practice in the Roman religious world.

The most popular Roman religions of the day

involved the worship of a number of idols and Roman gods and goddesses.

Part of this worship involved

the worshipers bringing a bull or a lamb to the temple of their chosen god or goddess,

and having the priest offer it as an animal sacrifice.

But then, following the sacrificial ritual,

the meat from those sacrificed animals

would be taken down to the marketplace and sold.

And, from Paul’s comments here in Romans,

it appears as though there were times

when the only meat available

was meat that had been sacrificed to idols.

And I suppose people would buy the meat

that bore the stamp of approval

from their favorite idol.

Your choice was to buy that meat,

or else go home with vegetables only.

Now, there were some Christians who looked at that whole false religious world of the Roman Empire,

with its idols, and weird little gods,

and saw it as the scam it was.

To eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols meant nothing to them

because they knew the idol was nothing but wood and stone.

Their knowledge of the truth

gave them a freedom to know

that a good steak is just a good steak

and it’s good because God made it that way.

But then there were others in the church

who had come to Christ from a deep involvement in that whole world of idol worship.

They knew exactly what he meant

when Peter said,

1PE 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

They knew the darkness of their former life all too well.

They knew the fear, and the power,

and the futility of the demonic lies that once held them.

And now, even the thought of associating themselves with anything from their former life

was not an option.

If it meant they ate vegetables only for the rest of their life,

then they would eat vegetables only

and praise their God for the freedom He’d brought into their life.

And Paul’s instructions to both groups were clear.

To the brother for whom the whole idol thing was a big joke,

Paul is saying,

“Your brother who came out of that past

doesn’t need your theology lesson

about how there is no such thing as an idol.

What he needs is your praise and encouragement for the new life he has chosen in Christ.”

And to the brother who wouldn’t touch that meat for anything,

when he sees his brother next door

firing up the barbecue,

Paul is saying, “You are not their God. You may not understand their freedom,

but recognize that the boundaries God has given you are yours alone.

You are not the moral policeman of the world.

Don’t destroy your friendship with them

because their rules differ from yours.”

And when we bring this back to the 20^th century

the fundamental principle is the same.

Every one of us have things in our lives

that trigger the emotional memories

of the lives we lived prior to our union with Christ.

Some of those things have caused us

to build protective fences,

personal rules that guard us from getting pulled back into those traps.

What may be nothing to one Christian

could be the doorway to agony for another.

For one Christian it may be a bottle of beer.

For another it may be a decorative crystal dangling from a string.

For another it may be the sound of a computer connecting to the internet.

The things that trigger the emotional memories of our former bondage

are as diverse as we are.

And Paul’s instructions to us are simple.

First, enjoy your freedom in Christ,

trusting His Spirit to live His life out through you

in just the way that fits your uniqueness,

delighting in the knowledge that you have not been called to a set of rules

but to the living God Himself.

Second, where you are weak,

in those areas where the vulnerability of your flesh

has made it necessary for the Spirit of God to draw some boundaries in your life

that He has not drawn in others,

trust Him,

and listen to Him,

and know that those special rules

that are yours alone

are given as an expression of His great love for you.

And then, third,

stay ever alert to the emotional triggers

in the lives of your fellow believers.

And when you find them,

use your strength,

and your love to guard and protect them in the areas where they are weak.

You do not have to make their rules your rules when they are not around,

but when you are together

know that their protection is infinitely more important than the exercise of your freedom.

We didn’t get to the other two illustrations used by Paul,

but we’ve gone far enough for today.