Food and the food. can be a problem. Anything can be a problem. The essence of sin is Excess. going out of bounds.
The temptation that Eve faced in Eden was based on food. There's plenty of food there. She went out of bounds. The temptation that Daniel and his friends faced in Babylon, food, the first problem they had was the menu. Then there was the first temptation.
that our Lord faced in the wilderness, and it was about food. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio.
specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Romans chapter 14 with this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Romans chapter 14. Every time we finish a chapter, I really lean on the Lord. Do you want me to do a topical or something in between?
And so far, for the last year or so, it's been you're right where I want you to be, and we're considering. Diets, days, and judgments. Verses 7 through 9, Romans 14. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself, For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.
For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again. that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
Now in the thirteenth chapter Towards the end. He said, let us walk properly. And then he added, Not in strife.
Well, he's going to deal with strife in this chapter. Be it food or holidays, or church policies, whatever. May we guard against becoming those who create strife where it it certainly doesn't belong. Do cynical Christians know they're cynical? Would they recognize themselves in Romans 14 or other sections of Scripture?
Well, when I asked the question, I said to myself, well, how about me? Am I cynical? Am I one of those people? It's a good thing to do from time to time, to examine yourself, It's better when you can find someone else to blame. Verse 1.
Receive one who is weak in faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things.
Now, verses 1 and 2 are going to take some time because there's really a lot here. When he says, Receive one who is weak in the faith. These are fellow wrong Christians. The ones that he's targeting It's not that there's a doctrinal difference, it's that they are doctrinally wrong. and he's calling them weak.
This particular problem he's dealing with. You can hear Paul's Tone is annoying. He's annoyed at this. He's had to deal with it. All of his apostolic life, and what he's dealing with is Judaism.
The New Testament form is legalism. The weak or the feeble in the Greek. doctrinally or majoring in the minors. This does not mean that they were not Christians. They were every bit Christians.
Weakness and wickedness are not the same thing, although The devil will exploit weakness when he can find a Christian without armor. He's going to take shots. And he's going to do damage because they have no defense. And they will fall prey to his influences a lot faster than the one who is on guard. These that he is addressing, the weak ones, habitually Fail to tell the difference between outward appearances and inward attitudes.
They see something, they don't like it. and therefore it must be wrong. And the motives are wrong too. This is what they were doing here in the church. At Rome and other churches too.
He'd been dealing with this in Galatia already and in Corinth, much of what he's talking about here. And to make matters worse, The speculating cynics think that they were the stronger ones. and everybody else was weaker. They criticized, again, based on short-sightedness. You hear these things You have to say, Lord, I don't have to do these.
I don't have to be guilty of this. I can avoid this. I can be so focused on serving and obeying and loving even the unlovable that I don't fall prey to the petty things, and the petty things cause big fires. How great a forest a little fire kindles When may we escape error? He says, but do not despise, pardon me, but not to disputes over doubtful things.
Don't argue. They were arguing their opinions, the doubtful things, things that really had no basis. And unsubstantiated speculations. First Timothy, Paul said, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes. Rather than Rather than godly edification, which is in faith.
And so Paul dealing with it later when telling Timothy, I know you got these problems in the church, these people are going to argue minutiae. Watch out for them. Don't get sucked into it. It's so easy to get sucked into it, so irritating when the other guy is wrong. The Apostle identified him again.
as weak and therefore wrong. He also wrote to Timothy about those who were doing the same things that he's addressing here in Romans, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm. Again, do argumentive people know they're argumentive?
Well, now we're going to really start opening it up in verse 2. For one believes He may eat all things. But he who is weak. eats only vegetables. Where in the world would Paul get such an idea as this?
And I'll get to the vegetarian part in a minute. Relax. If you're a vegetarian, you're not. Targeted Unless your doctrine's messed up.
Well, where would Paul be able to say? that it's not about food.
Well, Mark chapter 7. This is Jesus speaking. He says, Whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him. What comes out of a man, that defiles him.
Now, he said that before there was a church, a such thing as the church, there was the synagogue. The church had not, the New Testament church was not born yet. And so he's sowing seeds already about the church that's coming. In his teachings. And the Jews hear this.
Wait a minute, what are you talking about? It's not what interests them. If I eat pork, I'm defiling myself by what I took in. But Christ is going deeper than that. They're not yet ready.
And that's why the apostles, when they heard him say these things, they asked him, What are you talking about? We pick it up in Mark chapter 7. In verse 21, Because again, in verse 17, his disciples asked him concerning this parable, and he goes on to say. For from within Out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness. an evil eye.
Blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.
So he's not undoing the law. But he's getting ready to introduce a higher law, the new covenant. And it is higher because if the older one was higher, it would not have needed to be phased out for the new to be phased in.
Now the mature Christian could eat whatever you want.
Well, there's a limit to that. There are laws in Christianity. You cannot Eat your neighbor. Mm-hmm. Cannibalism is not well, you know, all things are edifying.
There's limits. Colossians 2.16.
So let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath which. or a shadow of things to come, But the substance is Christ. It's about Jesus. It's not about dieting.
Well, got a lot here to go. move forward, but he who is weak eats only vegetables.
Now these are not Today's vegetarians who have an aversion to eating animals. These are the Jews that were not eating meat. And there was a reason why they're in. These are the Jews in the Gentile world, they believed. The laws concerning clean and unclean animals were still in force.
Therefore, Rather than break the dietary law of Moses, they ate nothing but vegetables, because where they lived, all the meat that was available came through the Gentiles. At least. Yeah, a majority of it. And in Rome, the Gentiles. And again, Corinth had the same issue.
Because the meat that was sold in Some of the pagan markets were first offered to the pagan gods. Making, according to the weaker Christians, whoever bought and ate that meat. Guilty by association. and breaking the law of Moses. Also, since the meats were not properly slaughtered according to the law of Moses.
No upstanding Jew would have any of that. And Paul battled this a lot.
Now the Gentile converts They came into Christianity smouldering with paganism. They were sod with paganism, and they had to learn to get out of that. When the church wrote, the church fought over this. What are we going to do with these Gentiles coming in, and they're offending the Jews? They're eating things with blood, they're doing this, and this is they practice polygamy.
This is a problem.
So the church met about this, to get to the bottom of it, and their conclusion was to the Gentiles that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourself from these, you will do well. Farewell.
Well the things offered to idols. It would is what the problem was here from blood. And I don't think anybody should eat blood, but because let's stay focused on this. From things strangled, that goes back to the law of Moses. When he mentioned sexual immorality, well, it wasn't that it was permitted in the church because the Gentiles were coming in, but here's how it was working out.
Many of the Gentiles that were getting saved were polygamists. had two wives or more. had children from those wives. Christianity comes along and was not saying, well, you have to be monogamous and split the family. That is not what Christianity was going to do.
It had to work within that world. and at the same time begin to change it. And they did. They succeeded at that. But in those early days, they had to work.
They couldn't tell somebody, oh, well, you're a polygamist, you can't be saved. The Jews that were weak in the church. Where Paul was writing in Rome, eating only vegetables, they were esteeming. Moses' law over the freedoms in Christ And those freedoms in Christ are not lawless. Christianity is not a lawless religion.
or faith. Very much, there are rules we follow, and in many ways, it is more difficult. I'll give you a quick example. It's one thing to just take a Sheep down to the temple of God and have it slaughtered, and say, Well, there, I worship God.
Now, I don't want, I'm not trivializing that, but in contrast to the Lord saying, love your enemies. That's pretty heavy. Many Greeks and Romans believed evil spirits attached themselves to the meat.
So that when one ate meat, The evil spirit could invade the person's body. And so, to combat this, to remove the evil spirits, they would sacrifice their animals. to their gods. and their gods would bless the meat. and they would be protected.
Well, we don't believe that. There's no basis for that. That's superstition. The meat was served at the temples to the gods, but there was a lot of leftover meat. and so they sold it in the market place at discount prices.
And a Christian would say, man, the prices, they're great. I love steak. I love burgers. And I'm going to go there and I'm going to buy my meat. And that's, again, what Paul deals with to the Corinthians: meat's nothing.
But there were those that were making it an issue. And so, the immature Christians, because they were holding to Moses' law and not understanding their new identity in the new covenant, they were a problem. Food can be a problem. Anything can be a problem. The essence of sin is.
Excess. going out of bounds. The temptation that he faced in Eden was based on food. There's plenty of food there. She went out of bounds.
The temptation that Daniel and his friends faced in Babylon, food, the first problem they had was the menu. Then there was the first temptation. that our Lord faced in the wilderness, and it was about food. And so the weak Christians caused trouble in the church based on food because Satan knew that he would find someone that would help him out. to break unit cohesion.
to cause to disrupt Uniformity is more important than unity.
Well, unity is very important. Uniformity not so much. Unless we're talking about truth, of course truth must come before unif before unity.
So they were weak. because they made food an issue only Over faith. That's what irritated Paul. Not because of an aversion to eating animals, but because they made it a faith issue when it was not. Jesus delivered them from this.
And they were going to Drag everybody else in on it. The folly of linking diet to deity. Mosaic laws on Clean and unclean food was given to keep the Jews separate one from another, or from not one from another. That would. That wouldn't work.
But from other people's. They were a distinct people, and we've covered that. In Leviticus recently, and Balaam's blessing over the Jews How they were a distinct people.
So don't reduce your witness to diet. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that saves, not what you do or do not eat. 1 Timothy 4. Verses three through five. Paul again talking about those in churches causing these problems, commanding to abstain from foods which God created.
to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe And know the truth. He's talking about New Testament truth, believing in the Messiah. For every creature of God is good. and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving. for it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.
And that's one reason why we pray for our food. Can you imagine the look on Paul's face the first time he had? Shrimp. or barbecued pork, Like, this is really good. I'm loving this New Testament Christianity.
Anyway, again, he classified them as feeble. because they did not trust the fullness of the new covenant. They were trying to mingle in the law of Moses with the work of Christ, and that's what Judaism is. Christ had to show Peter, slay and eat. What I've created, don't call it unclean.
This is a new covenant. And the church slowly learned it. And Paul is the one that articulated it. more thoroughly than anyone else. Uh w as far as volume goes, because the the Well, if you had to keep score, James did less.
What Paul and Peter and John. They were on it. Peter stumbled a few times over this very thing. Verse 3: Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats.
For God has received him. Stop the food fights. That's what he's saying. it became so intense the vegetarian Christians held the carnivore Christians in contempt. because they figured their meat was defiled.
How dare you go to the temple? That meat was offered to idols. And the response was. I didn't offer it to idols. It's just meat.
And they were right. Jesus again said, Not what you eat, they counted with, yeah, well, Moses says. That is Judaism in a nutshell. That was the bane of the first Christians. until Gnosticism came along.
and sort of shoved Judaism out of the way. As more Gentiles came into the church and less Jews were in the church and the temple was eventually gone, Gnosticism became one of the great problems in the early church.
Nowadays, it's not meat, but some other taboo. that drives contention. That breaks up the unity and the cohesion, that brings condemnation, and wrongfully so, unfounded. Guilts by association. There can be guilt by association.
Paul says, I don't want you to have fellowship with demons. But there can also be unfounded guilt by association, and here's an example. Here's an example of rushing to judgment, being cynical of somebody. and being short-sighted at the same time. This 2024 blasphemous Olympics that we've been observing.
Upon learning how its overlords went out of their way, to blaspheme Jesus. What do you say? about a Christian athlete that remains in the Olympics in spite of that. Do you say that they're sinning? What if they counted with I will remain.
And I will witness in the midst of darkness. This ain't me. I find it as blasphemous as you do. But I also see a target-rich environment, and I'm not missing the opportunity to preach Christ. You see how it works?
Be careful. about judging appearances. What about the attitudes behind them? Where's the heart? You know, we saw this with homeschooling, when homeschooling became very popular.
There were some Christians just really. Ragging on those who kept their kids in public schools. And some of the parents could have had no choice. But others were like, well, that's where the battlefield is. You you know don't don't cause these divisions.
Don't put your foot in your mouth. before the Lord on matters that He is ruling over and that's why he's Lord.
Well, verse four, Who are you to judge another's servant? Mm. To his own master, he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.
So he puts them in their place. Who do you think you are? The pastor cared too much. to care. If the guilty were offended by this question, because it needed to be dealt with, because Paul knew, having dealt with it in Corinth, dealt with it in the regions of Galatia, he knew this stuff broke up congregations.
and hid the truth. And if it didn't break up congregations, it weakened them.
So he had to write to the Galatians: who's bewitched you? You began in the spirit, now you're in the flesh. Did I work amongst you in vain? He went right at them, and he was successful. Paramount is truth.
unto correction, unto cohesion. There's supposed to be a connection between these things. We don't just have doctrine so we can boast about another that I know the Bible better than you. We are supposed to strengthen the save. to reach the lost, and to resist the darkness.
That's why we want to learn the Bible. We're not paranoid. Oh, I hope I get to heaven. I better learn more of the Bible. It's the finished work of Christ gets you there.
The thief on the cross, what did he know? About Messiah.
Well, we're not told, he might have known a lot. Actually, I should not have picked brought that one up. To his own master, he stands or falls. Let God be God, let him rule. He's not applying for the job.
Faith grabs hold of that. Faithlessness resists it. And seeks to justify it. Oh, yeah, well, if God is so powerful in loving, then why this and why that? He continues in verse 4: Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.
So, Paul is saying, stop judging one another. God sustains us. You're not the only one that believes, you're not the only one that's sincere. Your church is not the only right church unless you go here.
Well, come on, we know it. Kidding, kidding is a visitor's thing. How dare you say that? Uh verse 5. One person esteems one day above another.
Another esteems every day alike, let each be fully. Convinced in his own mind.
So now we come to days, having dealt with diet. Another Judaistic favorite device for dividing. More of Moses' law. Overruling. The laws of Christ.
Holy Days. Let's use holy days to divide the church. to bring unholiness to the the surface.
So the law of Moses required the Jews to observe Sabbaths and Jewish festivals and new moons. But Christ Who those things spoke of. Who are types of the coming Messiah? After he came, and finished his earthly work uh on the cross Those things Fell away. Galatians four.
Now remember. Galatians, Romans, Hebrews are all dealing with Legalism, Judaism. The lack of trusting in the new covenant. And it was running wild in the days of Paul. Galatians 4, he says to them, but now after you have known God, or.
rather are known by God. How is it? that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you desire again to be in bondage You observe days and months and seasons and years. He goes on to say, Did I do my work in vain with you? That's pretty heavy stuff.
He's saying why are you still Going to Sabbath, why are you still behaving like Jews when your Christians are no longer Jew nor Gentile? Slave nor free, Scythian or barbarian, but all in Christ. Ethnically, yeah, you're a Jew, but spiritually, you're Christian now. Yeah. Bye, too.
Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreference radio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition.
Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio. Uh
