Life of Paul Part 25 - Gray Areas Part 2

Good morning, everybody.

Hey, it's wonderful to have you here. Let's take a Bible and open it together. Romans chapter 14, and we're going to be continuing in our study of Christian Liberty. As many of you know, I have the privilege of leading tours to Israel.

I've done maybe 15 or 20. And one of my very favorite places is a place called St. Catherine's Monastery. It sits right at the base of Mount Sinai, and it's been there since the early 300s A.D., never been destroyed.

It was built by Queen Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, when she was on a pilgrimage through the Holy Land. Well, the living conditions at this place are positively spartan. I mean, they have no running water, no central heat, no television, no radio, no telephones.

They only have an electrical generator that runs part of the day. I mean, this place is out in the middle of nowhere, and you are in total isolation when you live in this place. And yet people come from all over the world to live the ascetic life that goes on here. Now, the ascetic life, let's define, means a life where people believe that they're being more spiritual because they're giving up worldly comforts. And I'm here to tell you that as we look in the Bible, we never find any of this kind of ascetic thinking in the Bible, meaning that God tells us in the Bible He does not measure people's spirituality by how much we give up, by how much we deny ourselves.

However, even though God is not interested in ascetic self-denial, God is very interested in followers of Jesus Christ who are willing to limit their liberty because they have spiritually mature and higher goals than just living out their liberty. And this is what we want to talk about today. Now, before we do that, let's go into a little bit of background. Last week we started studying Romans 14, and we learned a whole new vocabulary.

So let's go back and review. We learned that gray areas are those areas of the Christian life to which God never speaks explicitly. These are areas where there's no thou shalt or thou shalt not anywhere in the Bible.

You say, like what? Well, like playing cards, going to movies, listening to secular music, dancing, buying lottery tickets, playing the slots in Las Vegas, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, getting tattoos, nose rings, earrings, wearing a bikini on the beach, dyeing your hair green, whatever. There's nothing in the Bible about all of these. And we learned that God gives us Christian liberty in all of these gray areas of life. We also defined a word last week called strong brothers or strong sisters and said these are people who, number one, understand their Christian liberty, and number two, God gives them freedom in their conscience to exercise that Christian liberty in one gray area or another gray area. And then we defined weak brothers and sisters and said that the word weak has nothing to do with the quality of their faith or their commitment to Christ.

They are weak when it comes to their ability to exercise their Christian liberty in one area or another, either because, number one, they just don't understand they have that liberty or, number two, they may understand in their heads that they've got it, but in their hearts and in their consciences, God is not giving them the freedom to live that liberty out in this area or that area. We concluded last week with three important comments. Number one, that two followers of Christ can have a very different conviction on some gray area, and it doesn't mean one of them is right and the other one is wrong.

It simply means one of them may be a strong sister in that area and the other one may be a weak brother in that area, and that's why they don't see eye to eye. Number two, we said that no follower of Jesus Christ is 100% strong or 100% weak, that every one of us have certain gray areas in our life where we're strong and we can exercise our liberty without any problem and other areas of our life where we don't feel that freedom and we're all some combination of strong and weak. And number three, we said that it is not unusual over time for a person who is weak in some gray area to transform into a person who gets strong in that area to begin feeling free to do things that a year ago or five years ago they never felt free to do as they mature in their walk with God. And we finished last week by saying there's a big danger in everything I said last week, and the danger is that strong brothers and sisters would walk out of the meeting last week and go, out of my way, everybody, I got liberty, and here I am.

And that is a danger. And so we're back today to bring some balance. This is like a jury trial.

You got to hear the whole thing before you make a decision. We're here to bring some balance and say, okay, let's say you're a strong brother or sister when it comes to playing cards, going to movies, dancing, having a beer, smoking a cigar, whatever. All right, fine.

That's wonderful. Now, what does God say to us in the Bible about considering limits on that liberty for higher purposes and biblical purposes? That's what we want to talk about today. Now, I want to begin by giving us the broad stroke that God gives us on this before we get real specific. And that's found in First Corinthians 10 23, which says, All things may be lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. Not all things are beneficial, meaning just because we have Christian liberty in some area, and even if we have the freedom of conscience to live that Christian liberty in some area, that doesn't automatically mean that doing so is beneficial to us, to other people or to the work of God. Galatians 5 13 says, Brothers, you were called to be free, and indeed you were. But do not use your freedom to indulge your flesh. Rather, use it to serve one another in love. The point here is that ministering to other people is more important than exercising Christian liberty.

That's what God wants us to understand. In his thinking, ministering to others comes before exercising liberty in terms of our priorities in life as followers of Christ. And the bottom line of this is that God measures spiritual maturity not by how much of our liberty we insist on exercising. God measures spiritual maturity by how much of our liberty we're willing to defer for the sake of our own spiritual well being, for the sake of other people's spiritual benefit, and for the sake of the advancement of the kingdom of God. This is how God defines a spiritually mature person who says, For my sake, other people's sake, or the sake of the work of God, I know I've got the liberty.

I'm just not going to use it. I've got bigger things I'm worried about. That's a mature person, not a person who goes out and just flaunts their liberty. We look at them and God says that's not a mature person.

That's an immature person. Now, let's get specific and say this. If you're a strong brother or sister in some area, there are five filters, five sieves, if you will, that the Bible gives us that we need to run every contemplated exercise of our Christian liberty through before we do it. And if it moves through all five filters, fine, hey, go do it and have a blast. If it gets hung up in one of these filters, God says there's a good reason for us to consider foregoing that liberty, limiting that liberty because it's hung up in one of these filters. Let's look and see what they are. And no matter what Christian liberty it is, these are the filters God wants us to run them through.

Okay, number one, filter number one is this. If I do this, will it be harmful to me physically? First Corinthians 619, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own. You were bought with a price, therefore honor God in your body. Friends, there are a lot of gray area activities that we have liberty to do, but there are areas that can damage and physically harm our bodies. And what this verse is telling us is our bodies are not our property.

When Jesus died on the cross, he purchased us and he purchased our body as well as our soul and our body is now God's property. We don't have the right to damage God's property. So do you as a follower of Jesus Christ have the liberty to smoke cigarettes? Of course you do.

But friends, we all know that smoking related illnesses cause more death in America than any other single cause. This damages the property of God. Do we have the right as a follower of Christ to eat as much chocolate pie as we want? Do I have that liberty?

Yes I do. But if I end up weighing 500 pounds with diabetes and a heart condition, is that treating God's property properly? And so my point is, before we do a Christian liberty, the first sieve we ought to run it through is one that says, hey, if I do this, will it damage my physical body, which oh, by the way, is not my property to damage.

It's the property of God. Number two, if I do this, our second filter, if I do this, will it be helpful to me spiritually? Hebrews 12 one, let us throw off every weight, the Bible says, that hinders us. Let us throw off those things that so easily entangle us so that we can run with endurance the race that's set before us as followers of Christ. The Bible says, you need to ask yourself the question, will this gray area action that I'm contemplating have a positive effect on my spiritual life? Will it make me into a man or a woman of God or help me in that process?

Or am I adding just extra weight that I got to carry that's going to slow me down in my race with God? We've all been to baseball games, and we've all seen baseball bats. And we've all watched guys come out onto the on deck circle. And what they do is they take a donut, a weight, and they slide it on the bat.

We've all seen this. And then they stand there without hitting speakers or microphones or anything, or they warm up. And we all know that, but have you ever seen a Major League Baseball player go to the plate with the weight still on?

Of course not. That'd be nutty. We've all been to basketball games where sometimes you'll see professional basketball players come out with ankle weights on, and they'll warm up in ankle weights. But you will never see a basketball player play the game with ankle weights on. Why would they want to do that? That's crazy. And what the Bible is telling us is that in the same way as followers of Christ, we should be careful about doing those things that are adding more donuts onto our back, that are adding ankle weights onto our spiritual race. We need to stay lean and mean so that we can run this race to the best of our possible ability. Now I want to go now, if you don't mind, from preaching to meddling.

Can I do that? And I want to say this, that there's no way a follower of Jesus Christ can go to an R-rated movie with nudity and explicit sexuality and then come out of that and claim that that movie was helpful to them spiritually. There is no way that a follower of Jesus Christ can listen to a steady diet of acid rock and gangster rap music and then claim that this is helping build them into a man or a woman of God.

There is no way a follower of Christ can sit and read all the articles in Cosmopolitan magazine and then say that these articles are enhancing their focus on God. Friends, we got to get smarter than this. We're running a race here. We are investing our lives for eternity here and liberties don't earn rewards in heaven. God never rewards a liberty. He rewards spiritual discipline that keeps us lean and mean that helps us run the race well. And you know there's another point here to make and that is that some of these things don't just slow us down spiritually. Some of these things can actually harm and damage our spiritual life. Paul says 1 Corinthians 6 12, everything is permissible to me, but I refuse to be mastered by anything.

And there are some gray area activities that are like sirens. They they call us onto the rocks spiritually. They gain mastery over our lives. I mean there is many a wonderful follower of Christ that's been caught up in gambling and been caught up in drinking and been caught up in dabbling with sensuality and pornography, been caught up with various kinds of music where these things take over their life. Some of these things are dangerous to us spiritually because of that ability they have to master us. And God says before you do these things, man, you better run it through this filter and make sure it's helping you spiritually. If it isn't, why do you want to put more donuts on your back?

It's crazy. Principle 3. If I do this, will it identify me with unrighteous things even though I may not be doing anything wrong? 1 Thessalonians 5 22 says avoid all appearance of evil. Here in Romans 14 where I ask you to look, verse 16 says, Do not let your good be evil spoken of. And what God is saying here is do not do anything. Do not exercise your liberty in any way that will leave people free to indict you with wrongdoing to indict me with ungodly behavior.

Be smarter than that. You may not be doing anything that's really wrong. Okay, fine.

But if people are going to see it and indict you with wrong behavior, don't exercise that liberty. I had a young man in my office a while back with his fiance, and in the process of discussion, he mentioned to me that he often spends the night at his fiance's house. And I guess he saw my eyebrows twitch or something because he said, Oh, no, no. He said, Our hearts are absolutely in the right place. We don't do anything wrong.

I sleep on the couch, and then I leave in the morning. And so I said to him, All right, let's even assume for a minute you're telling me the truth. Because you may be.

Let's assume for a moment you are. He jumped in and said, No, no. He said, You cannot show me one verse in the Bible where it says thou shalt not sleep at your fiance's apartment.

I have Christian liberty here. I said, You know what? You're right.

You do. So let me just tell you something. When you come strolling out of that apartment at eight a.m. the next morning, there is not one single person in that apartment complex who is going to think you've been sleeping on the couch. Every one of them is going to assume you've been sleeping with your girlfriend shacking up with your fiance. Is that really what you want to communicate as young followers of Jesus Christ?

If not, it doesn't matter where your heart is. Doesn't matter whether you're doing what's right before God. What matters is you're giving people an opportunity to indict you and assume you're doing what's wrong. That's a wrong liberty to exercise. As many of you know, I have a disabled little girl and I have a handicapped sticker that we use when we have her around. And I got to tell you, sometimes if I'm in a hurry to get somewhere and I'm trying to get home, you know, and she needs my care or whatever, it's a real temptation to pull into the handicapped spot and use that sticker and run in somewhere and run out real quick. And when my wife is with me, she always says to me, don't you dare do that.

Don't you dare do that. Because somebody's going to see you do that and they're not going to know we have a handicapped little girl at home. All they're going to assume is that you're abusing that privilege and they're going to see that as something wrong and ungodly and don't use that liberty. Well, she's absolutely right. And folks, the point is here that part of the issue is, is my heart right before God?

Yes, that's part of the issue. The other part of the issue in exercising some liberty is, am I going to open myself up to be indicted by other people for something wrong? If so, don't do it. Number four, if I do this, will I damage a brother or sister in Christ? Romans 14.

Look right here. Verse 15. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat. Now, remember, the issue here in Romans 14 is eating meat sacrificed in an idol's temple. And there was strong disagreement between Christians about this. If you distress your brother because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love.

Do not by your eating. And I would expand that to say, do not by your exercising of any Christian liberty damage your brother for whom Christ died. Verse 18. Anyone who serves Christ in this way, that is by putting concern for their fellow believer ahead of the exercise of their liberty.

Anyone who does that is pleasing to God. You say, Well, Lon, I'm not sure I really understand this. How can I, by exercising my Christian liberty, damage my Christian brother and sister? I don't think I don't understand what Paul's talking about.

Well, it's very simple, friends. By the way we exercise our Christian liberty, sometimes we can encourage a fellow believer to sin in their heart. Sometimes we can encourage a fellow believer to do things that they don't have freedom of conscience to do, and they've got to go home and confess it to God.

Sometimes we can even draw a brother or sister back into things that they've got no business getting into that can go on from there to really harm their lives. For example, ladies, do you have Christian liberty to wear short skirts? Yes, you do. Do you have Christian liberty to wear low cut dress to the dance? Yes, you do. Do you have Christian liberty to wear a thong at the beach?

Yes, you do. But let me just tell you something. You go to a dance in a dress that looks like both ends have shrunk up towards the middle, if you understand what I'm saying. You wear a thong on the beach, and there is not one healthy Christian male in America who's not going to go off like Thumper in Bambi, if you understand what I'm saying. And these are young men or middle aged men, whatever, who are trying to keep this under control in their life, trying to do what God asked them to do, trying to keep their mind in the right place, trying to keep their heart in the right place. And by wearing those kinds of things, you're not walking in love towards your Christian brother.

You're making life hard for him. Yes, you are. You are. That's why the Bible says, listen, 1 Timothy 2, 9, I want ladies to dress modestly with decency and propriety. Why? Don't I have Christian liberty to wear a bikini?

Yes, you do. But are you really helping and walking in love towards your Christian brother? Are you making life harder for him? Hey, another way that we can damage people like this is to invite a Christian brother over our home whom God has rescued out of a severe gambling addiction. And the first thing we do when we invite him over, sit him down at the table and say, hey, let's play some gin rummy. Friends, that brother has no business in the world playing gin rummy.

He has no business being anywhere near a deck of cards. Or we invite somebody over to our house to watch the football game who's in AA, and as soon as they get there, we sit him down in front of the TV and break the brewskis out. No, no, no, that brother has no business being near a beer.

And if he drinks one at your house, who knows where that may lead in his life. The point of all this is to say that a mature follower of Jesus Christ is a person who has the attitude that says, hey, I care so much about the spiritual well being of my Christian brother. I care so much about the spiritual well being of my Christian sister, that any liberty I have to forego, in order not to damage that fellow Christian, I'm willing to forego verse 21, Romans 14, it is good not to eat meat, or to drink wine and let me say or to go to the movies or play cards or wear miniskirts or smoke cigars or play the lottery or anything, if it causes my brother to stumble and makes him fall. People and their spiritual lives are more important than our Christian liberty.

Number five, and finally, if I do this, will it hurt my platform with non believers? You know, in the beginning of First Corinthians chapter nine, the Apostle Paul lists all the liberties and all the rights that he has as an apostle. And you know, what he's going to basically indicate is that I have the liberty to do all kinds of things. But he says, verse 12, First Corinthians nine, verse 12, he says, but I have used none of these rights, I have used none of these liberties, rather than hinder the message of Jesus Christ. He goes down to verse 19, and says, though I am free, and I'm free to do all of these things, I have made myself a slave to the expectations of other people, so that I may win as many people as possible to Christ.

Paul says, Hey, I'm so passionate about reaching people for Christ, that no liberty of any kind is worth it if it gets in the way of people coming to Christ. You know, I came to the Washington area in 1971. One of the first people I met here was a wonderful man named Bob Porter. Bob Porter had grown up in Fairfax County, and had a reputation that was known all over this county as a brawler, a womanizer, a gambler, and an incredible drinker.

I mean, this man was known all over the county. Well, he gave his life to Christ in 1970. And he started the Bob Porter Evangelistic Association, and he spent all day and all night down on the streets of Alexandria, handing out tracts talking to people about Christ, I fell in with him did this to help him for a while. And I know this story is true, because I was working with Bob when it happened. He had a friend who knew him in his old drinking days, call him up and say, Hey, Bob, I heard you got religion, man.

I heard that you're a new person. And Bob said, Well, that's true. He said, You know what, I'd really like to hear more about what happened to you.

Can I buy you lunch? And Bob said, Well, sure. So they went out to lunch, he sat down, they had a little chit chat. And then at the end of a little chit chat, the friend said, Hey, I'll have a beer called over to the bartender. And he said, Hey, Bob, what do you want?

Bob said, I really don't want anything. And his friend said, Come on, Bob. I mean, for old times sake, I'm your old buddy now.

Come on, for old times sake, just have one. Bob said, No, honestly, I really don't drink anymore. And the guy got a little bit upset with him and said, Bob, I mean, you're really, you're offending me.

I'm an old friend. I mean, we go way back, Bob, just one for old times sake. And Bob said he sat there and he thought, Well, you know, beer is not sin. Well, you know, I mean, I've got the Christian liberty to do this. And I don't really want this guy walking out of here and thinking that Christian that Christianity is all about. You can't do this.

And you can't do that. So he finally said, All right, all right. All right. He said, I'll take a draft. And a minute he said he said this guy stood up and said to him, I knew it. He said, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. He said all these friends told me Bob Porter's a new man.

Bob Porter gave up drinking for God. And he said, I said, he said, I said, I'll see I believe it when I see it with my own eyes. And I've seen it with my own eyes. You're a liar. You're fraud. You're a hypocrite. I don't want anything to do with you or your religion. And he stormed out.

Now, Bob was pretty depressed when he got back from lunch, actually tell you the truth. And I learned a really important lesson from watching all that unfold. I learned friends that once we go public for Jesus, people start watching. And they have expectations about how followers of Christ are supposed to act. Now, it doesn't matter whether their expectations are right or wrong.

It doesn't make any difference. The important point is that those expectations are real, that people take them seriously. And when we by the exercise of some Christian liberties step across some of those expectations, we lose our platform to share Christ. We blow our credibility right out the water. May I say that if you're here and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, that I'm sure you know followers of Christ who have gone past your expectations of the way a Christian ought to act.

And let me just say that if that's true, that doesn't surprise me in the least. Because Christianity is not based on us being able to perform perfectly in our walk with Christ. Friends, Christianity is based on Jesus Christ, His trustworthiness, His veracity, His integrity. And until you can find something wrong with Him, Christianity still stands the test, even if some of us, His followers can't always live up to your expectations.

And so if you're here, and you started to wonder whether this thing called Christianity has credibility, friends, until you find something wrong with Jesus, believe me, it does. But that's not an excuse for us as followers of Christ to take this lightly. You know, if I lived in my wife's hometown, in her hometown, good Christians don't go to movies, they don't drink, they don't smoke, they don't play cards, they don't buy lottery tickets.

And God help them if they dance. I mean, they don't do any of this stuff. And if I lived in that town, if I were serious about reaching people for Christ, these are areas where I would have to limit every single one of my liberties, or I would have no platform to reach people for Christ. Now, honestly, I'm kind of glad I don't live in that town.

But if I did live in that town, I'd have to live like this. And you say, Well, Lon, that's not really fair. I mean, why should I let some non believer out there place their limits on my Christian liberty? Well, weren't you listen to what Paul said? The answer is simple, because their soul is more important than your liberty. Them coming to Christ is more important than us having a beer or going dancing.

We're talking about somebody's soul. Let's summarize. What have we learned? We've learned if you're a strong brother or sister, that's wonderful. If you have the liberty to exercise your freedom in Christ in some gray areas, that's wonderful.

But there are five filters. God wants us to run that contemplated action through before we do it. Number one, if I do this, will it harm me physically? Number two, if I do this, will it help me spiritually? Number three, if I do this, will it cause people to think I'm doing something wrong, even if I'm not? Number four, if I do it, will it damage the spiritual life of another Christian brother or sister? And number five, if I do it, will I compromise my evangelistic platform with people? You say, Lon, if I follow all five of these filters, I'd never do anything.

Well, I don't know whether you would or you wouldn't. But you know, there's some Christian liberty even in how you apply these. For example, the Bible says ladies are addressed modestly.

I guarantee if we took a poll here, not every lady here would agree with what modest is. You have to apply that according to your conscience. All I can tell you, friends, is that I've gotten cards, letters, phone calls. So as the chairman of our elders about this series, going what is Lon doing? He's just turning people to go be wild men and women all over Washington, making libertines out of everybody.

Friends, that's not what's going on here. I want us to think biblically. And whatever we do, I want us to have biblical reasons why we do it. We are free in Christ. We have liberty in Jesus. And you say, Why didn't any other preacher any other time tell me that?

I don't know. But they're wrong. We have liberty in Jesus. Now, if we limit that liberty, God wants us to limit it voluntarily because we want to, and to limit it, knowing why we're limiting it. And the right reason to limit our liberty is not some preacher told me not to do this.

That's the wrong reason. The correct reason to limit our liberty is because we have higher priorities that we're committed to bigger priorities than just doing our liberties. And those priorities are my own spiritual well being, the spiritual well being of other people, and the advancement of the work of God. And God wants us to be in the position if somebody says, Why don't you do this liberty? Why don't you do that liberty to defend our position and say, Oh, no, you don't understand. It's not because some preacher says I can't do it. It's because I've got some higher priorities, and I voluntarily gave this liberty up.

And frankly, I'm not whining about it, and I'm not complaining about it. It's up to me. God didn't make me give it up. I gave it up because I wanted to, because there are other things more important to me than just doing my liberties. This is maturity. And I don't want you guys to be spiritual midgets. I want you to grow up and be men and women of God. And this is how God wants us to approach liberty. So if you're going to give up a liberty, that's wonderful. But know why you're doing it.

Do it because you understand what maturity is, and you can defend it before God and before people. Well, next week, what are we going to talk about? We're going to close it up next week. We're going to talk next week about this question. How should a strong and a weak brother relate to one another in gray areas where they passionately disagree? This busts up all kinds of churches.

This busts up all kinds of friendships. If you and I passionately disagree about one of these areas, what's God tell us about how to get along without our convictions changing? In other words, if I really feel very passionately that Christians shouldn't go to movies, and I drive by the multiplex, and my pastor is walking out of the multiplex, what should I do? And God help that dear brother that's walking out of the multiplex.

How many congregational meetings can he skip and say he's sick? That's what we're going to talk about next week. So you guys come and we'll talk more about that.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thanks for a chance for us to talk about this very, very practical subject. And Lord, every one of us here knows that there's conflict both in churches and in personal relationships between Christians, all because of disagreement on how we should live out these gray areas in our Christian life. So Lord, we need you to mature us as individuals, we need you to mature us as a church family, that we might be able to exercise our liberties in a godly, mature and responsible way. And so that we might be able to respond to others who see it a little differently than we do in that same harmonious and godly way. So help us to grow as a church and as individuals through this. And God, thank you that this church will allow me to be intellectually honest in dealing with these issues, even though it sounds a little risky at points. Thank you for a church that's willing to be biblical, even if there's some risk involved. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.