Life of Paul Part 24 - Gray Areas Part 1

Okay, well, we're going to study the Bible today.

Let's open the Bible together to the letter Paul wrote to the Church of Rome, Romans chapter 14. Now, you know, back in the late 70s, when we were living over in Maryland, Brenda and me, we bought a house and we were to save some money. We were having some friends help us move. And as we were there, we were getting ready to move our living room and table. One of the men that was helping us pulled the drawer out to set it aside to move the table. And inside the drawer, he saw a brand new bright red, still wrapped in the cellophane deck of playing cards.

Well, you'd think this guy had just found 75 pounds of cocaine in my drawer. He went absolutely nuclear. And he began to berate me in front of everybody that was there. He began telling me that, that I'd let the Lord down, that I was a disgrace as a Christian, that God was never going to bless my life. And finally, I did the only thing that I could possibly do to calm things down.

I picked the cards up, walked over to the trash can, threw them in the trash can. Well, he calmed down a little bit. But, you know, he and I worked at the same place and sad to say for years to come, whenever we would pass each other in the hall, that dear brother never had a whole lot much to say to me after that. Now, friends, I've been a follower of Christ 31 years and I've learned something. I've learned that the meanest, nastiest, most emotional fights that happen between Christians have nothing to do with theology. They have everything to do with these gray areas, like playing cards.

And we're involved in a study right now on Christian liberty. And today we're going to start talking about gray areas. And, you know, a lot of churches won't talk about this. They'll talk about one gray area or another specific gray area.

But never hit the whole picture. And this is really, really important for us because, you know, there are a lot of areas where we're going to have disagreements as followers of Christ. How do we handle those things in a way that doesn't bust up our relationships, bust up our friendships, bust up our churches? This is really important. So I hope you'll enjoy this study. I hope it'll be valuable for you and valuable for us as a church family.

Now, a little bit of background. We saw last week from Acts chapter 15 that the Jerusalem Council reaffirmed the truth of Romans 5-2, which says, through faith in Jesus Christ, we have gained access into this gracious position in which we now stand. As a follower of Jesus Christ, my relationship to God is a gracious one. I'm in a gracious position with God.

I am a child of God in a way that the rest of the human race isn't. And if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus as your real and personal Savior, I'd like to say to you that this gracious position is something God would love to give you. But the only way, as you see from this verse, that it's given to people is through faith in Jesus Christ.

It's not offered under any other circumstances. So if you're here and you'd like to become a child of God and move into this gracious standing with God, you can do that, but you've got to do it the way God says, through faith in Jesus Christ. Something to think about. For those of us who are in that gracious position with God, as we saw last week, what this means is that my relationship with God as His child is not based on my human performance, that God loves me unconditionally and that my relationship with Him is based upon His grace, His undeserved mercy that He shows me as His child. Romans chapter 6, verse 14, For we as followers of Christ are not under law.

We are not under a system of human performance. We are under grace. And we also said last week that what this means is that as God's child, I have the liberty, I have the freedom to act in any way I want to act without it endangering the bond between me and my Heavenly Father because I'm His child and He loves me unconditionally. Now, we also said last week that once we become followers of Christ, every issue in our Christian lives falls into one of two general categories and that our Christian liberty applies equally to both categories.

Category number one are the black and white issues. These are the areas to which God speaks explicitly in the Bible. Things like adultery, lying, stealing, pornography, premarital sexual activity, homosexuality, abortion, non-biblical divorce, slander, gossip, cheating in school, unethical business practices. And we said last week, as sad as it makes God, and it makes God very sad that we and I can do these things and God will still love us just the same and our eternal life will be just as secure. We closed last week by saying, yes, we have liberty in this area, but there are five reasons God gives us in the Bible why on these black and white issues He doesn't want us to use our liberty, to exercise our liberty, but the summation of that is 1 Corinthians 10, 23, which says, all things may be lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things may be lawful, but not all things are beneficial. Now, today we're going to go on.

That's where we've been. Today we're going to go on and talk about the other area into which all of our human actions may fall. If it's not a black and white issue, then it falls into the area we call gray areas. These are areas of the Bible where the Bible never speaks to this explicitly. You can look in the Bible and you won't find a thou shalt or thou shalt not anywhere in the Bible about these things. You say like what? Well, like playing cards, like playing the slots in Las Vegas, buying lottery tickets, going to the movies, dancing, going out trick-or-treating on Halloween, like listening to secular music, wearing short skirts, or going to the mall on Sunday, like drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, getting a tattoo, or dyeing your hair purple, like having earrings, nose rings, studs, like homeschooling versus public schooling, like one-piece bathing suits versus two-piece bathing suits. Now, frankly, on this last one, I have a very strong personal conviction on that one, which is why you will never, ever see me in anything but a one-piece bathing suit.

I believe very strongly that. Now, what are we really saying here? What we're really saying is that there are a lot of things in life that the Bible simply doesn't speak to in black and white terms. So how do we as followers of Christ know what to do in those areas? How do we develop our convictions in those areas? What if we have a conviction in the area and we come across a fellow Christian who has a very different conviction in that area? How do we relate to one another? How do we keep from busting up our friendships and busting up the work of God? How do we do all of that? And why do I have the convictions I have versus the one somebody else has?

This is what we want to talk about over the next couple of weeks. And here in Romans 14, this chapter is all about gray areas and how we relate to one another in the exercise of our liberty in gray areas. Look at verse 1. It says, Except him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. This chapter is all about disputable matters.

It's all about gray areas, those areas where sincere Christians can have sincere differences of conviction with one another. And there are two characters, two key players in this chapter. The secret to understanding this chapter and everything God says about gray area behavior is to understand the definition of these two characters. The first one mentioned in verse 1, we're going to call the weak brother. The second one that's mentioned later in the chapter, we're going to call the strong brother.

The Bible never uses that exact term, but we're going to use that term. But before we define, let's figure out first in this chapter, what is the strong brother and the weak brother? What are they fighting about? What do they disagree with one another? Well, verse 2 says, One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. You go, wow, this is great. We're going to get a biblical commentary on vegetarianism.

No, we're not. That's not the issue at all. Let me tell you what the issue was. In the ancient Roman world, much like in the third world today, wherever you go, if you want to buy a T-bone steak, you go into the open meat market in there. The meat is just hanging there, and you buy it. Well, in the Roman times, some of the meat in the meat market came from the slaughterhouse. But there were other pieces of meat that came to the meat market that came out of idols' temples, out of idol worship. The animal had been killed, the blood and organs used to worship this idol, and then they sent the carcass off into the meat market to be sold.

So as a follower of Christ, here's the problem. I walk out into the meat market to buy a T-bone, and I don't know where that piece of meat came from. I don't know whether it came from the slaughterhouse or whether it came out of an idol's temple, which means I've got a dilemma.

Do I purchase the meat in the market and take the chance it came from some idol worship, or do I simply never eat meat again, which means I never take the risk that I'm supporting idolatry and possibly defiling myself? Do you understand what they're fighting about? Now, it's a gray area. There's no verse in the Bible that says, Thou shalt or thou shalt not go to the meat market. And so Paul, in dealing with this specific issue here in 1 Corinthians 8 to 10, in dealing with that specific issue is going to give us principles that will work in dealing with any gray area issue. Now, let's look and see what the strong brother would say about this issue. Here he is, verse 14. He says, As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. That's the strong brother speaking. 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Eat anything in the meat market without worrying about where it came from, because, Psalm 24, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The strong brother says, Hey, man, I understand every T-bone steak in the universe is from Almighty God. He owns every T-bone in the universe. And it doesn't matter where it went through before it got to me, as long as I understand that and I give thanks to God for my T-bone, it doesn't matter who touched it before me.

I'm thanking God for it. It's all all right. Furthermore, the stronger brother would go on to say My spirituality isn't based on what I do or what I don't do anyway. 1 Corinthians 8. Food doesn't bring us closer to God. We are no better if we don't eat and we're no worse if we do eat. The strong brother says, Hey, I understand that my spiritual walk with God depends on my heart.

Where my heart is, it doesn't depend on what I do and what I don't do, and it doesn't get measured by what I eat and what I don't eat. This is the strong brother. He knows that as long as he gives thanks to God, as long as he doesn't misuse something in God's creation, he's free to enjoy all of God's creation without any guilt.

So let's bring it into the 21st century. What would a strong brother sound like today? Well, a strong brother would sit down and play gin rummy with his Christian friends because he, even though he knows that cards are used in Las Vegas to bankrupt people's lives, his attitude is, Hey, there is nothing inherently evil in little plastic coated pieces of paper with numbers on them. The fact that they're used somewhere in a wrong way, hey, if I'm not using them in a wrong way, if we're just having some fun playing gin rummy, it's okay for me.

I'm not misusing these little plastic pieces of paper. A strong brother could walk into Blockbuster and rent a PG movie, even though he knows that somebody else might walk in there and rent a much stronger R-rated movie. As long as he doesn't rent it, he's like, Well, you know, I mean, I'm okay. A strong brother would dance with his wife or his girlfriend and not feel a bit of guilt about it. A strong brother could have a glass of wine at dinner, a glass of champagne at a wedding. He could have a beer and a cigar while watching a football game.

Fine. He could listen to oldies music, country music, smooth jazz. As well as Christian music, because he understands God made the harmonic scale. Music is not a spiritual issue with God.

All music is clean in the sight of God. A strong sister could wear a two-piece bathing suit at the beach, even though she knows that the people in Victoria's Secret wear similar clothing. She's not in Victoria's Secret wearing some of that stuff.

And as long as it's a reasonable bathing suit, she doesn't have a problem. A strong sister could go and shop on Sunday at the mall because she understands that every day is the Lord's Day, not just Sunday. And if she shops on Monday and that's the Lord's Day, what difference does it make if she stops on Sunday?

That's the Lord's Day. This is the strong brother, the strong sister. They understand the liberty that they have in Christ and the Holy Spirit is giving them the freedom to exercise that liberty in this area, that area, or the other area. Now, what about the weak brother? Let me say, don't forget, in using the word weak here, the Bible is not trying to say that this person is weak when it comes to their faith in Christ.

That's not what the Bible is saying at all. In fact, some of these brothers are among the strongest and most committed followers of Christ you'll ever run into. The weakness comes when it comes to the freedom of conscience they have to exercise their Christian liberty in this gray area or in that gray area.

Let me repeat that. They're weak when it comes to the freedom of conscience they have to exercise their liberty in one gray area or another gray area. So 1 Corinthians 8 verse 7, Paul says, Not everybody has the same knowledge as the strong brother. Some people simply cannot eat marketplace meat without worrying about the fact that it was sacrificed to an idol. A weak brother's attitude is, hey, you know, that meat came out of the idol's temple. I can't shake the feeling that it's just innately defiled and if I eat it, it's going to defile me.

And by purchasing it, I'm endorsing and supporting the industry of idolatry. I can't eat that meat and feel right about it. I just can.

I can. And you know what, friends? The Bible says that when your conscience, my conscience puts a block up like that and says, this is not an area where you can exercise liberty, you're a weak brother in this area. The Bible says for us to press through that and go exercise our liberty anyway is sin.

It is wrong. Look at verse 14. It says, If someone considers something to be unclean in his heart, for him it is unclean. Verse 23, For whatever is not of faith is sin. In other words, whatever you and I as followers of Christ can't do and feel completely right about, completely good about, completely pure about, if something, if we can't have the faith that is absolutely okay before God to do it, then guess what? We shouldn't do it.

Here's the critical point I want you to get when you walk out of here today. You and another follower of Christ can both do the very same thing in a gray area. That other follower of Christ could go home, go to sleep, never think about it again, feel fine about it.

And you could end up going home and feeling completely dirty and wrong about it and having to confess it before God. And it doesn't mean either one of you are less walking with God than the other one. It means that sometimes in some areas God gives us the freedom of conscious to be a strong brother and sometimes in another area He doesn't. And we have no business doing those things if we don't have the freedom of conscious to do it.

And let me say one more thing. Nobody's 100% one way or the other. There's no brother in the world that's 100% strong or 100% weak. And you may have five areas of your life, gray areas, where you're a strong brother or sister and you go, man, I got no problem with any of them, but I got these five over here I just don't feel right about doing.

And you may go out in the lobby and meet another Christian brother or sister who's an exact mirror opposite of you. The five things you feel fine about they can't do and the five things you can't do they feel great about. You understand what I'm saying? And it's not a spiritual issue. It doesn't mean anybody's a better follower of Christ than another person.

It just means you're weak or strong in that area. So what's a weak brother sound like in our world today? Well, if you're weak in the area going to movies, then as a weak brother you can't walk in a movie theater and even see Bambi without feeling wrong about it.

You're supporting an evil industry and you just can't do it. And you know what, friend, if you talk somebody in who feels like that into going to a movie, they'll sit through the entire movie and feel guilty and feel wrong and have to go home and confess it to God. They have no business being there. They don't have that liberty of conscience. Some people are weak when it comes to alcoholic beverages. They can't even do a champagne toast at a wedding.

They've got to have sparkling cider or nothing. They just can't do it. It's just they don't have the freedom of conscience to do it. Some people are weak when it comes to dancing. They can't go to a wedding and dance with their wife or their husband or boyfriend or girlfriend.

Even if Glenn Miller is playing, they can't do it. Some people are weak when it comes to music. They can only listen to Christian music.

Nothing else is allowable for them. This is the weak brother. He's just as precious and he's just as special in the Lord's sight as the strong brother. He's just as much on his way to heaven as the strong brother.

But he either doesn't understand the marvelous liberty that God's given him in Christ or if he understands it in his head, the Spirit of God is not giving him the freedom to live it out in his conscience. Do we all understand what we're talking about here? Now, I want to close with two questions. Question number one is, Lon, okay, let's say I'm a weak brother in some area of my life. What made me that way? How did I get to be that way?

Why am I that way? Well, there are three forces that make us weak in areas of our life and you may be a combination of all three of them, but here they are. If you're a weak brother, I guarantee you one of these three things is true of you. Force number one is our upbringing, meaning our parents, our home life, our church exposure as a child, even the location in which we were raised. I mean, if you were raised going to a legalistic Baptist church in a small town in rural Georgia where every week the preacher preached hard against one gray area and then the next week he preached hard against another gray area. If you grew up going to a church where people don't smoke or cuss or drink or chew or hang around with them which do, and if you grew up with parents who were wonderful followers of Christ but they really didn't understand and exercise liberty in much of their Christian life, if that's how you grew up, then, my friend, you're going to have a lot more weak areas in your life today than if you were raised by non-Christian parents in Southern California and you gave your life to Christ as a senior at Berkeley. Are you with me?

Okay, that's part of it. Now, number two, force number two that makes weak brothers is our early Christian training, our early Christian formation, meaning that when we first come to Christ, the people who mentored us, the people who shaped us in our early Christian life, the church we went to, the pastor we studied under, the Christian leader that we looked up to and tried to model our life after, these people have an enormous influence on how we end up seeing the Christian life, how we end up approaching gray areas, the convictions we end up developing, they have a huge impact on us because we're open, we're formed, we're being formed and we're letting them do the forming and we're going to end up mirroring a lot of what they think. Number three, if you're a weak brother or I am in some areas of our Christian life, it's very possibly because of our background before we became followers of Christ. What I mean by that is areas of life where you and I had very strong, ungodly, sinful behavior before we came to Christ, usually if not always when we come to Christ, the Spirit of God immediately makes those weak areas in our life. And friends, this is a blessing, listen to me, because what God is trying to do is protect us. If you had a huge gambling problem before you came to Christ, I'll bet you when you come to Christ, you're not going to feel comfortable playing the lottery, going to Las Vegas or playing gin rummy with your friends.

Why? Because God's trying to protect you from being drawn back into something that ruins your life. If you came to Christ with an alcohol problem before you came to Christ, I guarantee you you're not going to feel comfortable walking in a bar and having a beer and watching a football game after work with your friends because God's trying to protect you from something that almost ruined your life. If you were promiscuous as a young lady before you came to Christ, I guarantee you as a young follower of Christ, you're going to have a real problem with short skirts and skimpy little bathing suits.

And if you were involved in the occult before you came to Christ, you are going to have a real problem when you become a Christian, going to movies about the occult and going out trick-or-treating on Halloween. This is a blessing from God. He's trying by not giving us liberty in certain areas to protect us from getting drawn back into things that even as followers of Christ could ruin our life. And if you're a weak brother in some area, one of those three or a combination of those three forces is why you are.

Last question. Lon, okay, I hear what you're saying. But can a weak brother ever change into a strong brother in some area of life? I mean, I sense that my convictions are changing. I'm beginning to feel like it's okay to do some things that I used to think I couldn't do. Am I going liberal? Am I backsliding? What's happening to me?

Well, no, you're not necessarily going liberal or backsliding. This is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And there are two reasons why sometimes weak brothers end up becoming strong brothers and sisters.

Let me tell you why. Reason number one is that sometimes we just begin to experience a broader scope of what God's doing in the world. I mean, we move from rural Georgia to Washington. We start attending a different church. We start studying the Bible. We start appreciating that there are some liberties nobody ever told us we had. We hang out with a different bunch of friends who see liberty differently. We marry some wonderful person who's not hung up like we are in all these different things and they begin slowly to shove us in the direction of more liberty. This happens all the time where we begin to phase out of our weakness because we begin to experience more of what God's doing in the world.

That's perfectly normal and that's perfectly okay. The second reason is because sometimes when we're weak in an area because God's trying to protect us, sometimes as we grow and we mature, those things that used to be a serious threat to us years ago, they're just not a threat anymore and God feels that now He can loosen up, give us more freedom, and let us exercise more liberty because these things aren't a threat down the road that they used to be. You know, when I came to Christ 31 years ago, I had been involved in so much ungodly behavior that basically when I became a Christian, God gave me the Christian liberty to do absolutely nothing. I had the liberty to do nothing.

I mean that sincerely. I was weak in every single area of my life and you know why? That was a good thing. God was trying to protect me. Everything was a threat to me when I first became a follower of Christ. Now you know 31 years later, honestly, God has loosened up on some of those things and some things I could never have felt right about doing 31 years ago. I can do now and I feel fine about because they're just not a threat to me anymore.

But I'll tell you, there are still some areas of my life where I'm still a weak brother. I was very much involved in the occult when I was dropping LSD and doing a bunch of drugs before I came to Christ. And to this day, I do not have the liberty of conscience to go to movies that deal with that. I've never seen Poltergeist.

I've never seen The Exorcist. I can't do that. I could never get near a Ouija board or do any of that stuff.

I'm still a weak brother in that area. God has never in 31 years given me the liberty to loosen up in that area of my life. Maybe you're a follower of Christ who came out of a background with some real problems and it may be as you grow and mature, God may give you some liberty in the future that you don't have right now and that's perfectly okay.

God's saying, hey, you're growing. That's a good thing. Well, let's summarize.

What have we learned for today? We've learned that a strong brother is a person who understands their liberty in these gray areas and who the Spirit of God gives them freedom in their conscience to exercise it in a particular area. A weak brother is a person who either doesn't understand their liberty or even if they understand it intellectually, the Spirit of God for whatever reason has not given them the freedom to live it out in a particular area of life. We all understand that. So if you meet somebody who can do something you can't do, we have to be very careful we don't brand them as being backslidden, liberal, uncommitted. I mean, all these nasty words we throw at people. Friend, they just may be a strong brother where you're a weak sister and it may be just that simple.

You understand what I'm saying? And we need to talk next week about some of the ways that we relate to one another. Some of the questions we want to answer next week is how should, number one, strong and weak brothers relate to each other in areas where they passionately disagree? I mean, if you're a church member who has a strong conviction against playing cards and you walk into church and see the youth pastor playing poker with the teenagers, what are you supposed to do? And may God help him, what is that youth pastor supposed to do at that moment?

All right, well, we need to know the answer to that question. Hey, question number two, is there ever a time when God calls on a strong brother or sister to limit their liberty? I mean, some of us here are going to walk out and go, hot dog, man, I'm a strong brother in that area.

Hey, man, you know, I'd do whatever I want. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. This chapter doesn't consist of just three verses. This chapter consists of 23 verses and the other 20 are all about telling strong brothers how to limit their liberty for reasons of advancing the kingdom of God.

So if you're a strong brother, I invite you to be back next week because God didn't finish talking to you yet. We're only halfway through. All right, fair enough.

We're only halfway there. So question number three, finally, is why doesn't Lon just tell us what's right and wrong and we'll do it? Well, no, no, no, no. I can't tell you what's right and wrong, friends. I can only tell you what my convictions are that the Spirit of God has given me because I'm me. I can give you some biblical principles to go by, but you've got to seek God on the convictions that work for you.

I can't answer the third question, but we'll do the first two. How's that? So we hope we'll see you next week. God bless you.

Let's pray. Lord, thanks for talking to us today about areas right down where we live, frankly, areas that lots of churches won't talk about. But we need to talk about them, Lord, because those very same churches often are carrying the scars of nasty, mean and emotional conflicts that came out of people not understanding what we're teaching. Lord, my prayer is that you would take what what the Bible is teaching us in this area and that you would teach us what it means to be gracious and loving and unified, both as as friends and as family and as a church family, when we interact with people who just don't see things the way we see it, who have liberties that we don't have. Lord, we need to know how we react to one another. And so continue to mature us as followers of Christ. Continue to teach us how to handle these differences in a biblical and godly way that enhance our unity and that further the work of God. We commit ourselves in this continuing series to you in Jesus name. Amen. You.