Monday, January 23, 2006
Jan 24th Romans 14
Go ahead and look first at Romans 14 . See how God speaks to you individually. Then come back, if you wish, and see what God has put in my mind/heart.
Key Verse(s): Romans 14:4
Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
Title: Useless Controversies- Why Are They So Much Fun?
Observation: Paul spends this chapter dealing with non-essential issues of faith and culture. He brings up two particular struggles that were going on within the church- those who believed that some days are more holy than others, and those who did not want to eat meat (most likely consecrated originally to some god or other).
We Christians love to fight about these things. We argue about contemporary or traditional music, oft times with one group condemning the other. We argue about the color of carpeting in the building we worship the Creator of all colors. We argue about whether Tim Lahaye’s Left Behind series is the equivalent of God’s decoder ring for our time or just a fairy tale spun by a dispensationalist with way too much free time on his hands. We love to argue about the non-essentials.
Why particularly the non-essentials? Because dealing with essentials, living a life of love, serving the poor, and sharing the gospel- these require us to do more than flap our gums and go out and serve the Lord with our lives. Even the homosexual issue is to a degree a battle that most of us need not fight- 90+ % of us are never tempted to sin in that way. Instead let’s talk about the lust in our own eyes for people or possessions and deal with the log in our own eye rather than go after the splinter in our neighbors. Let’s realize that our fellow Christians are ultimately accountable to God- and that we, the big talkers, are also servants who are also going to be judged by our Maker.
Application: I need to show mercy and grace to those who see the commands of Jesus differently than I do. In the current fight in our denomination I must hold firm to the essentials of Grace and the teaching of the Bible, but in the midst of name calling and accusations be a force for unity and peace. I need to be tolerant of those at ACBC who hold different views, and protect others from the zealousness of those overconfident in their reading of scripture who condemn, break, and destroy people for their ideology. Lord, help me to teach Josiah to walk in grace as well, and not by law.
Prayer: Lord God help me to live in grace with those to the left and to the right of me theologically. Help me to model grace and acting in love and mercy on all of the non-essentials and to be bulldog on the essentials of the Gospel message. Help me to live out the truth in my life so that I might be a witness who in unimpeached when I need to stand firm for the sake of the Good News. God, help me to live in grace and faith and be a light to those around me.
In Jesus Name,
Amen.
