21 The Problem of Christian Taboos (Romans 14:1-20)

Krisan Marotta: Are we recording? We are. Okay, we are in Romans 14. This passage, I love this passage. When we were when my kids were younger, we had let them read comic books. And my husband has collected comic books since he was, oh, you know, like five years old, and he still collects comic books. And um my kids used to play this card game that was based on the comic books. It was called Overpower. It's like magic, and and there's a few more now, but Overpower was one of the first. And it the cards had comic book art on them because they were based on Spider-Man and the X-Men and and uh the Fantastic Four and so on. In fact, they got so good at it, my son won the state of Virginia under 16 tournament. So there were two people from each state then got to go to Disney World to compete in nationals, and he won a thousand dollars. It was very exciting, you know, to be 14 years old and win a thousand dollars. So um we had a lot of fun with it, but I have to tell you, a lot of people were kind of like, you you let your kids read comic books? Um it raised quite a few eyebrows, and even in our family, people would kind of question our sanity and the sincerity of our faith because we let our kids read comic books. And my favorite argument was people would say, you know, they're gonna grow up to be pedophiles. And I'd say, you know, like my husband, you know, because he's read comic books since he was five. And his two brothers, you know, doctoring the community, and they read comic books too. But anyway, how do you handle that? What do you do when you're um when you're sincere Christians and someone else is doing something that you find very questionable, or on the other end, people are questioning things you're doing? Um, you know, how do you respond? How do you deal with that? Um should we say, no, we can read comic books and we'll take them everywhere, we'll let the kids bring them to Sunday school and and Christian school, and you know, I mean, are is that the right thing to do? Um so how that's the issue in the passage today. Basically, how do we meddle in other people's lives? Or when or and when we should or and shouldn't. So let me just set the stage of where we are. We are in the last section of Romans. You'll remember that chapters 1 through 8, Paul lays out the gospel and tells us that we are not saved by keeping the law. We are saved by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. In 9 through 11, then he says, What's the role of Israel? And he argues, did God reject Israel or did he treat them unfairly? And his answer is no, and that proves he will be faithful to us as well. And then in chapter 12 he says, therefore it is only reasonable that we worship God with our bodies. So in response to everything God has done for us, who he is and who we are, how should we live? And that's the section we're in now. So the rest of the book is how should we respond? And in chapter 12, he told us we should think very soberly about ourselves, not think too highly of ourselves, and be passionate and generous toward others. Then in chapter 13, submit to those who are in authority because all authority is ultimately there because of God, and that we should keep ourselves free from debt and free from darkness so we are free to serve God. And now in chapter 14, he's gonna turn to like kind of the favorite indoor sport we all have of trying to change each other. And it's interesting, this is the longest section. He gives more space to this than anything else, which may mean it's you know the universality of the problem. So this section begins in 14.1 and goes all the way through uh chapter 15, verse 13, and it's all one argument. And um we are, I'm not sure we're gonna get all the way through 14 today, but because it's one argument, that's okay. I expect we're only gonna get probably to 18, and then we'll pick up the last few verses with chapter 15 next week. So um that's a little different than your syllabus. But just wanted to warn you, as I was going through this, I thought there's no way I'm gonna fit this all in 30 minutes. So the question is the before us is okay, we know that God's clearly pleased with the way we live, you know, but there are those other people out there, and they do things that we think are questionable. You know, maybe they drink beer or they go to R-rated movies or they watch cable TV or surf the internet or they don't read the right books, or they read comic books, or smoke cigars, or work on Sundays, or, you know, well, they wear too much lipstick, or they don't do the right dances, or they, you know, those electric musical instruments, you gotta put those away. Or maybe they have pink hair, you know, or they spend their money on things that we would never spend our money on, or you know, maybe even they use zippers instead of buttons, you know. What what do you do? The I the it the list is endless. I mean there are over the years and over the cultures, there the list will change. And what looked questionable in the 1950s is not the same as in the 1990s is probably not the same today. So, but the question is the same. How do we deal with the taboos? How do you deal with the things that from culture to culture we say, is that right or is that wrong? Is that okay or is that not okay? And how do you live with someone who thinks differently than you do? And that's really the issue. When someone has a different opinion than you, they've landed differently, how do you live with them? How do you deal with that? So that's the issue he's going to talk about, and he's gonna give an awful lot of space to. So uh let's just start in 14.1. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. That's the English standard version. Actually, I like the New American Standard Translation better. Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. That's um same idea, I just like the not for the purpose of passing judgment. So he's gonna start out and say, basically, when you disagree with someone, you don't reject them, you don't treat them as a second-class citizen, or you don't be nice to them just to try to change their mind. Um and I bet every one of you has an embarrassing family member. You know, there's someone in the family that you just have to put up with because they're they're just a little weird or they're just a little different, and you see them at family reunions, and you just kind of like hope none of your friends see them. I think that's essentially the argument he's gonna make here. Accept your brothers and sisters in Christ because they're family. As we go through this, he's gonna basically say they're God's servant, not yours. You didn't get to make them part of the family. God made them part of the family, and it's our job to learn to love them. So, you know, you accept them, not with the idea of straightening them out, but just because they're family, you know, it's your mother's uncle Herbert from the Institute, you just have to put up with them, you know. It's kind of that idea. Uh and it struck me as I was thinking about this. Have you ever noticed who we complain about most in our family? It's usually our husbands. And he's the only one we got to pick. unknown: You notice that? Krisan Marotta: You don't get to pick your parents or your in-laws or your siblings, and you don't get to pick your cousins, or you know, the one person we get to pick, that's the one we complain about. You know. Um, not just the irony of it. So um the Paul's point as he's gonna develop this argument is you don't get to choose who's in God's family either. God chooses, and it's our job to learn to love them. So the first point he's gonna start out with is you accept them just before because they're family, and he's gonna go on to define that. So let's look, let's look at um two through six. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. Okay, before we try to unravel that, let me just talk about what the issues were, because they're not the issues that we would have today. Um I also want to talk about what he means by weak and strong here in a minute, but first let's look at what the issues were. He says some people eat only vegetables, and another is completely free to eat meat. And he's not talking about there may be people today who've decided not to eat meat for health reasons or environmental reasons or animal rights reasons or any number of things. That's not really the issue that he's talking about. The issue is whether God is offended if you eat a certain kind of meat, or meat that was sacrificed a certain way, or meat that wasn't slaughtered in the kosher way, and so on. And the issue was an issue for them, and especially in Rome, because it was such a multicultural church. There were um the church was composed of various groups of Gentile believers and Jewish believers, and the Jews would have come out of these dietary laws that they would they took very seriously. You know, you can't eat pork, or there's certain kinds of combinations of food that you weren't supposed to have together, um, and meat that you did eat had to be slaughtered in a certain way for it to be kosher. And for them to come through a whole lifetime of that way and then come into the Christian church and be told, you can eat anything, would be shocking. They would say, Are you sure? Am I really permitted to do this? It just feels so wrong. Um the issue is, is God offended? Am I doing something to offend God by my actions? And we know from 1 Corinthians 8 that some of the Gentiles had the same problem, or at least problems with food, because they probably grew up with idol worship, and idols were worshiped by sacrificing animals on their altars, and then the meat was sold in the marketplace. So for them to eat the meat would bring back all the dark days of their idol worship, and they would want to say, No, I don't even want to go there, I don't even want to be involved in that. Well, the Jews wouldn't have had necessarily that problem. So all the disagreement was ultimately over are we offending God? Is there some sort of spiritual taint to the choices we make with what we're eating? The that's the same problem with this the sacred days, and I don't think he's talking about the Sabbath here so much as all the feasting and fasting days in the Jewish calendar. Um so, you know, they had the well, there are many of them. There are all kinds of rituals about what you were supposed to do. And then the Gentiles had their own kind of pagan feast days or pagan fast days, and the issue is now what do you do? Now that you're a Christian and you've got this new worldview, what do you do with all these days? Do you observe them the same way? Um if God commanded it in the Old Testament, is it still a good thing now, or do we celebrate it differently? And so they found themselves disagreeing on what the church should do on those days. Should they meet, should they not meet, should they fast, should they feast, what kind of prayer should they say on these occasions? Um the issue, the underlying issue was how do we please God? What does God want us to do in this area? Now, as in every disagreement like this, there's going to be two viewpoints. There's the liberal broad viewpoint that says we can do anything. Those were shadows of realities to come, they were symbols, they were things that God was teaching us now, but now that Christ has come, it's changed. And then there would be the narrower viewpoint that would say, no, God instituted it, it's a symbol, but it means something. Um it still speaks to our culture, we ought to be sensitive to the culture. So you'd get this division. And the problem from Paul's point of view is both sides are accusing each other. If you look at verse 3, it says the man who eats must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does. So both sides are looking at each other and saying, You're wrong, you're not a Christian. And that's what Paul's coming in to address. Um every group found themselves thinking now, people who call themselves believers really ought not to live like that. Um, they just shouldn't do it. So I was thinking, what, where do we see that in our church? Like, not just modern America, but where do you see that at Trinity? And maybe it's just because I my children are older teenagers, and all my nieces and nephews are now older teenagers and young adults. But I see this generation gap. The younger group is saying, you know, those old geezers, they just drive me crazy. You know, they they they're stuck in the 1980s and they think it's contemporary, and you know, they're there's no freedom, their worship is dry, they do the same things over and over again, they have this routine. Um especially when they come home from college, we get an earful about can't they ever change the worship service? You know, can't we do anything different? Well then on the other side, those of us with more gray hair are saying, you know, those young people, they're just they're just playing fast and loose with everything the church believes, and and they wear blue jeans to church, and they they uh you know they just don't act quite right, they're they're more free. So how can God be pleased with that? So I think it really is an issue. I see, maybe it's just because I'm around so many young teen older teenagers and young adults, there's this gap of you're not doing it the way I like. Okay, before we look at Paul's argument, let's talk about what he means by weak and strong, or I would say weak and less weak. It's probably a better way to think about it. Um He claims through the section that those with the most freedom are the farthest along in the faith. And when we get down to verse 14, he's gonna say, I'm fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself, and basically advocate for the liberal position, and say that people who live with these outward restrictions really don't have to live that way. Now, that surprises me. I don't know if it does to you, but when I first read this, I thought, you know, that's not what Christianity is about. The stereotype is, you know, that the people who are most like God who are the ones that are the monks, you know, or the putting these one these incredible outward restrictions on their lives, or they live with the most severity and the most, you know, they sacrifice everything, or they give up their money, or they have few freedoms, and they say no to everything. And that, at least when I was a young Christian, that was my impression. But I think Paul is arguing the opposite direction and saying the more you mature, the more you are free to engage in more things because you're controlled by the Spirit of God, because you've learned to make the right choices. Um, think I want to make sure you see how this fits in the context. Remember, we ended last week by him saying, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. And I think that he's not contradicting that because I think as baby Christians need to protect themselves and we need to protect them. Just like when our kids are little, you have all kinds of rules and regulations, you know, so your toddler will not kill himself. There are things they're just not allowed to do alone because they don't have the experience and they don't have the wisdom to know how to handle it. And then as they get older, you give them a little more freedom, more responsibility, and then when they get to be teenagers, you give them a little more freedom. They start making more of their choices, but there are still barriers and boundaries to keep them safe while they learn. You know, so if you have a recovering addict, you'd remove alcohol from the house. It's the same kind of thing. And I think that's similar to Paul's argument here. As we mature, there may be, there will be less restrictions and less boundaries. Now, if you think about it, why was Jesus so free to go to parties with drunkards and harlots? You know, that on the surface, that looks like not a good thing to do. But because he was spiritually perfect and mature, he knew that he was going to change them. They weren't going to change him. He could go into whatever situation and influence it without fear of it influencing him. Baby Christians, I don't think, have that freedom yet. But as we grow and mature, there's more freedom. So, just to give you an example, if you saw Mother Teresa entering a crack house, what would you assume? I mean, my assumption is she's there to minister to the people who are lost and people who are hurting and they're throwing their lives away, and she's gonna come out of it okay. But if I saw, say, my neighbor who's had a 20-year crack habit and is now a week old and the Lord go in, I would panic. I would think they're going into a situation they can't handle, we've got to help them. Um I think that's what's going on here with weak and strong. When we are immature in the faith, there are things we cannot handle, and we have more boundaries in our lives. When we become mature in our faith, there are more that we more things we can do. Now, don't take that too far. There are some areas of Scripture that are not debatable, and that is not what Paul is talking about here. Um promiscuity, adultery, things like that, they are always wrong. And it doesn't matter how strong you are in the faith, you can't run a Christian brothel. It's just not allowed. So Paul's not talking about those areas. Where God has spoken in the Old Testament and New Testament and said, this is right, this is wrong, we are not free to change that. Um, we are told, I think, to rebuke each other and encourage each other and admonish each other if we're struggling in those areas and may even, you know, discipline each other according to the patterns of Scripture. So where God has judged, we are free to judge and say that is wrong. What Paul's talking about here is the gray areas, the issues of what kind of music should we have in church, what kind of how would we celebrate Christmas? Um, things like that where we are free to differ, and they may be a right issue, there may be a wrong issue, there may be issues of freedom and growth and maturity, but but we are not always going to see it the same way. So his point is if you're stronger in an area, don't reject those who are weak. Don't treat them as you know second-class citizens or somehow form little cliques in the church, and this is our group and we're doing it right, and that group over there, they're they're doing it wrong. Um if you're weaker, you're neither are you to judge. Um we're not to go up and say, you know, I just don't see how you can be a Christian and act like that. How can you spend your money on that kind of thing? Or how can you let your kids attend that school? Or how can you can you read comic books or engage in that hobby? Um those are the kinds of things we're to refrain from. Now, I have to confess, as I was going over this, uh I was working on this section, and my 17-year-old son came in and he asked me what I was doing, and he's an aspiring filmmaker, and he watches what I consider to be some very questionable movies. Now, nothing pornographic. We agree there is a line there, and he's never crossed that line, but he does, he's 17, he does watch R-rated movies, and some of them are rated R for very good reasons. So I was telling him, oh, this is what we're gonna talk about on Wednesday, and he says, Oh, you mean like all the times you tell me, how can you be a Christian and watch that movie? It's like, yeah, that's it. Um so yet again, here's a passage I can tell you what it means, but I can't do it. So But it was it was actually he was right, I judged him, and probably unfairly in some ways, because when we talk about the movies he watches, I'd you know ask things like, what redeeming value did that have? And he'd say, Did you notice the camera angles or how they handled the lighting, or did you see how they cut this scene? And no, I hadn't noticed any of that, because that's not why I watch movies, but it is why he watches movies. So my judging him had been driving a wedge between us, and especially judging him to the point of questioning the sincerity of his faith. So I have to confess I'm just as guilty of this of this passage. So now let's move on because we're gonna run out of time here. Why are we not to do this? Why are the weak and the strong not to look down on each other? He basically says, because it's not our responsibility to change them. Look at verse 4. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. So he basically says, Your sister in the Lord is not your servant, she's God's servant. And he's the one responsible to change her. He's the one responsible to get her from weak faith to strong faith. And I think that's what he means by standing or falling. I think that's a metaphor for being straightened out. And if someone is genuinely wrong in an area, God, it's up to God to change them. It's up to God to straighten them out because we're not capable of judging them. We don't um we aren't wise enough, we aren't strong enough ourselves, and we're not far-sighted enough to see anything. So his first point is it's not your responsibility to change them, it's God. Our responsibility, as we know from 12 and 13, is to love them, to be generous. The second point he makes in five through eight is God sees what we don't. He sees the heart. Um, that there are distinctions and differences and viewpoints, but if they arise from a sincere desire to follow God, then who are we to say it's wrong? There there may be a right answer as in eating meat or not eating meat, but if the person is doing what they're doing out of a sincere desire to honor God, Then God will accept that. So if somebody has very definite ideas about how, say, we should celebrate Christmas and how we should not celebrate Christmas, or what type of music is appropriate in church, or how we should ev educate our children, or what television programs are okay to watch, how strict discipline should be, all of that, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing it to honor God, even if we think it's wrong. And that's what Paul's saying. God sees their heart, we don't see their heart. Now, then he's going to go on to say, remember that our relationship is more important than our lifestyles. As long as people are seeking to try to honor God, if we differ in these gray areas, it's more important that we show unity. Look at, let's see, seven through twelve. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lords. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother, or why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Now I'm not sure I have this section yet, but it seems to me that this his living and dying is a metaphor here, and that he's not really talking about funerals and life and death, but he's talking about people who are living to the fullest and maturity would be living, people who are living with restrictions and the boundaries of immature faith would be dying. And in that context, I think he's saying whether you're on this end of the scale or that end of the scale, what's important is you're living to God. So it doesn't matter how far along you are in the process, the important thing is that you're seeking to follow God and love Him. I there's every time I read this, I think there's something else there, there's something deeper, but I haven't put my finger on it yet. So if anybody's figured it out, let me know. But I think is the the essential point is the important thing is that we belong to God, and that's what we're striving for. So we are brothers and sisters, we're not each other's servants, we're servants of God, and He has the right to change us in His timing, in His way, and His pace, and it's not up to me to change you, or vice versa. Okay, now He's gonna turn the coin, and I'm gonna I've got to pick up the pace here because we're running out of time. And he's gonna say, if that's what you should, you shouldn't do, you shouldn't judge each other. Neither are we to ignore the influence we have on each other. And he's gonna talk about what we have to we don't want to go to the other extreme and realize that our actions have consequences and they may affect other people. So let's look at 13 through 18. Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and I am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is an unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died, so do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and improved by men. So now he's saying, you may be strong in an area where you're strong, you may be exercising your freedom, but be careful that you're not exercising it recklessly and that you're not causing others to stumble. So as we mature, we may learn to go into situations that may have tempted us before, we may learn to celebrate in ways we didn't celebrate before. And his language is make sure you're not causing others to stumble. Realize that what you're doing, others are watching, and it has an influence. And the language he uses is very strong. This do not put a stumbling block in front of someone is a it's a pretty strong terminology. I was trying to figure out how to explain it, and I don't know, have you been watching the Olympics? You know, have you seen these people that they come down the ski slopes and they wipe out? I mean, that is the idea. I happened to be watching when the women's snowboarders were going, and there were like five women going down this hill, and one of them, they came over this bump and one crossed in front of the other just ever so slightly, and their their snowboards nicked, and it was like they just went flying. And I thought, oh, here they are. They've been training for decades, probably, you know, for this minute and thirty seconds of glory, you know, this their whole life has been building to this point up till now, and now they hit each other and they wiped out. Um, and it's all over in this horrible crash. I think that's the image he's saying. God's got people on a path, they're running the race he's put before them, and you don't want to get in their way and cause them to wipe out like that. That's, you know, if you're exercising your freedom as causing someone else to stumble, don't do that. Um look at 15. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. So again, we're talking about areas that are debatable. So in my case of the comic books and letting our children read comic books, we told them you can't take them to school, you can't take them to church. If it causes other people to worry and get upset, you're that's out of bounds. You want to stop. Um if you're drinking wine at dinner and you're thankful and you're cheerful and it's no problem, and you have a friend who struggles with that, put the wine away. Don't do it. Um probably the best example from my life is there I love to teach, and I believe from a sincere study of the scripture that there are times when women can teach men, but there are places I will not do that because it causes so much heat and so much confusion that the gospel is compromised. And people don't hear the message, they just get confused. And until that issue of where and how and under what circumstances women can teach is resolved, there are just things I wouldn't do. And I Paul's gonna go on to say basically, it's more important that the gospel is proclaimed than that I exercise my right. And that's what that's the ultimate goal. So he's kind of turning the tables here a little bit. Up to this point he said, stop judging, and now he's saying, really, if you want to judge, judge yourself. If you want to judge something, look at yourself and say, how are my actions affecting other people? Am I causing someone else to stumble here? Am I criticizing them in a way that is hurting them? Am I questioning the sincerity of their faith when it's really up to God to do that? So if you want to judge, judge yourself. Don't judge others. Um ask yourself, how are my attitudes, how are my actions affecting other people? Um Ray Steadman, who's my early one of my early pastors, used to liken this to crossing one of those rickety swinging bridges. You know, you've seen the movies where they have these rope bridges and they're over some huge cavern and their boards missing. And he says, some people can just run across them and they don't even hold on to the railings. They just have no fear and they run across and they're not alarmed by it. And other people will step out, you know, and maybe take one little inch at a time or get down on all fours and crawl their way across the bridge. Um and he's saying, essentially, that's how we are in the Christian life. Some of us are moving at a faster pace, some of us are moving at a slower pace. And it's cruel to go to someone moving at a slower pace and you know drag them up to their feet and haul them across the bridge if they're not ready to go. Um so moral questions are like that. We we are there's always going to be someone in the church who is stronger than you in an area, and there's always gonna be someone who's weaker. And we're just gonna have to get used to that. And what Paul's saying is adjust your pace. If your racing across the bridge is causing someone else to stumble, slow down and and walk with them a while. Help them, encourage them. Um and judge yourself, don't judge them. Now, let me be careful here. I don't think he's saying you can't make them think. He's saying don't make them stumble. But we are to encourage each other to grow in the faith. We are to challenge each other in some ways, and where we differ, we want to be going back to the Bible and saying, what does it say? Am I right or are you right? Am I wrong or you wrong? How is this a circumstance that applies here? Is this a principle? So we how do you get from weak to strong as you learn? You know, you don't uh so when I don't think he's saying, um, sit down, shut up, and never say anything. There may be times where you want to challenge someone to think. You want to challenge them in their ideas, but you do it lovingly, and not from a position of how can you be a Christian and make that claim? Um but well, let's see what the scripture says. Let's see where we can go from here. Um the analogy I like to use for this is um board games. My husband particularly loves games, and he was delighted when we had kids because it gave him a chance to play all kinds of games, and you know, he could call it good fatherhood, and it was. Um But we played a bazillion board games, and do you remember you probably some of you are in this stage now, when the kids were little, we must have played Candyland until we were ready to scream, you know. You know that game? It's just it's completely boring and r endlessly repetitive, and there's no strategy, and and yet when our kids were little, they loved it, and it was really all they could do. You know, they were learning their colors and they were learning to count, and they were inexperienced, and so that was the level they were at. And what we don't want to do though is stay at Candyland. You want to be able to move on to, you know, monopoly or or scrabble or risk or something that takes more skill. And Paul is not advocating that we stay stuck in the Candyland stage, but we want growth, we want maturity, we want creativity, we want to be able to explore and move on. So he is advocating don't cause someone to stumble, but he's not saying don't leave them there, don't leave them in their weakness. Um, love them. Seek to help them, seek to serve them, look at how your actions are offending them. If they're causing them to question and think, and that's a good thing, then keep at it. If they're causing them to stumble and grieve and fall into confusion, then stop, back off. Um in the same way we ought to judge our own hearts when we see someone else and we think, how can they spend their money on that? Or how can they how can they have that kind of hobby, or how can they let their kids uh read those books, or how can they have that kind of discipline in their home or lack of it, then you want to ask yourself, is this an area I should grow in? Am I missing something here? Instead of assuming, well, they must be the ones that are wrong, we want to go back and judge ourselves. Let's see, we're almost out of time here. Let me just close with 17 and 18. I didn't think we'd get much farther than that. We'll pick up um 19 to the end and add it on to next week with the beginning of chapter five. But 17 and 18 are actually, I think, a good closing point to this section because it's the reminder that nothing is we have lost nothing if we've given up our rights. We have lost nothing of eternal importance. We have lost um nothing important is at stake. Um because he says learning to love each other, learning to live with our differences is a worthy thing to do, it's a good thing to do, and whether or not we exercise our freedom and what kind of music we listen to or where we go or who our friends are, um, nothing eternally important is is at stake if I throw away the comic books. It may be a loving thing to do. What is important is righteousness, peace, and joy. So, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking. So it's not a matter of all these different things we disagree on, how you celebrate Christmas or what the worship service looks like or or what kind of music you listen to. What we really ought to be striving for is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. And if I give up something that I am perfectly free to do, and it brings about peace and unity and a furtherance of righteousness, that's a wonderful thing. I have lost nothing in not exercising my rights. So whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. I think that's just the added endorsement that this is the right thing to do. This is a good thing. Good things happen when we do that. Okay. Let me stop there and uh pray and then we'll pick up next week with um the rest of this chapter and in the beginning of five. Or not five, fifteen. Thank you, Father, for teaching us how to live with each other when we disagree, because we know we will. And we know that we're all guilty of this, whether we're weak or whether we're strong, we've judged our uh judged each other, we've condemned each other, and we ask you to forgive us in that and help us to see that it's your place to cause growth, it's your place to cause change, and help us to be tools in your hands and not stumbling blocks. We pray that you would be working this into our lives so as we look and grow that we would see our differences as an opportunity to sharpen our thinking, to go back to your word, to learn, to see more for you, and to grow and learn from our brothers and sisters. In Jesus' name. Amen. Questions, comments? Yes, I'm not sure.