Sermon: Romans 14
Intro – Asking the Right Questions
It’s important to ask the right questions in life – in fact, much of our education focuses around finding the right questions to ask, and the best ways to answer them.
Have you ever played the game “Psychologist?” Tanya used to love to play this game with her youth in Birmingham. It’s kind of an enhanced version of “20 Questions.” One person is dubbed the “psychologist” and is sent out of the room. While that person is gone, everyone else decides what’s “wrong” with them – for instance, everyone thinks that they are Michael Jackson, or everyone thinks they are a dog. Then the psychologist comes back into the room and has to ask yes/no questions to figure out what’s wrong with everyone.
It can be quite comical – and pretty frustrating, too, if the group chooses to have a problem that’s complex. For instance, each person thinks they are the person seated directly to his or her left. It takes some good question asking to figure out what’s going on!
Of course, questions are important in real life, as well. Take asking directions – unless you get lucky and stumble upon a really good direction-giver, if you don’t know how to ask good questions you can end up more lost than you were to begin with!
Or think about doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals, trying to figure out what’s wrong with someone. If you focus on the symptoms, ask the wrong questions, you can end up nowhere – or worse, you can end up with the completely wrong diagnosis!
Jesus was a master of asking questions that got to the heart of the matter.
It’s the same in matters of faith. Each sermon I work to find the questions that are vital to us today, here in this place and time. Some passages have questions that are easy to find. Some don’t. This is one of the latter.
We could ask all kinds of questions about this passage – but only by asking the right questions will we get to the heart of what Paul is saying, and what it means to you and me.
Wrong: Weak Vs. Strong
First is the question, “Who is WEAK and who is STRONG?” After all, we always want to know where we stand in our faith. What does God think of us? What do others think of us?
Admittedly, Paul seems to be acting a bit superior here. But I don’t think that’s Paul’s tone at all. After all, Paul has spent several chapters now discussing our relationship to the Law – not just the old Mosaic Law, but to any certain set of practices and rites. We are free in Christ, he says, to follow the LAW of LOVE and not the old strict laws.
And, Paul has also been very clear to make sure that everyone is seen as equal in God’s eyes – no matter their background, social status, or level of spiritual maturity.
So we can’t get caught up into splitting ourselves into “WEAK” and “STRONG.” That’s God’s job, not ours. No matter how strong you might think you are, there are always others somewhere, sometime, who have a stronger faith in some ways. No matter how weak, there are always others who are newer and less mature in their faith. And besides, how are we going to classify strength and quality of faith? What criteria will we use?
These distinctions don’t matter to you and to me. They don’t even really matter to God. This question is only a distraction.
Wrong: Looking at the Issues
Another trap we can fall into is looking at the specific issues Paul brings up – vegetarianism, celebration or non-celebration of certain days. And it would be an easy trap. We could go on for several sermons digging into the biblical roots of vegetarianism, into the debate over the true day of Sabbath.
But Paul is not talking about the specific issues here – his language shows that these are only examples of where he’s really going. The issues he raises are rooted in the culture, time and place of the people to whom he was writing – they have no real meaning to us.
Obviously, there were disputes among the Christians in Rome over these two issues. The
- Vegetarianism – was both a pagan and a Jewish practice.
- “Certain days” are not clarified. Could be the continued observance of Saturday as Sabbath, or the celebration of some cultural holidays observed by the state.
In our context these kinds of issues can take many forms:
- Seventh-day Baptists/Adventists,
- Working on Sunday
- Celebration of Halloween (or Christmas, or Easter), previously pagan holidays
- dietary restrictions,
- praying before meals,
- using contemporary or traditional music
- the style of our worship – formal or informal
In these things that are not explicitly set out in scripture or that are unclear, we must TRUST our brother or sister in Christ to examine God’s word, allow God to speak to them, and follow the convictions given to them by the Holy Spirit.
Right Questions: What is Essential and what is Non-Essential?
How should we respond when we have different opinions?
Here’s the bottom line – Paul is telling us to make a distinction in matters of faith between what is VITAL and what is NOT (14:17-18). Notice that Paul is very clear on excluding certain sinful practices throughout his writings – he’s not being overly tolerant of any and every thing. Neither is he promoting any kind of religious pluralism.
Rather, he’s cautioning us to be careful to distinguish between ESSENTIALS of the Christian life and NON-ESSENTIALS. Stand up for the essentials, absolutely! But on the non-essentials, we have a God-given task to overcome our differences and continue in worship and witness. Our goal is not to achieve the perfect set of beliefs, but to glorify God by our love and unity (15:5-6).
This was the problem the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day faced. They were so busy looking at the details of the non-essential things that they missed the most important essential of LOVE. That’s why Jesus boiled it down for them – the most important commandment was not one of the myriad little ordinances in the Mosaic Law. Rather, it was a summation of the whole Law – “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Paul points out the most important essentials in 14:17-18: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.
Focal Questions:
- What are our ESSENTIALS?
- What strong convictions do we hold outside those Essentials?
- How can we preserve love, peace and unity when we disagree about these non-essential things?
