Audio file
N207_HIH_061324.mp3
Transcript
00:00:05 Colin Cook
So we are in this chapter where Paul is concerned and about people Christians living together with all the differences they have among them. You know, it’s so interesting to recognize that.
00:00:20 Colin Cook
There are Christians who are educated Christians, who are wealthy Christians, who are uneducated Christians, who are.
00:00:28 Colin Cook
Or Christians who have certain rituals and and beliefs about one thing or another in the Bible and others who have a different view. And yet they’re all united in one truth that Jesus Christ is the son of God who came to the world.
00:00:48 Colin Cook
To give himself for the human race died on the cross for our sins, and rose again for our salvation, our eternal life, and will return to receive.
00:00:59 Colin Cook
Of people, this is the central thing that we all believe in, and yet there are these issues that separate well, that could separate us if we forget the major thing that brings us all together. Jesus Christ. So This is why Paul is so concerned about this. And he says.
00:01:21 Colin Cook
Receive one another, or rather receive one who is weak in the faith but not to dispute over doubtful thing.
00:01:29 Colin Cook
For one, believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables, and we have seen in the last few programs that that that is talking about the people who are concerned, the Christians, when they go to the market and buy meat. Was it offered to idols or not? Oh, I’d better not touch it because it has been offered to an idol.
00:01:50 Colin Cook
Therefore, I’ll just eat the vegetables, just buy vegetables, and the others would say no, no, it’s perfectly OK to purchase that meat because we are not under condemnation any more. Jesus Christ has paid for all our sins. So there are those.
00:02:06 Colin Cook
Who have a stronger faith in what Christ has done for them and those who are not quite sure on how much he has done for them.
00:02:15 Colin Cook
So let not him who eats despise verse 3 despise him, who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat, judge him who eats, for God has received him. I want you to notice 2 words here in verse three. Let not him who eats.
00:02:32 Colin Cook
Despise him, who does not eat. In other words, the stronger in faith may tend to look down on and despise the one who is not so strong in faith who doesn’t eat for fear that the meat will contaminate him. So there’s a tendency of the strong in faith to despise the weak.
00:02:53 Colin Cook
And then notice the next part and let not him who does not eat, judge him who eats.
00:03:01 Colin Cook
In other words, the weaker one is tempted to judge the stronger one as not conforming to all his little rules that he and his family keep for themselves.
00:03:13 Colin Cook
So you see then the strong tend to despise the weak, and the weak tend to judge the strong.
00:03:21 Colin Cook
We need to ask ourselves what are we?
00:03:23 Colin Cook
Doing.
00:03:24 Colin Cook
Are we judging our neighbour because he seems more at liberty than we do there? That he seems to be more carefree or more joyful in his Christian life, and where burdened down with rules and regulations so we judge him for not.
00:03:41 Colin Cook
Feeling as bad as we do.
00:03:44 Colin Cook
Or are we so at liberty and having a joyful Christian life that we sort of snicker at those who are weak and who are under lots of rules and regulations? So you see, this is all an issue of love. It’s all an issue of how do we treat other brethren?
00:04:04 Colin Cook
Christian brothers and sisters who are different from us, and so we need to be inner in the spirit, not allowing the flesh to either despise or to judge.
00:04:17 Colin Cook
So, he says, who are you? Paul says in verse four. Who are you to judge? And others and another servant to his own master. He stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand for God is able to make him stand. So Paul is saying. Now look.
00:04:35 Colin Cook
That Christian you despise all that Christian you judge has a master.
00:04:42 Colin Cook
And that master is Jesus Christ. So keep your nose out of.
00:04:48 Colin Cook
We forget that people are owned by our Lord God and are owned by our Savior Jesus, and that we are. They are not answerable to us. We don’t have to judge them as if they were answerable to us. We don’t have to despise them. If, as if they were answerable to us.
00:05:07 Colin Cook
They are answerable to Jesus Christ.
00:05:11 Colin Cook
Look at that verse again.
00:05:13 Colin Cook
Who are you to judge another servant to his own master? He stands or falls, indeed.
00:05:20 Colin Cook
He will be made to stand for God, is able to make him stand.
00:05:25 Colin Cook
This verse.
00:05:27 Colin Cook
Brings to us the reality or the question, how do we look at other people?
00:05:36 Colin Cook
Do we see them as God’s children?
00:05:39 Colin Cook
Or do we see them as simply individuals defined by their by their own humanity, that we can evaluate and judge or condemn?
00:05:50 Colin Cook
And despise.
00:05:52 Colin Cook
No. We have to see them as people for whom Christ died. You remember Jesus taught this.
00:05:59 Colin Cook
He said whosoever gives a glass of water in my name to one of these little ones has given it even to me, and whosoever does not give a glass of water to one of these little ones has not given it to me. And so Jesus is teaching us that every man and woman must be seen in the light of the cross.
00:06:20 Colin Cook
Every man and woman must be seen as redeemed. Now. Some of you may say, well, potentially redeemed Colin because they haven’t been saved yet. That’s OK.
00:06:30 Colin Cook
Whatever you way you see it, whether they’re already redeemed and have yet to find to discover the news of it, or whether they have yet to be redeemed, nevertheless, it is all in relation to Jesus.
00:06:42 Colin Cook
That’s how we judge people. That’s how we rather relate to people, not judge them. That’s how we evaluate them. Or let’s put it this way, we do judge them, but we judge them in Christ.
00:06:54 Colin Cook
Not judge them in their own humanity.
00:06:58 Colin Cook
So Paul then goes on to say to extend this even further and he’s quite surprising here, in my opinion. One person esteems one day above another another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.
00:07:16 Colin Cook
Now I think this is quite remarkable because Paul was Jewish and one of the great distinguishing marks of a Jew is not only circumcision, but also the Sabbath Saturday.
00:07:31 Colin Cook
Sabbath Friday, sunset to Saturday sunset and the Jewish people keep that day as part of the Covenant they have with God.
00:07:42 Colin Cook
How is it then that Paul is saying what he says here? One person esteems one day above another another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord, and he who does not observe the day.
00:08:02 Colin Cook
To the Lord, he does not observe it.
00:08:05 Colin Cook
That is utterly astonishing, and this is what made Paul, I think, very objectionable to Jewish leaders and teachers.
00:08:15 Colin Cook
What he is saying here is that the Sabbath day or and the sabbaths for there were many ceremonial Sabbaths as well are not to be an obligation.
00:08:29 Colin Cook
To the Gentile, to the non Jewish person.
00:08:33 Colin Cook
Nor, for that matter, are they an obligation to the Jew anymore. They are as something that he may choose to celebrate, because the Lord has risen or not celebrate. Let each one be convinced in his own mind.
00:08:50 Colin Cook
Now, that’s very, very difficult because you see the Sabbath day versus Sunday.
00:08:56 Colin Cook
Separates people, doesn’t it? 7th Day Adventists, for instance, go to church on Saturday, and others who are not. 7th Day Adventists go to church on Sunday.
00:09:08 Colin Cook
And so there is a separation.
00:09:11 Colin Cook
And yet that should not separate fellowship together outside of church. Let the Adventists be persuaded in their own mind and let the non Adventists be persuaded in theirs. But it should not separate us from fellowshipping with one another at different times. Nor should it lead us to judge.
00:09:32 Colin Cook
And yet the history between 7th Day Adventists and other Christians has been pretty horrible.
00:09:38 Colin Cook
The The What shall I call them? The evangelicals? The fundamentalists have accused Adventists of being fanatics, not Christian and not according to the evangelical faith. And the Adventists have often treated others as if they were didn’t have the truth.
00:10:00 Colin Cook
But you see, if Christians of those two groups have faith in Christ.
00:10:07 Colin Cook
Knowing that he is the son of God, knowing that he has died for the sins of the world, knowing that he has risen again for our eternal salvation, knowing that he will return.
00:10:17 Colin Cook
To bring his Kingdom to the world. If they have that, then we should fellowship with them, whether they have different views on different issues of the Bible or not.
00:10:28 Colin Cook
So you see how this is so very important? Why did that? Tremendous? Why has that massive argument and disagreement between Adventists and Non Adventists lasted for so long? I’ll tell you why. The answer is very simple.
00:10:46 Colin Cook
Because we forgot the centrality of Jesus Christ.
00:10:52 Colin Cook
When you forget the centrality of who Christ is, what he has done, how he has saved us, then you start majoring on minus you start making major issues out of minor issues because you have forgotten the major issue.
00:11:10 Colin Cook
And so if you’ve had a big controversy with somebody over the Sabbath, maybe it’s time to go to that person and apology.
00:11:17
Guys.
00:11:18 Colin Cook
Maybe it’s time to say, look, we’ve made a big heated thing over this and I have forgotten. I’m so sorry that Christ is the head of the church, and I know you believe in Christ as your Savior, and I accept that you are a, therefore a brother of mine or a sister of mine. Because of that very reality.
00:11:38 Colin Cook
This is how we need to work with one another.
00:11:41 Colin Cook
You see, then what Paul says here, he who observes the day, observes it to the Lord, and he who does not observe the day to the Lord. He does not observe it. It’s a funny way of talking.
00:11:53 Colin Cook
But what it’s recognizing is that the person who believes in this particular position, whether it’s vegetarianism or Sabbath keeping or whatever it may be, you’re recognising that there’s something deeper about his life than the than only the Sabbath or only vegetarianism you are recognising.
00:12:12 Colin Cook
That he observes that day to the Lord, and the Lord is the center of his life. Allow that. Can you not in other people’s lives, who have a different view from you.
00:12:25 Colin Cook
And allow it in yourself too. Yes, I have a different view, you may say, than my Christian neighbour, but I have that view before God in Jesus Christ and so.
00:12:39 Colin Cook
I’m going to accept that’s what’s special about me. It’s not the differences that make that set me apart.
00:12:47 Colin Cook
It is the same. The sameness of Jesus Christ as the savior of the world.
00:12:54 Colin Cook
These are just remarkable passages and are surprising that a Christian Jew like Paul can express them so that we are all one in Jesus Christ for none of us, he says, lives to himself and no one dies to himself.
00:13:14 Colin Cook
Can you not see in these verses how Christ, how Paul is constantly putting Christ at the centre of the issue, the centre of the issue is not vegetarianism. The centre of the issue is not clean and unclean meats. The centre of the issue is not a Sabbath day on a Saturday or a Sabbath day on a Sunday or any day for that matter.
00:13:34 Colin Cook
The center of the issue of is Jesus Christ.
00:13:39 Colin Cook
If you’re not sure of that.
00:13:41 Colin Cook
Is it possible that he has not yet become the centre of your life by faith alone?
00:13:51 Colin Cook
Thank you for listening today. This is Colin Cook and you’ve been listening to my program, how it happens. Funds are rather suffering at the moment. This is partly because of summer time when people uh perhaps don’t listen to the radio so often. And also because there are lots of commitments.
00:14:09 Colin Cook
We have in this little ministry that is now over 40 years old.
00:14:14 Colin Cook
If and this is listener supported radio. So if you could help with extra donations it would be so much appreciated at one program costs $39.00 a week’s program $200.00 if you’d like to make a donation online then you can do so at faithquestradio.com.
00:14:35 Colin Cook
Thanks so much. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
