Please turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 14, as has been indicated a few moments ago. Romans chapter 14. While you're turning there, I mentioned this morning, for those of you who joined us, that we are going through extraordinary times, not just as a nation, not just as a continent, but also as planet Earth. We've never had anything like this in our lifetime, which is really talking in terms of 50 60, 70 years. And so we are having to try and put our hands around whatever decision is that we are going through as individuals and also as families. We include the church there because we are having to think on our feet, trying to process how best we can relate to a situation where the church isn't meeting. But we're very grateful for technology once again, and here we are, an empty auditorium, well, almost empty. We have individuals playing different roles as far as this event is concerned, including musicians and also our technical staff, for whom we are deeply grateful. Announcements have been made in this service have been made again. I'm sure it was the end that we need to observe as much as we possibly can precautionary measures so that we preserve our own lives and also out of love for others that we also take those precautionary measures so that we do not infect others with this illness. Well, it's been six weeks since I was in this pulpit, and in the evening services, we're going through the book of Romans. We've been in it for a number of years now and now we are in chapter 14 and today we are drawing towards the end of this chapter. We are looking at the 22nd verse. However, I would want us to begin from this 20 and just read that concluding paragraph of this chapter. So if you have your Bible with you, uh, Romans chapter 14, we commence reading from verse 20. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. And then our text, the faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats. because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." Well, that's really the passage that we've been looking at, at least from the last time I was here, and we are continuing in it. The last time we're doing so, we're asking the question, how do I pursue peace and mutual edification, which is what we found in verse 19 when the apostle Paul had said there, so then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual uplifting or upbuilding. So how do I do it? Well, these 20 down ones is basically telling us how we are to do it. And the first way, which we observed last time, is simply stop doing that which causes your brothers and sisters to stumble. Just stop it. Whatever it might be that the brethren might be complaining about in terms of your practice, your activities, just stop it and that way you will provide an environment of peace, an environment of mutual edification, you will provide a situation where the church remains united. Well today we're going a little further and we're really asking the question How further can we do this? How is it that I am going to stop it? What is the first thing I need to do? And really, the Apostle Paul is saying that you must keep your belief to yourself. In other words, often it is not so much that what you are doing is causing people to stumble, it is because what you believe, which is the root of what you are doing, is ultimately a point of disagreement. And that point of disagreement consequently leads to the difficulties we are talking about, where church unity is affected. And you might be sitting there thinking, well, look, we're fighting with a global epidemic here. We're fighting with COVID. We shouldn't be spending our time now simply discussing the matter of church unity. What's the relevance here? And my point is there is a lot of relevance. This is vital information. And the reason is quite simple. It's the fact that when a church is divided, When a church is falling apart at the seams because of difficulties and fights within, what tends to happen is that the church fails to minister in the world and the world always remains a very needy world. So, for instance, if we're to go to the first century, the major difficulty in the first century when Paul was writing, as he was writing here, was that the church was under persecution. And as long as the church was under persecution, it was still a united church. It was being pushed from the outside in, and consequently the church would still say, let's get out there and make it clear that Jesus is Lord. Let's hold hands together so that we might save God in the midst of the flames and of the fire. But once the church gets disunited, when people are fighting with each other, the problem is they cannot lock hands. They cannot work together because they are now busy fighting with each other instead of together fighting in the world. Well, it's the same with us today. There are many issues that surround us. The church is supposed to be continuing in its work of evangelism, its work of missions. It's supposed to be locking arms together to do this work. But if the church is fighting within, if the church is disunited, inevitably its capacity to save in that way is limited. And we are now dealing with the coronavirus. There is so much of a need that is currently there, not just in terms of individuals that are losing jobs and consequently needing some form of practice. financial assistance, that they might be enabled to cross the boundaries of the various months ahead, but you also have the fact that the Christian church, and the Christian church alone, has the good news that the world in fear needs to hear. But if the church is fighting within, suspicious of one another, and full of this unity, the church does not have the energy and the unity to then minister to a world that is in desperate need. And this subject is very practical. It's one that we need to face and deal with so that the church can remain a united force, so that the church can do its job in our own day. Now, if the issue is a major one, if we're dealing with doctrines to do with the nature of God, doctrines that have to do with the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and so on, yes, they will say, let's fight because we are fighting for what the gospel really is. The problem in Romans chapter 14 is that they were fighting over diet, whether you can eat pork or not as a believer, whether you should only eat vegetables. They were fighting over holy days, observance of holy days. Now the problem with that is this, the world is on fire. How on earth do you sit there fighting over vegetables and meat? How? That's the problem that we are dealing with. And this is the issue that Paul is saying, come on, stop it, keep it to yourself, so that you might concentrate on the bigger issue, the great work that the church has in the world. So let's quickly look at verse 22 now and see how we can go beyond simply stopping it in terms of practice and we can go into stopping it in terms of sharing our belief. The apostle Paul begins there in verse 22 by saying, the faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. And in speaking about the faith that you have, ultimately what he is saying is that as far as controversial scruples and qualms are concerned, we all have individual beliefs about them. It's literally impossible for us to come to a common understanding with respect to those finer details or areas of Christian practice. So for instance, in the passage we are looking at here, and you can apply it in any other sphere, the brethren whose faith is strong, so to speak, Their beliefs often give them extra freedom in life. They are able to do things which other Christians cannot do. Their own consciences scream at them, often because of their background. Inevitably, therefore, this area is one where you will never be fully agreed because one seems to see that there's nothing wrong with doing something, someone else seems to see there's everything wrong with doing it. The Apostle Paul is saying we have such individual beliefs, all of us, at a practical point. For instance, if you turn with me to 1 Corinthians 8, where we have looked at so many times before, I want us to notice there that the issue is not so much, is there a God in heaven? Is there a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? The issue is not did Jesus Christ come to die for our sins on the cross. The issue is not should we repent of sin in order for us to be saved. The issue is not is salvation by grace and by grace alone. That's not the issue. The issue is the finer points of Christian practice because of the backgrounds we are coming from Let's quickly look at that. The apostle Paul says in verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 8, now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, He is known by God. That's the introduction. Now he jumps into the area of difficulty. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence. So, this is the mature belief. This is the person who's strong in faith. We know that idols are nothing and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven and on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist. And one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we exist. Again, that's not incantation at all. The nature of this God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not being questioned. However, not all possess this knowledge, but some, and here's the point, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol. And their conscience, being weak, is defiled. That's the problem. So on one hand, we are agreed as far as our doctrine of God is concerned. But on the other, because of people's backgrounds, they are struggling when they now see somebody eating food that passed through an idol temple. Verse 8, food, strictly speaking, will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. That's the correct belief. The apostle Paul adds a but there and it changes the reality once again. Look at this now. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, destroyed in terms of his conscience that is weak being defiled. And then he says, the brother for whom Christ died. Let me read again verse 11. And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. So not just sinning against the brother who has stumbled, whose conscience has ended up being defiled, but you're also sinning against the Lord himself. And so Paul says, therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I'll never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble. So again, let's be clear that the belief that he's talking about here when he says the faith that you have, it's about these practical aspects of the Christian faith. These qualms and scruples that all of us have depending on the background that we are coming from. I can quickly just throw out a few again. I've been doing this throughout the series as we have been going through chapter 14 of the book of Romans. An obvious one is activities that we can do on the Lord's day. In other words, the day that we treasure as being set apart for the Lord. I remember once upon a time a brother from another country who had visited us in Zambia and after the service, whichever church family he was with, they took him out for lunch at a restaurant. And long after that, He mentioned to me that he stumbled because of the fact that he was taken to a restaurant to eat on the last day. Other people were being made to work, and he found that difficult. Now, the family that took him, they didn't think twice about it. They thought, Instead of us cooking, which is going to take a lot of time, we have to come back again for the service. Let's just pass through a restaurant and eat. It's little things like that which are not little to other individuals because of where they are coming from. And of course in Zambia, we have the issue of alcoholic beverages. Someone was asking me not too long ago about this. And I said, well, in Zambia, alcohol is one of the things we repent from when we get converted. It's not just something we treat by the side. It's part of the package that we repent from when we are singing about the things Jesus has saved us from. We include alcohol in it. He turned to me and said, well, actually, my wife does take a little bit of alcohol. I don't. But again, those are the realities we are speaking about, where you have these belief systems on which you obviously differ. Another obvious area is musical instruments. It is said that when Satan fell out of heaven, he fell into the the area where the choir normally sits. Again, the point that is being made is that often some of the trials that rock churches are to do with the whole area of music. There are people that feel very strongly that certain musical instruments should never be in church. Speaking about drums, for instance, should never be in church, they say, or perhaps a bass guitar should not be in church, and so on. While others say, what's your problem? I mean, it adds to the rhythm of the worship and so forth. So it's things like that that are being spoken about here, that we all have different beliefs to some measure the belief that you have. Well, what are we supposed to do with this belief that we have? The Apostle Paul is saying here that it is often wiser to keep your beliefs in these areas to yourself. especially if they are on the more permissive end. In other words, if you are the one through whom you, because of your background and because of your grasp of Christian liberty and because of your own maturity, you don't seem to have problems where your brothers and sisters have problems. He is saying, keep between yourself and God. Let's go back to our text, Romans 14 and verse 22. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. The point he's making here is that he's not saying change your belief. or throw away your belief, or surrender your belief, or come to the point where what to you was okay, you now should start seeing as evil. No, he's not saying anything like that. All he is saying is keep your belief out of public view. Keep it away from public consumption. Don't put it right on the table for everybody to suddenly notice and consequently develop serious problems of relating to you. Don't, because when you do that, you spoil Christian fellowship. You bring disunity among the people of God. There's a saying in English, it's something like putting a fly in the soup. Putting a fly in the soup. I think you can understand the picture. If you were having a meal and it was with a common bowl of soup and everybody was looking forward to eating it because it's so nice, it looks nice, it smells nice, the mouth is salivating, and perhaps as your friend is about to reach it, a fly comes onto your jacket and you quickly go like this and in the process it falls into the soup. I doubt that the average person would just quickly take a spoon and remove the fly and then continue helping himself. I doubt. You will all lose your appetite immediately. You lose your appetite because you imagine, your imagination runs riot that this fly might have come from a nearby toilet. You just don't know what it has put there. It might have even brought coronavirus inside there. Your imagination runs riot. Well, that's basically the thing that Paul is saying. Don't do it. Don't start raising your arguments. among a people who have a more conservative attitude towards the things of God, who don't enjoy the kind of liberties that you seem to have in spiritual things. Don't put the fly on the soap, because all that will happen is that they will lose sight of everything else, and it's going to be a third world war that will begin. So those saints whose faith is stronger need to see the bigger picture. They need to be able to say to themselves that there's something more important here than my belief in this area of practical Christian living. And it is this, the church's unity. The church being united. Because if the church is united, we will be carrying out the Great Commission. We will be doing God's work in the world. And that's why we are here. It's not about vegetables. or pork or meat. It's not about these things ultimately. As important as it might be to me as an individual, I can put them aside for the sake of unity. And also keeping between yourself and God might include you going to God and saying, God, I honestly don't understand why these brethren have difficulties with this. It's so straightforward. As we saw from 1 Corinthians 8, God, you are the only God. Idols are nothing. They're just made out of wood or stone or some artificial thing. But at the end of the day, they don't exist. They're not gods. There's only one God. So what if my meat has gone through some ritual in that temple? It's still just protein, Lord. That's all it is. And I enjoy it. And then you say, but anyway, Lord, that's between you and me. It's between you and me. I won't take this fight into the church circles. I won't. I'll just put it aside. Put it aside. And hopefully, as the brethren get to know me better, my godliness, and then I also get to know them better at an appropriate day, in an appropriate environment, the discussion can come up and we can talk about it. But I will not turn it into a place where bloodletting should happen. I will not. So that's what it means here. The wisdom of not parading your beliefs is that you avoid hurting your conscience and you also avoid hurting the consciences of others. Look at the way he puts it back into our text. After saying in verse 22, the faith that you have keep between yourself and God, he goes on to say, blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. Now this verse can be a little tricky, so let me just carefully walk through it with you, especially this statement. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment. Now that word judgment there is in terms of a negative judgment. In other words, it's in terms of condemnation. So to pass condemnation on himself for what he approves. How can you condemn yourself for what you approve? It's supposed to be the person who does not approve, who when he eats what you are eating, whose conscience then gets defiled and consequently he gets injured. But here the Apostle Paul is suggesting that you can approve something And you can end up passing condemnation on yourself based on that which you approve. And he is saying, don't go that way. Instead, go the opposite way, which is the way of blessedness. And blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment or condemnation on himself for what he approves. What is he saying? Let's remove the two negatives and make the whole statement a positive, and this is what it says. Cursed is the one who has reason to condemn himself for what he approves. Cursed is the one who has reason to condemn himself for what he approves. What is it that can make a person grieve, that can make a person's conscience kill him over what he approves? It's simple. It is when you overlook the weak. And in the process, you leave out what you approve. And as a result, you destroy the work of God. The result is that your own conscience now screams at you. It says to you, so what have you gained by insisting on continuing to have your own way? Now look what you've done to the whole church. The church is failing to do its work and oh, it kills you as you are now alone in God's presence. home and you are imagining your own church is failing to do its work, it's not involved in evangelism anymore, at least not together, because everybody's pointing fingers this way and that way. They are not giving money towards missions because why? Where they can no longer trust one another. And what has caused all this? Pork. You wanted to eat your pork. And you begin to say to yourself, surely I should have just kept this to myself. I shouldn't have put this in front of everybody. And so your own conscience condemns you over something you yourself approve because of the lack of wisdom with which you handled it. That's really what he means by that. So you can imagine a situation where, like we have today with the coronavirus, instead of the church as a local church being involved in seeking to minister to so many individuals who've lost their jobs and now are looking for help one way or the other, the church is fighting within itself over whether we should have lunch at a restaurant or not. Fighting over itself as to whether we can have a drum set or have a trumpet or whatever else it might be in the means of worship. Fighting within itself. This is the kind of thing that the Bible is speaking about. The world is on fire. Desperately needing to hear the only good news that the world has. The good news of a gracious God who reconciles sinners to himself through the death of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Needing to hear fresh messages of the Christian faith. To borrow the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am the resurrection and the life. No one who believes in me who dies, rather everyone who believes in me but who dies will live again. Those are the words of our Lord. The world needs to hear that we can actually face death defiantly if we can believe, truly believe in the Lord Jesus. But no, that's not the message that's coming from the church. That's coming from the church is he's very stupid. He's very arrogant. She's this and she's that. And that's all they are busy doing to each other. And then you realize I caused it due to lack of wisdom. I caused it. I should have kept my big mouth shut. I should have zipped it so that the church can concentrate on its work. Oh, Lord, forgive me. Now, almost every mature, reformed Christian who's now in late adulthood will tell you that that's probably one of their greatest regrets. when they were young, that they learned a little thing somewhere, a little thing. Wherever it was, they quickly brought it like a fly into the soup. And not just the youth group went into splinters, the very church, the whole church was affected. over something that is by the side over there. But because you had stumbled across it and thought this is truth with a capital T, you made it the point of defining who's reformed and who is not. Fast forward. 20 years. Whenever you look back to those days, you want to become a Psalmist. Remember not, Lord, the sins of my youth. Remember not the sins of my youth. I wish I was wise enough in those days, Lord. I really wish I was wise enough to keep my big mouth shut. Often churches suffer and fail to do their work in a needy world because of these practical details of scruples and qualms that are very individualistic. What do we learn from this then? is that we maintain church unity by keeping our beliefs on debatable practices to ourselves, to ourselves. And this is crucial, brethren, because in that area, we will never ultimately be 100% agreed, never. Those of us who are mature have to learn to hold some things back because we realize they are not the most important things. So that the church can marshal its human resources together, its financial resources together, in order that the church as one man can do God's work in God's will. And that way, many years later, we'll be grateful because we will see the fruit of what the church was doing. And we'll say, thank you, Lord, that you gave me enough love to hold back my own liberties, enough wisdom to keep my big mouth shut. Sadly, often individuals who can't do that, who are willing to bring down the roof, as it were, of the church on top of everybody's head, over their own scruples and quowns, often it's that they are just not converted. They're religious, yes, but not converted. Often, it's a matter of time they shipwreck their faith. It's a matter of time. You will soon hear they've abandoned their wives. They've gone off into complete sexual immorality. And you say, hang on. They were fighting over this. Now this is what has happened. That's a bigger issue. Or really, at the end of the day, it was not the cause of Christ that they were really concerned about. It was their own music being heard, their own preference being the thing that everybody must abide by. In other words, often it's an unregenerate heart. So the appeal I want to make is if you cannot do this, The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. If you cannot do this, go to Christ and say to Him, save me. Save me, Lord. Change my heart. Take away this self-centeredness. that makes me think that I'm this important person with this important belief and everybody must abide by it. Lord, save me! That I might love your church. To borrow the song that was written by one of the early Negro Christians. Deeper, deeper in the love of Jesus. That's where you should take me. Higher, higher in the school of wisdom. That's where you should take me. I want the two together. That I might know what it means to love your people deeply. That I might know what it means to be wise in carrying myself among your people. so that as a result of my life among the people of God, my own church might be effective in today's world. And for us, today's world is COVID-19, isn't it? That when it's over, the world would take note that there was a church that was united enough to turn all its energies to the need of the day, rather than being split into every direction over what is really petty, over what is a scruple, a qualm. Oh, that God might help us to have deep love, and also to have high wisdom. Amen.