theological triage this morning. And before we get started, I'd like to pray. So let's bow our heads in prayer. Father, thank you so much for another day to be together as the people of God called out of darkness into your marvelous light. Thank you so much for the truth of your word. Thank you for the fellowship of the saints, the forgiveness of sin, life everlasting. And thank you so much for this time of study. I pray that it would be edifying to my brothers and sisters here and also glorifying to you. Lord, there's some things in your word that May be difficult for us this morning, but I pray that you would give me grace to explain them in the right way. Help us now in Christ's name, amen. All right, so we're on the topic of theological triage, and I wanted to do just a quick recap of where we've been so far in our study. So we covered two things last time, the what and the why. We talked about the fact that theological triage prioritizes and sorts doctrines according to their urgency. I'm not going to go into detail on that. If you want to look at the details or listen to the details, hop on the previous lesson. It also seeks to maximize the number of survivors and minimize the number of casualties. So as we triage doctrine, we're maximizing survivors, minimizing casualties. It also seeks to allocate resources to those who most benefit from them. It seeks efficiency of evaluation. And it seeks to avoid kind of two immature and major faults in our thinking, fundamentalism and liberalism. So we talked about those extremes last time. And then finally, it seeks the sustained life and maximal health of the Christian, and I would say, by extension, the Christian church. So as we think about theological triage, we're ultimately saying we want not only ourselves, but our church and fellowship to be a maximal life, maximal health. So that's a brief overview of the what. And the why, we discovered kind of three core reasons why. We remember these nefarious characters. Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli. We know what happened between those men. And Luther, for all the good he's done to us and to many post-Reformation, his views on the Lord's Supper were completely imbalanced. He triaged the Lord's Supper wrongly. Zwingli ended up doing the same thing with baptism. And Zwingli basically gave his okay for the killing of a fellow Protestant over the issue of baptism. So also we triage because if we wrongly do this, we just have to realize and settle with the fact that we can cripple ourselves in the fight. So as we're in this together, we can wound one another. We can discourage one another. We can dissuade one another. But at the end of the day, we could also at worst kill one another. That is part of our sad history. The Reformation was messy in some ways. And then finally, we triage because wise men have done it. We talked about last time the various creeds of the Christian faith, Nicene Creed, Apostles Creed, Athanasian Creed, those big name documents that we're used to hearing. And then also our own confession does theological triage, and they do it in a very wise way. And so I think we would be wise to listen and to look and see how those men did those things. So that's a quick overview of the what and the why. And we ended by saying, as Christians, we want to say, in essentials, unity. In the essential doctrines, we have unity. In the non-essentials, we have liberty among one another. And in all things, we have charity. That's just an old word for love. We have love for one another in all things. And so, really quickly, again, our agenda, we're heading down to point number three, the Bible system of triage. And it's going to be a a little bit of in-depth study this morning, so I want you to get out your Bibles. We're going to go through various passages, and Lord willing, Brandon and Robin and I talked, I may extend this study to one more Sunday. If you could hang with me just one more Bible study over theological triage, I think I could round out some ideas for us a little better than if I tried to jam it in right now. So let's get into the text. Let's get into the biblical data and see whether or not the Bible actually has a system of triage. Does the Bible weigh or rank doctrine? And I think you're going to be surprised at what we find. I'm going to do that really quickly from two perspectives, obviously the Old Testament and the New Testament. I'm going to fly by the Old Testament fairly quickly simply because when we get to the New Testament and we get to Jesus, he instantly gives us the answer. that we may be struggling with on whether or not the Old Testament does triage with doctrine. So you can see in the Old Testament the threefold division of God's law. There's the moral law, the civil law, the ceremonial law, and here are the various passages we're going to kind of hop through in the New Testament as we go. So with regard to the Old Testament, you have first the moral law. The Old Testament does theological triage. And again, I can only be brief here. So the moral law, summarizing the Ten Commandments, it's universal, it's immovable, and it's the absolute standard of righteousness, then, now, and forever. It never moves. It's the foundation for the rest of the Old Testament laws, and it's still enforced today. And so we could say something like, this is triage level one. When we're dealing with theological triage, if there's an issue in the church, if there's an issue in our own hearts, if there's an issue among brothers, we're instantly asking ourselves, is this some manifestation of a breaking of or a not clear understanding of the moral law? And so the various laws in the Old Testament can be seen as holding varying doctrinal weight really due to the sanctions imposed upon those who break them. And we can see that a little more clearly in the next two examples. So in the ceremonial law, It gave Israel its ideas of worship. It gave Levitical priests various laws related to sacrifices, food, being ceremonially clean or unclean. And one distinguishing feature of this law is it offered atonement for various sins of various weights. Doctrinal triage not only weighs essentials in doctrine, but it weighs sin as well. And so in relation to the moral law, we know that the ceremonial law given to Israel was not meant to be an eternally and abiding form of that law. Christ came and fulfilled it. And so think about this, we no longer bring physical sacrifices. We don't bring a lamb to the worship of God this morning. I hope you didn't. Please don't do that. Hebrews 10, if you are struggling with that, please go read Hebrews 10. We no longer confine the presence of God to a geographical location. What did Jesus say to the woman of Samaria? What did he say in John 4? No longer on this mountain or any other place will you worship, but the Father desires worship in spirit and in truth. This woman had the idea that God was confined to a physical location. Food and blood no longer make one ceremonially unclean. And so Christ obeyed, fulfilled all of those laws, the ceremonial law, perfectly. And again, those ceremonial laws have varying doctrinal weight due to the sanctions imposed upon them and for those who break them. The civil law governed the nation. It's how judges applied the law to civil cases in the nation. They had varying social conditions. They had varying human behaviors. We act like knuckleheads. Some of us act more like knuckleheads than others. And so not all sin and not all behavior was weighed or ranked in the same way. And these judges and these priests were given a way to triage various civil difficulties. Listen to Deuteronomy 17. If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, there's a triage. We don't say all homicides are the same, right? That's where we get the ranking of our own civil laws. We have first, second, third degree murder, involuntary, voluntary, manslaughter, all those things. If a case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to the place that the Lord your God will choose. And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in the office in those days, and you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision." And so these men were tasked with triaging a difficult situation that possibly the judges could not get a resolution on. So the civil laws of the Old Testament are imported now into the New Testament church. The Apostle Paul, says that the old laws of putting someone outside the camp or even giving them the death penalty for apostasy is now tied to the church in something like church discipline. And we know that as we've thought about discipline in the church, we have varying levels of triage. Not all sins require excommunication. Some may require exclusion. Some may require censure from the Lord's table. And others that are, as our constitution says, more heinous, they may require the consideration of excommunication. And so, do we excommunicate a man for forgetting to pay a parking ticket? I hope all of us would go, no. We'd all be out of the church at some point. Proper triage helps us think through those things, okay? Not all sin is worthy of some drastic measure, and it should be a last measure with excommunication. So you can see there, again, very, very fast brief overview of the moral, civil, and ceremonial law, and there's triage there. There's doctrinal triage going on. What about the New Testament? This is the cornerstone. This is the foundation. If we get the cornerstone crooked here, the rest of the building is off square. So Jesus settles this matter for us. Are there varying weights or ranks in the Old Testament? This is, I think, cleared up by Jesus, and we're going to look at a few passages. So if you turn to Matthew 5.19, I think Jesus speaks in an unmistakable way concerning theological triage, even in the law itself. So what does Jesus say there? We know that the Sermon on the Mount really kind of sets the tone or lays the foundation for the rest of the New Testament. And from this sermon, we see something really important about theological triage. It's traced through the rest of the New Testament. This is where the apostles got their thinking, okay? They were taught by the Lord. So their ideas of triage, as we'll discover later on, are foundational from this point. And so Jesus says in Matthew 5.19, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus says something very interesting about Old Testament law. He says that some commandments are comparatively lesser than others, which naturally implies that there are commandments that are comparatively greater than others. So before we go too far in our thinking, because you're very logical people, what I'm not saying here is one commandment is less necessary to be obeyed than another. In fact, that's the actual rebuke of Jesus. You Pharisees categorize and say these are lesser or greater, which in some sense that's true, but on the lesser ones you go, we don't have to obey that. We don't have to obey that. So what Jesus is not saying here is that there are commandments that are less necessary to be obeyed, okay? Even the smallest law must not be taken lightly. Christ fulfilled all of the law for us. That's how serious it was. He bled for it. He died for it. And so though comparatively lesser and greater, all laws are from God. And simply because one is lesser and another greater does not nullify the authority of those commandments. One commentator says, even the least command is from God. So the word least here presents the idea of a relative weight or significance with regard to God and man. There are things we'll see in just a moment that relate to God that are of first importance. that come before and must come before our obligations to one another. If we get those out of order, we're not triaging correctly. And so Jesus says some commands are lesser and some greater. Priority, weight, rank is one thing, but the Pharisees again took it further than this. They prioritized the law not for proper triage, and not for proper obedience, but they did so to keep only what they thought was most important, okay? They neglected the rest, and you can see that in Matthew 23. Look at Matthew 23. It says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected, what? The equal matters of the law? the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness, okay? These, the tithing of Mint, Dill, and Cumin, you ought to have done. Jesus doesn't say you put them aside. He says you ought to have done those things without neglecting the others. There's the issue, there's the rub. They had a triage scale, but in that, when they saw lesser and greater, they just did away with the lesser. You blind guides, he says. You strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel. So isn't this a typical Pharisee? They maximize the externals and they minimize the internals. They tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and everybody sees it. Look at this person. He's so holy. He gives a portion of his mint. and Dill and Kuman, and he says, you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, the internal. He said, lips that are close to me, but hearts that are far from me. So the Pharisees had a triage scale. Every body does triage. You're probably doing it now, thinking about these things with me, and even these wicked men. And they neglected the weightier matters of the law on the triage scale. They and their patients were dying. They were making people, as Jesus says, twice as much a child of hell as themselves. So improper triage, done wrongly, can kill people. And the Pharisees were doing that. They were killing people with their triage. So we have to ask the question, are justice, mercy, and peace weightier matters than the tithe of mint, dill, and cumin? Answer the question. Jesus says it is. Are all parts of the law? All of them are. All of them are parts of the law. Every jot, every tittle must be upheld. But not all were of the same weight. So do we see that? If we don't see that, we're going to have a real hard problem with the rest of the New Testament as we unfold this, okay? We have to see that Jesus sets the tone for us. He, looking at the Old Testament and giving his apostles instruction in the New Testament, set the tone. Jesus had a triage scale. Much of his rebuke to the Pharisees is pointing out the fact that they have a broken triage scale. We can't say that all doctrine weighs the same. We'd have a huge problem on our hands. And we'll make a fundamental disconnection between the theology of Jesus and the theology of the apostles. And so where did they get their triage from? They got it from the Lord. So proper triage helps us not to neglect the law but preserve the law and achieve proper balance. And so Jesus sets the tone. Let's look at one more passage. But before we do, can you think of another passage where Jesus says something about the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it? You know where that's at? Matthew 22, right? All right. I think you're going to be surprised what we find. Maybe not surprised. So what does Jesus say in Matthew 22? But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, here we go, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? They had a triage scale, and they're testing him on it. And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Sum up the Old Testament in love for God, love for neighbor. That's what Jesus says. So Jesus called love for God both the great, for those of us who know the Greek here, it's megos, and the first, protos. Heard of a prototype? Protos. It's an important word we're going to make a connection to at the end of this lesson. The great and the first commandment. It not only speaks of priority in time, but it's priority above all others in significance. The root from which everything else grows. And so, one commentator put it this way, it's first in its antiquity, being as old as the world. Love for God is as old as the world. It's first in dignity. It directs men to God. It's first in excellence. It's the summary and sum of the New Testament, the very spirit, he says, of divine adoption. It's first in justice. It renders God His due. It prefers Him before all created things. It's first in sufficiency. It's capable of making men holy in this life. Loving God is a means by which we are made holy. It's first in fruitfulness. It's the root of all the commandments. It fulfills the law. Love fulfills the law. It's first in virtue. By it alone, God reigns in the heart of men. It's first in extent, all creatures owe this to God, all creatures, even the angels. It's first in necessity. It's indispensable. You get rid of the love of God first and everything else falls apart. And it's first in duration, he says. It's ever to be continued on earth and never to be discontinued in heaven. Love for God is the command for earth and for heaven for all time. And so Jesus calls this the greatest and the first commandment. Regarding the second commandment, love for our neighbor, we have to understand that it's what comes from our love for God. It's the source from which, love for God is the source from which we get our love for neighbor. When Jesus says the second is like the first, he uses this word to signify that the love we show our neighbor should be just as genuine and earnest as our love for God. As weighty as our love for neighbor is and should be, we have to say from this passage, love for God is weightier still. Love for God is weightier still. One comes before the other. And we can say that if we're not properly loving our neighbor, we're probably not properly loving God. What would you think about a man who was a philanthropist, multi, multi, multi, multi-billionaire? Jeff Bezos, and this man was no open practicing religion, but kind of Buddhist maybe in his bent. And he gave away millions and millions of dollars to his fellow man, but he had zero love for Christ. Would we say that man was in proper order in his life, in his heart? Why? Because he's put what above what? He's put his fellow man above love for God. And so that's the point of Jesus. Love for God is first and the greatest. And so there's a triage scale. When we think about our own sin issues, issues in the church, whatever it may be, those two things have to be thought of. What's happening in our lives? What's happening as we struggle with our love for God and our love for neighbor? And so we triage based on that order. And those things have to be kept in proper perspective because the rest of the New Testament bases its theological triage on this very principle, love for God, love for neighbor. Well, let's run through a few of these that build off of this principle. First Corinthians 3.2. First Corinthians 3.2. Turn there real quick for me. I can get my phone to work. All right, 1 Corinthians 3.2, beginning of verse 1, but I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food. for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready, he says, for you're still of the flesh. And so Paul makes the case for doctrinal milk and doctrinal meat, okay? He explains that certain doctrines are fundamental to the beginning of life and easily and plainly, plainly digested by the Christian. Others require work, they require teeth, chew on and digest a stronger stomach. And those are for the mature. So Paul is doing doctrinal triage here in terms of food. I'm using a medical term, he's using a food term. He'll use a house term in just a minute. Milk contains the plain doctrines of the gospel, which are things fundamental to the life of the Christian and easily digested. When we're first converted, our new nature is so weak. We feel so strong because we've come out of just the poison of sin, but our new nature is so weak that we can't bear certain truths and digest them properly. You don't talk to a brand new Christian about some of the more intricate things that mature Christians think through. These are doctrines of milk that don't need a strong nature to digest. And that's also true for Christians who fall into sin and are sick and weak from sin. The basic doctrines reorient their hearts. When someone's struggling with sin, we're not talking about ultimately some nuance of the Trinity or the hypostatic union or all those intricate things that are more mature, or the priesthood of Christ in Melchizedek. We're giving them the basics of the gospel to get them back reoriented. Meat contains the more solid gospel doctrines that are digested with difficulty. So Paul in 1 Corinthians is really exposing the absurdity of the Corinthians who judged between preacher and preacher. and claimed to have some deep acquaintance with the gospel, yet they proved they had very little acquaintance with it at all. And that's where from chapter 3 forward all the way to chapter 15, he's just unfolding the gospel to them because they had begun to compare preacher with preacher. I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. He's like, was I crucified for you? Here's the gospel. This is what unites us. So there's a triage there, milk and meat. What about this one? In keeping kind of with this theme of milk and meat, the Hebrews writer makes the case for doctrines that relate to children and men, Hebrews 5.11. About this, the writer says, that is kind of the deeper connections concerning the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ. About this, we have much to say, and it's hard to explain since you've become dull of hearing. By this time, you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. Brand new Christians are wobbling with the truth. They know those central things, but they're wobbling with other things. Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. So two types of food are presented, two types of hearers, milk and meat, children and mature. So the writer calls certain doctrines the basic first or elementary principles of the oracles of God, and he compares them to milk for the body. He says in Hebrews 6, if you just, you know, scan over just a little bit in your Bible, he says, let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again, and this is God bless you when you get there, brother. This is an extremely difficult passage in the original language to parse through. It's hard. I'll just read it. Let us go into maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God and instructions about washings and laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. So the writer calls basic principles those things in which new converts and children are catechized. These are the basic principles of the oracles of God. For the Jews in this letter, it was the basics of the law that were spelled out to them in baby terms as they read the Old Testament. And things by this time, the writer says, you ought to have known. The Old Testament led them by baby steps right up to Jesus and they get to Jesus and go, who is this again? I have no idea who I'm looking at. Okay? They should have understood these things by now. Also, in theological triage, he contrasts this with solid food, milk with solid food, which is for the mature. Solid food is for the mature. And so we can see a triage there. The writer really kind of rebukes the Christian who, after such a long time, has yet to mature enough to distinguish between the foundational principles of Christianity and the things that are built upon it, okay? It's kind of a stern rebuke. But this fundamental kind of doctrinal triage runs through the whole book of Hebrews. So we have to admit that it's kind of a stinging rebuke to us when we haven't gone any further than the plainness of unity in those basic principles. And we haven't gone on to maturity as I'm trying to stay away from saying Paul says. It's my thoughts on Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews. In other words, it's proof that a church is still a babe in Christ if they're still on milk in their unity and never matured to the meat in their unity. So in our triage, this is something I think we need to back up and think about. We have to be aware that Christians come in all sizes and conditions. This is really kind of a special note for us here. We can't expect babes to eat steak. We can't expect a full-grown man to survive on milk. That's why some of us, as we've grown in the Lord, we've moved churches because we realized our souls were starving because that place was still, in a sense, on the milk. And we were longing for the meat of the gospel, and we were dying as we grew. It's a strange, strange thing. But we also have to be aware that triage of doctrine affords us consideration of what to say and when to say it. This is one of those where the rubber meets the road type of things. If we don't triage correctly, we're going to be a bull in a china shop in what to say and when to say it. Look at what the writer says, we have much to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. By this time, he says, you should be ready to hear it, but you're not. The writer wanted to discuss more profound things, but he recognized his patient in front of him couldn't bear it. He was looking at a baby. And so proper triage helps us analyze situations properly and build and defend the truth in a balanced way. We don't do like Luther and lose our minds over differences in the Lord's Supper, let's just put it that way. So, keep going. 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 15, Paul gives, he gave the milk and meat, baby and man metaphor, now he's giving a house metaphor, a building, a foundation. What does he say in 1 Corinthians 3, we'll read 10 through 15. He says, according to the grace of God given to me, and I'm reading from the ESV here, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation. and someone else built upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each one's work will become manifest, for the day, capital D, day, will disclose it. but it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. So Paul distinguishes here the foundation from the things built upon it. Can we see that? He laid a foundation. And we are, as ministers of the gospel and as Christians, building on that foundation. A house has one foundation. You don't pour a foundation on the second floor, right? Most of you don't have a slab 10 feet above your head. I hope not. That'd be really bad. If you remove the foundation, what happens? The house falls. The house falls apart. You can't build a house without a foundation. There are foundational doctrines with which the house cannot be built, without which the house cannot be built. So Paul says he was a master builder. He was an apostle which laid the foundation of faith alone in Christ alone. Paul says earlier in this letter exactly what this foundation is, what it consists of. He says that we confess that Christ is our wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. So this is really a point where we part with Rome, the church in Rome. He's not our righteousness alone in the Roman system. He's righteousness plus our works and all the other things we know about the Reformation and what they said there. So he distinguishes the foundation from the things built upon it. He gives an order for the building and does doctrinal triage. The foundation is laid what? First. To say it another way, the main things are the plain things. Plain things are the main things. The more essential articles of the faith are laid first. Then we can carefully, by preaching Christ, move on to building with gold, silver, and precious stones, as he says. the finer things of the gospel. And then finally, he distinguishes between building materials, gold, silver, precious stones. They vary in worth. They vary in their purity. They vary in their weight. They vary in their durability. They vary in how we admire them. They vary in their usefulness. These are all different doctrines built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ. And though they're various, they agree with the foundation. So we have to keep sight of this fact that they vary. There's different weights to them. This is another way of recognizing theological triage in building terms. Let's keep going. Almost done. So when we do triage, Paul, we can see by comparing these two passages, does some triage between essentials, what we've called foundational milk first principles, and lesser matters, lesser matters. So Paul explains that if anyone touches the essentials, if anyone touches the essentials, he's accursed. This is triage level one stuff. We know what Galatians 1.8 says. Even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you any gospel contrary to the one which we preach to you, let him be accursed." That's a level one thing. We get the gospel wrong, we get everything wrong. He didn't say, if we are an angel from heaven should choose another carpet color other than the one that's already in this building, let him be accursed. Ah, we're already doing triage. The truth and the purity and the perfection of the gospel remains the immovable core and foundation of Christian unity and triage. This is the dividing line issue. But he says in Romans 14, there's wiggle room for Christians to differ on lesser matters. He calls for forbearance. and leaving judgment to those matters to God. This is what we looked at last time, triage level three through five stuff, okay? The Roman church there had Jews and Romans together. Some of those Jews still wanted to observe dietary laws and festival days, ceremonial days. And the Gentile Christians, like, I'm free from those things. Matthew Henry says that the Jew had these sorts of things just kind of baked into his bones from birth. He couldn't get away from them. And Paul's instruction is forbearance, patience, restraint from your opinions, refusing to divide over opinions. Look at Romans 14, the word he uses there. Romans 14. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrels over opinions, over opinions. These are things that are opinions of Christians, not laws, not sin, okay? Excluding one whom God has received is sin. Refusing to pass judgment on him is the right thing. If you're on the Jesus diet, fish and vegetables, that's what we ought to eat. Celebrating Christmas, Halloween, Easter, lighting the menorah, Christian rap versus Bach. All are examples of indifferent things, neither commanded nor forbidden in scripture. Paul says each should be convinced in his own mind and it's before his own master he stands or fall. That's an inside joke. I won't go any further than that. But fundamentalism sees no gray here. They see no gray. Everything is black and white. It goes from each should be convinced in his own mind to each should be conformed to the church's culture. And that can be very dangerous. Fundamentalism has a very difficult time receiving into its membership someone who would not conform to the church culture. It's an immature triage. But liberalism sees a wide open door here. Indifferent things are pushed to that dangerous area of flaunting your liberty in such a way that it may destroy your Christian neighbor's conscience. You can read about that in 1 Corinthians 8. So let's, I don't know if Tony Lee is here. He's not. Let's suppose Tony and I go to this wonderful restaurant and we eat Vietnamese food and I know that that food's been offered to idols. I know that an idol's nothing. But let's say there's a new Christian there who thinks, I can't do this. This food's been offered to a pagan god. I can't eat this. This would be sin." Well, Paul gives us instructions on how we ought to forbear with the weak in those situations. The point is that triage recognizes one and the same time immovable truths, fundamentals of the gospel, and things that are conscience issues for the individual Christian. Not all doctrines are the same. Not all weigh the same. Well, this brings me full circle and I'm going to hustle right here because I want to preach this to you rather than talk about it. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, 3, the gospel of Jesus Christ is of first importance. He says that. I deliver to you of first importance what I also received. That word first there is protos, the same word Jesus used about the first and greatest commandment. Okay? It's an unambiguous word. It means, in comparison to all of the doctrines, it is the first. It was received by him from Christ alone, and it was first in everything he did. I want to read this wonderful thing from you, and we'll end here. I found a commentary on this passage and this gentleman just kind of brought home the heart of what I'm trying to get at and I know we're just out of time. He says, the gospel was first of all in Paul's profoundest arguments. It was first in all his richest encouragements, first of all in his severest denunciations, first of all in his fervent exhortations, first of all in his impassioned objections, first of all in his enraptured and sometimes his entranced and absorbed anticipations of the life to come. If he wanted to induce a habit of self-denying liberty, mark him, this is what he did. Quote, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. If he wanted to get men to forbear and be patient with one another, thus he did. Quote, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. When he wanted to get men to lead righteous, sober, godly lives, thus he did by the gospel. Quote, you are not your own, you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your bodies and in your spirits which are his. If he wanted whenever he had a congregation like the Corinthians to get the impenitent and the unbelieving out of the hands and out of the snares of the devil, Thus he did, quote, there is no other sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation that should devour the adversary. In a word, he determined not to know anything among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Your teaching cannot get on without the alphabet, this writer says. And Paul could not have gone on without his alphabet. And thus, it was evangelically that wherever he went, he gloried in nothing except the cross of Jesus Christ. The gospel, the gospel, the gospel, the gospel, broken record, the gospel. Paul was taught theological triage, and he had gospel-centered triage. That's where we have to begin, that's where we have to end, and that's how we have to triage everything in between, okay? All right. Well, we are out of time. I hope that was a jet tour that you could at least follow. We'll pick up next time, Lord willing. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for your mercy. Thank you for the small time we had here together. Thank you for your word that helps us balance our hearts and our minds. Please, Lord, forgive us where we do these things wrongly, where we just maximize the the lesser things and minimize the great things. Forgive us for not loving you with all our heart and loving our neighbor as ourself. Help us this day to do that. Help us to worship you in spirit and in truth with reverence and all. In Christ's name I pray, amen.