In his sermon titled 'How to Handle Disagreements in the Church,' Scott Brown explores Romans 14 to guide believers on managing differences within the church community. The sermon emphasizes that each member will give an account to God and advises against judging others or placing stumbling blocks in their paths. It advocates for walking in love and not causing grief to fellow believers, highlighting the importance of pursuing peace, righteousness, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Brown explains that the diversity within the church is ordained by God, and it should be handled with care to prevent division. He outlines specific commands from Paul: do not judge or destroy your brother's faith over debatable matters, and bear with the scruples of the weak. The sermon connects these teachings to the broader theme of love that began in Romans 12, stressing that love is the fulfillment of the law and must be exercised with patience and understanding. Using real-life examples, such as differing views on Christian liberty, Brown illustrates how to navigate these challenges by respecting individual consciences and striving for unity in diversity, following Christ's example.

Romans 14, so then each of us shall give an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us not judge one another any more, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way. I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died.

Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.

All things in thee are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat meat, nor drink wine, nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God, happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith, for whatever is not from faith is sin.

We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbour for his good leading to edification, for even Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Heavenly Father, Please fill this room with your Holy Spirit.

Please put it on Scott's mouth as he brings us a teaching from this text Please put your Holy Spirit on our ears that we might receive it and reach all the way down into our hearts and let it nestle there I pray that we would be humble towards one another as we consider this. In Jesus' name, Amen. Great text gives us a snapshot of life in the church in Rome. And Rome was having trouble in their church and there were two different parties with two different backgrounds coming together in this church and there was a clash. You'd think that that would be normal as it is.

You've seen it yourself all your life, if you've been in the church all your life, if you've only been in the church a short time, you've seen it as well. How there are different people at different places in life, different understandings of sanctification, the Bible, everything about life, and when they come together there's often a mismatch and a difficulty. And the Apostle Paul is coming to the Roman Church and in doing so he's coming to our church as well. And he is appealing to us to do something in a very careful way, to do something in a very specific way, regarding the way they handle their differences. This passage is about how believers handle differences that they discover in one another as they go along in their life together.

And what you'll see here is Paul's solution is not the excommunication of one of the parties or both of the parties, but to bring them into obedience to some very specific commands that we'll outline as we go through this text. The beauty of the church, the power of the church is in many things, but it is in this one thing as well. That God brings together a diverse people from various backgrounds and various understandings. And he uses the fellowship of the church, the work of the Word of God on the members of the church, the exercising of the work of the Spirit of God in the church, the relationships with one another, and the conscience to sanctify His people. All of these things are brought together into this passage of Scripture to help us understand how to handle disagreements in the body of Christ.

And what we find here in Rome is what we will find in every church that's ever been established and that is that there are often conflicts between a mature believer and an immature believer. This was the case in Rome. There were Jewish and Gentile believers mixed together because of their backgrounds, they were having problems loving one another. So that's what's happening here in this text. It was really interesting reading this text this week and then having a phone call from another part of the country from a gentleman who had a question about some particular matters.

He had questions about courtship regarding his daughter, and he is a Baptist and a Presbyterian young man is interested in courting his daughter. And he was concerned about two things, his view of Christian liberty regarding drinking and pipe smoking. And it was very interesting to engage in this discussion with this man with this text in front of me to help me counsel him regarding how do you deal with these matters of disagreement. And now I want you to notice three things about this text before we dive into it. First of all, it is a text.

It is a text for building love and unity in a church. Now I'll tell you, if you do not get what's here in this text, you will be susceptible to a great sin against your brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. You will possibly, if you do not understand this, become guilty of defaming and contradicting the law of God, which is summed up in love. And so this text is so critical for us. It's one of the most important passages of scripture regarding the preservation of the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

He gives specific commands to maintain love. And in the church, when there's disagreement, it shows how love works in the church. It's interesting that it doesn't give a simplistic picture of love, but it really reveals the tensions that emerge in the expression of love. It implies a number of emotions, it applies opinions, it implies doctrinal positions, it implies preferences, It implies a number of things that come together that cause tension in a church. You know what?

It speaks of this, how to have patience with one another in the church. It speaks of how to glorify God in the church. It has to do with what it means to be like-minded. You've heard people use that word. I'm looking for some like-minded believers.

Well I think that we'll find out that being like-minded in the sense of the usage here is something quite different than finding people who are just exactly like you and think exactly like you. This text explodes the idea that you will ever find people who are like-minded. But what you will discover is that we should be, though we will not all think the same, we should do this. We should be like-minded toward one another. That's a different proposition entirely.

That we would operate in a certain way toward one another In the midst of all these differences, that's the point. And so this text begins with a command and then a series of commands and it ends with a prayer. And it's remarkable that the prayer really draws together all the things that are said. It begins with the words, do not, and it ends with this prayer. Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you would carefully notice each word in the prayer, you'll find how it so fulfills everything that has gone before and clarifies the purpose of it all. So the first thing I want you to understand about this text is that it's a text for building love in a church family. Number two, it continues the theme which began in Romans 12.1 And Romans 12.1 begins with the proposition that a believer dedicates his life as a sacrifice to God. And that works itself out in love. And he defines different ways that love works in the church.

First of all, love works when someone has presented their body as a living sacrifice before God. That's the beginning of love in the church. And then in 12.3 through 8, Love is expressed through the exercising of the gifts in the church, that we are active church members. There's no such thing as a passive church member in a New Testament church, and neither should it be with us. But love means that you exercise your gifts.

You are giving, you are pressing, you're pouring it out upon the church. And then love means that you submit to authorities, those various authorities, government authorities, your parents, the elders of your church, your boss. There are a number of authorities that God has established. And how would you relate to them? Will you relate to them in love by the directions that are given?

And then there is the fulfilling of the law. How do you love one another? You fulfill one another by loving the law. The only way we know how to love is by obeying the commandments of God. If you think that you're going to love by just pulling it out of your hat, pulling your way of love out of your hat, you'll go astray.

Because your ways are not his ways. So we have to learn his ways in order to learn how to love. And love is a fulfillment of the law. So we have to understand the law in order to love. And then we need to learn how to receive the weak in debatable matters.

Steve Regge brought us a message on this text in Romans 14 1 through 13 and how love works in these kinds of matters. And then now we turn to the fact of glorifying God through having a like mind toward one another. And we fulfill the laws of love through these things. So This immediate topic of what to do when Christians disagree in particular areas has to do with this entire context of love. So we're still talking about the same thing that we were talking about in Romans 12.

We're just talking about a different application of love. So the apostle is applying the doctrine of love in a number of different areas. Don't you love the way the apostle does this? He is so brilliant. He begins with a critical proposition that everything flows from, and then he begins to work through the details.

And those details are the areas that we struggle with. And he's just been slowly working through this area of breakdown of love toward the government. This area of breakdown of love, perhaps toward your boss. That area of breakdown of love toward the body of Christ and withholding your gifts. So he just continues to spin out the application so that we'll understand how love works.

So the second thing that we need to understand with this text is it continues the theme. We don't want to just read this in isolation. We want to see it in its grand context of the category of love and what love really means in the church. And then thirdly, this text reveals the causes of many breakdowns in relationships, personal hatreds, and church splits. There is honest to goodness, God ordained diversity in the church.

When handled wrongly, it defies the love of God in the church. And people divide wrongly. They do it wrong. This text assumes that there will be differences of opinion on matters. But the real question is, what do you do when you find that you disagree?

How do you relate to that brother with whom you disagree? How do you handle your speech? How do you handle your emotions? What do you do? And the Apostle is so kind to come and reveal the will of God to us so that we'll we will know how to live.

And how do we handle these disagreements. And so what you'll see here, I've broken this up into three into a number of sections. The first section is that there are specific things that we must do. The second thing, the second section, breaks out into things that we must not do, and then what we must do. And then we see the example of Christ, and then finally we must live out and fulfill a prayer that's prayed.

So that's where we're going. And so we begin with a command, as I said before, and we end with a prayer. The command begins with the words, do not. And so let's find out what we must not do when we disagree. Here's what we must not do.

Number one, do not judge and stumble and cause a brother to fall, verse 13. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or to cause a fall in our brother's way. So the command is to stop. There's something that we must stop doing. He's assuming that we all do this.

I'm assuming this morning that all of us are doing this somewhere in a relationship. I'm confident that on any given day, many of us are out of order in this area. I don't think it takes much to be out of order in this area. I think it can happen in the moment of time. I think it can happen in a conversation that you didn't intend or a phone call or just a fleeting thought.

And here he says, what do you do when you find this happening that is stop doing something stop judging and stop putting stumbling blocks in the way now it's interesting that he would say don't judge here because in first Corinthians 512 He told us that we must judge. So was there a contradiction here or something? Has God lost his mind? And he says one thing here and another thing there? Well, he's talking about two different kinds of judgment, two kinds of categories.

In 1 Corinthians 5, he's talking about judging immorality in the church, something that is so clearly spoken of and condemned. Here, in this context, we're talking about matters that cross to the areas of liberty, matters that don't have specific and careful and clear teaching on. And so he's talking about two different things. And he's saying, when you're dealing with a debatable matter, don't sit in condemnation of your brother. But rather, use your discretion.

Resolve. In other words, think about it. Think more broadly about it than just a hard knife of judgment toward your brother. But resolve. He says resolve now.

That means to consider carefully how you will love him in the midst of this disagreement by refusing to put a stumbling block in his way. We'll learn more about what these stumbling blocks are later on. But make a solemn decision not to judge unrighteously. This doesn't mean that we throw out categories and judgment. It doesn't mean that we stop reproving and rebuking and exhorting with great patience.

It doesn't mean that we stop doing that. This is a different kind of a thing. When we're dealing with issues that are debatable matters and they're part of the long process of sanctification in a person's life, catching some person at a point in their life where they might not understand something yet, How do you deal with them? Well, you don't crush them. And you stop judging them in a harsh way on debatable matters regarding food and special days, which is the context here.

And so he is saying, be careful, don't cause your brother to fall. And don't let the one who eats meat sacrifice to idols judge the one who cannot do it in good conscience. You know, he stands before God and he is the servant of God and you have no right to judge someone else's servant. He looks unto God and you know, so Paul is not saying here, Paul is not saying here that we set aside discussions, but there is an underlying forceful judgment that he is condemning here in the church. So the first thing he says is do not judge and stumble.

And secondly he says do not grieve your brother, Verses 14 and 15. Do not grieve your brother. He says, now I know and I'm convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself. But to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love." He says there's nothing unclean of itself.

And he's saying that Everything is truly clean regarding food and drink and days. Paul's not saying that there's no difference between a French fry and a salad. He's not saying that. He's not saying that all foods are good for you. In fact, some foods are actually poisonous.

So some foods can cause physical problems. Some foods can cause obesity. Other foods can cause people's bodies to go into a coma. So he's not making a statement about the relative quality of food. But one thing he is saying here is that the Levitical law was not actually based on the actual nature of the things that were claimed unclean.

Like for example, pork. What the Apostle is saying is, why was pork restricted for Jews? Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because God was governing his people regarding their food and it was clean but he restricted it even though it was a clean food. We didn't come to Christ and all of a sudden the Food changed in its molecular quality. Not at all.

It was always clean. But God declared it unclean for his own purposes. God has a right to govern his people any way he would govern them. And he would restrict from his people, for his own purposes, food. And he did that under the ceremonial law of the Old Covenant.

The ceremonial law is suspended now. And so now what? God has changed this perspective of our understanding of what is clean. So God is the ruler and the judge and he has a right to govern his people. And he says, all these foods are unclean.

He says, don't grieve one another. Do not grieve one another because you're doing something that conflicts with your conscience. And the problem with this is in verse 15, you're no longer walking in love. You're demanding, you're right, but you're not loving. You know, you are your own man, you're a cowboy, you are, you're forcing your will upon everyone else.

You have a high, highly exalted opinion of your own understanding of things and so you're grieving your brother. You've perhaps seen this, I've done this myself where I've been too forceful on a matter that was really something that God was in charge of the work in this brother's heart. We can be too overbearing in these things and reject a genuine brother over a matter that's really part of his sanctification. It's not wrong to speak of the matter, but it is wrong to grieve your brother and be so overwhelming to him. You can demand your rights but it can destroy love, and by being overbearing on a debatable matter.

And also, we encounter the word brother. We need to recognize that he is your brother. That we do not live autonomously in the church. We live among brothers and sisters, and we are a great family, and it's inappropriate in the family to despise our brothers who are in process of sanctification. And so it's wrong to continue despising the weak and allowing the weak to be bitter against the strong and the strong who have concerns about the weak.

So not only do we not grieve our brother, we do not destroy our brother. Verse 15. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. You see what Paul is doing? Do not.

Do not. Do not. We have to gain the forcefulness of this. He's just itemizing different ways that we harm our brother. And here now, he says that you can destroy your brother.

We can tamper with the well-being of our brother by harming his faith. We can make him dependent on our conscience and not his own. He is able to stand, for God is able to make him to stand. But we want to control him. We want to enact a code.

We want him to be just like we are. We want him to be right where we are. But he's not there. He's on a road to the same end. But God is taking each one of his sons and daughters there at different speeds and different ways.

But you can destroy your brother. Here it makes it clear in this whole chapter that the stronger brother is the responsible one. He can destroy the conscience of his brother by not taking him seriously and by not handling him with love. And so through lack of love he runs rough shot over his conscience and he destroys the faith of his brother. And you can make your brother violate his conscience.

You can make him feel bad so that he makes changes because of what you said. Not because of the blessed work of the Holy Spirit. Not because he was convicted and he repented, not because he was tender toward the Lord, not because he desired in his heart to be faithful, but because you said he had to. That defeats the work of sanctification in the church. And so he says, do not destroy your brother.

Lloyd-Jones says, you must never produce a bad conscience in your brother. I think I think that's the idea that's here. You can produce something, a bad inclination, a bad reason for obedience in your brother by being too forceful, by not allowing the work of the Holy Spirit to have its effect in your brother's life. Do you understand what we're talking about here? We're talking about all of us.

Think of the diversity right here in this room. If you just take one category, think of the different ages that are here in this room. The different levels of sanctification that exist in this room are enormous. And what will we do? Well, here's one thing we must do.

We must, all of us together, be crying out to God that He would convict our hearts, that He would activate our consciences, and that we would be trustfully and happily obedient to Him. And yes, it is appropriate for us to speak with one another and to bring things up. But there is a way that we cross the line. And the apostle is saying, do not cross that line, because you will destroy your brother in his faith, and you will defeat the beautiful work of the Spirit of God in the soul of man. This is a very precious thing, that God would be working in our souls, And he would be working one day at a time, bringing all kinds of influences.

He would bring a tragedy in here to help work on our soul. He would bring someone who is contrary to us into our lives so that our soul would be worked on. He would give us a particular pleasure. He might give you a wife. He might give you a brother or a sister.

And God would use all of these things, calamities and blessings, all of them, and He would cause all these things to work together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. He would use all of them for sanctification, but we can hurt the sanctification process of our brothers by being too forceful and too demanding of them and thereby harming this beautiful interplay of God at work in the soul of man through His Holy Spirit and through the Word. So do not destroy your brother. And then, number four, do not let your good be spoken of as evil. You might, the thing that you're destroying your brother with might actually be good.

It might be right. You might be right. And that good, because of your forcefulness and your, perhaps even the hatred that has been aroused in you, or maybe the hatred that has been sparked in him. It would cause this good thing to be spoken of as evil. And Again, it's interesting that the apostle makes it very clear that often the brother who is harming the other is right.

He's right, but he's not acting right. He's not treating the brother right. You can be right in Word, but wrong in Spirit. We all know how that works. And by forcing our conscience on another, something very bad happens.

Not only is the good spoken of as evil, but the whole quality of the Kingdom of Heaven is contradicted. It says here that the Kingdom of God is not in eating and drinking, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men." So The beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven will be spoken of as evil and looked at wrongly. And it takes a good thing, the Kingdom of Heaven, and turns it into something that's spoken of as evil. And so being too harsh on matters that Scripture is silent on and trying to control the conscience of your brother misrepresents the Gospel.

It misrepresents the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not in eating and drinking, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And it takes away from that personal dynamic of the beauty of the kingdom of God, which God so desires to bestow upon His Church, that they would taste it, that they would see it, that that righteousness would be the theme, that the peace would be the quality of the relationships and the joy and the Holy Spirit would be there. Notice he deals really with the full orbit of life, of our life together. He says the Kingdom of Heaven is righteousness. That has to do with our relationship with God.

We're saved by grace through faith. And He gives to His people a righteousness that's not their own at all. And the kingdom of heaven is a righteousness that is not your own. We don't stand here together and are able to be brothers because of some righteousness that we have. God forbid, because there wouldn't be enough to go around.

We would fall apart from it for all the unrighteousness in this room. So we must have a righteousness that's not of our own. And that is the beauty of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That we are saved by faith and we are declared righteous and there's not one inch, not one iota, not one pound, not one anything that contributes to our righteousness but the righteousness of Christ. And so the kingdom of heaven is about righteousness.

So he first deals with our relationship with God, and then he moves down into our relationship with one another, with peace. That has to do with our peace together among our brothers, to live in peace, to walk in charity and love, and to be at peace with all men. Christ came into the world to be a great peacemaker before men. That doesn't mean that he causes war as well. He does cause divisions.

He does cause particular hatreds to rise up in this world because of the gospel. But among the brethren, he breaks down the dividing wall and he makes peace between brothers. So first he deals with righteousness, our relationship with God, and then he speaks of the kingdom of heaven and how it works together in the church, that we are at peace with one another. And then finally, he speaks of the joy in the Holy Spirit. That has to do with the spiritual joy that is a fruit of the Spirit.

The daily living by faith in the Spirit where God is helping you. He's leading you. He's comforting you. This daily, moment by moment walk. So when he speaks of the kingdom of heaven, he loads up all the different aspects of it.

Your personal heart relationship toward Him through the Spirit, our relationships with one another of peace, and then our righteousness. And the only way we can stand before God is through righteousness which is by faith alone. So he says, he says here, do not let your good be spoken of evil. Don't mess this up. Don't mess the kingdom of heaven up in your church by being overbearing on matters that are debatable and being harsh with your brother.

And then fifthly, he says, do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food in verses 20 and 21. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things are indeed pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense." This is someone who is eating with offense, someone who is hard-hearted and has lost compassion for his brother. It is good neither to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. So we have to be very careful.

We need to be very sensitive to our relationships with one another. That as we teach one another, as we relate with one another, as we are the church together, that we're very careful and sensitive to the way that we are affecting one another. And it is always the duty of a believer to look out for those that he is with in order to preserve love. And in this sense we are to be patient and sensitive with one another and not to destroy the work of God. And so we can unrighteously offend and be offensive to our brothers by forcing our conscience upon him.

The whole idea of conscience is running through all of Romans 14. It begins with the issue of conscience regarding meat sacrifice to idols and having feast days, things like that. And he's dealing with the conscience. The word conscience is a fascinating word that helps us understand what he's talking about here. Khan means together.

Together and science, khan science, is knowing. So it's knowing, knowing together. That's the idea. Knowing together with who? With God.

We stand before God with a conscience, with a knowledge together with God. God has given us this amazing treasure That no matter where we are, the guidance of this conscience is given to us as a gift. He has given it to us for our pleasure, for our sanctification, and also for our relationships. And we know that bad things can happen to our consciences. And we can have a good conscience, as spoken of in 1 Timothy, or a pure conscience.

We can have a seared conscience as well, where we're just numb. Our consciences have not been trained well. You can spend your life damaging your conscience by ignoring what the Bible has said, through disobedience, consciences can be seared. But still, God has given us a conscience that we should work with and work through, to know together with God. It's a very personal and a very detectable thing.

I think everyone in this room understands the operation of the conscience. And so here's what we should do in even discussing this. It's this. It's to ask ourselves, Is there anything about which my conscience is bothering me? Is there something in my life that my conscience has been needling me about?

The thing about the conscience is that hopefully it will continue to keep needling you. And maybe your conscience has been needling you about something for years and today is the day to listen to the conscience and turn to God not because of what anybody else said but because the Lord God has been just ever so gently caring for you through poking you in your conscience. It isn't interesting, the gentleness of the conscience. Now, of course, sometimes your conscience will terrorize you. But often, it's a very gentle voice.

And we are able to push it down and to ignore it. And so I think a very important question for us to consider this morning, is there anything that your conscience has been working on that you should admit and repent of. Do it before we take communion. Repent of that thing. Make a turn and come to the table with joy knowing that God has poured out His grace toward you in that area.

He's been so kindly needling you in that area. But the beauty of the conscience is that it keeps us from being phony. It keeps us from having a purely theoretical religion. And it keeps us toward repentance. It keeps us working with God.

The twanging of that conscience comes. We know we're sinning. And then the conscience keeps us from having a purely theoretical academic faith. An academic faith is no faith at all. A faith that has no works is not faith.

It's something else. And so God has given us a conscience so that we would respond to his personal work in our lives as he uses the Word of God, the people of God, the Spirit of God, the circumstances, all working together to activate that conscience so that it would it would move in the right direction. So that's what you must not do. There are five things that you must not do. Now let me give you three things that you must do in these times of disagreement.

First of all, you must respect the importance of the conscience and of faith. Verses 22 and 23. Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself and what he approves, but he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith for whatever is not from faith is sin." Are we going to trust this or not?

Or are we going to have to control everyone's life? That's the idea here. No, you stand before God, ultimately. Yes, we can deal with one another in a brotherly way, but ultimately we stand before God in our own faith and in our own conscience. And He says, happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.

That means that we have to set people free and say, brother, if this is the direction that you believe that you should go, then I trust that you're happy in it, and let them go. Now if it's an item of clear sin, if they cannot say, I'm doing this in worship and praise toward God, then they need to be warned and confronted. But there's this element, there's this element here that he brings up that we must respect the importance of someone else's fate. You might think, well that's just going to lead to licentiousness. Well, that's God's business, not mine.

What he has said here is that we must be ready to allow someone to be happy in what he does if he's not condemning himself. We are not the conscience of the world in that sense. And so if you consider it unclean, it is unclean. God has given you a conscience. I do believe that because we live in a world where our consciences are often seared, that the consciences need to be trained by the Word of God.

And there are areas that people are not aware of that they need to become aware of. And that's a good healthy way of activating the conscience. But it's not done through heavy handedness and it's not done through an overt sense of condemnation. It's done through the training and the admonition of the Lord. It's done through the preaching of the Word.

It's done through the reading of Scripture together. It's done through personal brotherly conversations. But we must end up in this place. God is sovereign over that brother. God will cause him to stand.

God has saved him and he will bring him into his final destination. You know, we've been doing meetings around the country with leaders of these family integrated churches that have been planted this year. And one of the sessions, in one of the sessions, we're speaking to leaders about how to handle, how to govern their tongues as elders. And every time we've gone through this teaching, someone raises their hand and they ask the same question that gets asked in everyone that I've ever been in this year so far, and that is, how do elders know when they're gossiping about the people in the church? You know, when you're having sensitive discussions about shepherding the flock, there's a line that you can cross where you're gossiping about a brother, as an elder.

And the question always comes, how do you know? And there are many different ways that you can know, but here's one way. You know, you know when you're gossiping about your brother. Your conscience will tell you if you're saying something that you shouldn't say. The conscience is a gift from God and we should bless the Lord for it.

And so this implies that there's a kind of judgment that's inappropriate and there's a kind of freedom that we give to our brothers that is appropriate. That we must be able to say, they are not accountable to me, they are accountable to God in their conscience. I must, in good faith, speak to my brother, but I also must keep myself in order and understand that that man also stands before God after I've appealed to him. Unless he's in gross sin and needs to be put under church discipline or something like that, or needs a dramatic appeal towards specific sins that are endangering his soul, we are authorized to do that. But on debatable matters, we must allow a brother to stand.

And then secondly, not only do we respect the importance of their faith, we bear with the scruples of the weak and not please ourselves." Chapter 15, verse 1. He says, we then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak and not please ourselves. And that means that we're not obligated to exercise every freedom that we have. I think there's a misunderstanding about liberty. There are people who think that Christian liberty means, I get to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it, no matter what anybody else feels about it." That's not Christian liberty.

That's completely contradicted in this statement in verse 1 of chapter 15. We are not at liberty. Liberty doesn't, Christian liberty doesn't mean that that we are free agents without respect to our brothers. We don't live independently. We're not autonomous.

We live in community. And so we have to care. We have to care about what the other brother says. If we find ourselves saying, I don't care what he says. We've sinned against God and that brother.

That's not where we should be. I was listening to Steve Abregui's sermon on this, and we were discussing it on Tuesday morning. And he said something like, the weaker brother should not self-exalt in his abstinence, and the stronger brother should not indulge in his liberty. You see the tension there? It's not just one way.

It's two ways. We are to adjust and care for one another and have a level of sensitivity toward one another. And bear, notice the language, bear with the scruples of the weak. We must bear with them. That means have patience with them, try to understand them, not just write them off as some nutcase thing that's not your thing.

Not at all. But to bear, to labor with them, to look in the eye, to understand, to work through them, take time to work through them. You know, we live in an age where people want to have one conversation and solve things between brothers. That's not what the Apostle is counseling here. He's saying, no, no, Bear with them.

Take the time and help one another through them. But know this, that you are brothers in the midst of it. So we might be correct in our liberty, but we must also love. And so we can be doctrinally right and at the same time have a wrong spirit through lack of love. You know, it's such a spectacle.

I think it's a particular spectacle in child raising, where you're raising your children and someone is right, but they have the wrong spirit about them. And so the subject gets changed from whether that child is right or not is totally irrelevant. They have a wrong spirit about it. So you have to deal with the spirit. And that's what he's saying here.

In the church the same thing happens. There are people who are right, doctorally mature, they know what should happen, but they don't have any love, and they're wrong because they already have the wrong spirit. And we have to understand that that happens in the church. Some people have big fat heads and little teeny hearts, And some people have big fat hearts and little teeny heads. And that's the problem in the church.

And we have these mismatches. And how do we deal with it? So we bear with the scruples of the weak and then thirdly we please our neighbor. Verse 2, let each of us please his neighbor for his good leading to edification. In other words, you don't separate from your brother, you work to please him.

Instead of shun him, you continue on with him. That's what we do in the church and our disposition to be should be to please our brother not writing write him off imagine Imagine how different churches could be with this kind of disposition. And we can do this. We can do this because we have confidence that Christ has already promised that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. God is faithful to his church.

He needs us to do our part, and that means to please our neighbor. Does that mean you're a man pleaser? No, no. Man pleasing is different than this. This is loving your brother through pleasing him in a particular way.

You all have been blessed by people who desire to please you. That's what this is all about. Our family was reading Psalm 9 this week in which David says, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. We can, we can, we can rest in that. That God has not forsaken his sons and daughters.

He will speak to them. He will help them. He'll activate their conscience. He'll bring them the word and the circumstance and the spirit and all that they need to grow. And so we're free to open up and to please one another.

And we are this, we are this interesting mix of response, we have this interesting mix of responsibility. One, to speak the truth in love. To please one another and yet not be man-pleasing. God has really brought us together in a very interesting and wonderful relationship. Okay, so we've spoken of five things that we should not do, and we've spoken of three things that we must do.

Now if you're going to understand Christian liberty, if you're going to understand how to relate with people who have differences with you in the church, you got to understand what you do and don't do, and we've just covered that. Now he takes us further. Here the Apostle is brilliant again. He gives us the principles and now he comes down and he gives us a living example. He gives us Christ.

He says follow the example of Christ. Verse 3 in verse chapter 15. For even Christ did not please himself. He comes down and he gives the overall principle. He gives lots of details.

He issues commands. And he says, now, OK, what does this look like? It looks like the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ did not please himself. But he laid aside his glory, and he came as a sacrifice for sinners.

But as is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever things were written were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope." Christ and the scriptures are the examples that the apostle brings to us. And so think of Christ when you think about his relationships with sinners, that he does please his sons. He does work very hard to please us by giving us blessed thoughts and commands and comforts. Notice he brings about, he speaks of the scriptures that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.

Our disposition toward our brothers should be the disposition of hope because that's the disposition of Scripture. When we bring Scripture to our brothers it is a picture of hope. So we follow the example of Christ. He did not please himself, but he's bringing many sons to glory. And we are his representatives, we do the same thing with one another.

We are like little Christ in the church, except for without all of the authority that he has. But we are His hands and His feet, and we come and we work to bring many sons to glory, not through our condemnation, but through our speaking the truth and love, and our pleasing our brother, and our likeness of Christ. And then we are to fulfill Paul's prayer for unity in 15, 5 through 7. So you see where we've gone? There are things you must do, must not do.

There are things you must do. And then you must follow the example of Christ, and then lastly, listen to this prayer, and let this prayer be fulfilled in this church. I pray that God would cause a great fulfillment of this prayer that we have before us. And you'll see when we read it now how much it takes everything that we've already looked at this morning and pulls it into a very beautiful prayer that we should be praying here among us. The prayer is this.

Now may the God of patience comfort you and grant you to be like-minded toward one another according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so here we find, if we would ever hope to know how to deal with those we disagree with, we must have patience and comfort that God would grant and that we would have to become like-minded. He's obviously not saying that you're thinking the same way about everything. That's not like-mindedness. But that you are like-minded toward one another in the midst of your diversity.

That You have the same mind that was in Christ toward one another. And that's the oil of your relationships together. Because you will disagree. You will be in a different point of sanctification. You will have a different level of Bible knowledge than your brother.

You will have a different experience that has caused you to be sanctified in this area that this brother's has barely been touched. What will you do when you're so different from one another? Well you will be like-minded as Christ is toward us. And that's our like-mindedness is not found in our thinking exactly the same, but our acting the same toward one another. What a beautiful prayer.

And that's the disposition of one another. Okay, applications. Let's jump into some applications. I have eight of them. I don't know if we'll get to eight, but let me give you one.

We'll start with one and we'll just move, we'll try to work through some of them. Of course the central theme of this text is walking in love, right? That's, that is what this passage is about. When you step back and look at it, it's really one thing, how to love in the church. Now, unloving demands destroy love.

That's the principle I want to bring out. It's unloving to demand our way in our brother's lives. We have disagreements, which are part of our sanctification. And there are two ways of handling those things. One is cool neglect and it destroys love.

Cool neglect means that you just let your brother alone in his unrighteousness. That you don't care enough about him to say, brother, I see this area of sanctification that's needful, and you just let him alone. You don't care about him. It's cool neglect and it destroys love in the church. And The flip side is impatience and demand and it destroys love.

Those are two ways that lack of love works in the church. Our pervasive weakness in all of its Various categories require time for our sanctification. We are long-term projects. We need the patience of our brothers. I mean, I hope you know how much I need your patience if I am to get to the other side, and you need mine as well.

I trust that we would be patient with one another because we're not all in the same place at the same time. We don't know the same things at the same time. And therefore, we need one another. That this collective working together would cause the building up of the body and love. We need that.

But we dare not coolly neglect one another, nor be impatient. And so a long life in the church is a setting for a sanctification. Close, genuine relationships bring about weaknesses. They surface disagreements. But true peace only comes when we determine to engage in our disagreements in a godly way.

Because it is assumed here in this text that we won't all agree on the details. That's the assumption. You know, the church was never intended to be something that looks like a room full of clones where we legislate with codes and every single person is up to speed because of getting up to speed it only really happens in heaven so we have to be patient with one another okay number so the first is unloving demands destroy love and then secondly and I've already said this achieving like-mindedness in the church does not mean that everyone is alike at the same time. Doesn't mean that everyone's alike at the same time. Thirdly, this text makes it clear that liberty is often a disguise for making a provision for the flesh.

Often liberty is nothing more than, I'm going to do what I want to do when I want to do it. And if it's that, then your conscience needs to be your guide in it. Typically, those who claim liberty neglect the initial requirement that they were doing it as unto the Lord. So if there's a debatable area, we must be able to say that as we were partaking in our liberty, we with a heart of worship and discipleship were performing this, not just for our own fleshly pleasure. You know, 14.6 says, He who observes the day observes it to the Lord.

So if you're observing a particular day, It's not just because you want to. It's because you're doing it out of worship. For if we live, we live to the Lord, verse 8, verse 12. So then let each of us, each of us will give a count of himself to God. 14, 18, for he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men, serving Christ in these things.

If you think that it's your Christian liberty to watch filthy movies, Then I want to appeal to you on the authority of the Word of God that we should set aside filthiness It's not a question of Christian Liberty You do you do not watch immoral images as an act of worship So Let's make sure we're thinking clearly about what Christian liberty is. Christian liberty is I can defy the commands of God. No, that's not Christian liberty. Christian liberty is whatever I do, I do as a worship toward God. If you think shopping is your liberty, then shop for the glory of God.

If you think wearing a firearm is your liberty, then only wear it for the glory of God, and not just for your own cowboyness. So we need to understand the rules of Christian liberty. All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. Peter says, do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God. We could list any number of debatable items, but we always have to run it through this grid.

Is it a covering for evil? Is it a covering for sloth? Is it a covering for refusing to redeem the time? Is it a covering for some other lust? Or is it truly for the glory of God?

Number six. You must never produce a bad conscience in your brother. What kind of uniformity should we look for? Our uniformity should not be because of the forcefulness of our demands for our brothers. It should be through the preaching of the Word of God, the loving appeal, speaking the truth in love, and our acknowledgement that Each man stands before God alone.

Unless he's fallen into gross sin, then we must deal with it. And then, of course, the bottom line of this whole passage is love. Do not destroy your brother's desire for holiness by imposing your own conscience upon him. But let his conscience be free before God. As a leader of a church, tenderize the conscience, nurture the conscience, make the conscience operate right.

In many ways, we are in our sanctification spending all of our lives with God reorienting our consciences because we've been numb and dead to many areas of sin. And God, through our conscience and through the ministry of the Word, he slowly brings our consciences to a healthy state when they were once dead. And we need to understand that people's consciences will be activated at a different pace. That it is for us, though, to nurse the conscience through the Word of God, but not through the forcefulness of man. Well, One of the things that was so striking to me as we were in the United Kingdom last week was as we were walking the streets of London and Edinburgh, it was so plain to me that the people of the world do not know how to live.

No one has taught them how to live. What to do with their eyes, what to do with their feet or their minds, what to do with their clothing, what to do with their relationships or their sexuality. They are like people without a shepherd. But here in this text, God has come to us as a shepherd. And He said, here's how you live.

Live this way in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And He has given us his word, he has given us his spirit, he has given us his conscience, and he has also given us one another so that we would know how to live. But in the meantime, we have to make sure that we are walking in love. And so Paul is instructing us how to legislate our lives, not by a code, not by majority rule, not by an authoritarian proclamation, but by the Word of Truth and the work of conscience. Matthew Henry said, How happy is the Church who has clearness about how to handle disputable things.

And so would you pray with me. And now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth Glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.