(Note: This sermon was introduced with a powerpoint presentation set to the song "All Kinds of People" written by Sheryl Crow, Kevin Gilbert and Erick Pressley and performed by Susan Ashton from the "A Distant Call" CD).
Why is it that the Christian community is divided over many of the very same things our world is divided over? That’s a troubling trend, when you think about it. We can understand why certain issues tear people in our culture who don’t know God apart, but why do some of these very same issues tear apart the Christian community?
One of the more tragic examples of this came in the 1990s in the African country of Rwanda. You probably remember that intertribal warring in Rwanda led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. What isn’t widely known about that horrible event is that among the Rwandan tribes that were killing each other, 98% of the people claimed to be Christians (McClaren). You see, Rwanda was for many years held up as a success story in Christian missions, a stellar example of a place where missionaries came, presented the good news of Jesus Christ, and the vast majority of the people came to faith in Jesus. Yet here were these people who confessed loyalty to the same Lord and Master, and they were trying to exterminate each other. At one time an Anglican bishop went to Rwanda to appeal to leaders among the tribes to stop killing each other. During his meeting with them, the bishop asked the leaders of the tribes, "Which is more significant to you? The waters of your Christian baptism or the bloodlines of your tribes." Without a moment’s hesitation they said, "The bloodlines of our tribes."
The things that divide the Christian Church here in America aren’t quite so hateful, but they’re troubling nonetheless. I’ll never forget reading Christian author Phillip Yancey’s description about how the church he grew up in actually asked a black family to leave during a worship service back in the 1960s (Yancey). Yancey’s boyhood congregation was entirely orthodox from a doctrinal perspective, yet it was as racist as its neighbors.
Churches today are still divided by race, by economic status, by political party. It’s even happened in our own congregation. I know of someone who was once a member of our church who felt excluded because she and her husband held differing convictions about politics than the majority of our members. Many congregations these days are divided along generational lines. Some churches are primarily old, while others are exclusively young. Its as if many congregations have given up on ministering to people across generational lines.
This is terribly tragic.
According to the Bible, there are two things that bind all human beings together. Regardless of our skin color, our annual income, our political convictions, our marital status, or our age, there are two things that bind us together. The first thing that binds us together is the fact that all human beings are created in the image of God. Every human being is an image bearer of God, no matter what gender, income level, age, or social class. This is true of everyone.
But the second thing that binds us together is our fallenness. You see, according to the Bible all human beings have turned away from God, thereby tarnishing God’s image in their lives. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. The entire human race has joined in a revolution against the creator, causing us to be alienated from God, and desperately in need of reconciliation with God. This is also true about every person in their natural born condition, no matter what age, gender, skin color, or whatever.
Because of this all people share these two things in common, God wants us as a congregation to welcome all kinds of people who share a common faith with us. God wants the basis of our unity to be a common faith in Jesus, not our skin color, income level, marital status, our political party, or anything else.
Of course God also wants us to welcome seekers who are investigating the Christian faith. But a seeker is our honored guest, a person who’s not truly a part of our church community but who’s chosen this congregation as a place to investigate the Christian faith. But we can’t pretend that a seeker is already a follower of Jesus, because only our common faith in Jesus is what binds us together as a church family. That’s why a person must have a confession of faith in Jesus and have been baptized publicly as a Christian before they can become a member of our church.
Now why does God want us to welcome all kinds of people we share this common faith with? We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Romans called GOOD NEWS FOR OUR TIMES. The last few weeks we’ve been talking about tension that existed in the church in Rome between the Jewish Christians and the non-Jewish Christians. This tension was primarily over issues like eating kosher food, observing the Jewish Sabbath laws, and so forth. We’ve seen in the last few weeks that the Jewish Christians still felt obligated to obey many of the Jewish customs from the law of Moses, while the non-Jewish Christians didn’t feel bound to observe things like food laws and special Jewish festivals. This disagreement over what Paul calls "disputable matters" in chapter 14 of Romans was tearing the church apart, so Paul writes to try to bring these two groups together. Paul calls the non-Jewish Christians who had freedom in these areas "the strong in faith," while he characterizes the Jewish Christians who still felt bound to observe these Jewish customs "the weak in faith."
Today as we finish talking about the strong and the weak, we’re going to see from Romans 15:1-13 five reasons why God wants us to welcome all kinds of people who share a common faith.
1. Following Jesus’ Example (15:1-3)
In vv 1-2 we see that God indeed does want us to welcome all kinds of people we share a common faith with. Again, the "strong" here are the non-Jewish Christians, while the "weak" are the Jewish Christians. It’s hard for us to really appreciate how wide the divide was that separated Jews from non-Jewish people back in the ancient world. The separation between these two groups was stronger than any separation we’ve experienced in our own lifetimes, even the issue of race. You see, Jewish people grew up believing that non-Jewish people were inherently unclean, so devout Jewish people avoided all contact with what they thought of as "dirty Gentiles." If a Jewish person back in the first century wanted to be faithful to God, that person would avoid shaking hands with, dinner with, business deals with, and any other kind of social contact with non-Jewish people.
God had given the Jewish people laws like circumcision, food laws, purity laws, and Sabbath laws to mark Israel off as his special people, and to bring God’s blessings to the other nations, yet by the time Romans was written these things had become badges of honor, proudly worn to exclude all non-Jewish people. These special gifts were given to Israel by God for them to be a blessing to others, yet by the time the New Testament was written, most of Israel became obsessed with its own preservation rather than bringing God’s blessings to the Gentiles. And the disdain between Jew and non-Jew went both ways. Anti-Semitism was extremely prominent in the ancient world. The Romans ridiculed what they called "the silly superstitions" of the Jewish people, making fun of their food laws, festivals, and purity rituals. The Romans accused the Jews of hatred against the entire human race. So here are two groups, once separated by so much, but now united in a common faith in Jesus, trying to get along with each other.
So Paul tells the strong--mostly non-Jewish Christians--to go the extra mile in "bearing with" the weaknesses of their Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ. Now the word "bear up" doesn’t just mean to "put up with" somebody, but it refers helping bear another person’s burdens. One of my Greek dictionaries defines this Greek word Paul uses here as, "to provide continuous and…prolonged assistance and help by supplying the needs of someone" (Louw and Nida 35.32). That’s more than putting up with someone, but its actively assuming the responsibility to help shoulder that person’s burdens and struggles.Paul tells us to not live to please ourselves, but to live to please others, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Now when I first read this, I thought, "Wait a minute. Doesn’t the Bible tell us to not be people pleasers elsewhere?"Is Paul contradicting that now by telling us to be people pleasers, where other places like Gal 1:10 and 1 Thess 2:4 tell us to please God instead of people? But what Paul is telling us here isn’t to please people instead of God, but to please people instead of pleasing ourselves (Moo). And pleasing our neighbor is qualified by the phrase "for his good" and the purpose of this pleasing as "to build him up" in his or her Christian faith. So this is a qualified command to please God by pleasing people when pleasing that person will be for his or her good and will build that person up in the Christian faith.
So we could sum up vv. 1-2 with a command for the Christian church to welcome all kinds of people through our common faith in Jesus. But why? Let me give you the first reason before we look at it in the text. When we welcome all kinds of people we follow Jesus’ example.
Look at v. 3. Paul appeals to the example of Jesus here. To do that, Paul quotes the Old Testament verse Psalm 69:9, because the Old Testament predicted how Jesus would live. The insults people made against God fell upon Jesus, as God’s Son, but Jesus endured them rather than lashing back. Jesus was faithful to please God and also to seek other people’s good in his life.
When we read the New Testament, we learn that Jesus welcomed all kinds of people during his life. He welcomed the Samaritan woman who’d had more husbands than Elizabeth Taylor. Jesus welcomed Simon the leper, even though he was considered unclean and unfit for God’s presence because of his skin disease. In fact, the holy Son of God went into Simon’s home and shared a meal with him, even though Simon was considered unfit to enter the presence of God in the Temple because of his skin disease. Jesus welcomed the woman caught in adultery who the religious leaders wanted to execute. Jesus welcomed the religious leader Nicodemus, even though Nicodemus came at night so no one would see him visiting Jesus. Jesus models a lifestyle of welcoming all kinds of people and inviting them to trust in him.
I thought about this as I was reading this month’s issue of Christianity Today (July 8, 2001). The cover story was about the legacy of Charles Colson, a man who went to prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal. When Colson came to faith in Christ, shortly before being indicted for his part in Watergate, no one believed he had sincerely accepted Christ. Doug Coe, the organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast, tried to convinced the Christians in Washington that Colson has really accepted Christ, but no one believed him. Finally, Doug Coe called Harold Hughes, an outspoken Christian and well known Democratic Senator. Now think about this: trying to connect the special aid to the Republican President Nixon who headed up Nixon’s dirty tricks with a Democratic senator. Can you think of two people who had more reason to dislike each other? Coe called up Senator Hughes and said, "Senator, I have a friend who is in tremendous need and needs a friend. I was wondering if you could meet with him." When Senator Hughes found out Coe was talking about Chuck Colson, he cursed and hung up the phone. But an hour later he called back and said, "I’m sorry. I know that’s not what Jesus would want me to do. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll meet with him." Hughes met with Colson, embraced him as a fellow brother in Christ, and began helping him grow in his faith in Jesus.
When we welcome all kinds of people because of our common faith in Jesus, we follow the example of Jesus.
2. Receiving Strength From the Bible (Romans 15:4)
Let me give you the second reason: When we welcome all kinds of people, we receive strength from the Bible.
Look at v. 4. The "things written in the past" refers to the Old Testament Scriptures, but what Paul says here applies just as much to the New Testament as well. The things written are there for our instruction, for us to learn from.
Here we learn that the Bible can be a source of endurance and encouragement in our lives. Endurance is perseverance, the ability to bear up under difficult circumstances, to continue in our walk with Jesus even when we’re assaulted by doubts, plagued with problems, and burdened with difficulties. Encouragement is consolation and support to strengthen us when we feel discouraged and defeated. God gives us endurance and encouragement through the Bible so we can have hope, so we’ll be optimistic about the future God has planned for us, even in the midst of discouragement and problems.
Now Paul seems to be implying here that a refusal to welcome all kinds of people cuts us off the endurance and encouragement we’d otherwise receive from the Scriptures. Think about that: unresolved issues like bitterness, resentment, prejudice, and so forth puts a barrier between us and God when we read the Bible. Could it be that the reason why the words on the page of our Bible doesn’t seem to make an impact on our lives is because we’re harboring unforgiveness or a judgmental attitude toward a brother or sister in Christ?
When we welcome all kinds of people, we receive strength from the Bible.
3. Honoring God With Praise (Romans 15:5-7)
Let me give you a third reason: When we welcome all kinds of people, we honor God with praise.
Look at vv. 5-7. Verse 5 is a prayer Paul is praying for the church in Rome. The same God who strengthens us with endurance and encouragement through the Bible also wants to give us a spirit of unity. Now unity does not mean agreeing about everything, because, after all, Paul has just spent all of chapter 14 telling us that it’s okay to have difference of opinion on what he calls "disputable matters." In the context of the church in Rome, this means the Jewish Christians are free to continue observing the dietary laws and observing the Sabbath, and the non-Jewish Christians are free to eat whatever they want and not observe the Sabbath. For us today it means respecting each other’s opinions in areas like drinking alcohol in moderation, homeschooling or public schooling, seeker worship or non-seeker worship, and so forth. So unity is not uniformity in these areas where Bible believing Christians have honest differences of opinion. In fact, Paul warned us back in chapter 14 against trying to change each other’s minds on these issues, because each person should be fully convinced in his or her own mind.
But this unity does mean glorifying God with one heart and one mouth, even though we differ on these disputable matters. Our heart refers to our internal state, the world of our attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and so forth. The heart is where we hold on to resentments, where we nurse bitter attitudes, and so forth. God wants our hearts to be free from these things. Our mouth refers to our outer state, what we say with our words. With our mouths we gossip, discourage, tear down, complain, and so forth. God wants our mouths to be filled with praise.
The kind of unity that honors God is both internal (the heart) and external (the mouth). This unity involves acceptance of each other, welcoming those we differ with because we share a common faith. In fact, the command to accept each other in v. 7 takes us full circle, because that’s the command Paul started with on this topic all the way back in Romans 14:1, to accept those weak in faith. This acceptance brings praise to God because it honors God, it shows God’s awesome greatness and majestic glory.
Most Christians I know genuinely want to honor God with their praise. I worked with a woman who said, "Praise the Lord," in about every other sentence, because she wanted to honor God with praise. We sing songs about praising God, like one of my favorite that goes, "I will give you all my worship; I will give you all my praise." Well part of honoring God with praise is welcoming all kinds of people who share our faith. All the praise songs in our office file cabinet can’t compensate for a refusal to welcome all kinds of people. This is the praise God wants, the kind of praise that honors him in our relationships with each other, not just with our words during our worship services. When our relationships with each other and our words of worship are aligned, this is truly the spirit of unity Paul prays for here.
Why welcome all kinds of people? Because it honors God with praise.
4. Fulfilling the Bible’s Promises (15:8-12)
Let me give you a fourth reason: When we welcome all kinds of people, we fulfill the Bible’s promises.
Look at vv. 8-12 with me. Here the Bible reminds us the incarnation, the claim that God himself became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. We’re reminded that the incarnation took place in a Jewish context. At that first Christmas, God took on Jewish humanity in the context of the nation of Israel.
Why did God do that? Well God did it "on behalf of God’s truth," which refers to God’s faithfulness to keep his promises to the nation of Israel. And he did it to confirm the promises God had made centuries earlier to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All the way back in the book of Genesis God had promised to use the descendants of a guy named Abraham to reverse the effect of human sin and to offer the human race a way to be reconciled to God. God promised Abraham, "Through you and your descendants Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed." This promise was confirmed to Abraham’s son Isaac, and to Isaac’s son Jacob, and to Jacob’s twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. This promised was passed on from generation to generation in Israel, as we saw back in the forth chapter of Romans and then again in the ninth chapter of Romans.
Finally the time when Jesus was born as a descendant of Abraham, a descendant of Isaac, a descendant of Jacob, from the nation of Israel to finally fulfill this promise. But Paul reminds us here that the whole point of Jesus coming as a Jewish man to fulfill these promises was ultimately so non-Jewish people could experience God’s mercy and thus bring praise to God for that mercy. Jesus came to the world through Israel in order to offer God’s plan to the nations outside of Israel.
You see, by Jesus’ generation many of the people of Israel thought God’s promises were exclusively for Israel, to make Israel great, to keep those unclean non-Jewish people out. They’d forgotten the fact that this entire plan was on behalf of all the families of the earth, not just the Jewish family. So Paul quotes a litany of Old Testament verses to remind them that God’s ultimate plan is far greater than Israel.
In fact, if we fast forward from here in Romans to the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we catch a glimpse of God’s ultimate vision. We heard Rev 7:9-12 read earlier in the worship service, about a vision of heaven of people from every language, every tribe, every nation, gathered around the throne of God in worship. Each in its own distinctive dialect, worshipping God in its own distinct way, expressing love and praise to God. That’s the final fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham, and that’s why Jesus came.
Now in the church today we talk a lot about God fulfilling his promises to us. You can buy books at the Christian bookstore that list all God’s promises to you, so you can keep track of what God is obligated to do for you. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but this text seems to point us in another direction. This text seems to remind us that God wants us to live in fulfillment of his promises in the lives of others. So while we tend to focus on what God is obligated to do for us, here we’re called to focus on what God calls us to do in the lives of others. Our welcoming of all kinds of people begins to fulfill that vision in Revelation 7, it begins to fulfill these verses Paul quotes here. Our obedience to this becomes the fulfillment of the Bible’s promises in other people’s lives.
Why welcome all kinds of people? Because when we do we fulfill the Bible’s promises.
5. Overflowing With Hope (Romans 15:13)
One final reason: When we welcome all kinds of people, we overflow with hope.
Look at the prayer in v. 13. This prayer sums up what Paul’s trying to say in chapters 14 and the first part of chapter 15. It’s an appeal to God to fill us with joy and peace. We saw last week from 14:17 that this is what God’s Kingdom is really all about, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. God’s not so concerned with what we eat or drink or other "disputable matters," as much as he’s concerned with these things, and God is the one who can fill us with this. This joy and peace comes to those who’ve trusted in Jesus, which his another way of talking about people who’ve responded to God’s good news about his Son. This good news (this gospel) reveals God’s integrity and makes us right with God on the basis of faith instead of human effort. So Paul’s prayer here is for Christians, for men and women who’ve responded to this message with truth.
Finally, the promise here is that we will overflow with hope as we walk in trust. The word overflow means just that, to spill over the borders, to have an extreme abundance of something. It’s not "just enough hope" to squeak by, but its an overflowing abundance of hope surging through our lives as we think about our future with God.
Could it be that one reason why hope is blocked from some of our lives is because we’re not welcoming all kinds of people? Could it be that we’ve built a dam to hold back the infinite reservoir of hope God wants to flood our lives with? Could it be that our internal resentments, unresolved bitterness, and refusal to forgive our fellow Christians has blocked out hope from our lives? If so, then the way to overflow with hope is to begin doing what this text tells us to do, to not just live to please ourselves, but to welcome, bear the burdens of and even please others for their good.
Conclusion
So my question for myself and for you today is this: Do you really want to follow Jesus’ example, receive strength from the Bible, honor God with praise, fulfill the Bible’s promises, and overflow with hope? I’d venture to say that every single follower of Jesus wants those things to be true in their lives. Well Romans 15:1-13 tells us that if we want these things, then we dare not exclude people from our fellowship as a Christian community. These things come in part as a consequence of welcoming all kinds of people who we share a common faith with.
Of course there are doctrinal parameters we need to guard as a church--that’s in our doctrinal statement--and of course we can’t turn a blind eye to areas of clear moral absolutes. We need to be passionate about holding to our doctrinal core without apology or compromise, and we need to be clear that the Bible teachers that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. We dare not compromise or minimize areas of essential Christian doctrine and areas of clear moral teaching. But when we deal with those other things that divide us--those "disputable matters" that honest Bible believing Christians have honest differences of opinion about--may God help us welcome rather than judge.
