Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri

The picture of the heavenly blessings coming down from heaven. The dew that descends upon us of unity, peace and brotherly love was a foretaste of heaven and those wonderful relationships which we’ll have there in the context of the church.

We turn for our sermon text again today to 1 Timothy 5:1 and 2. This is my third sermon on these two verses and will be my last. Please stand for the reading of God’s word, which is also always a grace word to us.

1 Timothy 5:1 and 2. “Rebuke not an elder but entreat him as a father and the younger men as brethren, the older women as mothers, the younger as sisters with all purity.”

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for this simple instruction. We pray now, Lord God, that you would remove the scales from our eyes that we might understand what this means. That you would also, Father, enliven our hearts that your Holy Spirit might write this word upon our hearts. That to the end that we might understand it, but more importantly, that we might obey it as well, one toward the other. And to those with whom we are linked to the spirit of Christ across our city, across this state, across the nation, and indeed across the globe. We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

About President Clinton who holds about a 20 percentage point lead over Bob Dole. Hard to get excited about that, isn’t it?

Well, in any event, it’s interesting how this recent poll done the last few weeks, apparently people were rated the two candidates in terms of their truthfulness, in terms of their character, those sorts of issues. And in each of those areas, who is more truthful? Dole was way ahead. The character question, who do you trust more? Dole was way ahead. And yet he remains 20 points behind in the poll. The one question that demonstrated that same 20 point spread roughly, give or take five points, was the question of who do you think cares for you? People like you. On that question, Clinton held a 20, 25, or 30 point lead—a big lead.

So you could take from that point. I know there are other factors. There’s economics which you know in a nation that you know worships the dollar and has for all too many years. We know that economic security is a big issue. But if you just look at that poll, it’s a good picture of something. There’s a relationship I think between President Clinton, gangs, and the church in America today.

What’s the relationship? Well, people like President Clinton according to this poll because he cares about them. And if he’s lied or broke the law or whatever he’s done, which most people believe he has, and I don’t know that he has or hasn’t, but that’s what people think. So, they think even if a president is breaking laws or lying or is untrustworthy or is just a rotten guy in many ways, if he cares for me, I’m going to prefer him over somebody who may be right, truthful, good character, lawful actions, but doesn’t care about me.

See, people say, “Well, I want people to care for me. I want people to feel for me, you know, feel my pain.”

Why do we have so many gangs? There’s another statistic came out this week. I think there’s—I don’t know what I heard—20,000 gangs in the country, 600,000 gang members, something like that. I don’t know. Why are people in gangs? Well, you know, if you just think the gangs are simply groups of guys who are just ruffians, that isn’t quite what it’s about.

Gangs have a sense of loyalty. And you look at various interviews done with gang members, they feel that’s their family. There’s a real commitment. In other words, they’ll trust themselves in the context of a relationship with someone again who’s a lawbreaker and has lousy character but cares about them. People are looking for somebody who cares about me. And so young people without a sense of moral values, the thing they get out of the gang is, you know, they do things and break into people’s houses and steal and all that kind of stuff, but what they really get out of it is the glory of other people respecting who they are, which God says we all want because we’re made in his image.

And so when the gangs or whether it’s the country who wants President Clinton instead of Mr. Dole—a lawbreaker but someone who cares for him—or the gangs, you know, lawbreakers and people care for me—relationships are what’s being stressed. And in the church today in America that’s what’s important too. People go places because they have friends there and if the church has bad doctrine—demonstrably so—or bad actions, whatever it is, that’s of less importance to them than the point that people care about them and they have relationships with people.

Now, I’ve talked about the importance of relationships the last couple of weeks, but a church that’s all that people care about are relationships is a heretical church. A heresy is the emphasis of one truth of scripture to the detriment of other truths. See, that’s what a heresy means. It doesn’t mean something totally made up of whole cloth. It means a perversion, an unhealthy perversion of one aspect.

And the scriptures teach the need for brotherly love. They teach the need for relationships. They teach the need for orthopraxy—what you do in your life relative to your brother. But they also teach the need for orthodoxy. You know, this balance I’m talking about is the balance between what’s right—is a person truthful, then they obey the law, etc.—balancing out a person being right and a person wanting relationship with you.

Right and relationship. We could look at it as the idea of exactness of doctrine. Is that more important? Or the idea of empathy? See those two things. Which is more important—empathy or exactness of doctrine? What’s more important? Orthodoxy or orthopraxy? Again, you see, you can see these relationships. Well, the scriptures say that both are important. And you could relate it to the threefold office of Christ.

Christ is a prophet. And the church has a prophetic nature that must include an exactness, a growing maturation and exactness of doctrine—orthodoxy, what’s right. That’s very important in the context of the church and of your life to know the truth. But the church also manifests the priestly role of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is a prophet, but he’s also a priest. A priest is empathetic. He’s a high priest who has felt our afflictions, who does indeed care about us.

And if we’re to manifest the priestly role of Christ in the context of the church and the world, we’ve got to care about people. We have to feel each other’s pain. To use the common phrase these days, the priestly role. To exalt either the priestly role or the prophetic role above the other is to involve ourselves in heresy. So what I’m trying to do by spending a couple weeks on and really kind of following up our camp talks on koinonia is to make sure we don’t get out of balance relative to doctrine and exactness of doctrine—the prophetic role of this church—as opposed to the priestly role of this church as we have empathy and minister to one another and bring reconciliation, mediation between us and God and us to each other.

And of course that leads to the third office, the kingly office of Christ and the kingly rule of the church. And you can sort of say that kingly rule will not happen if we become heretical either in the terms of the exaltation of doctrine to the denial of practice or in the exultation of you know a relationship and a denial or a subjection or subjugation rather of what is right.

So all these things work together.

It’s interesting. I was going to mention this—you know, I heard yesterday on the radio that Michael Jordan, they have pieces of jerseys that he’s worn and you can buy a little chunk of Michael Jordan’s jersey for 10 bucks, which you know the guy said it was ridiculous. I thought it’s fairly cheap. I was expected to be a lot more money. But you know, it reminded me of how much this culture has moved away from a religious perspective or changed the religion to sports.

You know it used to be that the articles of clothing the saints wore were highly praised because they were sort of—you know, I think it’s just the idea that you’re thinking this was actually worn by you know the apostles or by a great saint and it’s a reminder to you to be personally holy like that person. It’s not a bad thing. But then it became superstitious and somehow it gives us grace. And instead of that, now we’ve got Michael Jordan’s jersey.

Well, if we want to be like Jesus in the sense of an appreciation of who he is and how he’s manifested himself in the life of members of the church and saints, this is the way to do it: to take the truth of God’s word as it relates to relationships. That’s the little chunk, so to speak, that the scriptures want you to apply to your life and hold in your hand and treasure—is that manifestation of Christian love based on a right doctrine. And that then does indeed produce lives that are gracious and empowering to us.

So, let’s talk again about these ways to exhibit brotherly love. These two verses obviously talk about correction. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes, but it phrases all that in the context that in the household of God, we have a family and we’re to treat each other in the context of the family.

And as we go through these things real quickly again today, I want you to think about applying them first in the context of your family. That’s the training ground. If you can’t get these things across in the family, it probably won’t flow out to extended members of the family or to your church family or to your community or to other people that we know, Christians that we love and care about in the context of our geographic vicinity and maybe at other churches.

You see, it’ll all get stopped up if you don’t start to the training ground of the family. Apply it to the family. Apply it to the church family here at RCC. Apply it to those who have come through RCC. We got a lot of people who have visited here in the past 10, 15 years who have visited our booths, picked up tapes, information, etc., talked to various people that we know, people in the context of the church.

Think about those people if you have relationships with them, exhibiting Christian brotherly love to them. Think about in the context of the extended body of Christ in this area. Maybe I prayed last week for the churches that are formed in their view of salvation and the sovereignty of God. But we know that there are many believers going to churches that at least are not clear on Calvinism versus Armenianism, or are absolutely wrong on it. And yet these are brothers of ours as well because they haven’t really self-consciously thought through and rejected God’s sovereignty, but they sit in the context of teaching that they think is orthodox.

So the application goes way out into all of our relationships. And I want us to think about that. And again, I won’t point out again—I talked last week brotherly love is really epitomized in the scriptures as the demonstration of love one for the other.

And I’ve talked about in the outline and we’ll just review it quickly. The idea of putting off and putting on—that’s a basic counseling practice that Mr. Cyprian teaches, that Jay Adams teaches in the context of nouthetic counseling. What you do, and you work with people to bring them away from problems, has them put off sinful behavior based on Ephesians and to put on correct behavior. You cast out the demons but you don’t leave the house empty or with a vacuum because a vacuum by nature abhors a vacuum. It’ll be filled with something.

And if you don’t fill it with goodness, some other perversion will come back in that could be worse than the perversion you kicked out the door. So, you don’t just put off the improper deeds toward your brother. You actively put on positive deeds. Remember the Westminster Catechism—the explanation of the fifth commandment lists what are the requirements of superiors to inferiors, inferiors to superiors, equals to equals.

What are the requirements? What do you got to do? And what are the sins? How do you sin against an equal, your brother and the Lord? And the first thing listed in each of those questions is a not doing the things that are positively commanded toward your brother is in itself sin. So if all you do is put things off and don’t practice positive brotherly love, you’re still in sin according to the catechism’s understanding of what the scriptures teach.

And so we have these positive commands and negative commands. Sins of commission, sins of omission, both are sins.

What things do you put off then? You put off anger in mind and tongue. I wanted to mention briefly why here that I rented a movie this last week. I do not recommend this movie, but I suffered through it. The movie is called Seven. It’s very, very rough and bad to watch.

Why did you watch it, pastor?

Well, I watched it because it’s about the seven deadly sins. That’s what Seven come is. It’s a series of seven murders. And a man in the context of this movie commits seven murders, preaching to the culture round about him the deadliness of the seven deadly sins. And in the middle of the movie, Morgan Freeman goes to the library and researches. It was interesting. Many of the same books that I researched—Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy, etc.

Even I think they even showed an outline up there of Dorothy Sayers’ work on the seven deadly sins as perversions of love. So, it was interesting to see that. And I don’t recommend the movie, but you know, it did this for me. It reminded me in very graphic pictorial ways of the horrificness, the deadliness of the seven deadly sins. You know, we just kind of rattle them off—you know, pride, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, anger, and envy—you know, we just kind of rattle them off and we see them.

We think, well, I better avoid those things. They’re deadly. They’re absolutely deadly. And that movie reinforced that to me. And it made me think about this outline in terms of the seven deadly sins.

What is the first thing that I talked about last week? The scriptures clearly teach in Matthew 5, putting off anger in your mind, and your tongue. What’s anger? It’s one of those seven deadly sins. I know people that have been angry at other Christians for years—years, five, six, seven years angry. I know men have been angry all their lifetime against other Christians. It’s deadly. It’ll eat you up. Put it off.

Put off lust. That was the second thing. You’re not supposed to, you know, have an ungodly affection for your sister or for your brother’s wife. And we use the quotation about Herod who had his brother’s wife as his wife. And so, put off lust. What’s lust? It’s another of the seven deadly sins.

You put off agitation in the context of brothers. And I use the quotation with the Jews stirring up the Gentiles. Why did the Jews stir up the Gentiles? Why did the Jews persecute our savior? The scriptures say it was because of envy. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins. Envy says, “I want what you have. I can’t have it. So, I will destroy it from you. I will remove it from you.”

Envy in the context this movie, the guy, the murderer, like this detective, played by Brad Pitt, and he couldn’t have his life, so he killed Pitt’s wife and eventually had Pitt fall into deep sin as well. Envy does that. And the Jews stood at the Gentiles because of envy. And the Jews moved against our savior because of envy.

And when you agitate the context of the church, one of the motivations—we won’t go into it now—but the scriptures clearly teach that one of the motivations for agitation in the context of the house of God is people’s envy for someone’s else’s position, for someone else’s relationship with people that they can’t seem to get. “Gosh, that person to be such good friends with somebody else, I can’t be good friends, I’ll destroy that friendship.” Agitation is based upon envy, another seven deadly sins.

Put off ripping off greed, another of the seven deadly sins. See, the scriptures from beginning to end warn us about these things.

Put off evil speech. Same kind of thing based on envy and also based upon pride. In James chapter 4, don’t speak evil of one another. “He that speaks evil of his brother judges his brother speaks evil of law and judges the law.” To presume to judge one’s brother unrighteously or to judge the law is a prideful assertion of one’s preeminence. You know when the seven deadly sins are developed, it was originally pride was the deadly sin and pride manifests itself in these other means—anger and envy and greed and other things.

Put off improper judgments. Again, improper judgments, you know, to not judge somebody else’s activity unless it contradicts the word of God. I think this is important. I want to do this activity in the context of the church or my life or with kids. And you say, “Well, that’s a stupid thing to do.” Don’t do that. Everybody stands to his own master. Okay? And we want to help people take that desire and put biblical spin on it and make it into a biblical ministry that person is involved with.

Improper judgments, it’s prideful. I think the only thing that’s important is what I think is important. I’m the ultimate judge standard. It’s pride and it leads us to improper judgments.

Put off grudges. Grudges I think can be seen as envy—results of envy.

And then this one I didn’t talk about last week. I passed this over inadvertently and it’s very important and I want to spend a little bit of time on it. Number eight. That’s why it’s in bold type on your outline.

Put off stumbling blocks. Okay. Now turn to Romans chapter 14 if you will. And this is the same place we looked earlier in verses 1 through 5 of Romans 14 to talk about the need not to be improperly judging your neighbor talks about he stands to his own master. And you remember we said that Romans 14 is about the weaker brother. It’s what it’s all about.

And according to Romans 14, the weaker brother judges the strong brother. Weaker brother sees the strong brother eating meat that’s been sacrificed to idols and says, “You’re in sin by eating that polluted meat.” The strong brother says, “Well, I know there’s nothing wrong with meat. This guy’s just an idiot for thinking that there’s some that somehow evil can be contained in a substance. That’s gnosticism really, to think that evil is somehow something physical can be evil in and of itself.”

Some people think that way about TV. Ascribe evil to an entire medium. Okay. What if we do know people like that? Do we despise them if they’re weaker in the faith and so as a result have gotten rid of their TV? I mean, I’m not saying getting rid of your TV is a bad thing to do. It can be a mark of strength as well to remove ungodly temptations. But what I’m saying, if you think that it’s against God’s law to watch that medium, okay?

I think that you’re probably a weaker brother and you need to be brought up and strengthened relative to that. But you don’t despise the weaker brother. Weaker brothers tend to put laws other than God’s laws upon other people’s actions and judge them. Stronger brothers tend to look down upon the weaker brothers because they know there’s nothing wrong with that meat sold in the shambles. They know that it’s okay to eat and they shouldn’t worry about it.

I talked about that last week, but it goes on to talk about the putting off of stumbling blocks. Romans 14 beginning in verse 9. “For to this end Christ both died and rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.” The point here is that it’s following up saying don’t be judge of other people. Jesus is the judge to which he must stand or fall.

Verse 10. “Why dost thou judge thy brother? Why dost thou set at not thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.” This is an intensified form of what we’ve always said in this chapter earlier. He said of the chapter, you shouldn’t judge or despise your brother. And now to ratchet it up, to really drive it home, he says to the weak brother, why do you judge your brother? He puts it in a question form for intensification of application to them.

We shall stand before the judgment seat of God. Don’t judge your brother, your stronger brother here, on the basis of your God-given rules. He’s going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And then he says to the stronger brother, “Why do you set at not thy brother? Why do you despise your brother?” So first he says, don’t despise him. Then he says, I know you are despising him. Why do you do it?

I know you are judging him. Why do you do it? Forget it. Jesus is the judge. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. “It is written, ‘As I live, sayeth the Lord, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess.’ So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not therefore judge one another anymore. But judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.”

So what does that mean? Who’s he talking to now? The stronger brother or the weaker brother? Well, verse 13, or verse 13 rather, it could be a bit vague. The weaker brother can put a stumbling block in front of the stronger brother by telling him this meat’s evil and then begin to cause some doubt to arise in the stronger brother’s mind. Well, should I really be eating this meat or watching this TV if my brother thinks it’s wrong?

That’s possible. Or of course the other way is obviously possible. If you despise your brother and eat the meat in front of him and you cause him to fall by eating meat that his conscience isn’t clear about, you put a stumbling block in front of him. And as the text goes on, I believe that second alternative is best for the whole text here.

Verse 14, “I know and I’m persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself. But to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkst thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died.”

So now clear, isn’t it? He’s talking to the stronger brother in this section of Romans 14. He’s saying, you know that you’re not supposed to despise your brother. I’ve told you that already. You’ll stop thinking a little of him. But now I want you to go on to the next step to show brotherly love for him by putting off an occasion of stumbling that you might cause by your taking of that which you know is okay in his presence. He says, “Don’t destroy him for whom Christ died.”

Now, that’s strong language, isn’t it? What’s he talking about? Is he talking about you’re the stronger brother and to put a stumbling block means to do something your brother’s going to get mad about? No. No. A stumbling block is something that causes somebody to stumble. An occasion to sin means it’s going to lead him into sin. And what’s the sin that’s being talked about? It’s the sin of taking that which the man in his conscience doesn’t think is good, but he eats it anyway.

He means don’t make the weak brother, don’t tempt him to sin. It’s not a sin to eat the meat, but it’s a sin to eat the meat if you in your mind aren’t doing it to the glory of God. It’s a sin to do anything apart from the glory of God. The weak brother says, “Well, you know, I know it’s sin to eat that meat.” That’s what he thinks. But he does it anyway with a polluted conscience. That’s what it’s talking about.

So, in by way of application, don’t put stumbling blocks in front of your brothers. And by that, I don’t mean don’t do things that they’re going to get upset about or cause them to judge you about. That’s not the idea. Don’t do things that’s going to tempt them into that sin. Okay? A guy who’s a drunkard, don’t go drinking a lot of beer around him. Don’t have it in your house. Don’t serve it to him when he comes over to your table.

When if he’s had a problem in the past with drunkenness, you could cause him to stumble. Don’t put stumbling blocks in front of your brother is the whole point. And look at the strong language that this putting off is in the context of verse 15.

“Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died. And let not then your good be evil spoken of.” See, but if you do that thing, you eat that meat sacrificed to idols, it’s a good thing because you have a clear conscience before God and you’re strong. But if it causes your brother to sin by eating meat that he doesn’t think is okay to eat, well then your good is then evil spoken of because it’s become a source of a stumbling block or offense.

“The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. He that is in these things serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved to men. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edify one another. For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure. But it is evil for that man who eateth with offense.”

See, it’s evil. It destroys him to eat the meat. If in eating the meat he stumbles in his conscience before God. That’s what it teaches here. “It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor anything wherewith thy brother stumbleth or is offended or is made weak.”

We’ve got to put off stumbling blocks. That’s part of the sins we can do of commission against one another is to do something that is legitimate in itself and yet would cause your brother to sin in that particular area.

Let me read a summation of some of these truths from Charles Hodge’s commentary in the book of Romans. And it’s interesting because Hodge counted—he must not have finished it or something. The last few chapters it’s simply got his compilations of what the teaching of those chapters are—not a verse by verse exegesis—but it is quite useful. And here’s here’s what he says. Here’s some—he’s got like 12 or 13 different things. I won’t read all of them, but he says this in terms of Romans 14 to sum up this whole chapter:

“It is a great error in morals and a great practical evil to make that sinful which is in fact innocent. Christian love never requires this or any other sacrifice of truth. Paul would not consent for the sake of avoiding offense that eating all kinds of foods, even what had been offered to idols or disregarding sacred festivals of human appointment should be made a sin.

He strenuously and openly maintained the reverse. He represents those who thought differently as weak in faith as being under an error from which more knowledge and more piety would free them. Concession to their weakness he enjoins on a principle perfectly consistent with the assertion of the truth and with the preservation of Christian liberty.”

So Hodge says first of all Paul wanted it quite clear that if someone thinks that eating this meat or drinking wine is bad, he needs to be strengthened because he’s weak. It is your obligation to strengthen the weakened brother by an exegesis of scripture by taking him to the word of God and by helping him to mature in the Christian faith. And by the way, he notes that personal piety is also a means of maturation in the faith. You understand the word better as you obey it and have a consecration to God and you’re weaned away from those superstitions or weak regulations of men that you have prior to that growth and grace.

So he says, you know, Paul very strongly wanted to speak against the weaker brother who’s going to judge the stronger brother on the basis of what the scriptures do not prohibit. Okay, so that’s that—that was what we talked about last week. Don’t judge improperly your brother. And I quoted this last week, but it was an excellent quote. I’m going to quote it again.

“A denunciatory or censorious spirit is hostile to the spirit of the gospel. That kind of censorious spirit that the weaker brother exhibits, the person who judges other people by things that the word of God does not prohibit. That is a censorious or denunciatory spirit and is hostile to the spirit of the gospel. It is encroachment on the prerogatives of the only judge of the heart and conscience. It blinds the mind to moral distinctions and prevents the discernment between matters non-essential and those vitally important.

And it leads us to forget our own accountableness and to overlook our own faults in or zeal to denounce those of others.”

If a person is prone to denounce other people based on things that are not clear violations of the word of God, that person is generally the last to receive corrections properly. It’s what Hodge is saying there. Because the spirit that permeates his walk is one that does not allow him to see his own faults. Because see, he’s taking his standard and saying it’s my way or the highway. So when you got a guy who’s saying that it’s real little difficult the brother or sister in the Lord who’s saying that to get him to see his own faults because he’s so exalted his own opinion.

The weaker brother is also hard to mature because of that very weakness and then the proneness to judge. And so the first thing you got to do with the weaker brother in that way is to get him to stop judging other Christians on standards that are other than what the scriptures teach about. And if he doesn’t can’t get him to stop doing that, you’re not going to get very far then in helping him to correct in his own particular difficulties that we all have.

“We should stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and not allow our consciences to be brought under the yoke of bondage to human opinions. There’s a strong tendency in men to treat as matters of conscience things which Christ has never enjoined.

Wherever this disposition has been indulged or submitted to, it has resulted in bringing one class of men under the most degrading bondage to another and in the still more serious evil of leading them to disregard the authority of God.”

See, if you let, you know, if you let the weak brothers rule the Christian culture and you get rid of movies and TVs, all of them, and wine and other things that God says we can legitimately make use of, what happens is they forget the authority of God because they’re working on the authority of men.

Hodge over and over and over pushes this point. Okay? And you’re saying, “Well, Dennis, I thought you were going to tell us not to put the stumbling block in there.” Well, I am. I’m going to get to those quotes, too. But see, it’s very important in the context of our Christian culture to correct that culture by asserting again the need for God’s authority and not man’s laws to rule and govern in the context of our lives.

So I want to stress that now. He does go on to talk about the other side of the coin and he says this: “Though a thing may be lawful it is not always expedient the use of the liberty which every Christian enjoys under the gospel is to be regulated by the law of love. Hence it is often morally wrong to do what in itself considered maybe innocent. It’s morally wrong,” he says, “to cause your brother to sin in an area even though it’s okay for you to do that particular thing. Morally wrong. Sin, grievous sin, destroys your brother.”

He goes on, “It is often necessary to assert our Christian liberty at the expense of incurring censure and offending even good men in order that the right principles of duty may be preserved. Our savior consented to be regarded as a Sabbath breaker and even a wine bibber and friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom was justified of her children.

Christ did not in these cases see fit to accommodate his conduct to the rule of duty set up and conscientiously regarded as correct by those around him. He saw that more good would arise from a practical disregard of the false opinions of the Jews and to the manner in which the Sabbath was to be kept and as to the degree of intercourse which was allowed with wicked men and from concession to their prejudices.”

So again, he’s saying that you don’t always want to give in to the weaker brother if they’re—if you’re not going to cause him to stumble. There’s no point in giving in. You want to exert Christian liberty and the truth of the scriptures. So he’s making that point again.

Then he goes on to this: “While Christian liberty is to be maintained and right principles of duty inculcated, every concession consistent with truth and good morals should be made for the sake of peace and the welfare of others. And that’s not putting a stumbling block. That point there.

It may at times be a difficult practical question whether most good would result from compliance with the prejudices of others or from disregarding them. But where there is a sincere desire to do right and a willingness to sacrifice our own inclinations for the good of others connected with prayer for divine direction, there can be little danger of serious mistake. Evil is much more likely to arise from a disregard of the opinions and the welfare of our brothers and from a reliance on our own judgment than from any course requiring self-denial.”

So if you’re not sure, he said there—going to be lots of ways in which you’re not sure. But if you pray about it and you have the welfare of your brother at heart, you—there’s very little reason to assume you’re going to go wrong as God will guide and direct you in which things you put down for the sake of your brother and which things you assert for the sake of his maturing. You got two things going on. You don’t want him to sin, but you want him to be strengthened.

And he said it’s difficult sometimes to tell which is which. And you know, if push comes to shove and at the end of the day you have doubt, better to put it away—better not to engage in the thing because the kingdom of God doesn’t consist in meat and drink and in the things that are non-essentials. Now, we’re not talking here about, you know, the specific commandments of God. We’re commanded to worship. We’re commanded to keep the Sabbath, etc., but we’re talking about the things that we’re not commanded to do and yet we have Christian liberty to do.

So, it’s difficult, he says, at times, but you’ll be guided by God. And if push comes to shove and you don’t know what it is, better to self-denial is always a safe path for the Christian.

And then finally, he says this: “The peace and edification of the church are to be sought at all sacrifices except those of truth and duty, and the work of God is not to be destroyed or injured for the sake of any personal or party interests.

An enlightened conscience is a great blessing that secures the liberty of the soul from bondage to the opinions of men and from the self-inflicted pains of a scrupulous and morbid state of moral feeling. It promotes the right exercise of all the virtuous affections and the right discharge of all relative duties.”

Okay, took a long time on that, but I wanted to stress that. Put off stumbling blocks to your brothers. And by stumbling blocks, not things that get them mad, but things that would cause them to actually stumble or fall into sin.

Put off divisions. Put off the pride that leads to divisions.

And now again to the putting on things. We said put on humility. Again, the seven deadly sins. That means you’re denying pride.

Put on a desire of doing God’s will. It’s slothfulness on the part of Christians that has them not to engage in doing God’s will.

Put on service. Again in Luke 22, “Which is greater he that sits at me or he that serves? Is not he that siteth at me, but I am among you as he that serves.” Putting on humility, not asserting pridefully our due rank, but rather having that rank end up in service one to the other.

Put on salutations, embracing encouraging people by your their knowledge that you love them and that love is demonstrated in salutations and other means of greetings including the actual hugging folding in the arms is talked about by the particular word that’s used there.

Let me just say here that I think that sloth in terms of these things you’re supposed to put on is one of the besetting sins that we have. I was thinking of this last night. I made a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and I thought, well, I could just make some cheese sandwiches here. But that proverb came to mind about the slothful man roasting not that which he takes in hunting. What does it mean? Well, you go out and hunt and God in his grace gives you a deer or whatever it is, and the slothful man doesn’t cook it.

He doesn’t add value to the deer by taking the time to cook it up. He just eats it right away. He’s a sloth. He has no care or concern or heart for the improvement of his lot. By way of application to our text, the slothful man doesn’t improve the relationships that God in his grace brings you into in the context of the church. You go out looking for a church. You find a church. You find relationships in the context of the church. But if you’re slothful and don’t have a heart for the task that God has put you to do, you don’t improve relationships. You see, you’re not roasting that which God has given you in hunting.

Grilled cheese sandwiches to me taste a lot better than just normal cheese sandwiches—tastes better. Takes more work though, but you get more blessing because of the work you put into it. And the same thing is true of Christian relationships. You want to positively encourage your brothers in the Lord that you see on a regular basis. When you see them, you’re supposed to greet them and salute them. And we saw later, we talked about this last week, you’re supposed to have social and physical concern for your brother.

And number five, number six, you’re supposed to bring joy to your brothers. You know, Paul went around and bringing joy to the brothers by saying, “Look what God has done here.” And then in number seven, you put on hospitality. Him and Barnabas said, “Let’s go visit those Christians that we saw before and God brought to the Lord and he gave us some honey. Let’s go build them up now and let’s go visit them and demonstrate hospitality.”

Well, you know, that’s what I’m talking about here. If you have brothers and sisters in the Lord in this church or in your family, in other relationships outside of the church, you want to add value to those relationships. You want to positively go out of your way by showing them you love them. Salutations by showing you love them, helping them get things fixed. They need money for lawyers, whatever it is. Help them with that if you possibly can. Bring them into your relationships. Cause them to have joy by showing what God is talking to them about, God has done in your life in other ways. You want to bring them to a state of joy.

You want to show them that you love them and entertain them. You want to have them over to your house.

Now I want you to think—I want you to think here. You know how well do you do these things? How well do you improve the relationships that God has given you in the context first of your family? Brothers and sisters, you take it so for granted. God has given you with no effort on your part—brothers and sisters in your family. But what do you do to improve the relationship? To roast the food that God has given to you, to improve the relationships that God has given you in your home. Do you think of ways to show love, kindness, acceptance, joy, meeting the needs of your brothers and sisters?

Your family is the training ground for this, kids. Okay? And what do we do in the context of the church? Why do people like Clinton and gangs? Because they care for them and they at least make verbal statements of salutation and joy and, yeah, I’m going to make the rich pay for your problem. See, even helping out physically, it’s a perversion of the faith community that happens in the context of the presidential election, in the context of gangs. But folks, it’s because we’ve dropped the ball. We don’t do these things enough. I’m convinced we don’t do these things enough.

God says to do them. God says to go out of your way to seek ways to show sacrificial love. That’s number eight there. Paul said, “My heart’s desire and pray to God for Israel is that they may be saved.” He said, I’m willing to be a curse for the sake of these people. Are you willing to spend yourself if need be for the sake of somebody else? Self-sacrificial love drives that adding value to the relationship.

Put on an aptness to teach. Hebrews 8:10, “For this is the covenant that I will make to the house of Israel. I will put my law in their mind, on their hearts, and will be to them my God, and they shall be to my people. And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ For all shall know me from the least to the greatest.”

Until the time comes when we all have that full Bible knowledge from the least to the greatest in the context of us. We are supposed to say to our brother know the Lord. This is the way. Walk in it. In our relationships, we’re supposed to encourage each other not just in where we’re at, but to move them into a further knowledge of Christ.

I’m real pleased. Let me mention the next one first. Number nine. Put on prayer. “Brethren, pray for us.” Real simple instruction. That was it. There’s no context for that really. In 1 Thessalonians 5:25, Paul says, “Pray for us.”

Simply put, and I’m real pleased that at our parties, at our joyful celebrations at RCC, that we have the context of word and prayer. Friday night, good time, but it begins in the context of prayer for the food, of course, prayer and an exposition of the word relative to the homeschool advance of our children and prayer for those children as well.

Jim B. Jordan told me that if there’s one thing he would have done different in Tyler, Texas, it would all their fun times together would have had an element that’s not just what you do, but an element of the word and prayer as the proper context for the brotherly love and relationships they rejoiced in. That’s the—it’s kind of like the bookends of our relationship is the word and prayer. And in our gatherings together, it should always have an element of those things.

A lovely night we had a couple months ago at the Lord’s house. The end of the night, we sang some Geneva jigs. That’s a fun thing to do. You see, you bring what bonds us together into our social relationships. Otherwise, we get up just like the world where the only thing we like about it, the only reason we’re together is because we like to have a good time together. Well, we do like to have a good time, but the context must always be maintained.

Our flesh and our old man will tend to slide off that right perspective by sliding away from the word. Word and prayer. The word and prayer is essential to adding these values to our relationships.

Put on conciliatory efforts. Number 10. Work at removing offenses. “If any man bring a gift to an altar and there remember that a brother has ought against thee, leave your gift and go and first be reconciled to your brother.”

You can’t always accomplish that. Your brother might shut the door in your face and refuse to speak to you. And he cannot bar you from the table through that action. But the point is that you should be positively thinking in your mind of how to bring reconciliation to someone that is wrought with you, you have a positive obligation. Not if you’ve sinned against your brother, certainly there as well. But if your brother has something against you, you’ve got a positive obligation to show brotherly love by putting on conciliatory efforts.

Put on righteous corrections. Number 11. Oh, how important this is. That’s the whole context for what we’re talking about here, isn’t it? That’s what 1 Timothy 5:1 and 2 is all about—is how go about righteously correcting our brothers in the Lord. Correction is necessary.

Luke 17:3 says, “If your brother sin against you, rebuke him.” 1 Corinthians 5:11, “I have written in you not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator or covetous or an idolater. He’s called a brother, but he’s one of these things, a railer, a drunkard, an extortioner. With such a one, do not even eat. You must judge”—is what he’s saying.

He goes on to talk about that in verses 12 and following. 2 Thessalonians 3:14, “If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him that he may be ashamed, yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”

It is brotherly love to correct your brother when he’s clearly in violation of the scriptures. The epistle, he’s engaging in these sins. If he sins against you, is defined by God’s word. You must rebuke, admonish, correct if it’s a major enough sin. I mean, something you do overlook, but you can’t overlook plain violation of God’s word that you are part of—that violation. In other words, they’ve sinned against you. You must correct your brother. That is part of brotherly love.

If all we do for the last two weeks is encourage you to love your brother the way the world loves the brother, I’ve accomplished nothing. Nothing. Because the world’s definition of love is different from the scriptures’ definition of love. And we’re to root out the worldly definition and pour in a biblical definition. And the biblical definition has all these other things we’ve mentioned, some of which the world shares. But it has this in it as well—that our relationships are governed by the word and prayer. And when those relationships contradict the word, then our prayers must be for correction.

Our prayers must be to help our brother to godly correction. It is required by God’s word. It’s required.

Yet in the context of doing that, we have to do it righteously. Matthew 7:3 through and following says, you know, if you’re going to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye, first take the moat out of your own eye—the big log in your own eye. See, it doesn’t say don’t take the splinter out of his eye. The whole point is God wants you to be able to see clearly enough to help him with the splinter in his eye. It’s not brotherly love to leave a brother with a splinter festering in his eye. That’s not what the scriptures teach.

And I know that most evangelicals over and over, don’t judge. Don’t judge. Don’t judge. The whole point of this Matthew 7 is to just focus on yourself. That’s wrong. The whole point of relationships is to focus on the other person, to serve the other, not to serve self. But it’s in serving the other, you must remove the sin from your own eye. You must correct your brother righteously because our tendency is to look at all his problems and not see our own.

So before you can correct others, you’ve got to be able to accept correction yourself and move to judge yourself and remove the difficulties that’s going to hurt keep that brother from hearing what you have to say.

So we’re to put on proper judgments, proper corrections. We’re to seek the recovery of our brother, but we’re to do it carefully. In Acts 7:26 and 27, the context there, Moses—I believe that it’s properly saying that Moses—Jesus really—was called as a deliverer by God. And he sees two brothers fighting and he goes in and tries to make peace of them and they both turn on him and say, “Well, who made you a judge or deliverer for us?” Well, God did, but they didn’t know it. They looked at Moses as just an intermediary…