July 27, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Lord, you’ve loved us first and foremost and wonderfully and graciously. We want to say tonight we love you, too. We are thankful and we honor you for your great mercy that you have shown your creation. And to each of us personally, we thank you that you know us. And in this broken world where it’s hard sometimes, you will never leave us nor forsake us.
And we will step into glory one day and see you face to face with our sins forgiven because of the blood of Jesus. Thank you. We don’t have bigger words to say, but thank you. Amen.
All right, dear ones, good to be with you. Tonight I’m going to read Romans 14, and we’re going to talk about scruples, which, by golly, it’s just a, you know, there are words that are fun to say, right? That’s a fun word to say. Scruples. One of the ladies in church this morning, I said, “I just like the word scruples.” And she counted. I said it 18 times during the sermon. So if you want to, if you’re OCD and want to jump on that, I’m in three deep right now.
All right, so Romans 14. It continues Paul’s therefore from the beginning of Romans 12.
This is a part of the therefore. Therefore, because of all Christ has done for us. Therefore, because we’re justified by faith and made righteous with God through Christ. Therefore, because we have this great hope and nothing can separate us from His love and all those things Paul talked about in the first eight chapters of Romans. Therefore . . .
1 Welcome anyone who is weak in faith, but don’t argue about disputed matters. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while one who is weak eats only vegetables. 3 One who eats must not look down on one who does not eat, and one who does not eat must not judge one who does, because God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge another’s household servant? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand, because the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person judges one day to be more important than another day. Someone else judges every day to be the same. Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 Whoever observes the day, observes it for the honor of the Lord. Whoever eats, eats for the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not eat, it is for the Lord that he does not eat it, and he gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 Christ died and returned to life for this: that he might be Lord over both the dead and the living. 10 But you, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, and every tongue will give praise to God. 12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. 13 Therefore, let us no longer judge one another. Instead decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in the way of your brother or sister. 14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. Still, to someone who considers a thing to be unclean, to that one it is unclean. 15 For if your brother or sister is hurt by what you eat, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy, by what you eat, someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore, do not let your good be slandered, 17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 Whoever serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and receives human approval. 19 So then, let us pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another. 20 Do not tear down God’s work because of food. Everything is clean, but it is wrong to make someone fall by what he eats. 21 It is a good thing not to eat meat, or drink wine, or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. 22 Whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 23 But whoever doubts stands condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and everything that is not from faith is sin. (Romans 14:1-23, CSB)
God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
All right, in the first century, this is one of the first century controversies. And we have to understand what’s going on in the first century to make application today. Because the issue, the presenting issue that they were dealing with is not really a presenting issue in our culture.
And the presenting issue was meat offered to idols now being sold in the meat market. And so, we know it’s a sin to commit idolatry, all right? That didn’t go away because of the cross. It’s a terrible sin to commit idolatry. And the pagans, just like the Jews, the Jews would offer sacrifices to Yahweh, and the meat that was slaughtered during the sacrifices would be the portion for the Levites. The Levites would get that, that would be their pay because they couldn’t produce income, they didn’t have land. And so that would be the offering that they would receive. But for the pagans, the pagan priests, the meat then was often, after the animal was sacrificed, taken to the market and just sold in the market. It was taken to a butcher, and then the butcher would sell the meat.
The early Christians had a controversy over this. Some people who didn’t have strong scruples on this matter would say it’s just meat. Other people would say, no, if you purchase that meat and eat it, you’re actually participating in the idolatry, and therefore it’s a sin to eat that meat. And so that was a controversy in the first-century church. The controversy is around this idea of what is sin and what is maybe a fence that we put up to protect us from sin.
It is kind of probably how we would define it down through the ages as legalism versus license. We are to walk between legalism and license. There are some who proclaim the Christian faith who, in fact, still kind of preach a gospel according to works, that you’re not really saved by faith alone. You’re not really saved by God’s grace through faith, but you’re saved by God’s grace through faith, plus some legalistic observances.
For example, have you ever run into an ardent King James only Version Bible person? Yeah. All right? You’re not even a Christian if you don’t believe, you’re not, you’re reading the perverted word. You’re not reading the pure Word of God, you know, the King James Version, good enough for Jesus, good enough for me. And so there’s kind of a legalism there.
There’s a group of Christians who are legalistic about a particular day of the week. They believe that the Sabbath is the seventh day, which, in fact, quite accurately it is. In the Old Testament, it’s Saturday, not Sunday. They’re very kind of rigid about the belief that you should worship on Saturday, and if you worship on other days, you are committing a sin. Now, most of those churches have no problem renting out their facilities to other churches to worship on Sunday and help them out.
And that’s because a lot of those churches aren’t that legalistic about it. They have some grace about that. But in fact, you know, here Paul says some people think certain days are important. Other people think a day is a day.
You know, me and my wife. Christmas is a huge thing in her household and her family growing up. And it’s been a huge thing in our family growing up. She loves Christmas, decorates for Christmas, and Christmas needs to be celebrated when? Christmas, December 25th. And I’m like, “Hey, if we’re busy on the 25th, we can exchange presents on the 27th or 28th. We’ll call that Christmas. I mean, it’s not literally the day Jesus was born anyway, right?”
And so, you know, for one person, a day is important. For another person, a day is not that important. But people can make things so important, they can make them a matter of faith. This happened during the Charismatic movement in the 70s and the Pentecostal movement, where Pentecostals got very legalistic in the early days.
You know, you had to dress a certain way, and it even got to the point where you weren’t saved by faith in Christ. You were saved by faith in Christ, plus the initial evidence of being baptized with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. And it got to the point that some Pentecostals, not all, and it’s never been a part of Pentecostal doctrine, but some would judge other Christians. If you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not really saved. If you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not really saved.
And then partly out of reaction to that, other Christians would say, no, if you speak in tongues, that’s the devil. That’s what legalism does. It divides.
License, on the other hand, is what legalists are always afraid of. Oh, my gosh. Once you start loosening the rules, once you start letting women wear slacks in church, you know, who knows what’s going. Things are going to run amok. I don’t know what amok is. I don’t know what bad things happen when they run. I just know it’s bad to let the amoks run. From my whole childhood, you know, they’re going to run amok. I don’t want the amoks running. Anybody ever seen in an amok run? It must be a scary thing.
And so license is what the legalists are afraid of and probably have a reason to be afraid of it because license is taking the liberty we have in Christ because our sins have been forgiven, and then just going ahead and sinning because God will forgive us anyway. Or making excuses, which are really excuses to sin, but we won’t call it sin. We’ll give it a religious name.
I went to Cal State University, Chico, the Harvard of the West Coast. And you know I hung out with Christian organizations, Young Life and InterVarsity. All those organizations were on campus, and all of us young Christians touched by the Jesus Movement were on campus, and we would talk with one another. And one of the popular things that was going on at Chico State was missionary dating, all right? Missionary dating. You date the unconverted to lead them to Christ.
Except I noticed that all the guys who were missionary dating had a very, niche that they were going after. These super hot, loose, secular girls were the ones they were missionary dating. And all the girls who were missionary dating were dating the Hulks, the athletes, the handsome guys, and the successful guys. Nobody was ever missionary dating the pudgy nerd with a real potential for a good prayer life. They weren’t doing that kind of missionary dating. They weren’t seeking the least, the last, and the lost. They were seeking the cute, the hot, and the well, never mind.
License. They were trying to ride two horses with one bottom. How does that work out, Stevin? Not well. They wanted to live the wild party college life and at the same time have their insurance card for heaven checked off, and every once in a while get the warm fuzzy singing kumbaya.
So the devil will take your abhorrence of either legalism or license and use it to push you the other way. If you don’t like those Christians, you know, who, you know, just are loose living and fast talking and cuss once in a while and you know, they drink, you know, and all that, well, you’re going to make rules. You’re going to make rules and look down on them for that behavior.
If you don’t like those fuddy duddies, those rigid people, those stick in the mud, do the, you know, rule makers, you’re going to look down on them. And what Paul’s saying here, legalism is not good, license is good. But he says in the middle there’s not just one spot, there’s a spectrum. And Christians in the first century were within that spectrum. Some sincere followers of Jesus’ consciences were seared by eating meat offered to idols. They didn’t feel comfortable doing it. Others felt no guilt whatsoever.
But then the problem wasn’t that. The problem was that they were judging one another for that. And that’s where Paul says on those non-essential things, stop it, don’t do it, don’t. Those things are not worth dividing over. Some people have more scruples than others. Some people are scrupulous, other people are unscrupulous. All right, but the unscrupulous person might not be living in license, and the scrupulous person might not be a legalist. It’s just areas of comfort.
At our house where we live, we live on a street, but we don’t live on that street. We live on McCormick Woods. But actually, you have to go into kind of a community driveway area where there are several houses. And the reason they do that is to make it nice. There’s a tree line between you and the main street. And so it makes it very pleasant. You know, you’re not just, you know, traffic’s not zipping by. It’s nice. All right, we have a house on the right, on the left behind us we have a green belt. We look out our front door, we don’t see traffic, we don’t see cars, we see trees.
But the tree line on the other side of the little parking strip that we all share or the little driveway we all share belongs to the homeowners association, not to me, in front of my house. And across that little drive area is a nice little place to park on the homeowners association’s grass. We have a two-car driveway. If we have guests over, we can fit four cars in our two-car driveway. We have more, you know, that’s just a nice place to park. It’s a convenient place to park.
And so for years, when we’d have guests over, we’re doing, you know, getting in and out of the driveway, whatever, we’d occasionally park there. Well, some neighbor with scruples ratted us out.
And the homeowners association put a sign up in that area that said no parking. They made a grave error in where they placed that sign. They should have placed a sign in the middle of that area so you couldn’t fit a car on either side of it. But they placed the sign way on one side of the area, so you can still fit a car in that area.
So, one person in my family thinks that that no parking sign is a legitimate God-given rule, the 11th Commandment passed down from the homeowners association. If they say no parking on that area, you don’t park.
Another person in our family thinks it’s a suggestion that we should follow most of the time. But when need arises, who cares what the HOA thinks? You can determine which of those two people thinks which.
But anyway, my legalistic wife does not like me to park there.
And so you know what? I don’t, I don’t. Why? I think it’s ridiculous. I don’t hurt the grass. It doesn’t hurt anybody on the planet. It’s not unsightly. The homeowners, nobody on homeowners You know, it’s just one neighbor didn’t like it and, you know, so who cares?
“Well, they could fine us.” Eh, they send like three or four notes first. We’ll be good. “Well, it’s a rule.” How binding is a HOA rule anyway? But I don’t do it. Why? It’s not worth dividing over, right? It’s not worth dividing over.
Or I should say this. I don’t do it when she’s around, all right? I don’t have much cause to do it.
So essentials versus non-essentials in theology and practice. Idolatry is a sin. There’s no room for scruples there. If you’re bowing down and worshiping something that’s not God, that’s a sin. Who cares whether you eat the meat or not? You’ve already sinned.
Sexual immorality is a sin. If you’re sleeping with somebody who’s not your husband or wife, or you’re lusting after somebody who’s not your husband or wife, you’re committing a sin, all right?
However, some people think, well, you can’t do, you know that’s bad. So you shouldn’t dance because dancing will lead to fornication. But dancing, not necessarily. You can dance before the Lord.
Another, another one that’s in our culture would be drinking. Drunkenness is a sin and it’s destructive and it’s horrible and it ruins families, it ruins society. It is the number one drug problem in our country today. It’s not fentanyl, it’s not heroin, it’s not marijuana, it’s not meth, it’s alcohol. And it’s not even close. The statistics aren’t even close. Alcohol destroys far more lives than all those other drugs combined.
However, the Bible doesn’t say don’t drink. It says the sin is drunkenness. Now some religious groups, to build a fence around drunkenness, say, “Why even take the risk? Don’t drink.” Other religious groups say, “I don’t have a problem with it. I like a cold beer on a hot day,” or “I like to pair my wine with this certain kind of dinner.” And so they’ll drink and have no problem with it. Don’t judge the other. The dancing and the drinking both.
I had a Free Methodist pastor friend of mine, and we did a combined worship service in his church. We were kind of a Charismatic church, and so we went into his service, and they all sang songs like this if the words were printed up there, which made them extremely uncomfortable. They were much more comfortable singing songs like this with a hymnal open in front of them. But, you know, we were moving into the modern times, and we had words focused up there.
Then our people, oh, the scandal, would do this. And then some of them did the little Pentecostal hop. You know, the little Pentecostal two-step. Oh, you got to watch. It’s a classic. My sister was great at it. They would dance, and they would twirl, and they would spin, and I didn’t even think twice of it. And then afterwards, my pastor friend said, “Well, your people move a bit when they worship.” I said, “Oh.” He goes, “You know, we forbid dancing. That’s against Free Methodist rules. You can’t dance.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry we offended.” He goes, “No, no. I talked to our people, and we decided to call it rhythming.”
That same pastor I was out to lunch with one time, we had a pretty nice restaurant, and it was lunch and it was busy. We asked for a table. They didn’t have a table. And the hostess said, “But there’s a seat in the lounge,” which is the bar. “Would you like to sit there?”
Okay, so I have a choice. Sitting in the restaurant, waiting 20 minutes for my food, or sitting in the lounge and getting my food quickly. No brainer. So “We’ll be fine in the lounge.”
But then I noticed he kind of just looking over his shoulder, snuck in the lounge, and he sat down. He goes, and again, I wasn’t thinking right. He said, “I’ve never been in a lounge in my life. I hope one of my people doesn’t see me in here.” Said, “Scott, you’re not going to get drunk.” He goes, “No, but this is against the rules.”
Okay, now neither one of us are being unbiblical in our approach. He has scruples about those things because of what they can be associated with. I didn’t, because I don’t want to participate in the sin, but I don’t want to stop dancing or, you know, getting my food quicker because somebody else is worried about sin.
Had I known his uncomfortableness with either of those situations, in both cases, I wasn’t trying to push the limits on him. I was just acting in ignorance. If I had known his uncomfortableness with sitting in the lounge, I’d have waited 20 minutes. And that’s one of the things Paul talks about. So in non-essentials, give way.
And that’s true of theology. That’s true of theology. It is fine if you can do it without fighting. And if you do it to just refine your mind and to sharpen your thinking, it is fine to debate theology with people. I love doing that. But the minute it becomes personal, the minute it becomes a fight, you’ve crossed a line. And Paul says, don’t do it.
St. Augustine said, on the essentials, unity, or on the essentials, unity, on the non-essentials, charity. And in all things, love.
There is, I got to confess, Isaiah knows this. Probably some of you, some of the rest, you know this. There’s one group of Christians that drives me nuts. They just drive me up the wall. It is the hyper-reformed cessationist, anti-Charismatic, suit-wearing, sarcastic, know-it-all YouTube preachers. They drive me nuts. I wanna, and it’s not my, my thoughts are not charitable. I want to argue with them, humiliate them, defeat them. And I just got to tell you, their prince in America just died. And some of you know who I’m talking about.
And I just got this sneaking suspicion he’s going to be my next door neighbor in heaven. God’s going to say, “Get to like him, get to like him.”
In all things, dear ones, I don’t think, you know, you’re going to have a lesser place in heaven because your eschatology was wrong, or your view of communion was wrong. Or you know, on all things, listen, there are things that are essential, there are things that are creedal, that are a part of 2000 years of orthodoxy. Once you get outside of that circle, you can debate ideas with people. Those things may have significance in how you live out your life. They may be important to a certain degree, but they’re not worth breaking fellowship, dividing over, not liking people.
Paul says, why are we to be this way? See, in the first century you’d have thought, well, they’ll get this all figured out. Now, 2000 years later we realize, oh my gosh, we don’t have all this figured out. We still bicker and fight and complain. And “You’re not right.”
And I’ve read hundreds of books by scholars who are much smarter than me, who simply disagree. I was trying to get the millennium down one time, and I read Three Views of the Millennium by three scholars who love Jesus and love the Bible and believe the Bible. One was premillennial, one was amillennial, and one was postmillennial. The way the book would read, you would read the guy’s argument, and then you’d read the next two guys, and they would poke holes in the argument. Then you’d read the next guy’s argument. Then the other two guys would poke holes. And then at the end of the book, you’re supposed to come to a conclusion.
And here was my experience. Everyone I read is like, well, yeah, obviously he’s making. Yeah, that’s clearly what the Bible says. Yeah. And then I’d read the critiques. Well, he has a point. He has a point.
And I read that book so I could come to a firm conclusion on what I believed about the millennium. And after I was done with that book, here is the conclusion I came to. There are people who are smarter than me and love Jesus that don’t agree. What makes me think that my view on this is going to be infallible?
And I’ve later, my view has sharpened and maybe hardened, and I’ve come to some conclusions. But I hold those things lightly. I tell people all the time, I could be wrong. And you’re still my brother or sister.
Why should we accept one another in love? Because God has accepted them. If we believe that people are justified by faith in Christ, then God has accepted them. God has accepted them. Who am I not to? Jesus died and rose for them. If they’re good enough for Jesus to love, who am I not to love them? Jesus Christ died for them. He rose from the grave for them. His relationship with them is as precious to him as his relationship with you. If they are in Christ, they’re your brothers and sisters.
You know, I love how the Bible uses brothers and sisters to talk about the church. And we think of that. The minute we say that, we think, oh, how warm. We’re one big family. But anybody who grew up with brothers and sisters knows what? In this fallen world, what do brothers and sisters do? They fight.
I no longer fight with my sisters. I’ve come to the peaceful conclusion that the three of them are crazy. And I was the only one who escaped the nuts gene in my family. And so I accept them. I accept my crazy sisters. I hope they’re watching tonight. I love you, crazy sister number one, two, or three.
All right. We tease in our family. It’s a sign of love.
All right, we’ll all stand before God’s judgment seat. I don’t know if at the judgment seat God will correct theology or not. I don’t know if it’ll matter at that time, but if He does, I will be corrected. God will say, “Kevin, you didn’t get that right. Kevin, you taught people this, but you weren’t. You know, you missed it. And that guy that you really didn’t like, he had that one nailed.”
And I’ll say, “Yay, Jesus, thank you for my smart brother. Yay Jesus.”
I tell people all the time I don’t believe that we’re going to get taken up before a seven-year tribulation. I believe we could get taken up in the air when Christ returns, but we’ll immediately return to earth with him. That’s my eschatological view on the Rapture.
But if we get raptured before a seven-year tribulation and the other folks are all left behind, when I’m floating up with the rest of you, I’ll look for all the left-behind people and all the dispensationalists who read those books and, you know, who believed it vehemently. And I’ll just look at them and go, “Hey man, you’re right. But look, it didn’t cost me. It didn’t cost me. I’m still going up.”
Why are you going up? Because you go up because you have faith in Jesus, not because you got your view on the rapture right.
We will all, we all have less than perfect moral views, less than perfect theological views.
I’ll give you a modern one. Here’s a modern one that’s debated now, more so even than the drinking one. You have a beloved relative, a cousin, or even more poignant, a child or a grandchild who deals with same-sex affection and they meet a person of the same sex, they fall in love and now they want to get married.
Do you go to the wedding? The churches’ Christians are divided on that. There are many people who would say, “Absolutely, I would go to the wedding. I want to show love and support in all cases.” There are others who would say, “No, the best way to love is you can’t bless broken. And so the best way to love is to say, you know I love you, but I can’t bless broken. I’m not going to be there now.”
I’ll bet there’s division in this room on that. I know what I’d do. I think I know what I’d do. But I don’t know if one of my beloved grandchildren came and said that their parents said, “Please go dad.” Maybe. But you know right now I’d be like, “I ain’t going. I’m not going to bless broken.”
Now about the whole issue of eating meat offered to the idols. If they brought home some leftover wedding cake, I would eat that the next day. I’d have no problem, I’d be fine.
But if you went, if you came to me with that issue and asked for my counsel and I gave you my counsel and you decided to do the other way, go the other way, you would not be chastised or kicked out of the Firehouse Church. It is not a central issue. It is not a central issue.
And so Christ died for you. Christ died for me. We’ll all stand before the judgment seat of God. He can figure all that out. The kingdom of heaven is more than food and drink. It is joy, love, righteousness, and peace in the Holy Ghost.
John Wesley and George Whitefield lived in a time where the Arminian Calvinist debate was raging. It was raging. And they just stopped putting people to death over this. I mean, it’s terrible what Christians did at the beginning of the Reformation. The Catholics killed the Reformers, the Reformers killed the AnaBaptists. It was horrible. Christians killing Christians over this, over non-essential, important, but non-essential Christian views.
But John Wesley and George Whitefield, George Whitefield was a Calvinist, John Wesley was an Arminian. And yet toward the end they divided fellowship over it. You know, they stopped doing meetings together but toward the end of their lives, it’s amazing how gracious and kind they speak of one another and how they honor the other above themselves.
The kingdom of heaven is more than food and drink. It is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17, CSB)
Then Paul concludes by saying, whatever does not come from faith is sin.
So for the person with scruples, maybe eating meat offered to a pagan idol and then sold in the meat market, it seems for Paul that that’s clean. He doesn’t have a problem with that, doing that personally. But he says if you have a problem with that, then by all means don’t do it. Not because the thing in and of itself is sin. But violating your conscience is sin. Violating your conscience is sin.
It is not sin for me to park out in front of my house on that little strip of property. I don’t know if it’s a sin for Jill or not, but it’s close. You know, you’re breaking a rule. We signed a piece of paper. We said we’d follow the rules of the homeowners association. I signed in my, she doesn’t know this, but I have a “kind of mean it” signature. So I signed in my “kind of mean it” signature, but she signed in her real signature.
But for me to get on her, “Oh, come on, don’t worry about it. No big deal. Do it anyway.” And then to try to pressure her to violate her conscience is a sin. It’s a sin to violate your conscience. And it’s a sin to put a stumbling block in front of a brother or sister and violate their conscience.
When I was, when I was a young Christian with Young Life, we had some leaders, some of the leaders in our Young Life. It’s like, do not go to an R-rated movie. Just flat out. If the Hollywood Movie association rated this R, you can’t go. Well, there are different reasons that movies are rated R. Some for language, some for violence, some for sexuality, some for this, some for that.
So I didn’t have again, I’m not the scruples guy. Sorry. If you’re the scruples person, I’m not. Like, I’ll go see an R rated movie, I’ll go see an R rated movie with nude scenes. I don’t appreciate it. I think most of the times it’s gratuitous. But one of the best movies I ever saw was Braveheart. And it has two scenes in it that are not pornographic but a little bit, you know, racy. And it’s like, but it’s a great movie. So I’ll go see it and I won’t lust. I promise. I promise. All right. If I get close to lusting, I’ll do this. But other friends of ours, especially when we were young men, other guys will say, “No, I just can’t do it. We’ll never..” And you know, here’s the right thing to do, okay, we’ll go see a PG movie. We’re not going to ask you to violate your conscience because that’s not a matter of our conscience. And that’s the loving thing to do. And that’s what Paul’s saying here.
Instead of letting your opinion or your scruples judge, be the judge, let what’s good for your brother or sister be the judge. If I had known, so I’m pleading ignorance, if I had known, I’d have not eaten in that lounge. Again, not because there’s anything wrong with eating in that lounge in my mind, but in my friend’s mind, I actually led him to sin. He violated his conscience, and he loved food. I don’t even know if he enjoyed his meal because he was looking over his shoulders for one of his members, hoping they didn’t catch him in the lounge or hope word didn’t get out that Pastor Scott ate in the lounge.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Whenever I go to preach at another church, I have a question. The first question I ask whenever I go to preach at another church is: What’s the dress code? What’s the dress code? Because I don’t want I don’t think there needs to be a dress code to preach, except for decency and modesty. I don’t think there’s a… I don’t think. But if I go to a place where it’s like, “Hey, you don’t really respect the Bible and don’t respect God unless you’re wearing a suit and tie,” I’m suiting and tying up.
If I go to an Episcopal church, like, “Hey, put on a robe, dude,” I’ll put on a robe. When I go to Haiti, you gotta have a white shirt and a tie. When I went to Haiti, you gotta have a white shirt and a tie.
I served communion in a Methodist church. Again, out of ignorance, I violated the congregation scruples. The pastor didn’t tell me. I was a young youth pastor, and I served communion, and I wasn’t wearing a tie. Oh, my gosh. Did he get mail, before email. He, you know, “He served communion without wearing a tie.” And when he told me about that, I apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He goes, “I know.” He goes, “Next time wear a tie.” I said, “To make up for my sin, I’ll wear two. One down the front, one down the back.” He said, “No. Sarcasm will not heal the situation.” It never does, but it always is the first thing that comes to my mind.
So let love rule. Let love rule, dear ones. Don’t try to make someone disobey their conscience and obey your conscience until the Holy Spirit convinces you otherwise.
In essentials, unity. Jesus Christ is Lord. He lived a sinless life. He died on the cross for our sins, and He rose from the dead. We are made right with God by faith in Christ. And when we put our faith in Him, He puts His spirit in us and we live forever with Him. God loves us and forgives us of our sin. He redeems us. He’s called us to gather as a church. He’s coming again. Pre trib, post trib, mid trib, no trib. I don’t know. But He’s coming again. And we will live forever in glory. New heavens, new earth. Beyond that, you can have your convictions.
By the way, I just want to say I actually like people with strong convictions because people with strong convictions are often people who have thought about it. There’s nothing wrong with strong convictions.
Strong convictions only go wrong when they’re mixed with pride. When they’re mixed with “I got to be right.” And so you can have strong convictions, we can debate, we can talk back and forth about what we think is right and what we think is wrong. And I’m fine with that. If your, as John Wesley said, “If your heart is as my heart, here is my right hand of fellowship.” Here is my right hand of fellowship.
How many of our scruples and how many of our disagreements and squabbles are just going to melt away in His presence? I used to think, you know, in heaven we’ll get all our theology questions answered and all of. We’ll see all the justice of history and we’ll see every bad guy and everything that’s ever been done, and it’ll all get straightened out.
And I’ve kind of leaning toward another kind of picture now. It’s like a lot of that’s just going to, like, vanish. Like, it’s going to be like, who cares? Who cares? I just saw Jesus and He said my sins were forgiven and I get to be here forever. Who cares about the rest?
I don’t know which is true. I like to think my curiosity will be satisfied. But in the meantime, love one another. So I want you to come and receive the literal, the Spiritual, or the symbolic presence of Christ tonight. I got my opinion on it. I believe it. But I know this. Jesus said do it.
I love what CS Lewis ultimately said about communion, and you’ve heard my opinion on it. But I know, I love what CS Lewis ultimately said about the divisions of the church around communion. He says, “You know, in the end, the command was take and eat, not take and understand.”
So, dear ones, the Lord Jesus has invited you to take and eat. So I invite you, if you want Jesus, and you’re a premillennial dispensationalist who loves the Left Behind series, don’t believe in spiritual gifts, are deeply reformed, and despise Charismatics like me, come and have communion at this table. I don’t think anybody fits that description here, but just in case. Come and have communion at this table. If you want Jesus, then come.
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