Found Any Faults Lately?
June 20, 1999
Rom. 14:1-12
By Pastor Curt Young
I don’t want to sound like Andy Rooney this morning, but have you ever noticed how there are certain things you can never find when you want them?
In the office, I keep two church directories in my lower right desk drawer. But it doesn’t matter. I can never find one when I want to make a phone call. I can never find a sharp pencil or my fancy pen. 
Several times a week I call Suzie on the intercom. I say, "Suzie, I need…" I here click. Several seconds later there’s a knock at my door. Suzie walks up to my desk, thrusts her hand under a pile of papers, and comes up with exactly what I needed. It’s eerie!
It’s even worse at home. Do you see this? It’s a three prong to two prong adapter. We now own 37 of them, because I can never find one when I want one. 
In our closet we have a large box full of new batteries. Everyone in my house, including our dog, swears they have never put a spent battery in that box. But can I find a fresh battery for the camera when I need one? No way!!! If I need a "AA," the box is full of "D’s". If I need a "D," its full of "C’s." I can never find the fresh battery that I need.
One other thing. I can never find a pen that works when I’m taking a phone message. When I was a kid in the fourth grade, one of my buddies told me that you could free up a ball point pen if you put a burning match under the point. You have no idea how many pens I’ve burned. Did you know that when you heat a pen the ink boils out the other end?
At least there’s one thing I can always find, no matter where I am. It doesn’t matter if I’m at church or at home. I can always find fault with someone if I want to. I’m talking about little things, about as significant in the grand scheme of things as a Bic pen. If I want to find something to criticize, I can find it. My dog drools, my kids eat too fast unless it’s their turn to do the dishes, my weed whacker is broken, and my wife wants to communicate.
Maybe you can relate to what I’m saying. Why is it so easy to find fault? Why it is it so easy to criticize?
F.F. Bruce, one of the greatest NT scholars ever, commented when he studied this passage that the sin of finding faults in others, of picking at them on the inside if not on the outside, is perhaps the most tenacious sin of all. This is the sin you find blatantly practiced among the most ethical, the most scrupulous, the most holy of people.
I don’t know for sure about all that, but I do know that Paul addresses this matter in Romans 14-15. I think this is a great text for us to consider as we prepare for communion, because it’s really talking about our unity as Christians. Paul concludes this section with a benediction in 15:5 that says, "May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus."
Paul is concerned that we not let our unity in Christ, based His gracious acceptance of us, be destroyed by our petty refusal to accept each other. The same bloody sacrifice on the cross that enables God to accept us in spite of our sin, surely can enable us to accept one another in spite of our relatively insignificant differences of opinion or practice.
It’s easy to read these verses and miss the point Paul’s making. On the one hand, he’s talking about whether we only eat vegetables (referred to as Bob and Larry in our house) or whether we also eat meat. He’s talking about whether we observe certain holidays (in this case the Jewish holidays) or whether we don’t. 
He cites these as two examples of issues that can be a pretense for a critical spirit, for Christians to find fault with each other on matters that are not foundational to the truth of Jesus Christ. Paul is addressing this matter of critical spirit, of the disapproval we so easily harbor toward those who scruples are fewer or greater than our own.
The central admonition is that we accept one another just as Christ has accepted us. "Accept" is first used in vs. 1: "Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment. It’s next used in vs. 3: "for God has accepted him." It’s last used in Paul’s conclusion in 15:7: "Accept one another then, just as Christ has accepted you, in order to bring praise to God."
By accept, Paul doesn’t just mean allow someone into the fellowship of your life. He means literally, draw them to your side in fellowship. "Embrace" would be a good paraphrase.
I believe that the Bible speaks to everything we face in our lives, but not always in the form of : "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not." The final word is: "So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself in what he approves…But the man who has doubts is condemned…everything that does not come from faith is sin."
On many matters we are given liberty. That doesn’t mean we are free to do anything we please. It means that each of us is free to act on the dictates of our own conscience as it is shaped by God’s Word, regardless of how other people see it or the choices they make.
The point isn’t that all choices are equally wise or commendable. Paul has a very strong opinion against scruples in eating. Nonetheless, persuading and encouraging someone you embrace as a brother in Christ is far different from criticizing someone you disapprove of.
This is an important message. A lot of Christians – individuals and churches – insist that everyone agree with them on everything. Insisting on uniformity is not unity. Uniformity destroys the unity Christ died to establish.
Before proceeding I want to give you a couple illustrations. You may think that the issue of food is something no Christians judge each other on these days, but that’s not so. A church I know very well recently went through a big upheaval. The issue was whether the juice of vine served at the Lord’s Supper should be fermented or unfermented. The church leadership decided in the name of faithfulness to the Bible to administer wine. After fifty years of grape juice and a fundamentalist heritage that condemned any use of alcohol, the wine bibbers told the tea totallers that they’d done it wrong and now they were going to do it right. That was two years ago; the unity of the Supper has not been the same since.
You may think the issue of observing days is something Christians do not judge each other on, but there’s at least one Presbyterian denomination in our country that will not observe Christmas or Easter because the Bible doesn’t command it. Unless you agree, you’re not going to feel very accepted because in the sense that Paul talks about it you’re not going to be accepted.
This week I heard a man speak in behalf of another Presbyterian denomination. He announced that his denomination has settled the matter of whether Genesis 1 teaches that God created the world in 6 24-hour periods. They decided that He did. I think it’s great that they have studied their way to a conclusion. I don’t think it’s great that they regard any other view on the matter has unorthodox and subject to church censure.
There are a lot of issues that matter very much, that our faith does and should impact. It’s not that they are unimportant or insignificant to the faith. Or that the Bible does not lay down principles that apply. Rather the point is that we’re to accept each other as we work out the implications of our shared faith even when our obedience is expressed differently.
What are some matters where Christians tend not to give each other such freedom? Music (instruments, which instruments, exclusive Psalms, classical or contemporary, rhythm) Family size. Women and career. Psychology. Education. Race.
As devastating to the unity of the church as the error is of failing to condemn views that are heretical and conduct that is immoral, the error is just as devastating of condemning views and conduct that are neither, as if they were, just because they are different. They’re either more restrictive or more permissive than our conscience can accept. I’m talking about the error of judging matters as if essential to the Gospel when they are not.
Given that Christ has accepted us in His grace through repentance and faith, Paul drives home two principles that would restrain us from being quick to judge one another.
1.	In judging one another around such matters, you not only set yourself above your brother, you set yourself against Christ.
Look with me at verse 4: Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
Paul paints a picture for us of scene familiar in his day but not so common in ours. It’s that of a household that includes a master and a servant. The term "servant" is not the common NT term for slave but the more precise term for a household servant.
It was unthinkable for a man to go to his neighbor’s servant and judge whether he was serving well or poorly. It would be completely out of place for him do so, an insult suggesting that the master was negligent. To judge the servant is to criticize the Master.
Paul drives this point home when stresses, "And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand." Christ is the advocate of the one we condemn.
In vs. 9 Paul makes the point further: "For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living."
The cost of the privilege being Lord, of sitting in the judge’s seat, is immense. Only Christ has paid it. While we might argue that no one is wise enough to judge especially the conscience of another, Paul’s point is higher. 
Not one of us has been so longsuffering, so committed to love, that we have any claim on criticizing each other. 
Last summer, Isaac and I went to Glacier National Park with a friend of mine and his son. My friend is a pilot. In the Air Force he had served as a trainer. He told me a story about something that happened when he left the Air Force and was training to fly a commercial airline.
There was another veteran pilot who had commercially flown the old 707’s. Now he was being qualified on a newer, smaller, more computerized plane. Every time he made a mistake in the simulator, his trainer would point it out as soon as he made it. As each training flight was completed, he was a given a list of things he had done wrong. The veteran captain was failing the training course. He had lost confidence.
My friend, who had been a trainer in the Air Force, said, "The trainer didn’t work with him. He didn’t come alongside and encourage him. He didn’t suggest, "You might have had more control in your landing if you give the plane a little more flap." Or "That left bank would have been smoother with a little less aileron." Instead he led the guy to think he could never get it right, although it was obvious to everyone else he was totally capable.
When he shared this with me I got a pretty good insight into why my friend is such a fine elder in his church. He knows how to be a trainer. He also knows how to be a trainee. He knows that when you are with someone who doesn’t know as much as you do, you can’t begin to help him along unless you’re prepared to accept him. 
They can’t receive what you have for them until you have you have first accepted them for who they are, until you have shown them that you are their advocate rather than their judge, an encouragement rather than a critic.
The premise of Romans 14 is that the church is full of trainers and trainees. Most of us are trainers and trainees. Most of us know people who are newer to the faith than we are, and people who are farther along and more mature.
While it is true that it takes two to have fellowship, the deeper truth is that the initiative rests with the more senior member. At home…in the church.
1.	We are to live as those who will be judged by the Lord, not as those who are to judge others. (vss. 5-12)
Look with me at vs. 10: "You then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat….vs. 12 So each of us will give an account concerning himself to God. 
On the great day, Jesus isn’t going to ask, "What did you think of Joe not sending his kids to Christian school?" Or "What did you think of Mary staying at home with the kids when there was no money for shoes?" You’re not going to be asked, "What did you think of Harold praying in tongues? Or "Jimmy who wouldn’t dare." You’re not going to be asked what you thought of Audio Adrenalin or D.C. Talk or Bach.
Bach will be asked about his music, whether it was Soli Deo Gloria, all for God’s glory as he wrote across his finished manuscripts. So will the D.C. Talk be asked about theirs. You and I will be asked about what we listened to and what we contributed to – not only the music but gossip and carping and criticizing that are too common among believers.
You and I will give account of the educational choices we made, for the praying we did, for the decisions we reached about our careers – and no one else’s.