Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Back in the 19th century, a young boy had watched his dad become a great inventor and businessman.

He and his family had moved from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, Russia to be with his father Immanuel who had moved there some time before in order to get his business off the ground and running.

It was a great success.

Immanuel had become an arms manufacturer for Russian army, and had invented a new underwater mine that had caught the eye of Tsar Nicholas I and so had made Immanuel and his family a very well-to-do family.

However, at the end of Crimean War, the manufacturing plant closed, and Immanuel struggled to make ends meet.

But his son, he had caught his dad’s inventive mind.

In fact, so had his brothers.

Eventually, while Ludvig, one of the brothers was the John D. Rockefeller of Russia having figured out how to refine oil and so becoming one of the wealthiest men in the world, Alfred became the most famous of his brothers.

His invention changed the world.

Having created a much safer way to mine, Alfred’s invention was soon used in war to kill and maim people.

When Ludvig died, a paper in France had publish an obituary, thinking it was Alfred who had died.

With the obituary was the headline, “The Merchant of Death is Dead.”

It is believed that having read how at least one columnist saw his life and work, Alfred changed his will.

He was obsessed with how the world would remember him; not as a merchant of death, but as a giver of life and peace.

So this man, who loved both science and literature and who had invented something for good but also used for war, bequeathed nearly his entire fortune to be given year by year as prizes in those fields.

The Nobel Prize in Physics, in Chemistry, In Physiology or Medicine, in Literature and of course the Nobel Peace Prize are awarded because one man saw that his good work, the invention of dynamite, had been used for evil.

Christian liberty, a great good, can also be used as a terrible evil.

Those who are strong in faith must be strong enough to keep that from happening as it has always been incumbent upon the strong to protect the weak.

As we open up our text this morning, I hope by the end, we will see three interrelated ways that the strong in faith serve Christ and then two results that come with such faithful service.

The first is that we serve Christ when we listen to the Lord’s teaching.

The second is that we serve Christ when we love the Lord’s people.

Finally, we serve Christ when we live by the Lord’s Spirit.

Listen to the Lord’s Teaching

Love the Lord’s People

Live by the Lord’s Spirit

Listen to the Lord’s Teaching

The first way that we serve the Lord is when we listen to the Lord’s teaching.

Notice what Paul wrote in verse 14.

Here is a Jew writing this to the Roman church.

I bring that up because as a Jew, he would have had dietary laws that he would have lived by his entire life.

There were certain clean and unclean animals.

Some he was allowed to eat and others he was not.

But here, Paul wrote that he knew and had been persuaded that nothing was unclean in itself.

His mind was changed.

What he had learned his entire life, and rightly so, had at some point changed.

How?

He had been persuaded in the Lord, or better yet, “by the Lord Jesus.”

It is critical for us to understand that when Paul wrote that he was persuaded, he wrote it in the perfect passive indicative.

The perfect tense of this means that this was something that occured in the past; it’s a completed thing.

So the persuasion was completed in the past.

Paul was not coming up with this on the fly.

He was already persuaded at some point in his past.

But the perfect also is used when the past event affects the present.

So it was that Paul was persuaded in the past and that persuasion affects the way he lives in the present.

He doesn’t ignore his persuasion.

The passive voice indicates that Paul was the recipient of this persuasion.

He didn’t come up with this on his own.

There was an authority in his life that had the power to persuade him.

That authority is named: the Lord Jesus.

And the indicative just simply means that this was a reality.

This isn’t a fantasy.

It isn’t a hope or a wish.

This was reality.

Jesus had persuaded Paul that nothing was unclean in itself and so Paul listened and believed.

However, the contrast comes in the next clause: “But it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.”

Not only is the word “think” an altogether different word than persuade (they’re not synonymous), it is written as a present, middle, participle.

In other words, it is a continuous action taking place in the present tense.

But it’s middle.

Technically, it’s a deponent, but it still acts in the middle voice.

In other words, this thinking, this reckoning or convincing, is done by the self or for the self’s interest.

So, I am thinking through this issue at this moment and think it best for me not to eat certain foods.

So, one has been persuaded by the Lord and the other is convincing themselves.

And hearing that, some of us may be tempted to look down upon those who are not persuaded by the Lord but are convincing themselves otherwise.

But we are told not to do that.

Not with matters that aren’t sinful.

What we eat and drink are not sinful things, unless we’ve convinced ourselves that some are.

It is at that point then that they become sinful.

But as Paul wrote, they are sinful only to that person.

What Paul literally writes is, “the one who considers something to be unclean, to that person, it is unclean.”

"That person,” is a word of emphasis.

It would be like pointing to that one there.

Love the Lord’s People

Now, it may be that those strong in faith in this place are feeling pretty good about themselves.

Perhaps they think consciously or subconsciously, check!

I am listening to the Lord’s Teaching.

But before we get too far, we need to get to the second way we serve the Lord.

That comes when we Love the Lord’s People.

This is the crux of the next verse:

The word grief here is a hard word to define.

Some want to equate grief to the next word used in the argument “destroy” as if they are synonymous.

They aren’t.

Some want it to mean even the slightest hint of offense.

It probably doesn’t mean that either.

Let’s give a quick look to how this word is used in Scripture.

What it would appear to be saying then is that this grief, this sorrow of the brother is not a slight offense, but a deep-down emotional hurt.

It’s, as one lexicon put it, “severe mental or emotional distress.”

To disregard such an emotional pain is simply unloving.

We are not loving those for whom the Lord died.

For us to stick to our eating and drinking, or whatever those scruples may be, knowing that it is tearing our brothers and sisters up inside, shows that we care more about our Christian liberty, more about our food and drink or cigars or movies or whatever, than we do about those for whom the Lord died.

And Paul gives the command not to destroy those for whom Jesus died.

Again, that’s a strong word.

Paul goes from severe emotional distress to destruction.

If you have ever read the Left Behind Series, you’ll probably remember one of the titles being, Apollyon.

That means “destroyer.”

This is the verb equivalent.

In essence, we don’t want to be the destroyer of the people for whom the Lord died.

Jesus loves those for whom he died.

But if he died for them, how can they be destroyed.

Have we not seen over the last two weeks that the Master, our Lord is strong enough to uphold them?