Insight for Living

Announcer: Most Christians understand they're saved by grace, not rules. But here's where it gets complicated. What happens when your freedom becomes someone else's stumbling block?

Announcer: Today on Insight for Living, Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll tackles one of the most challenging tensions in the Christian life. The collision between liberty and love. Should we adjust our choices based on what offends others? Or does that lead back to legalism? In this penetrating study of Romans chapter 14, we discover why both extremes miss the mark, and we learn the surprising secret to living freely while loving deeply.

Chuck Swindoll: You brought a Bible, find the letter to the Romans. If you didn't, that's okay. You will see what the text says and then we'll be guided into it by the Spirit of God as he speaks to us in a special way. We love God and we love how great he is and we thank him for his word.

Chuck Swindoll: I'll read for you the section from Romans 14 beginning at verse 13 down to the end. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. Therefore, do not let what is for you a good thing be spoken of as evil, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then, let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another. Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they're evil for the man who eats and gives offense. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles. The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and whatever is not from faith is sin.

Announcer: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Romans on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message, Liberty on a Tightrope.

Chuck Swindoll: It's the 7th of August, 1974. It's New York City and it's a hot, humid morning. The sky is clear. You notice that as you step up out of the subway and onto the main thoroughfare, making your way to the place where you have worked for a few months.

Chuck Swindoll: You see it, of course, immediately upon coming out of the subway. The towers stand tall over a quarter of a mile high into the air. 1350 feet high, not counting the 70 feet below street level, where the foundation sits like a gigantic bathtub, steel laced concrete below all the way down to Manhattan granite.

Chuck Swindoll: You realize as you approach these towers, they stand tall and high. There are some 70 acres of office space within them. 110 floors. We will all remember that, having lived through 9/11. Where all kinds of businesses occur from one day to the next.

Chuck Swindoll: Your office is about halfway up, but you reach this towering building. And before you walk into the lobby with its seven-story high ceiling, you stop, because others around you have stopped, and they're all looking up. Their mouths are open and they're staring, and they're seeing something that was not a part of the original architectural design.

Chuck Swindoll: There is a thin, thin line that stretches across the two buildings, way, way up at the top. 131 feet apart these buildings sit. Like a wind tunnel. And they must be that far apart, said the architects, or the buildings will vibrate when the wind swishes through like a wind tunnel, surging through because of its high velocity. But you see this strand high up there, and then there's a speck in the middle of it.

Chuck Swindoll: You, like everybody else around you, cannot believe it, because the speck is moving. What you are looking at is a 25-year-old French-born tightrope walker named Philippe Petit. Who is out on this 450-pound cable that he has strung up there the night before, illegally.

Chuck Swindoll: There are policemen on both ends as he is dancing out on this tightrope. One source said he went back and forth eight times and on occasion jumped on the cable as if it were a trampoline.

Chuck Swindoll: One of his friends had said to him, you have to wear a harness and connect it to one of the towers or as sure as the world a gust of wind will come along and blow you off. He laughed at that. One of the policemen standing on the other end screamed out, "You get off there, or I'm coming out to get you!"

Chuck Swindoll: Can't you see, come on. His words describe his philosophy, two towers, I walk. Well, he was arrested and later set free after just a little brief incarceration. And of course, the talk shows and all sorts of interviewers wanted to hear him tell his story. These are his words, "I feel I belong to the sky.

Chuck Swindoll: It is the moment of purest happiness, absolute freedom for me. At no other time am I more free. I breathe very slowly and enjoy immensely the miracle of balance. I breathe slowly and I realize I felt fear earlier, but no longer. The fear of letting go, and I fought it, and then I laughed at it.

Chuck Swindoll: I was surrounded now by complete peace out on the wire. I know the rapture of the heights. In the middle of the wire, I dropped to one knee in the traditional salute of the tightrope walker. There at my feet was all of New York. He's a nut. Absolute nut.

Chuck Swindoll: He's a brave nut, but he's a nut. What is it that sends that guy out on places like that? It is the feeling of freedom. There are many analogies between the experience of that remarkable acrobat, some would call a fool, and the exhilarating experience of the Christian life.

Chuck Swindoll: Once you have tasted of true liberty, you never can go back. Even though they'll shout at you from both sides. You realize you have never been more free and the ecstasy of the freedom is unspeakable.

Chuck Swindoll: You have lived your life anchored, anchored to the rules and regulations of a legalistic church or pastor or body of people who would hold you in their grip and push you down. Tell you to never, ever walk. That that kind of freedom is for those who are stupid, who are heretics, who have no understanding of the Christian life, but you know better and you've learned better.

Chuck Swindoll: No longer is there the harness of lists and demands and legalistic expectations that you have to live up to to rid yourself of guilt or even worse, shame. You're free. You're free in Christ. And you've just begun to experience the joys, that sense of almost careless freedom as you breathe the fresh air of grace.

Chuck Swindoll: And we at Stonebriar Community Church applaud you for taking the risk. Against the memories of your past and against a number of friends who frown, you're determined, you're not going to live in the guilt and the shame of their expectations. And you are rare. And you're ready to dance and tell the world the story. You feel like at times below you is all of the world that needs to hear it.

Chuck Swindoll: Now, the first 12 verses of Romans 14 is all about the acrobat out on the wire. The last half of chapter 14 of Romans is all about the balance he maintains or she maintains while enjoying the freedom. I've even given you a little artist cartoon. I like the guy. I like the hair on his chest. I like his eyes at half-moon. I like it that he's relaxed. I like his thumbs.

Chuck Swindoll: But what's most important is not the little acrobat, not Philippe. What's most important is what's on each end of the pole. On one end is the control that we place on ourselves. Out of the other end, love for others.

Chuck Swindoll: You forget that and you become a careless, independent rebel of a Christian. You're going to do your thing, regardless. It doesn't make any difference what anybody may say or think. I am free. Thank God Almighty, I am free at last. And nobody is going to hold me down. I don't care who's offended by my freedom.

Chuck Swindoll: It's to you, Paul writes these last verses of Romans chapter 14. And there are some of you here like that. Just as there are some of you here who are still in the clutches of the harness. Can't even imagine being free. The way you were reared, the things you were taught, the churches you attended, the groups you were a part of, the pastor you served under. Emphasis on under.

Chuck Swindoll: You were, if you will, entrapped in the clutches of those demands and expectations. Paul understands, remember, he was a Pharisee. Remember his past? He was a member of the Sanhedrin. It's impossible to think of one more legal in the first century than the Apostle himself. But he's been set free. And so he writes the letter to the Romans to explain it. But now a word of caution.

Chuck Swindoll: There must be control mixed with love, or it won't be freedom at all. It'll be an offense. It'll be license. I am of the conviction, the same as Martin Lloyd Jones, from whom I learned it, that unless some take advantage of it, you really are not preaching grace.

Chuck Swindoll: It doesn't mean we want people to take advantage of it. It means that when we do declare grace, there will be those who go too far. Who in a careless and independent spirit care little for what others may say or think or how their lives may be impacting them negatively. So Paul writes these verses to bring it into balance.

Chuck Swindoll: Sort of a summary as he begins. Therefore, he summarizes at verse 13, let us not judge one another anymore. Now, you sat through a whole sermon last time on how important it is that we let people live their lives and that we free ourselves from judging, looking down on others. Both extremes are seen in the lives of both legalist who judge the one who is free and the one who is free having no regard for the one who isn't, the weaker brother.

Chuck Swindoll: And so he speaks to both of us when he says, "Let us." Let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this, not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother or sister's way. You see, I put it like this, love is the card that trumps liberty. And you show your immaturity when you have little room for love and most room for liberty.

Chuck Swindoll: Because they must be seen together and held in balance. Hold your place and look a couple of letters further into Galatians chapter 5. Galatians is what I've sometimes called a Magna Carta of Christian liberty. Chapter 5, verse 1, connected with verse 13. Don't have the time for the verses in between, but look at these two in juxtaposition to one another. Verse 1, verse 13 of Galatians 5. If it was for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

Chuck Swindoll: Amen. We believe in that. We stand in that. We exalt in that. Don't go back under the legalistic lifestyle. Don't think by living up to someone else's do's and don'ts you're more spiritual, or that God somehow will smile on you or accept you into a special category of his family called the spiritual.

Chuck Swindoll: Verse 13. He says it again. For you were called to freedom, brethren. And then this word, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. But through love, there it is again, serve one another.

Chuck Swindoll: If you've never marked a verse before in your Bible, I suggest you start with verse 13 of Galatians 5. Wonderful guideline. We'll mark another one in Romans a little later, but this is one to mark. You're called to freedom. There's no doubt about it.

Chuck Swindoll: So get out on that, on that cable. Start your walk. Learn to balance. However, remember not all can walk there as you do, so you need discernment. Most importantly, you need love for others. In other words, have a heart. Take note that not everyone is as far along as you are.

Chuck Swindoll: Especially when you are in public places, when you are in a place where you could easily be an offense. Put on the brakes. Apply some control.

Chuck Swindoll: Now, we have two or three reminders in this last part of Romans chapter 14 that I think are worth repeating. The first one comes from the 14th verse. Nothing is unclean in itself. That's just exactly what the verse says. I know and I am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. Last time we talked about meat that had been offered on the idol.

Chuck Swindoll: We talked about those who observe one day over another, turning festivals and special days into a fetish. We talked about those who were offended by those who would eat meat that had come from a carcass that had, part of which had been burnt on an idol's altar. Paul says there's nothing to it. There's nothing unclean about the meat. There's nothing wrong with any day of the week or month or year. There's nothing innately wrong about it. Nothing is unclean in itself.

Chuck Swindoll: You sit down to a T-bone steak that was cut from the steer, part of which had been offered on an idol's altar. There's no problem. The steak does not contaminate you. But there are those who have been raised in idolatry and have been saved out of idolatry, and they've not yet come to the place where they can see that the meat is okay to eat. They think to touch anything that was once on an idol's altar is wrong.

Chuck Swindoll: And so Paul sets it straight. Nothing is in itself unclean. However, remember the control part, remember the love part of our balance. To him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Talk to the young Christian who was saved out of that, who has a deep and abiding fear of ever coming anywhere near that or anything that once touched that, and you'll hear another story.

Chuck Swindoll: Remember last time? We talked about meat that had been offered on the idol, before the idol, and the good meat left over found its way to the meat market and went on sale and Christians would buy that meat and then throw a party, and they found themselves surrounded by friends who loved that meat and suddenly talk came from, "Where did you get this meat?" "Oh, the meat came from the shambles, from the meat market." "Oh, really?" "Yeah, actually, it's meat offered to an idol."

Chuck Swindoll: You got a few there that go, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. You realize my background? I came from that background. I mean, that'll contaminate your life if you eat meat that was once offered to an idol." He'd prefer to eat vegetables than any piece of meat cut from a carcass that has been on an idol's altar. That's what he means by the meat here.

Chuck Swindoll: Paul says, there's nothing unclean if God's called it clean. Now, let's understand that, lest you think this means anything goes, which is the whole point of this message. If the Lord writes in his word anything about something being wrong or unclean or sinful, stay away from it.

Chuck Swindoll: That's not legalism. That's obedience. While he doesn't condemn a sip of wine or a bit of wine at a meal if that's your choice, he condemns from start to finish, drunkenness. There's no question. That's never in question.

Chuck Swindoll: Our Lord says there's, there's even room for anger. But he says rage and anger where you go to sleep on it and you sustain anger, that's wrong. So be angry but do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. And there are other, other gray areas we could name.

Chuck Swindoll: Verse 15. Here's the love flowing through. For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. Both of you are equal in God's eyes, both of you are equally loved. How about a little love for one another is the.