Psalm 116:3-4, Isaiah 2:4: Remembrance Day Address 2022

Presented to the Alberni Valley Community, 11 November 2022, by Major Michael Ramsay, Legion Branch #293 Chaplain (Padre)

  

Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth forever more.

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, time stands still for a moment; and we remember those who died, not for war, but for a world that would be free and at peace.

 

Psalm 116:3-4:

The cords of death entangled me,

the anguish of the grave came over me;

I was overcome by distress and sorrow.

Then I called on the name of the Lord:

“Lord, save me!”

Isaiah 2:4:

He will judge between the nations

and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

nor will they train for war anymore.

 

Almighty God. You are our refuge and strength; we humble ourselves in Your presence, and, remembering the great things you have done for us, we lift up our hearts in adoration and praise. As you have gathered us together this day, we give You thanks for all who served their country in time of trial.

In remembrance of those who made the supreme sacrifice, make us better men and women, and give us peace in our time, O Lord.

 

Today I have my facemask from the Legion with me. You probably can’t see it that well. It is red with a poppy on it. We lost a few legion members throughout covid-19. Most people in our community lost someone during covid-19. Do you remember the fear when the pandemic began? Do you remember the empty streets? Do you remember the flags we used to have in front of City Hall to mark the dead in BC from the pandemic? Every week we used to address this community from that spot mentioning the tragedy as the number of flags, each representing a casualty grew. Can you imagine if in 1914 or 1944 we added a flag for every casualty of war?

In World War One, 650 000 Canadians gave their lives and our whole country only had around 7 million people. 1401 from BC alone gave there lives and of the only 1600 people who lived in the Alberni Valley, 116 – more than 17% of our population – signed up to go overseas in just the first few months of the war alone.

We know about Cyril Woodward: he was only 15 when he enlisted.

We know about the Redford boys - 3 brothers who enlisted from our area.  Edward, 29, was wounded by a shell that killed 2 of his companions. William, age 19, was sent home when he was wounded in combat and Douglas at age 20 was killed in action – never to come home again.

The poet Charles Samuel Bannell, in November of 1916 he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and less than a year later, on Oct 30th, 1917, he was killed in action.

From our roll of honour at the legion: Private William Stewart, PPCLI, fought in the battle of Frezenberg during the 2nd Battle of Ypres. He is buried in Ypres, Belgium. He was 26.

Private William Clarke, Son of Daniel and Laura Clarke, of Alberni, British Columbia. Served in the 7th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry. In 1916 he was buried in Belgium at age 19.

And then after so much loss, more was to come: the Second World War. Port Alberni again answered the call and contributed greatly to the war effort. There are many who served. There was Flight Lieutenant David Ramsay. He was awarded the Belgian Cross of War in 1940 and on April 28th, 1944, he was given another cross, this one on his grave. He was 23 years old.

There was also Jim, Jack, John, Joe, Leo, Leonard, Nick and Dorothy Schan. Seven brothers and one sister (4 connected to Pt Alberni) all enlisted in the military during the 2nd World War. No family is believed to have contributed more soldiers to Canada's war effort.

And then there was Edward John Clutesi, born to be hereditary chief of the Tseshaht First Nation, instead he gave his life for us in August 1944, in France, at age 26.

Hugh Patterson, the uncle of one of our Legion Members, has his name on the honour roll of those who never returned from the Second World War.

I have a story to read. This one was handed to me on a piece of paper from another legion member. It is about another war in another country from another time.

There was a captain with an invading army. Through the night he heard the cries of a wounded soldier in the distance. He didn’t know whether the solider was on his side or the other. He eventually decided to risk his life to try to find and save the soldier. He got to the soldier and the soldier was indeed one of the enemy but -in a cruel twist of events- the soldier was also the captain’s own son. He did not know his son was fighting for the other side. One can only imagine. His son died. He requested a military funeral but that was denied. He was eventually allowed to have a single bugler and the captain asked the bugler to play notes that were written on a paper in his son’s pocket. That is the story of the origin of the American version of ‘the Last Post’: music composed by a deceased confederate soldier and played for the first time at a funeral performed by the enemy who killed him -who also happened to be his family who loved him.    

Many of us have friends and family who left our community and our country only to be buried overseas or to come back missing their friends who had. My grandfather served in World War 2 and my grandmother’s brother, who left the family farm to serve, never did speak of the day they were surrounded by the enemy.

We have spoken briefly today to honour some of those many young people who were loved by others here in our community and who lived and died in the wars. There are many more stories: of Canada’s then 11 million people, 45 400 of them died in World War II. In World War I, from our population of just more than 7 million people, 61 000 gave their lives. If you were alive then, someone you knew and probably someone you loved, died in the war. We are here to remember them today and we are here to remember all of those who have died since that war, the war to end all wars – and in the many wars that have followed.

Shortly after the world war my grandfather was stationed in Pembroke, Ontario. One day, he sawed off the butt of his rifle and made a cribbage board out of it. Many of his comrades followed suit hoping that was now the best use for the rifles.

We can only hope and pray that one day the real War to end all wars will finally be fought and we will learn war no more. For it is only as we remember the tragedy of war and the stories and lives of those who serve that we can possibly be willing to fight for peace so that one day our young men and women will no longer be compelled to go overseas to lay down their lives for us. Let we forget. Lest we forget.

 

Let us pray: Almighty God, as You have gathered your people together this day in hallowed remembrance, we give You thanks for all who laid down their lives for our sake, and whom You have gathered from the storm of war into the peace of Your presence. Let the memory of their devotion ever be an example to us, that we at the last. Being faithful unto death, may receive with them the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Romans 14: ‘Don’t Condemn, Don’t Despise!’ ‘But the Weak Eat Only Vegetables!’

 Presented to TSA Corps 614 Regent Park, Toronto, 29 May 2016 and 06 November 2022 by Major Michael Ramsay

 

This is the BC 2022 version, to view the Toronto 2016 version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2016/05/romans-14-dont-condemn-dont-despise-but.html

 

Today, I want you to remember one thing about Romans 14 and that is, ‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other’.

 

As many of you know, our kids are vegetarians: I have a story about how that all began. Susan tells the story a little differently but this is my recollection.

 

Many years ago, Susan and I were studying Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. We were encouraged to try each of the disciplines as we read the book. Susan began exploring vegetarianism – for her it was about stewardship of God’s earth as much as anything else. If you ask her another time, I am sure she will quite happily tell you more about this.

.

While we were studying Celebration of Discipline and after Susan had experimented with vegetarianism for a couple of days, I went grocery shopping with a 2- or 3-year-old Rebecca and a 1- or 2-year-old Sarah-Grace. That wasn’t always so easy. To help them settle, I would often tell them that if they co-operated, I would let them watch the live trout or lobsters in the tanks at the store. I was trying to get everything on the list Susan gave me and contain a 2-year-old who wanted to wander here, there and everywhere – the one-year-old was firmly secured in the shopping cart, so caging the two year-old there was not an option; thus I let Rebecca look at the trout swimming around as I was getting everything near there in the store. Then as I was putting a packaged fish in my shopping cart, Rebecca looked at the package and asked, ‘Where do fish come from?’

 

When I told Susan that story at dinner it led to future discussions with Rebecca and from then on Susan was very good at encouraging Rebecca in her vegetarianism. Rebecca, in turn, encouraged Sarah-Grace who was even younger and for a couple of years Sarah-Grace would say that she too was a vegetarian - but her favourite vegetable was sausages.

 

Romans 14:2: “Some believe in eating anything but the weak eat only vegetables.” Is this what Paul was writing about in Romans… contemporary vegetarianism? Does it mean that all vegetarians are weak people who should be more like us strong meat eaters?  No. It isn’t

 

But let’s try to figure out what this verse is saying by exploring the context. When first preparing for this sermon, I read a lot of Biblical scholars and historians’ writings about these ‘weak’ vegetarians, hoping to gain some insight into why these Christians were not eating meat. Some academics think that since some Jews – the Essenes – didn’t eat much meat and were very strong in keeping Sabbath laws, maybe when they became Christians, they were the weak vegetarians and Sabbath-keepers to whom Paul is referring. The problem with this is that the Essenes wouldn’t have interacted with others. They kept very much to themselves. They were like the Hutterites in the Canadian prairies or even the Amish.[2] They wouldn’t be a part of society as a whole – especially Roman society – so this wouldn’t apply to them.

 

Others have suggested that the weak vegetarians were not Christian Essene Jews but simply everyday regular Christian Jews or Gentiles.[3] Paul in his other letters speaks a lot about meat sacrificed to idols. In the first century they didn’t have Save-On. Buy-Low or QF. Butcher shops and marketplaces in the Roman Empire were often located right inside pagan temples. When someone brought an animal to be butchered for eating, it would be offered as a sacrifice. The leftovers from sacrifices could often be sold in the market alongside other butchered meat; so some Christians didn’t want to risk eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol so they just didn’t eat meat at all.[4] The problem with this idea is that these are the ‘weak’ folk is – in contrast to his many of his other letters - Paul doesn’t specifically deal with meat sacrificed to idols at all.

 

So then who are these 'weak' vegetarians to whom Paul is referring? …Basically, the answer is… we don’t know. Some of the best scholars disagree with each other and none of them make an overwhelmingly compelling argument. But we do know that they weren’t like PETA or today’s vegetarians who think of eating meat as eating a pet or even a friend. There is no record of that concept in the ancient world. And they probably were not even like Christian vegetarians today who refrain from eating meat as a way of being good stewards of the earth. We don’t really know who these vegetarians are who Paul refers to as weak but we do know that ‘eating only meat’ is 1 of 3 attributes of the weak that he addresses, the three items are:

.

1.     Romans 14:2: Some believe in eating anything, but the weak eat only vegetables.

2.     Romans 14:5: Some (the weak) consider one day to be better than another.

3.     Romans 14:21: It is good to not drink wine

 

We talked about the uncertainties around not eating meat. There was also the same uncertainties around judging one day as better than the others. Jews had a lot of feast days. This could be what this passage is talking about. Maybe the Jewish Christians were still celebrating all of the old Jewish feast days and the Gentiles couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up with all of that. Maybe this is what Paul is saying doesn’t really matter.

 

This passage may refer to – or at least be extended to – the Sabbath as well. The Sabbath is Saturday and some Jewish Christians would still celebrate the Sabbath in synagogue on Saturday before they would get together with other Christians on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Paul might be saying that this is what doesn’t matter.[5] Everyday for the Christian is supposed be Sabbath. That might be part of what he is talking about.

.

Next there is drinking. Paul says that just like weak Christians don’t eat meat, they also don’t drink and we have no idea what this is all about but we do know that Paul says here in Verse 21 that it is GOOD not to eat meat or to drink wine.

.

‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise!’ This is the main part for all of these things. For some reason the here-called ‘weak’ people, they didn’t eat meat or drink wine, and they held some days as more important than others. These people apparently thought that everyone should act like they do. They thought that because they were right in their own estimation not to drink or eat meat or do anything on Saturday that nobody else should. Paul says in Verse 3 and elsewhere that these people were getting a little - what we would call it in my day? - ‘holier than thou.’ Paul calls these ‘holier than thou’ people, weak. He tells them that they are not to condemn people in the church here (v.3). Paul says if they aren’t your employees, they don’t have to answer to you. They serve God so they answer to Him (v.4). If we insult each other like this, Paul says, then we are really insulting Christ (15:3) and that is never good. To the holier than thou group, Paul says, ‘Stop it! ‘You’re not the boss of them.’[6] ‘Don’t condemn others!’

 

Then to the others – to the so-called ‘strong’ Christians, Paul says, ‘smarten up!’ They’re not to judge you but you DON’T despise them. How easy is it for people to ‘write off’ others? How easy it is for us to simply despise people as hypocrites and have nothing to do with them? Paul says don’t be so selfish![7] Christ died for those people I just called weak just like he died for you supposedly strong people. Because of this, Romans 14:7-8, we aren’t supposed to just live for ourselves and do whatever we like; we are supposed to live for Christ and live for others.[8] If your friend doesn’t drink, don’t go out for dinner with them and proceed to order a pint of beer or a glass of wine. That’s just mean. Don’t tempt them to do something that might be very bad for them. Don’t despise them because they don’t drink. Don’t put a stumbling block in their way.

 

Paul also says it really doesn’t matter if some people observe every special day in the church. To bring this into a bit more of a contemporary context: does anyone remember ‘fish Fridays’? In the Roman Catholic Church when I was a kid anyway, they would not eat any meat but fish on Fridays. So – as an evangelical - if you were going to go out to a fish ’n chips restaurant, it would be wise to pick a different day than Friday; they were just packed.

 

Also, does anyone remember when there was no Sunday shopping? To this day, some Christians still refuse to buy anything on Sundays. I remember my college church group, decades ago, would have spaghetti lunches at one point so that we wouldn’t go out for lunch on Sundays. The Apostle Paul is saying none of this matters; so stop despising your friends who want to keep these days as holy. And for those of you that are just keeping one day holy, remember that God made all of the days and so as such, every day is the Lord’s day. So don’t condemn and don’t despise others!

.

To the weak Paul says, ‘don’t condemn!’ To the strong Paul says, ‘don’t despise!’ This is so important. We are not supposed to fight with each other. We are supposed to help each other; we need to stop our bickering.[9] If you flip to Chapter 16:17-20, that we read earlier, you will notice what Paul says about all this and about all of us:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guiltless in what is evil. The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.

 

In other words, don’t bud into things that are none of your business! Don’t cause trouble! Don’t despise or condemn one another! Instead encourage each other in obedience, be wise in what is good and be guiltless in what is evil and then God will crush Satan under our feet. Jesus died on the cross and rose again not so that we will despise and condemn each other; quite the opposite. He died and rose again so that we may live and that we may live our life abundantly. So to that end I encourage us all today to encourage each other, uphold the week, and support the strong in Jesus Name.

.

.

Let us pray.

.

www.sheepspeak.com

www.faceboo.com/salvogesis

 ---

[1] Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans. Interpretation: (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1985), 214

[2] W.E Vines, “Week in Faith”, in Vine's Word Studies of New Testament Vol. III. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), p. 166.

[3] NT Wright, Romans for Everyone Part 2: Chapters 9-16 (Louisville, US: WKJ, 2004), 95.

[4] Cf. Michael Ramsay, 1 Corinthians 6-10: In Tents Storm of Life: Everything is Permissible but Not Everything is Beneficial. (Swift Current The Salvation Army: Sheepspeak, 01 June 2014) On-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/05/1-corinthians-6-10-in-tents-storm-of.html cf. also N.T. Wright, '1 Corinthians' in Paul for Everyone, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 98.

[5] Cf. William Hendricksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, NTC (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic: 1981), 458.

[6] The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, 2919: ‘Krino’, (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), 51.

[7] Cf. N.T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans (NIB 10: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1995), 475.

[8] Cf. Alan Le Grys, The Expository Times 122 (11). ‘11th September: Proper 19: Vision and Reality’.(August 2011), 549

[9] Cf. John Stott, Romans, (Downers Grove, Ill., IVP, 1994), 369.

Romans 14: ‘Don’t Condemn, Don’t Despise!’ ‘But the Weak Eat Only Vegetables!’

Presented to TSA Corps 614 Regent Park, Toronto, 29 May 2016 by Captain Michael Ramsay. Presented to TSA Alberni Valley, 06 November 2022 by Major Michael Ramsay

  

This is the 2016 Toronto version, to view the 2022 TSA AV version, click here:  https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2022/11/romans-14-dont-condemn-dont-despise-but.html

 

   

.

Today, I want you to remember one thing about Romans 14-16 and that is, ‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other’. What is the one thing I want you to remember?

.

As many of you know, Susan and the kids are vegetarians: Rebecca and Sarah-Grace are quite devoted to the cause. I have a story about how that all began. Susan tells the story a little differently but this is my recollection.

.

Many years ago, Susan and I were studying Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline while we were part of 614 Vancouver. We were encouraged to try each of the disciplines as we read the book. Susan began exploring vegetarianism – for her it was is much about stewardship of God’s earth as anything else. If you ask her another time, I am sure she will quite happily tell you more about this.
.

While we were studying Celebration of Discipline and after Susan had experimented with vegetarianism for a couple of days, I went grocery shopping with a 2 or 3-year old Rebecca and a 1 or 2-year old Sarah-Grace. That wasn’t always so easy. To help them settle, I would often tell them that if they co-operated I would let them watch the live trout or lobsters in their tanks at the store. I was trying to get everything on the list Susan gave me and contain a two year-old who wanted to wander here, there and everywhere – the one year-old was firmly secured in the shopping cart, so caging the two year-old there was not an option; thus I let Rebecca look at the trout swimming around as I was getting everything near there in the store. Then as I was putting a packaged fish in my shopping cart, Rebecca looked at the package and asked, ‘Where do fish come from?’

.

When I told Susan that story at dinner it led to future discussions with Rebecca and from then on Susan was very good at encouraging Rebecca in her vegetarianism. Rebecca, in turn, encouraged Sarah-Grace who was even younger and for a couple of years Sarah-Grace would say that she too was a vegetarian but her favourite vegetable was sausages.

.

Romans 14:2: “Some believe in eating anything but the weak eat only vegetables.”

.

What is the one thing I said I want us to remember today? (Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other)

.

Romans 14:2: “Some believe in eating anything but the weak eat only vegetables.” Is this was Paul is writing about in Romans… contemporary vegetarianism grounded in a respect for the environment or a view of animals as friends or pets? Does it mean that all vegetarians are weak people who should be more like us strong meat eaters?  No.

.

Let’s try to figure out what this verse is saying by exploring the context a little bit. But first, what is the one thing I said I want us to remember today? (Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other)

.

This week, I read a lot of Biblical scholars and historians’ writings about these ‘weak’ vegetarians, hoping to gain some insight into why these Christians were not eating meat. Some academics think that these vegetarians were Gentiles.[1] Some think that since some Jews – the Essenes – didn’t eat much meat and were very strong in keeping Sabbath laws, maybe as they became Christians, they were the vegetarians to whom Paul is referring. The problem with this is that the Essenes kept very much to themselves. They were like the Hutterites in the Canadian prairies or even the Amish.[2] They wouldn’t be a part of society as a whole – especially Roman society; they would keep very much to themselves.

.

Others have suggested that these people were not Christian Essene Jews but simply everyday regular Christian Jews.[3] Paul in his other letters speaks a lot about meat sacrificed to idols. In the first century they didn’t have Loblaw’s, Sobeys or Safeway. Butcher shops and market places in the Roman Empire were often located in pagan temples. When someone brought an animal to be butchered for eating, it would be offered as a sacrifice. The leftovers from various sacrifices could often be sold in the market alongside other butchered meat; so some Jews and even some Christian Jews didn’t want to risk eating any meat that had been sacrificed to an idol so they just didn’t eat meat at all.[4] The problem with this idea is that – in contrast to his other letters - Paul doesn’t specifically here deal with meat sacrificed to idols and the other mentioned areas of abstinence aren’t generally associated with Jewish culture (but cf. the Nasserite vow) and if they are, they aren’t tied to not eating meat.

.

So then who are these 'weak' vegetarians to whom Paul is referring? …Basically the answer is… we don’t know. Some of the best scholars disagree with each other and none of them make an overwhelmingly compelling argument. But we do know that they weren’t like PETA or today’s vegetarians who think of eating meat as eating a pet or even a friend. There is no record of that concept in the ancient world. And they probably were not like Christian vegetarians today who refrain from eating meat as a way of being good stewards of the earth. We don’t really know who these people are that Paul refers to as weak but we do know that ‘eating only meat’ is 1 of 3 attributes of the weak he addresses:
.

1. Romans 14:2: Some believe in eating anything, but the weak eat only vegetables.
2. Romans 14:5: Some (the weak) consider one day to be better than another.
3. Romans 14:21: It is good to not drink wine

What was that one thing that I said I wanted us all to remember about today? (Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other)

.

We talked about the uncertainties around not eating meat. There was also the same uncertainties around judging one day as better than the other. Jews had a lot of feast days. This could be what this passage is talking about. Maybe the Jewish Christians were still celebrating all of the old Jewish feast days and the Gentiles couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up with all of that. Maybe some Jewish Christians were saying that is what is important and maybe this is what Paul is saying doesn’t really matter. This may refer to – or at least be extended to – the Sabbath. The Sabbath is Saturday and some Jewish Christians would still celebrate the Sabbath in synagogue on Saturday before they would get together with other Christians on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Paul might be saying that this is what doesn’t matter.[5] Everyday for the Christian is supposed be Sabbath. That might be part of what he is talking about but what is the important thing he is focusing on that I want us to remember for today? (Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other)

.

Next there is the drinking. Paul says that just like weak Christians don’t eat meat, they also don’t drink and we have no idea what this is all about but we do know that Paul says here in Verse 21 that it is GOOD not to eat meat or to drink wine. What is the important thing he is focusing on that I want us to remember for today? (Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other)

.

‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise!’ This is the main part about all of these things. For some reason the here called ‘weak’ people, they didn’t eat meat or drink wine, and they held some days as more important than others. These people apparently thought that everyone should act like they do. They thought that because they were right in their own estimation not to drink or eat meat that nobody else should. Paul says in Verse 3 and elsewhere that these people were getting a little - what we would call it in my day? - ‘holier than thou.’ Paul calls these ‘holier than thou’ people, weak. He tells them that they are not to condemn people in the church here (v.3). Paul says if they aren’t your employees, they don’t have to answer to you. They serve God so they answer to Him (v.4). If we insult each other like this, Paul says, then we are really insulting Christ (15:3) and that is never good. To the holier than thou group, Paul says, ‘Stop it! ‘You’re not the boss of them.’[6] ‘Don’t condemn others!’
.

Then to the others – to the so-called ‘strong’ Christians, Paul says, ‘smarten up!’ They’re not to judge you but you DON’T despise them. How easy is it for people to ‘write off’ others? How easy it is for us to simply despise people as hypocrites and have nothing to do with them? Paul says don’t be so selfish![7] Christ died for those people I just called weak just like he died for you supposedly strong people. Because of this, Romans 14:7-8, we aren’t supposed to just live for ourselves and do whatever we like; we are supposed to live for Christ and live for others.[8] If your friend doesn’t drink, don’t go out for dinner with them and order a pint of beer or a glass of wine. That’s just mean. Don’t tempt them to do something that might be very bad for them. Don’t despise them because they don’t drink. Don’t put a stumbling block in their way.

.

Paul also says it really doesn’t matter if some people observe every special day in the church. To bring this into a bit more of a contemporary context: does anyone remember ‘fish Fridays’? In the Roman Catholic Church when I was a kid anyway, they would not eat any meat but fish on Fridays. So – as an evangelical - if you were going to go out to a fish ’n chips restaurant, it would be wise to pick a different day than Friday; they were just packed.

.

Also, does anyone remember when there was no Sunday shopping? It was very recently on the prairies. To this day, some Christians still refuse to buy anything on Sundays. I remember my college church group even on secular Vancouver Island, decades ago, would have spaghetti lunches at one point so that we wouldn’t go out for lunch on Sundays. The Apostle Paul is saying none of this matters; so stop despising your friends who want to keep these days as holy. And for those of you that are just keeping one day as holy, remember that God made all of the days and so as such, every day is the Lord’s day.
.
What is the one thing that we need to remember today? (Don’t condemn and don’t despise others!’)

.

To the weak Paul says, ‘don’t condemn!’ To the strong Paul says, ‘don’t despise!’ This is so important. We are not supposed to fight with each other. We are supposed to help each other; we need to stop our bickering.[9] If you flip to Chapter 16:17-20, that we read earlier, you will notice what Paul says about all this and about all of us:
.

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guiltless in what is evil. The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.

In other words, don’t bud into things that are none of your business! Don’t cause trouble! Don’t despise or condemn one another! Instead encourage each other in obedience, be wise in what is good and be guiltless in what is evil and then God will crush Satan under our feet. Jesus died on the cross and rose again not so that we will despise and condemn each other; quite the opposite. He died and rose again so that we may live and that we may live our life abundantly. So to that end I encourage us all today to encourage each other, uphold the week, and support the strong in Jesus Name.
.

What was the one thing we should remember today? (Don’t condemn and despise others!’)
.

Let us pray.
.

www.sheepspeak.com

---

[1] Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans. Interpretation: (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1985), 214

[2] W.E Vines, “Week in Faith”, in Vine's Word Studies of New Testament Vol. III. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), p. 166.

[3] NT Wright, Romans for Everyone Part 2: Chapters 9-16 (Louisville, US: WKJ, 2004), 95.

[4] Cf. Michael Ramsay, 1 Corinthians 6-10: In Tents Storm of Life: Everything is Permissible but Not Everything is Beneficial. (Swift Current The Salvation Army: Sheepspeak, 01 June 2014) On-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/05/1-corinthians-6-10-in-tents-storm-of.html cf. also N.T. Wright, '1 Corinthians' in Paul for Everyone, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 98.

[5] Cf. William Hendricksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, NTC (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic: 1981), 458.

[6] The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, 2919: ‘Krino’, (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), 51.

[7] Cf. N.T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans (NIB 10: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1995), 475.

[8] Cf. Alan Le Grys, The Expository Times 122 (11). ‘11^th September: Proper 19: Vision and Reality’.(August 2011), 549

[9] Cf. John Stott, Romans, (Downers Grove, Ill., IVP, 1994), 369.