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Don't Yuck at Someone Else's Yum (Pt. 2) - D. Cates · Faith On A Hill

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  It is good to see each one.
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  A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I had seen an article written by Del DeVerney in the Fulton County Gospel News, and it was entitled Don't Yuck at Someone Else's Yum.
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  That was an expression that I had not heard before that, but I heard it this week.
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  So there are at least two people in this world who use the expression don't yuck.
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  at someone else's yum, one of them lives in Michigan, one of them lives in Oregon, and I don't know any way they would know each other.
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  So that's uh that's interesting.
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  But as we uh were talking about that I said that I would build several devotional messages off of what that article had said.
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  I'd like for us to turn to Romans 14.
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  Romans 14.
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  In this chapter we are
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  Reading about scruples.
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  We are reading about especially uh eating meat that's been offered to idols.
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  Now, what do we mean by meat which has been offered to idols?
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  Well, if you were an idol worshiper, you would go to the marketplace, you would buy some meat, whatever type, I guess, that the idol preferred.
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  I don't know if they had different preferences.
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  I have an idea that probably was decided by the priests of the different uh idols.
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  But you would take that meat and you would basically put it in front of that idol, and then you would be done with your part of things.
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  Well, the priests they would perhaps eat some of that.
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  The God wasn't going to eat it.
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  They would eat some of it, or they would take it back to the marketplace.
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  And they would sell it back to the marketplace, and then the marketplace would sell it again.
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  It was meat that had been offered to idols.
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  Now, notably, those idols had not eaten that meat.
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  And yet it there it was in a marketplace, and it surely would have cost less than brand new meat would have cost.
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  Well, some of the members of the churches in Rome.
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  Would buy that meat and eat it without giving it another thought.
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  Others thought, well, that meat isn't good because it's connected to idolatry.
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  It was given to this idol first.
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  Paul, in writing to Romans, tried to urge them not to have uh a great division over the question and to basically train.
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  Their consciences and really to think logically about the situation of this meat offered to idols.
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  And it's not just at Rome that they had this problem.
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  He deals with it a couple of times in his writings.
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  But this is the point that Paul made regarding meat offered to idols.
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  If the idol is nothing, is not really a God, and so forth, then that meat which has been offered to the idol.
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  Is really no different than it was when it was first bought.
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  Because all it's done is changed position.
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  It has not changed its nature.
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  It has only gone from here to there to there to there, not from here to a God and then to there.
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  Now that's an important thing because it's actually the person who will not.
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  Eat the food offered to idols.
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  That is saying that that idol is something.
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  The person who will eat it is saying that idol's just a piece of wood, or that idol's just a piece of marble, or whatever material the idol may have been.
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  But the person who has the scruple is the one who misunderstands the nature of the idol.
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  But I want you to notice what Paul said in verse 3.
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  He did not get on to either side and say either side shouldn't have done what they were doing.
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  He did say, Let him that eateth, let not him that eateth, in other words, the person that has no problem with the food offered to idols, let not him that eateth despise him that
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  eateth not.
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  Okay, if you eat that meat, great.
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  Don't hold that against the person who doesn't eat the meat.
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  And let him not him which eateth not
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  Judge him that eateth.
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  If you don't eat meat offered to idols, then that's fine.
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  You don't have to.
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  But don't look down upon the person who does eat meat offered to idols.
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  The focus is on the last part of that verse.
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  For God hath received him.
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  In our relationship with God, those matters of opinion or scruple, they do not matter.
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  A bit.
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  Let me give some examples of what some of the scruples are that we might run into in Christian circles from time to time.
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  Now, one of them dates back to when I was a child.
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  We don't really see it as much these days, but then again, now we have air conditioning in buildings, which reminds me I need to turn the fan on.
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  We have air conditioning in buildings.
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  Sometimes we we have flies that will get inside a building, but usually not so much.
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  Back in ye olden days, when we would have potlucks or dinners on the ground as we called them down in Alabama, flies would swarm around the food while we were waiting to to eat
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  later in the morning.
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  So people would cover the food.
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  Well, one place that dad preached, they had the Lord's
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  Supper table covered.
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  And uh, you know, they got air conditioning and whatnot, and they realized we don't we don't need that.
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  So they were going to take the covering off the Lord's Supper table since it wasn't needed.
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  Dad said that one of the ladies was vehemently opposed to that.
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  She said, if you remove that covering from the table, it is like removing the very burial garments of Jesus Christ.
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  No, it's not.
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  It's not.
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  Those two things are not even in the same category.
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  That was a scruple that she had.
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  It was fine for her to take the Lord's Supper if it were on there.
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  It would have been fine for her to take the Lord's Supper if it were not on there, as it was fine for the rest of the congregation.
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  In other words, that was just an opinion.
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  It didn't matter.
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  A number of years ago, Shelley and I were looking at a work, and the elders of the congregation said there's a rule that we have here at the congregation, and that rule is
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  that women must wear dresses.
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  Women cannot wear dress pants, that they must wear dresses.
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  Okay, that's that's an interesting law to lay down.
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  Uh that was the eldership that said that.
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  That they have the right to uh rule in their own congregations.
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  that's probably a rule that I would not have put into effect.
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  but they they held that very strongly.
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  Well, that was a matter of opinion.
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  Are we, if if we have ladies here who do not wear a dress but wear uh dress slacks or pants or whatever they might be called, are we any less righteous in our worship of God?
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  Than a congregation where ladies wear dresses.
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  No.
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  So in Paul's words, let not her that weareth uh pants despise her that wears a dress, and let not her which wears a dress not judge her that wears pants.
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  That's an area of opinion.
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  Sometimes it's easy for us, though, when we have very strong opinions, to begin to enforce those opinions on others.
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  One more example that might hit a little bit closer to home, still a number of years back, but you can get the idea.
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  In Memphis, uh back in the 80s and 90s, there were there was the beginning, at least to my knowledge.
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  Of some of the places that were called such and such bar and grill.
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  I think chilies may have been chilies bar and grill for a time, if I remember correctly.
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  Well, some members of the church said, Well, you can't eat there because it has bar in the name.
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  Now, they had less of a problem if the place said it was a grill and bar.
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  And if it just said they served food and they had a bar over in the corner, that was okay.
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  Or if they served food and they didn't have a bar, but you could order a beer, that was okay.
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  They would shop at grocery stores where the beers were on one side of the aisle and the soft drinks were on the other.
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  And they would go to gas stations that had the
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  advertisements of all the different beer companies, they would go inside to pay their bills.
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  But they would judge those who went to a place that was called a bar and grill when there's no difference.
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  But that was an area where they could enforce their opinions and they could gain a little spiritual priority over others.
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  There are other areas that we see this from time to time, like holidays.
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  just an example of what Maggie heard, I think yesterday.
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  She was that at Target or somewhere.
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  Sh she was walking through Target and there was this lady with her child, and the child said something about the Halloween stuff, and the lady said, We don't celebrate evil.
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  And kept going.
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  Well, uh, I don't think if we're having a trunk or treat, that's celebrating evil.
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  I think Yeah, we don't celebrate evil either.
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  We just like candy.
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  that's just the way it is.
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  But people have looked down upon brethren because they liked Halloween or maybe because they liked Christmas.
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  Those are all areas.
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  Do they not?
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  Uh that that was all the area of opinion.
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  Opinions are fine for us to have.
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  But in the realm of religion, we cannot take our opinions and force them upon others or condemn others based upon our opinions.
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  Sort of goes back to what we were talking about this morning when we noticed that the canon is what we call the word of God.
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  If the word of God has dealt with the issue, it's authoritative.
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  If the Word of God has not dealt with the issue, that's not part of the canon.
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  That's not part of what we're going to be judged upon.
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  We will be judged upon how we treat our brethren.
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  That will face us on the last day.
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  Don't yuck at someone else's yum.
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  It may be that a woman likes to wear pants.
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  That's fine.
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  It may be that someone likes to have.
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  Charlie Brown Halloween characters in his or her yard, that that's fine.
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  It may be that someone thinks that you ought to have a covering over the Lord's Supper table.
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  That's fine.
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  The problem is when we become the authority ourselves and we enforce our will upon others.
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  So that's one of the points and I
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  developed it a little bit more than I intended to.
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  One of the points in that article on don't yuck someone else's yum, but it's something to think about, as sometimes we can have pretty strong opinions ourselves.
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  This evening what we know is not an opinion is how one can be saved.
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  We know that's not an opinion because we see that not only taught forthrightly even by Jesus himself,
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  But in what's often called the book of conversions, the book of Acts, we see example after example after example of people who went through the same process in order to be saved.
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  Surely all of them believed what the Bible says.
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  The text doesn't say that all of them did, but I don't think any of them would have been obedient to the gospel without believing.
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  Surely all of them repented of their sins.
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  Again, that's not what the book of Acts says.
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  It says regarding some that they repented, but again, I don't believe that anyone could be added to the Lord's church and still continue living in the sin that characterized his
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  former life.
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  Repentance is a necessity.
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  All of them surely confessed, although the book of Acts doesn't show all of them making that good confession.
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  But we understand that with the mouth, confession is made unto
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  Salvation.
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  What we do read in the book of Acts is that all of them were baptized.
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  And I think that's interesting because that's the part of the plan of salvation that is constantly critiqued in our religious world.
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  But that's the part which is repeated throughout the book of Acts.
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  That's not an opinion, that is simply looking at.
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  the practice of the first century and combining that with what Jesus had said, we also could combine that with what was written to the churches, those who had been converted,
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  those who had been baptized.
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  When baptism is mentioned, it's mentioned as something which had been done in the past, like Romans chapter six.
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  And what's mentioned as far as going on is faithfulness.
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  Unfortunately, some people will take the epistles
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  And say, see, all this says is you have to be faithful.
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  Well, those epistles are written to people who are already Christians, not written to the alien sinners, which means there's a difference in purpose, difference in purpose, which
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  means there's a different term difference in terminology.
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  But again, opinions they can divide us if we're not careful.
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  Truth can divide us as well.
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  That's why we need to be extra careful.
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  When it comes to what God has said.
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  Maybe the case that t tonight you're not a member of the Lord's church.
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  You can be added to the church by being uh in that watery grave of baptism so that the blood of Jesus Christ can contact you.
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  Revelation one five, and your sins can be washed away, Acts twenty two, sixteen.
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  If you are a member of the church, it's possible to wander away from faithfulness, but you can be restored.
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  Through repentance, confession, and prayer.
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  This evening, if you need to respond to the Lord's invitation, won't you come?
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  As together we stand and sing.