Introduction:
A. The story is told of an old, disheveled cleaning woman who visited a local church one day.
1. When the invitation was given at the end of the service, she went forward wanting to become a member.
2. The preacher listened as she told him how she believed in Jesus and wanted to be baptized.
3. The preacher thought to himself, “Oh my, she is so unkempt, she even smells a little, and her fingernails are not clean. She picks up garbage, cleans toilets - what would the members think of her.”
4. He told her that she needed to go home and pray about it for a while before she was baptized.
5. The following week, here she came again during the invitation.
6. She told the preacher that she had prayed about it and still wanted to be baptized.
7. Again the preacher told her to go home and pray some more.
8. A few weeks later while out eating at the restaurant, the preacher saw the little old lady.
9. He did not want her to think that he was ignoring her so he approached her and said, “You have not been back to church for a while. Is everything all right?”
10. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I talked with Jesus, and he told me not to worry about becoming a member of your church.”
11. “He did?” said the preacher a little shocked.
12. “Oh, yes,” she replied. “Jesus said even He hasn’t been able to get into your church, and He’s been trying for years.”
B. Let’s start with a probing question: Do you think that Jesus is welcome here at Wetzel Road?
1. How welcoming and accepting of others are we as a church?
2. Now, I want to think that we are pretty welcoming and accepting, and I hope that we are.
3. But I know this: We cannot experience real Christian community without the ability to accept one another.
4. So, let’s spend some time with the command to accept each other, and come to understand what it means to do so, and then let’s examine ourselves to see if there isn’t some room in our hearts and lives for some growth in this matter.
I. The Instruction – Accept One Another
A. Romans 15:7 says, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” (NIV)
1. The key word is “accept” which is the Greek word proslamban.
2. It means “to receive kindly or hospitably” and “to treat with kindness.
3. It means “to welcome” in the broadest sense.
4. It means “to receive wholeheartedly, to warmly welcome to yourself, to grant admission into your heart, to look beyond anything superficial and to be willing and open to build relationships.”
5. Acceptance means to welcome someone who is different from you.
6. Can we not only tolerate people, but extend the holiest sense of grace to them?
7. Can we express a resilient and abiding meekness to others even in the presence of that which is distasteful and offensive?
8. Can we do that?
B. The key phrase for understanding and practicing this command is the phrase, “just as Christ accepted you.”
1. Christ is our standard – we are to accept others just as He accepted us.
2. And how did Christ accept us?
3. According to Romans 5:8 the Bible says, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
4. It was and is Jesus’ nature to love the unlovable.
5. His loving acceptance is able to distinguish who we are from what we have done.
6. Even in our sin, we are still the objects of His love.
C. The purpose for this command to accept each other is so that we can “bring praise to God.”
1. As we become, more and more, the church we ought to be, the world will notice.
2. When they walk into our fellowship, they will sense that something is different here, and they will go home thinking, “I want what they have; I want to be a part of what is going on there.”
3. They will go home praising God, saying that God is in that place; God is among those folks.
4. Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (Jn. 13:34-35)
5. Jesus said, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Jn. 17:23)
6. When people know that God loves them, because we love them, then they will bring praise to God.
D. If there is something that all of us need it is to be loved and accepted.
1. Dr. Larry Crabb, in his book Connecting, wrote that we experience God’s power to heal souls through our compassionate, authentic relationships with others.
2. Crabb wrote, “What every Christian can pour into another is the powerful passion of acceptance, a passion that flows out of the center of the gospel, a passion that fills the heart of God.”
3. David Ferguson wrote in his book Never Alone Church, “We all have a deep relational need for others to accept us for who we are.”
4. According to Forbes magazine, Madonna is the tope earning female singer in the world with an estimated net worth of over $325 million, but she lamented in Vogue magazine, “My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. That’s always been pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I’ve become somebody, I still have to prove that I’m somebody. My struggle has never ended, and it probably never will.” Madonna needs Christ and His church.
5. Oprah Winfrey is ranked as the richest African American woman of the 20th century, and some even say is the most influential woman in the world. But she has confessed, “I discovered that I didn’t feel worth a (blank), and certainly not worthy of love, unless I was accomplishing something. I suddenly realized that I have never felt I could be loved for just being.” Oprah needs Christ and His church.
E. God has created us all to need to be loved and accepted, and for the church to be the place where love and acceptance can reign.
1. When love, acceptance and forgiveness prevail in the church, then it becomes what Jesus was and is.
2. It becomes a center of love, designed for the healing of broken people, and a force for God.
3. People are fragmented and torn. Life isn’t working for them because they are without Jesus.
4. The church is the place where they can find Jesus and be healed and transformed.
5. The church is not supposed to be a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.
6. Brennan Manning in his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, wrote, “Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual, but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace…Something is radically wrong when the local church rejects a person who is accepted by Jesus…Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace.”
II. The Application – Accept One Another
A. And so we are instructed to accept one another, just as Christ accepted us in order to bring praise to God.
1. So now let’s talk about the application – how do we go about doing that.
a. Who is the “one another” that we are to be accepting?
b. What is it that makes it difficult for us to accept one another?
2. I would like to suggest that the “who” we are to accept includes both non-Christians and Christians, and the “what makes it difficult” to accept includes prejudice and legalism, or judgmentalism.
B. Dr. Fred Craddock, the famous homiletics professor from Emory University, tells about an experience he had in Winnipeg, Canada.
1. He had gone there to speak at a church, but a snow storm came in on Saturday night.
a. On Sunday morning he awoke to a couple of feet of snow.
2. His host called him at the hotel and told them that the services had been canceled for the day.
a. Fred asked his host, “So what should I do?”
b The host said that a block and a half from the hotel there was a deli he could walk to get something to eat.
3. Craddock says that the place was packed, but the people moved over and made room for him.
a. He ordered a bowl of soup.
4. A few minutes later the door opened and in came a rather unkempt woman.
a. Some people made room for her and she sat down.
5. The man with a greasy apron came to her and asked, “What do you want?”
a. She said, “I’ll just take a glass of water.”
b. The employee with the greasy apron brought the water and then asked in a gruff voice, “Now what do you want?”
c. She replied, “The water is all I want.”
d. He said, “Look lady there is paying customers in here; either you are going to order something or else get out.”
e. She said, “Can I just stay in out of the cold?”
f. He said, “No, you have to order something, or leave.”
6. Slowly she scooted out of her seat and started to leave.
a. But when she did, the person on her right and left also got up to leave.
b. Then the persons on each side of them got up to leave.
c. And pretty soon everyone started to leave.
7. The man with the greasy apron quickly assessed the situation and said, “All right, lady, come on back. You can stay.”
a. So everyone came back and took their seats.
b. The man with the greasy apron even brought the lady a free bowl of soup.
8. Craddock asked the man beside him, “Who is that lady?”
a. The man said, “I don’t know, but if she’s not welcome, then I’m not welcome.”
9. As Craddock ate his bowl of soup along with the group in that deli, he suddenly was reminded of the way he feels when he eats the simple communion meal at the Lord’s table.
C. Shouldn’t we share the sentiments of that man – “If she’s not welcome, then I’m not welcome”?
1. Everyone should matter to us and everyone should be welcome to come among us at church.
2. I’m reminded of that day when Jesus told the Samaritan woman about the good news. (Jn. 4)
a. And his disciples were surprised that he would talk with someone like her.
b. Wasn’t she a woman? Yup. (A man shouldn’t be conversing with a woman in public)
c. Wasn’t she a Samarian? Yup. (Jews didn’t usually associate with Samaritans)
d. Wasn’t she a sinner? Yup – (5 divorces and one live-in boyfriend)
e. They wondered, “What are you doing, Jesus?”
f. What was Jesus doing? He was reaching out with acceptance to draw that woman to God.
g. Jesus said the fields are white for harvest – people who need God are everywhere, all we need to do is open our eyes.
3. On other occasions when Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees for spending time with sinners, he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Mt. 9:12)
4. Ultimately, accepting people doesn’t mean that we accept and support them in their sin, but that we reach out to them with love right where they are, and then encourage them to change.
5. To the woman caught in adultery in John 8, Jesus protected her and did not condemn her, but he did encourage her, saying, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (Jn. 8:11)
D. So we must do our best to accept people without prejudice or being judgmental.
1. It doesn’t matter who they are, where they are from, or what they have done.
2. It shouldn’t matter to us whether a person is rich or poor, or is educated or uneducated.
3. It shouldn’t matter what is the color of their skin, or the country or culture they come from.
4. Nothing about their appearance should matter to us – tall or short, thick or thin, good looking or other looking, handicapped or not, tattoo covered, pierced, you name it.
5. What about those who have been in trouble with the law, or who were in prison, or who carry the label of sex-offender, or those struggling with addictions – are they welcome? They will be if we want to be like Jesus.
E. What about those who think differently?
1. That’s where we get into the context of Romans 15:7.
2. Why did Paul write this letter to the Romans? Because the church at Rome was experiencing a lot of division.
3. People were judging each other and were not accepting each other because of their different ideas and convictions.
4. We don’t have time to look at the whole argument and all the issues involved, but Paul’s treatment of it begins back in chapter 14.
F. The church at Rome was divided over diets and days.
1. Paul addresses the groups as the “strong” and the “weak.” A better term might have been with “weak” and the “weaker.”
2. The “weak” were those whose consciences would not allow them to eat the meat sold in the marketplace because much of that meat had been offered in idol worship before it was sent to Bob the butcher.
3. The ones that Paul calls “strong” believed that they could eat any meat, even meat that had been sacrificed to idols, because idols were not real, and the meat was just meat.
4. The “weak” ones also believed that they had to continue to keep the Jewish special days in order to be saved, but the “strong” ones did not believe they had to keep the special days.
5. It seemed that the only thing the two groups agreed on was judging and despising each other.
G. Paul’s prescription for the problem included the following:
1. First, of all, stop the judging.
a. “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 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.” (Rom. 14:1-4)
b. In other words, leave the judging business to God.
2. Second, give room for differences of opinion on disputable matters.
a. If God has not given a clear command and instruction on the matter, then let’s give each other the right to come to our own conclusions, to make our own personal choices.
b. “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.” (Rom. 14:5-6)
c. There are three categories specified in Scripture: Things that are right, things that are wrong, and principles that must be applied according to freedom and preference.
d. A disputable matter is an honest difference of opinion between Christians on how best to apply a biblical principle.
e. We know that we have to agree on that which Scripture makes clear, but we must not make our personal decisions based on principles a matter of fellowship.
f. Here are some kinds of things that fall into disputable matters: entertainment choices, parenting choices, education choices (public, private, home schooling), political choices, and alcohol choices, just to name a few.
g. A great slogan that was embraced by the Restoration Movement is: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
3. Third, do what is best for everyone.
a. Rom. 14:13, “Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.”
b. Rom. 14:19-21, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.”
c. Rom. 15:1-2, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.”
d. If we really love each other, and honor each other, and are willing to submit to each other, then accepting each others limitations and therefore limiting some of our freedom for the sake of others, will not be that difficult.
e. We certainly don’t want to cause our brothers to stumble – and that certainly involves more then just making them uncomfortable, or feel bad.
f. Paul meant that we don’t want to cause a brother to do something he cannot do with a clear conscience and therefore cause them to sin against the Lord.
g. Ultimately, all of us should be seeking to build up our neighbors, rather than seeking to please ourselves.
Conclusion:
A. I want to end with a true story about a Jewish boy who suffered under the Nazis in WWII.
1. The boy was living in a small Polish village when he and all the other Jews of the vicinity were rounded up by Nazi SS troops and sentenced to death.
a. This boy joined his neighbors in digging a shallow ditch for their graves, and then faced the firing squad with his parents.
b. Sprayed with machine-gun fire, their bodies fell into the ditch and the Nazis covered them with a thin layer of dirt.
2. Amazingly, none of the bullets hit the little boy.
a. He was splattered with the blood of his parents and when they fell into the ditch, he pretended to be dead.
b. The grave was so shallow that the thin covering of dirt did not prevent air from getting through to him so that he could breathe.
3. Several hours later, when darkness fell, the boy clawed his way out of the grave.
a. With blood and dirt caked to his little body, he made his way to the nearest house and begged for help.
b. Recognizing him as one of the Jewish boys marked for death, he was turned away at house after house, because the people were afraid of getting into trouble with the Nazis.
4. Then something inside seemed to guide him to say something that was very strange for a Jewish boy to say.
a. When the next family answered the door, they heard the boy say, “Don’t you recognize me? I am the Jesus you say you love!”
5. After a poignant pause, the woman who stood in the doorway swept him into her arms and kissed him.
a. From that day on, the members of that family cared for that boy as though he was one of their own. (Anthony Campolo, Who Switched the Price Tags?)
B. An important key to learning to accept one another is to attempt to relate to each person as if they are Jesus.
1. To seek to treat them the way we would treat Jesus himself.
2. After all, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me…whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” (Mt. 25:40, 45)
3. May God enable us to grow into a real Christian community that truly accepts one another as Christ has accepted us to the glory of God!
Resources:
Building Up One Another, by Gene A. Getz, Victor Books, 1981
Accept One Another, Sermon by Brian Bill, SermonCentral.com
Our Family Values: Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness, Sermon by Chris Jordan, SermonCentral.com
Accepting the Different (Part 1), Sermon by Eyriche Cortez, SermonCentral.com
