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Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.

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And I'm Van Owens.

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And I'm Tim Adams.

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Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,

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connections, and real life application.

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We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the Sermon on the Mount and

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discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.

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Well we have a very special podcast today.

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This is going to be a little bit of a diversion, maybe one of our bonus episodes, so to speak.

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But it's really to set up what's going to happen for the next couple episodes.

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And so, so far in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we've been examining how our

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righteousness should surpass that of the Pharisees, which has been challenging in a good way.

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But none of us has had a wildly differing view about what Jesus is saying.

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We each bring our own perspective, but we all generally agree about what we're looking

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at.

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So, while these discussions have been challenging, they've also been very encouraging.

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However, we're about to approach a few topics now that will be challenging for different

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reasons because we don't see things exactly the same, or we draw different opinions about

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how we should act as a result of Jesus' teachings.

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Some things in the Bible might be hard to understand, but this is an opportunity for

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us to exhibit the type of love Christ calls us to have, and it's an opportunity for each

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of us to learn.

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In our polarized, divided times, I'm reminded of a F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, the test of

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a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the

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same time, and still retain the ability to function.

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Most of the time, if we're honest, we don't want to consider another's point of view.

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We'd rather feel right and feel good about ourselves.

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However, oftentimes, the exercise of looking at the other side of an issue reveals contours

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that we never understood before.

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So that's our hope going forward, and so I'm very excited about our future discussions,

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and I hope our listeners know how much each of us loves and respects each other.

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I hope that comes out.

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Each of us has a spirit of humility knowing that someone we respect in the highest way

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looks at something differently than us.

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So because the Sermon on the Mount elicits differing interpretations, it raises a

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very important question.

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How do we wrestle with the Word of God individually and in community?

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What does it mean for us to develop a conviction beyond the confines of our own little room,

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beyond just what we feel or think in isolation?

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The way we are going to approach this topic is to look at several aspects.

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Debatable matters, essential matters, spiritual discernment, and hermeneutics, which is a

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fancy word for how we interpret Scripture.

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What lens we apply to understand it?

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For debatable matters, we'll draw from Romans 14, and that's where we'll start.

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Paul turns his focus then to resolving very practical but huge matters of difference among

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a diverse body of Jews and Gentiles.

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He turns to how we're to treat each other when we have differing matters of belief.

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So let's read Romans 14.

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As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him.

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But not to quarrel over opinions.

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One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.

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Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains

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pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.

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Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?

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It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord

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is able to make him stand.

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The thrust of Paul's instruction in chapters 14 is that we welcome each other, especially

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those that differ in opinion from us.

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In verse 4, Paul reminds us that we are on the same level as everyone else we see at

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church.

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All our fellow servants under God, our common master.

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We're not in the position to judge each other like he can.

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Paul does the same thing a few verses later when he references life and death and appearing

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before the judgment seat of God.

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Now, what I find so fascinating about this section is that we have a debatable matter,

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you know, matters of belief, debatable, that on the surface might not seem like a big deal

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to us today, but it's getting major attention.

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Paul's pulling out all the big guns to deal with something that you and I might think

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is really kind of small potatoes.

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Why does he do that?

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And is there an underlying danger here that he's addressing?

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Yeah, thanks for that intro, Matt.

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And I am glad that we're taking this time to think about how we wrestle with the word

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individually and in community.

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It's something that is a little meta because we've been talking about the Sermon on the

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Mount and how to understand it, how to make it apply to our lives.

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But this is really important because it's going to guide kind of our framework for everything

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else that we're going to do.

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So yeah, in answer to your question, it is interesting that the matters that Paul is

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talking about in Romans 14, they might not seem like a big deal to us, but I think it

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is important to note that they were a really big deal in the time.

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And there's a couple of main ones.

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The main one is eating food that was sacrificed to idols, basically eating meat.

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And that's talked about Acts 15.

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It's talked about the 1 Corinthians here in Romans.

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So it was coming up a bunch.

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And then also there was considering one day alike or considering different days sacred.

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My understanding is that's talking about religious observances like the Jewish law and how Gentiles

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are supposed to or not supposed to observe the old laws and customs from the Old Testament.

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So really, really big issues at the time, even if they don't feel like a massive deal

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to us right now.

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Yeah, that is, I'm glad you pointed that out because you're right.

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It's hard to, and I think it's very important, and we'll talk about this when we talk about

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hermeneutics, to get into the mind of the audience.

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These were letters that were written to a specific group of people at a specific time.

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And we are 2000 years divorced from that time.

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They're both looking at the Bible, presumably, and thinking about something drawing completely

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different conclusions from looking at the same thing.

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Yeah, I think this is such a great topic to talk about.

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And I think particularly in this day and age, because what we're really talking about is

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how you develop your individual convictions based upon the word.

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And I think that word conviction is sort of the way Inigo Montoya thought.

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I don't think that word means what you think it means, sometimes with people, because I

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think people will have an emotional reaction to something that is based upon what they

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were taught growing up or based upon some kind of tribal connection to a particular

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party or a particular way of thinking or a particular philosophy.

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And they will take the emotional, reflexive reaction and say, this is my conviction,

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which is not what a conviction is.

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Biblically, a conviction is something that you develop from reading, studying, meditating

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on the word of God.

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And we do have to do that as individuals, and we have to do that in our community as

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well.

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And until we do that, we can't really call it a conviction.

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And so what we have to contend with is all of these sort of pseudo convictions floating

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out there.

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And some of them are things that, you know, it might be something that matters a lot to

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me, but doesn't matter as much to you.

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It doesn't concern you because it's not something that you think about, or it's not something

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that particularly affects your life.

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And so it's very easy for me to trivialize that, whether I do it unwittingly or purposefully.

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And in the same way, it would be very easy for you to accuse me of being, you know, prejudiced

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against your way of thinking.

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And so it's really important to have a type of devotional life in which you wrestle with

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the scriptures.

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Yeah, this is a huge issue, Van, that you bring up, especially for our society, where

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we live right now.

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I feel like people are allergic to reading the Bible sometimes.

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Like, they would rather take a hot take on something and then make that their strongly

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held feeling that they say is a conviction.

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But what is it based on?

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Yeah, and then it's very easy.

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If you do it backwards, then if you go in trying to manipulate what the word of God

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says, you can make it say anything.

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It's been used to justify things that most people will believe are not valid things anymore.

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You can use the Bible has been used to justify slavery.

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It's been used to justify antisemitism.

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It's been used to justify misogyny.

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And you can pick and choose and pull out things out of context and make it seem like that's

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what it's saying.

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And so it's very important to go in with an open mind to say this is knowing how you

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feel, knowing how you think, but at the same time, being willing to be open to the scriptures

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and to let the scriptures challenge what you feel and challenge what you think.

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That's really difficult to do.

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And I think that's why people are kind of allergic to studying the Bible.

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You don't want to read the part that says the thing that disagrees with you.

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Well, it also brings up one of the essential attitudes that you should have when you approach

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the scriptures is that of humility.

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And so being, I can't tell you how many times I've, over the years, realized, hey, what

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I thought the Bible said, it doesn't say that.

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Ah, oops, I guess I got to reorient what I was thinking.

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This is a long process to develop convictions.

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You know, biblical ones take time as you start to read through things again and again, and

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then you start to make connections.

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I didn't make connections with certain things until 10, 20.

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I'm now seeing more and more than I ever had, but you have to keep at it.

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And so not to overwhelm people who might just have become a Christian.

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But you know, this is, when you get to debatable matters, which is what we're talking about

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tonight, these are things where I think we'll probably get to this.

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You are developing spiritual discernment about things, which doesn't come in a blink of an

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eye.

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But let's get back to, so we were, let's get back to this, to the scripture here we're

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studying in Romans 14.

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So Paul brings up days and he brings up food as matters of debate in this congregation.

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And then he says in verse five, he continues, one person esteems one day as better than

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another while another esteems all days alike.

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Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

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Okay, now this is totally fascinating too.

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Why does Paul write we should be fully convinced of something debatable?

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Doesn't that sound like a recipe for further division?

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Why is it so important that we are fully convinced and why should it not lead to division?

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Yeah, it's a great question.

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And it is, I think partly connected to what Van was talking about when we equate our convictions

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with our opinions that are as an emotional response.

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Actually those emotional responses change, right?

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They change very, very fluidly depending on how we're feeling in the moment or what feels

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convenient.

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And when I think about what does it mean to be fully convinced?

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That means that you've really thought about this particular issue.

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And from as a Christian, it means that you've really gone to the scriptures and you've prayed

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to get discernment from the spirit about how to understand all of this.

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And I think you'd be able to both explain why you believe what you believe, but note

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the areas in which, you know, maybe that foundation is not on an explicit quote from scriptures

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that says this is the way it is, but oh, I developed, you know, this and this and this

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and this opinion and foundation based on a set of principles.

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And so you realize that a lot of, even though you're convinced, you realize my foundation

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is based at some level, just on my own understanding, right?

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And so you can track your own logic.

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And when we can do that, you can see the areas in which my logic is very sound.

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It has a firm foundation in the scriptures and other places where maybe I assumed something

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here, here and here, and I can, that makes sense to me, but it's those assumptions that

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I may not necessarily be able to hold onto someone else.

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Yeah.

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And I think that when he, when he says being fully convinced, I'm not, you know, not an

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expert in language, but I wonder if convinced and conviction have the same root.

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I think they probably do, and I think that when it comes to a debatable matter, we have

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to understand that anything that's a debatable matter among, among brethren in the same fellowship

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is something that can potentially divide us.

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And so if I'm going to have a stance that is contrary to a stance that Brother Adams

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has, then I need to not just have that because I want it or because it's the way I grew up

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or it's because I just prefer it.

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I need to have a conviction about it.

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In other words, I need to be fully convinced based upon my relationship with God, based

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upon my understanding of the scriptures, what my conviction is about that.

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So that when that thing comes up, I can explain in love, in humility to Tim, this is why I

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do, this is why I do what I do in this particular matter.

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This is what I believe.

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All the while keeping myself open to what he believes.

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All the while keeping out, you know, I might be jumping the gun a little bit and talking

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about this more in community, but there's not a, there's not a hard dividing line between

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wrestling with the scriptures on your own and wrestling in community or wrestling with

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somebody else.

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The line is fuzzy there.

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They're very, very interrelated and it's very important for me to have a conviction about

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it that is based upon the solid foundation of the scriptures and not just based upon

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personal preference or anything else other than the scriptures, because anything else

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other than the scriptures is going to be a compromised foundation.

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It's going to be shifting sand.

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Right.

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Exactly.

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It can change with the times.

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Yep.

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And so I really like what you guys are saying about developing convictions based on the

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word of God.

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It feels like you're at peace internally and you're able to be humble toward other people.

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And I think that's something that is so important for the body of Christ to be is unified.

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And I think humility is one of the huge parts of it.

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In Revelation 1:10, John actually references the Lord's day and evidently, you know, the

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Christians viewed Jesus' resurrection as the dawning of a new day.

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And the Sabbath was the day of rest and God rested and then from creation on the seventh

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day and then Jesus was crucified or unpassed over.

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He slept in the tomb until Sunday morning when he woke and arose.

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And now his new work of creation is begun.

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And you know, in Romans 13, we have a kind of a reference to this, but this new day has

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begun and we're to work.

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And so you could see that there is a conflict there now between one group thinking one day

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is really important and another group thinking there's another day is really important.

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And they're both right in some ways, but they could be totally convinced and then still

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be unified because I think in them being unified demonstrates something bigger in that God

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is, you know, we value God and relationship and the things that, you know, if we're fully

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convinced about something, we're not afraid, you know, digging into our position.

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But we're willing to not make that be something that would hurt our brother or sister that

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God has had Jesus die for.

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Yeah.

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I that that part, as I was reading Romans 14, that felt so critical.

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And really Paul just keeps on going at it over and over again in verse 13.

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He says, therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide

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never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

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In verse 15, he says, for your brother is grieved by what you eat.

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You are no longer walking in love by what you eat.

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Do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.

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And so it felt really clear that reading Romans 14, when I'm looking at the conversation

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that I'm having with someone else or my interactions with someone, we might disagree about something

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that I have a deep conviction on myself.

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But in that whole interaction, this is my brother or sister for whom Christ died.

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And so I can't bring myself above them.

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I can't assume that their opinion or the spirit within them is void or that only I have access

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to what is true.

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There's this deep humility and recognition that this person is just as loved by God as

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I am loved by God.

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And that needs to impact all of my interactions with them.

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It's almost like I would rather be wronged or I would rather lay down my privilege or

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my freedom to do whatever I want to do.

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Paul says he's fully convinced that no food is unclean.

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He says that in 1 Corinthians 8 and he references the Old Testament.

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Psalm, I don't know, 24 or 27 or something.

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Anyway, he references the Old Testament and he's convinced, totally convinced.

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And then you even have like Mark 7 where he puts a little, oh, by this Jesus declared

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all food clean.

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And if you think Mark was probably one of the early Gospels, the tradition is that he

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recorded Peter's sermons and Peter, we all know, had that vision.

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So you know, he's probably interjecting, oh yeah, when Jesus said that back there, hey,

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I didn't see that at first, but you know, all food's clean.

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And so Paul is fully convinced, but he would rather not let something silly like food wreck

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his brother or sister's faith.

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And I think that's maybe a good place to pick up next time when we come back to this, because

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I think we're going to have to get into faith more.

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Sounds good.

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See you guys next time.