Bringing Love, Peace, and Righteousness to a Conflicted World

I recently read an article about how social media algorithms really foster anger, because what the social media companies want, of course, is more engagement with their apps, so they can sell you more advertising, and anger tends to drive engagement.

I mean, think about the news articles or the social media headlines that you're likely to click on, and very often they're ones that rile you up right, and so, consequently, many creators produce content that taps into anger because they know that's going to be what the algorithm favors, and they want their content seen Compounding.

The problem is that anger is often driven by fear.

The things that make us angry are often the things that sort of subconsciously make us anxious, and anger is one of our reactions to that, and so, consequently, the use of social media has been very clearly linked as one of the causes of the mental health crisis that we're experiencing.

So mental health, anxiety and depression.

To quote a wise old alien fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.

That was a very poor Yoda impression.

What strikes me is that, sadly, christians so often contribute to this negative cycle when actually we have the antidote baked into our faith.

So, as a church, our vision is to see God's kingdom, established on earth as in heaven, and the flavour of the kingdom is love, peace and righteousness, not fear, anger and hatred.

Now, social media and its amplified conflict and anxiety, but these aren't new to society.

They're not new to the 21st century, and the Apostle Paul had to deal with some of these issues in his churches as well, and one of the churches he wrote to was the church in Rome.

Actually, rome wasn't a church he started.

It was a church he wanted to visit, but nevertheless, they were dealing with the same issues as so many of his churches.

And he writes a few words.

Now we're going to open to Romans, chapter 14.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

If you've got an app on your Bible, you can do that.

If not, recommend the Bible app, the YouVersion app, romans, chapter 14, and we're going to start at verse 13.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

And I'm reading from the Christian Standard Bible.

Therefore, let us no longer judge one another.

Instead, decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in the way of your brother or sister.

I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.

Still, to someone who considers a thing to be unclean, to that one, it is unclean, for if your brother or sister is hurt by what you eat, you are no longer walking according to love.

Or sister is hurt by what you eat, you're no longer walking according to love.

Do not destroy by what you eat someone for whom Christ died.

Therefore, do not let your good be slandered, for the kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Whoever serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and receives human approval.

Now scholars think that the church in Rome probably consisted of a majority Gentile population.

That makes sense.

It was a very Gentile city with a Jewish minority, with a Jewish minority.

Apparently, some of the Jews in the congregation felt they still had to follow the old dietary laws from the Old Testament that they'd grown up with, and this was evidently leading to conflict in the church, as the Gentile majority, and likely many of the Jews as well, felt freedom to eat whatever they wanted, while a minority insisted that you could only eat kosher food, and in that setting, that often meant not eating meat at all.

Because they couldn't find kosher meat anywhere.

It had to be butchered in the right way, and so they were effectively forced to be vegetarians.

Now Paul labels the Christians who felt the freedom to eat meat any old meat as strong, and the Christians who wanted to adhere to the Torah as weak.

Isn't that interesting?

Now, it's possible he was echoing the language the Gentile Christians were using, but how Paul tells them to deal with this conflict is really fascinating.

Keep in mind that before meeting Jesus, paul had been a strict Pharisee and he probably would have wholeheartedly agreed with the weak in inverted commas Torah observant Christians back before he became a Christian himself.

But Paul changed his views in light of Christ's ministry and says in verse 14, I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.

So here we have an apostle saying I know this isn't just my opinion, this isn't virtually an apostolic pronouncement.

And yet Paul doesn't tell the weak Christians to get with the program.

He tells the strong Christians who are walking in the freedom they have in the Lord to accommodate the weak.

Now, if our understanding of the social situation is correct, he was telling the majority to accommodate the minority.

This isn't the only church that had this sort of situation.

We see a similar one in the church in Corinth, which was a church Paul had planted and had some authority in.

There the issue was explicitly eating meat that had been sold in the marketplace, because back in those days, in that society, most meat nearly all the meat that was sold in the marketplace had been sacrificed to idols and pagan temples.

That's just what they did, and, as you can understand, many Christians had a problem with this, and so it was probably the same situation in Rome.

So not only is the meat not kosher, it's probably been sacrificed to idols.

And yet in 1 Corinthians, chapter 8, paul argues that, although demonic idols are nothing and meat sacrificed in the temples, the pagan temples, can be eaten by Christians with a clear conscience, for the sake of those whose conscience is not clear, the strong should avoid such meat if it's going to cause a weaker Christian to go against their conscience.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

I don't know about you, but I really struggle with this.

I find this really challenging because Paul seems to be telling me that I should curtail my own freedoms, my God-given freedoms.

I am really free to do this, but I should not.

I should cut down my freedoms and preferences over something as trivial as diet, for the sake of people who don't understand grace.

And I'm deliberately wording it that way, because that's often how we get into these arguments, isn't that interesting, alex.

You don't have to eat meat if it's going to cause someone else who's still growing he hasn't got there yet.

If it's going to cause them to stumble, well, what does this mean?

How do we apply this?

Does this mean that you can't eat meat if there's an ethical vegan sitting next to you, or you can't drink alcohol because there's an Al-Anon meeting that uses our church?

Well, look, it's not quite so simple.

There are nuances to this.

Keep in mind that the concerns Paul was wrestling with were about religious behavior, and he was concerned that we don't cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble by sinning against God in a religious matter.

This wasn't simply a difference of opinion, and it wasn't even simply a difference of ethical opinion.

It wasn't about hurting someone else's feelings.

It was about what people believed was necessary to faithfully follow Jesus, and so he was worried about shipwrecking people's faith, not simply causing them offense.

And so we have to be careful, because what sometimes happens in these sorts of discussions and debates is that self-appointed moral guardians start policing what others should say and do because someone might be offended.

You're never quite sure who this someone is, but someone might be offended.

Now, I don't think Paul's talking about that.

Likewise, he's arguably not talking about what we do in the privacy of our own home.

Christians shared common meals, and so it's quite likely I think that he's talking about those sorts of common settings and certainly he's not saying we should avoid talking about it because it might make someone feel uncomfortable.

After all, paul himself is wading into this debate and giving a very clear position on where he stands.

But what Paul was concerned about was the unity of the church and that Christians walk in love, because the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Now, given that the kingdom is not about eating and drinking, external rules and rituals, eating and drinking external rules and rituals the strong could have said well, you see, the weak should just get over it, they should just get with the program.

But rather Paul says since these things are inconsequential, you who are strong don't have to assert your rights, you don't need to eat unkosher meat.

Let love drive your actions.

Pursue the righteousness, joy and peace of the kingdom of God.

So, as I said, we do need to practice discernment when deciding how we're going to approach these issues and deciding on behavior, and there may well be times we need to refrain from eating or drinking for the sake of love.

Now, an obvious example would be if you know there's someone present who struggles with alcohol, and they may be even fine for you to drink, in which case you really are free, but you may just decide because of love.

You know what.

I'm just going to stand in solidarity with my brother or sister, make it a little easier for them.

It's not a religious matter, it's a matter of love.

Do you know what?

There may be other times, though, that you actually decide no.

Do you know what?

This person's being a moral bully.

I need to stand up to them and, for the sake of other people who may want to practice freedom but are feeling a little bit afraid, I'm going to eat the meat, drink the whatever, or maybe you need to counsel a young Christian about their freedom in the Lord, not to compel them to do something against their conscience, but to help them work through it.

I mean, by all means, if you're a vegan, be a vegan if you want to be, but what we're after is living together at peace in an often fractured world and trying to accommodate these differences, and, you see, this is the point.

My point this morning, of course, is not about eating and drinking, and really it wasn't Paul's point either.

It was just a flashpoint where that church was.

But if we're going to be a church and if we're going to see the love, peace and righteousness of God's kingdom into every heart and home in our world, then we need to begin with our own hearts and our own homes as living witnesses of God's transforming power and the transforming power of God's love.

We need to live at peace when we disagree with each other and when we disagree with those outside of the kingdom, actually Not giving in to the self-righteous anger that so often feeds those social media algorithms I was talking about before, that so often fires up our public discourse.

But walking in grace Now, this doesn't mean letting go of the truth of your convictions, but it does mean not being threatened when others disagree with me.

If I'm feeling threatened, what's triggering that?

What's going on within me, that when someone says something I don't agree with, that I start to arc up, and I do.

Alex Huggins arcs up.

What's going on with me?

But neither should we allow others to cow us into submission, unless love demands silence.

But you know what?

When we do something out of love, we're no longer doing it out of cowardice, we're doing it out of grace.

Right, because the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.

It's not disputes, it's not stubbornly holding on to my view or asserting my view, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

And joy in the Holy Spirit Whenever we get into a situation, follow the righteousness, the peace and the joy.

Or, as we put it at Bentley love, peace and righteousness.

What does righteousness mean?

Well, that's an interesting word.

I have a non-Christian friend who's really quite averse to it because it has that connotation of self-righteous.

I'm right, see how good I am.

But that's not what it's about at all.

Actually, very simply, biblically, righteousness is about living in right relationship with God and with others.

And what's really interesting here is the very same Greek word that we translate as righteousness is the same word that we translate as justice.

They're not separate words.

In the Greek they're the same word.

And in the Hebrew.

You cannot separate living righteously from living justly.

In other words, to live righteously, you have to treat other people in the right way, and neither can you separate it from living in obedience to God and his word, because righteousness is also how we treat God, so to speak, is also how we treat God, so to speak.

Peace is closely related to this idea of right relationship, although it's broader than that.

Peace is more than simply the absence of conflict.

You may be familiar with the biblical concept of shalom Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace but, as I say, it's more than the absence of conflict.

Shalom is a general well-being that encompasses the whole of life.

It's a wholeness our heart, our mind, our soul, our relationships.

A person who's experiencing shalom, peace, is experiencing contentment, but it's not a contentment that depends on our circumstances.

It's not a contentment that comes because I don't need anything.

It's a contentment that comes because I am living in the presence of God and I know his love for me and his grace in my life, and I have a faith in him that transcends my circumstances.

And then tying all this together is love.

Now, to understand Christian love, we need to go back to the Old Testament.

Like so many other things, the word for love in the Old Testament, as it does in the New Testament, covers a range of meanings.

So the word for love is used of the affection between parents and children, the affection between friends, the love between lovers, a husband and wife.

But it's also tied to covenant loyalty between a king and a vassal, between a king and a vassal.

King takes over your country.

You enter into a covenant or else you're going to get wiped out and you're expected to stay loyal to that.

You're expected to love the conquering king.

Get that, and the Old Testament borrows this covenant.

It's not always by conquest, sometimes it's voluntarily entered into.

And the Old Testament borrows this covenant.

It's not always by conquest, sometimes it's voluntarily entered into, and the Old Testament borrows this covenant language of love in relationship between Israel and God.

And Israel was to love God in the sense of having this covenant loyalty that encompasses their hearts, where their hearts are drawn to, but also the way they live, their actions.

And so, riffing off the Old Testament, jesus said that we're to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, our mind, our soul and our strength.

And because we are to love God like this, we're also to love our neighbor, because loving God encompasses loving our neighbour.

And so love between Christians is based in the deep bonds of covenant, loyalty of love to Christ and, as Christians in the world, love towards people outside the church is an expression of the compassion of God.

That reflects God's self-giving love and mercy for the world, even when the world rejects him.

You know there is a day of judgment coming for those who reject God's love, but today is not that day.

Today is a day of God's love, but today is not that day.

Today is a day of God's grace, and so we emphasize this love, peace and righteousness of God's kingdom.

Now, these three words.

It's not an exhaustive list.

It's representative of the kind of world we want to work towards, a world in which we can make room for deeply held differences and still love one another, a world in which the strong are so strong they don't need to bury the weak beneath their own preferences, but can lift them up.

So how do we do that?

Well, the world is full of contention and strife.

You know, it just seems on many issues, doesn't it?

Whether it's political, moral, ideological, people can't even agree to disagree anymore.

Everything is moralised so that if you don't agree with me, then you're evil and I can't give any ground to you, because I feel like I'm going to be swallowed up by your side if I give even an inch.

And so it's all fear-based.

It leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering and there seems to be no end to it.

But that's not the way of Jesus.

What did Jesus say?

Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers.

The pastor Mark Connor from Melbourne puts it.

He talks about Christians being a non-anxious presence in the world.

Just a non-anxious presence.

Don't get tied up in it.

Just be at peace and let others come into that ambit of peace.

So the key to bringing this gift of peace to the world is to be grounded in the peace of God, being secure in his love and bringing our anxieties to him, living out his love, his peace and righteousness among one another in his church, living out his love, peace and righteousness in our homes, our families being lighthouses.

Jesus has offered us peace through the cross and we find peace in the radical forgiveness and acceptance and the presence of God through the Holy Spirit.

When we bring our anxious hearts to God and let him heal and console us, we find God's peace.

You know, finding God's peace is an act of faith, understanding that God's peace is greater than the anxiety that I experience.

Not that your anxiety is not real, we have to face that.

But are you experiencing fear and anxiety.

Bring it to the Lord, ask him to bring his peace into that situation.

Are you experiencing conflict?

Bring it to the Lord, ask him to give you wisdom and courage to be a peacemaker in that situation.

Now I want to say anxiety is a word that is used a lot nowadays.

People become really familiar with it, aware of it as a mental health concern, and if you suffer from anxiety, then please get professional help for it.

But I think that we as Christians also need to lean into the power of God a little more when we're coming with mental health issues.

It's not either, or it's not God, or a psychologist or something.

It's both and.

But we need to, I think, lean into faith a little more than perhaps we sometimes do, and understand the gospel.

You see, the thing is, when we have healed hearts, we can bring God's healing into our relationships and our world.

So, to summarise, the Christians in Rome were grappling with what to do when some Christians saw food as a matter of faithfulness to Jesus and others just saw it as irrelevant.

Paul's criteria was to maintain the love and unity of the church.

He wasn't asking the strong to compromise their convictions, but to make sure the weak didn't have to compromise theirs.

Now we can aim to have a disposition grounded in God's love, peace and righteousness, so that these are the values that flavor our interactions and relationships, and our aim is to bring God's peace and his rightness, if you like, between people and God.

The way we interact with the world may be different than the way we work within the church, because within the church, we're brothers and sisters, we're the family of God, we have the Holy Spirit, we have this common set of values, we're working towards a common goal, and that's not usually going to be the case in the world, where people may not even believe in God, let alone the Bible.

But we can still be peacemakers, a non-anxious presence in an anxious and conflicted world, and so I want you to think about this week when are the places of anxiety in your life?

What can you do to bring them to God?

Talking about social media, I keep turning it back on and off, and on and off.

I've discovered this app that blocks social media.

I can set it up on a timer and it's like I woke up this morning and I think I'll just flick on ABC or Facebook or whatever it was.

I can put all sorts of websites in there and I'm like, oh it's not loading because I turned it on.

That's great.

You know what I did.

Instead, you think this is great for a pastor, isn't it?

I prayed, isn't that wonderful.

I should have been my first choice.

There's practical things we can put in place to help us if that's your issue, like it is with mine.

But what is it in your life that is causing you anxiety?

What can you do to lean into God's peace, and where are the places of conflict and anxiety in your world?

It might be family, it might be workplace, it might be the community, it might be somewhere else where you can be a peacemaker, where you can be a non-anxious presence and carry the love, peace and righteousness of God into the world.

Let's pray, father.

We thank you for the example that we have in Jesus.

Father, I just want to turn our vision into a prayer.

Lord, may we see the kingdom of God established on earth as in heaven.

Let your love, peace and righteousness transform every heart and home by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, beginning with us.

Amen.