The Letter to the Romans: Message #8 – Chapter 14

I find one of the most remarkable things in scripture here. A half a verse sometimes will open and unlock a door for you, and a phrase, a word, and maybe that’s one of the only times, or one or two times, that this thought appears in scripture, and yet it just unlocks doors everywhere. Here, brothers and sisters, is a passage of scripture, and we’re going to look at Romans 14 and 15. Here is a passage of scripture that goes one chapter and another fourth of a chapter discussing vegetarians and meat eaters. I find that incredibly remarkable. Do you? One chapter plus six more verses discussing meat eaters and vegetarians. There’s got to be more here than that, just got to be. Well, we have a lot to do tonight. I think I’d like to have a prayer with you.

I want to thank you for my young brothers and sisters here in Chicago and the incredible way that you have made this church. I consider it, Lord, a miracle of your grace, and I bow before you in awe, complete awe. Last night and tonight, use it to bind up hurt places and to open eyes. We need to know how to get along with one another, and how can we do this if you do not open to us your Spirit within our spirit? Get past our minds, O Lord, and down into places where things can really happen that change our greatest needs. Cleanse Anoint. Anoint the tongue, anoint the ear, and anoint all our spirits. Open to us, O Lord. Amen.

Well, here is a brother sitting in Corinth. He has come to chapter 14 (he doesn’t know this is chapter 14), and he is still…obviously, there’s only one burden in all of this, and that’s to show the brothers and sisters how to get along with one another, what the Christian moral code is, and how to overcome weaknesses that are basic within you. Now, this brother has lived long before Freud did, but he has discovered that the Christian is a complex creature. I don’t guess any of us will ever really understand how complex we really are. We use Christian motives to get our own way. Someone said we use even our tears and crying, and even our repentance needs repentance. Sometimes it gets that complex. Sometimes we use scripture, repentance, apologies, everything, and still, down underneath there, we’re developing and working toward our own ends.

So, as we get into chapter 14, we’re not just seeing meat eaters and vegetarians; we’re seeing basic conflicts between individuals. Basic problems unravel here—the conflicts of basic dispositions. Before I even get into this, I’m going to mention just a little bit more of this to you. Are you aware that there have always been, are, and always will be, people…there’s a little slice of the human race, there’s a little slice of the human race…who will always be fascinated by signs and wonders. They will always be telling you about that strange-looking cloud that appeared over China, and this book that got dug up, the so-and-so, and a prophecy made by a woman in Russia in 1902, and about something the astronauts saw out of one of their windows when they went over the moon. I’m just picking up a bunch of stuff out of my own past recollections, and about this fella—and I do believe he was from Chicago, I honestly believe he was—who predicted that Chicago would fall into Lake Michigan. There was an earthquake, y’all. Did y’all miss this guy? I think the funniest thing—oh, people were listening to him in the ’70s. He’s just a young fella, probably about your age, and I read one of his letters. He decided to march to Washington, D.C., and people actually thought he would get to see the President of the United States and bring him to repentance. Nothing, of course, happened at all, but he walked from here to Washington, D.C., and he said, “I was walking along this country road, and the cows began to follow me.” It was late afternoon, and the cows began to follow him. Any country boy worth his salt knows exactly what was happening. Those cows were going into the barn for milking, and they always go together about that time in the afternoon.

There will always be those kinds of people, and they are in the church. People are just fascinated. I have a friend who, once or twice a year, mails me a huge packet of stuff. I don’t know what they’re going to do now that Russia is beginning to open up a little bit. These people are going to be so unhappy. These are the kind of people who love to go to Russia or someplace and sneak Bibles in and write home about things they saw and heard. It’s just full of prophecies and things like that. They’re here. They’re right here in this room. Now, that’s a little slice.

Do you not realize that there are brothers and sisters who are incredibly morally orientated—strong, tremendous orientation toward morality? They really feel that we should all stand erect and walk properly before God. They’re just that kind. I recently read a study on different personality types. I found out—I saw a profile on someone who is a fanatic. I was surprised to find out that he is almost always a very quiet person and very intense. He has very little to say and almost never smiles, yet he goes… he is just like this all the time… and he wants to know things constantly. He’ll get a hold of something and clutch it like this. Well, one of the most fascinating things about him is that one day he snaps, and he drops that thing completely after about ten years, and he calls it “of the devil.” And he’ll run just as straight to something else, and he’ll grab that thing for five or ten years, and then it’ll snap again, and he’ll write books against it—it’s of the devil. Very intense, fanatical-type person. You’ve got at least one or two here, for sure. Now, he’s been around since the beginning of time and will continue to be here forever.

Do you realize that there are just naturally domineering people? Don’t do that—you’re never supposed to put your arm so quickly, this one—just correction, this, that, the other. I’ve already mentioned to you the person who’s just ready to go along with anything and wants everybody to live at peace: “Why are we having problems? Why can’t we just love one another?” There’s the Pollyanna—everything is always just fine and wonderful. There’s the person who—and I hate you—you see God in everything. The sunset—oh, I just feel this wonderful…You know, whatever—oh, the Lord this, the Lord that. I have a dear friend, and I know she will not mind my telling this. It was one of those times when I really had to sit down and reevaluate my personal convictions. Attache house in Canada, in Quebec, by the way, any of you who want to go up there and help me during August, you’re welcome. We were trying to redeem the bathroom—the whole house had been such a wreck—and she found some curtains real cheap and made curtains for a closet that had no door, and she got wallpaper that looked almost exactly like the curtains, and she said, “Oh, look what the Lord did! He showed me curtains and wallpaper that matched.” And I looked at them, and by George, they almost did match. I sat down there on the side of that bathtub for 30 minutes looking at that wallpaper and those curtains, thinking, “Now, is that of God? Is that really, really, truly of God?” So, we hung up the curtains, and we put up one roll of paper. Someone walked in and said, “Oh, that looks horrible—it clashes.” So, I had to sit down on that bathtub again and look up at that wallpaper and that curtain and wonder, was it of the devil, or was it of God?

And those of you who—God is just doing this, and God is doing that, and “Oh, isn’t the Lord wonderful?”—I wish I could be like you. I hate you. I wish my faith could be so simple and so naive. I just really wish that. Then there are those of you who always—God is speaking to you. “Oh, the Lord just showed me something today! He just really showed me something today.” An hour later: “The Lord just spoke to me and showed me such and such.” And an hour later, “You know, God just told me, and He showed me.” “This morning in the Scripture, God spoke to me and said, We’re going to go do so and so. The Lord really opened our eyes and showed us such and such.” I hate you too.

I’m going to make a statement that many of you will not understand. I don’t remember the last time God spoke to me. It has been years. That’s a rare occasion for me. I mean, do you run around ministering without God speaking to you? There are things other than being spoken to. There is a deep sense of something, and I seek to go by that sense. I can’t explain that to you. I have a deep sense beyond emotion.

Well, as I said, there is always the very intense person who wants everyone to conform to their standard. There is the guy who is just constantly selling his idea. He’s got an idea, and he’s just constantly saying, “This is what we all do. This is what we all do this way.” He’s not pushing it hard, but he’s just, “Let’s do it this way.” We’ve got all these different kinds of people, and God puts them all in the same room. No wonder we have had all the problems we have, and it is a wonder we haven’t killed one another. Well, it is—it’s an absolute wonder we have not killed one another. Then there are the psychotics. Did you know that one of the nuclear plants here leaked radiation? And it made everybody in town develop extrasensory perception, and everybody in Chicago is talking to one another in a mental collective, you know. “I can hear you, and I know what you’re thinking.” Real far-out schizoids and paranoia. “What are you all talking about me over there?” And if we don’t have a bad case of it, we have a little case of it—deep, deep, deep, profound damages. I think Paul of Tarsus is just—I don’t know—but I think maybe he’s off on vegetarians and meat eaters here, just to make a point. I hope that’s why he wasted a page and a half in my Bible, or why he took up a page and a half; otherwise, it’s wasted, but let’s talk about that.

Who is the stronger person, the meat-eater or the vegetarian? And which one is the weaker? Well, ask a vegetarian, and he will tell you he is very definitely the stronger, but Paul tells him he is the weaker. He is someone who really feels, “If I eat that, I get sick.” Now, I’m not a vegetarian, but I’m very close to it, and I’ll tell you, when I eat certain things, I get sick. In fact, I just barely got in this room here today because of something I ate yesterday—or today, I guess it was. We’re definitely the weak ones, but us weak ones feel sorry for you. We really feel sorry for your good health. Boy, you’ve got such good health, and we wonder about you. How about a pizza and a hamburger? And give me some ham and eggs, lots of butter. Ham and eggs and butter, and I put some garlic and butter on my toast there, and a cheese omelet—let me have a cheese omelet. You know, we look at that. This is Heart Attack City here! I mean, you’ve got cholesterol hiding in the follicles of your hair, you’ve got multiple sclerosis that’s everywhere in your body, and you’re clogged up from one end to the other, and you’re going to die at fifty, and we’re going to say, “Oh, what a wonderful brother he was,” and we’re going to go home and say, “If he hadn’t eaten that kind of food, he’d have lived to at least been sixty-five or seventy.” And that’s kind of what we feel about some of you hot-dog hounds.