Series context:

Two weeks ago, I asked you to imagine yourself a prisoner in a maximum security prison. I d like to ask you to repeat the exercise again this morning:

You are a prisoner. You are on death row. Your execution date is set. You have exhausted all appeals. Your execution is inevitable -- and deserved. [this is our natural situation]

Suddenly, without warning, the warden comes to your cell and announces that you have been pardoned. You are free. You no longer face death, no longer face condemnation. You are free to leave prison. And you did nothing to accomplish this for yourself. You had no expensive lawyers, no allowance for good behavior. It is a completely free and undeserved gift.

[this is grace!]

And once outside the prison gates you discover that you are not only free, you are given a completely new identity. You are an adopted child of God, a member of God s household. You have a completely new life. That was the story of the first part of Romans, through chapter 8 -- the story of how, in Christ, God freed us from death row and adopted us as his children.

And we all live happily ever after? Not exactly. Becoming a child of God is really only the beginning. We still have alot to learn about what it means to LIVE as a child of God. We have old prison habits to put aside. And we have new habits to learn. As children of God it is normal that we should want to please our father. We want to do the things that he would be happy with. We want to avoid the things that would sadden him. You might say, we want to know the household rules. And we often think about it as a sorting exercise. There are some things that God definitely does not like. Like this red duplo -- we stack those over here. These we call Sinful, with a capital S. -- stealing, lying, adultery. And there are other things that God definitely does like -- we put them in this green pile here. There are other actions over here that are Good, with a capital "G" -- kindness, generosity, going to church. And in between there is a very large category of things that are just OK -- not really good, not really bad, a sort of proceed with caution pile. That s how we humans LIKE to think of sin. We like to sort actions into neat categories. And we like to think of the Christian life as a process of reducing the red pile and making the green pile get bigger.

And that s what the Roman Christians wanted to do. They had a simple problem -- a very common household problem over food preferences. The problem was this: some of the Roman Christians would eat anything -- and they especially liked MEAT. Other s of God s children were vegetarians. [To get into the spirit of it, let s say Those of you to my left -- you are the meat eaters; Those of you to my right, you are vegetarians.] Some of you vegetarians become quite upset at the smell of steak and kielbasa on the Bar B Q. Not just upset, but offended. You are not all sure that it was OK for a child of God to be eating meat. But you meat eaters --you just laughed and pile more steaks on the grill. In fact you think the vegetarians are just being silly, so you deliberately carry plates piled high with hamburgers over to the vegetarian tables, saying, "Mmm. Doesn t that smell delicious. Would you like one. No? Oh, Too bad." Now it might not be such a big deal if you vegetarians were just able to take a joke and laugh back at the meat eaters. But some of you had serious meat eating backgrounds. And you really miss meat. And you really wish it was OK for you to eat meat, but you re not sure it is. The temptation of seeing other Christians is just too much for you. So at night you become closet meat eaters. You sneak to the kitchen and fill up on hamburgers and hotdogs. But during the day, during the day you act like a strict vegetarian and hope no one smells the meat on your breath.

Now Paul s problem in Romans 14 is to solve this problem. Can Christians eat meat or not? It should be a simple problem. All Paul has to do is pull out his comprehensive manual of sin, flip through and find the entry of meat and find out whether it is RED, GREEN or YELLOW. Either eating meat is Bad or Good or OK, right? A new definition of sin

But instead, Paul completely demolishes our neat categories. He pushes all of the piles together and completely messes up our normal way of thinking about sin. (That s one of the inconvenient thing about the Bible --if you read it seriously its always messing up our normal ways of thinking about things.)

The Romans problem is not meat -- the problem is that they have a completely wrong way of looking at sin.

What he says, basically is that sin is not limited to the RED category. A GREEN action can be sinful -- a YELLOW action can be sin. Everything here is a candidate for sin. Sin can t be defined by its external appearance. Sin is defined by its root. And the root of sin is a state of the heart. Paul sums up his argument at the end of the chapter in verse 23: "Everything that does not come from faith is sin." In other words, Sin is anything -- whether it looks good bad or indifferent -- that does not come from faith. "Everything that does not come from faith is sin." This is the clearest and most succinct definition of sin you will find in scripture. "Everything that does not come from faith is sin." If you think about it for a moment you will see that it is absolutely devastating. Suddenly all of my comfortable ideas of right and wrong are shaken. The good things that I have been piling up in my green pile are candidates for sin. I do all sorts of things that I think are good, but are not necessarily "of faith." Coming to church can become sin. Staying home might be sin. Preaching can become sin. Not preaching might be sin. Bringing flowers to my wife may be sin. NOT bringing flowers may be sin. And the yellow things are no longer automatically OK. Eating meat may be sin. NOT eating meat might be sin. Going to a movie may be sin. Not going to a movie might be sin. Brushing my teeth may be sin. Not brushing my teeth might be sin. EVERYTHING we do becomes a candidate for sin, because "EVERYTHING that does not come from faith is sin." The implications of this definition of sin --

All of our old ways of defining sin are no good anymore. Suddenly it becomes pretty important that we understand what it means to do things from faith. So what does it mean for something to be "of faith." Let me try to use examples to explain. Let s take some examples from each of our categories -- Red, Green and Yellow.

RED

Covetousness. Covetousness is an obvious sin, right. It makes the top ten list. Have you ever wondered why? After all, covetousness really seems so harmless. All it is really, is WISHING for something you don t have. And what is wrong with wishing? It s like window shopping. Window shopping is pretty harmless, right? If that s all that coveting is, why is it sin?

[Any ideas?]

Well, if sin is defined not by its external appearance, but by its root, then we need to recognize the root of covetousness. And the root of covetousness is unbelief. Coveting comes from not believing that what God has given us is enough to satisfy our needs. God has promised that he will supply ALL our needs. If we covet, we say -- God, you haven t quite done that. I don t really believe your promises. And so we insult God by saying denying that he will keep his word.

Lust. There s a big one. What is the root of lust? Isn't it just a result of quite natural sexual drives? No. Lust comes from a failure to believe God that the pleasures that he has to offer are far better and far more lasting than the pleasure of sin. God promises those who are faithful and obedient that we will have eternal joy and pleasure beyond our wildest dreams in his presence. To lust is to say -- I d like my pleasure now, thank you very much. So we trade eternal, lasting joy for momentary sensual pleasure. Why? Because we don t really believe God.

Anxiety. This one is easy. Why do we indulge in the sin of anxiety? Because we don t believe God really has things under control. We are not QUITE sure that he is able to carry through on his promises. So we d better take things into our own hands and worry.

So, you see, when we look closely, every sin turns out to spring from unbelief. Unbelief is the pervasive root of every sin. Sin is based on a lie -- the very same lie that Adam and Eve fell for -- the lie that we are missing something if we obey God. That God is somehow not QUITE to be trusted. That to be happy we must take things into our own hands. God offers us a palace -- we look it over and are not quite sure that it is earthquake proof, so we set out to build ourselves huts of mud and straw.

GREEN

And we don t just use bricks from the sin pile to build. Some of our most important building material comes from this pile of green things that we label "good." It s just as easy to do something that looks good motivated by unbelief as it is to do something that seems bad. In fact, maybe easier, because we are more likely to be deceiving ourselves.

This is a particularly dangerous thing for Christians, because a concern to look good and a concern to be religious can so easily lure us away from a relationship with God. Let s take an example: Prayer

Prayer is a good thing, right? Can prayer become sin? Easily! If it is motivated by a desire to look good -- or by a desire to get what you want FROM God. The object of prayer is communication with God -- if you pray for any other reason your prayer springs from unbelief and it is abhorrent to God. How about helping someone move? You give up your whole Saturday. Such a self-less act. Can that be sin? Sure can. If you do it out of obligation. Or because you are trying to score points with other people. Or if you are trying to score points with God -- show him what a good person you are. Anytime you do something you think is "good" and you come away feeling better about YOURSELF, more confident in YOURSELF, LESS dependent on God, then your actions are rooted in unbelief. You are building a mud hut with your "good deeds." Only those things that are done in utter dependence on God, and out of firm belief in his promises will have lasting value.

YELLOW

How will this definition of sin affect our attitude toward things that seem completely neutral -- neither good nor bad. Let me take an example that seems utterly trivial-- Brushing your teeth. Most of you would not think that there was something particularly good or bad about brushing your teeth. You just do it. How could brushing your teeth possibly become "sin?" Well, let s say that I have a Dentist appointment coming up. And I have a very strict Dentist. In fact, I am rather afraid of my dentist. And I know that you have not been flossing and brushing as I should. So you are trying to make up for it in the last 48 hours. So I brush at every opportunity. I take my brushing very, very seriously. I do not want to Surely that is not sinful? If I am brushing out of anxiety or fear or vanity, then it is sin. Why? Because I am acting out of self-protection. Brushing my teeth is making me focus on myself and depend on myself -- and it is therefore taking me farther from God. So brushing my teeth if it is done out of anxiety, or fear or vanity can become an act of unbelief. And you know what will happen if I brush my teeth in unbelief and I find that the toothpaste has run out? I will grow frustrated and angry. I will grow impatient. My serious efforts to have good dental hygiene have been thwarted. Unbelief will lead to selfishness which has led to unrighteous anger. So what will it look like for my brushing of my teeth to be of faith. It means seeing my teeth from God s perspective. And from God s perspective, this body of mine, including my teeth is quite unimportant. To brush my teeth out of faith would mean to say to God, "These decaying teeth and gums are yours to do with what you want. They aren t worth much, but I ll do my best to take care of them for you." And if you see your teeth from God s perspective, you will be able to laugh at vanity -- and laugh at your dentist, for whom teeth are everything. Why? Because you know that this body is just a temporary thing, and you believe God s promise that he will provide you with a new body. Now what will happen if the toothpaste runs out? It will be a small thing! Something to laugh at. The smallest things can either turn us away from God or turn us toward God. If they are done out of faith, they will bring us closer to God. If they are done out of unbelief they will turn us away from God and toward idolatry. Aside: And notice HOW we are turned away from God by small things. We are most likely to be turned away from God when we treat them too seriously. When we get anxious about them, and preoccupied with them. When we need to handle them ourselves rather than recognize their triviality and give them over to God.

That was the problem that the Romans who were vegetarians had. They were making a big deal of whether to eat meat or not. And by becoming preoccupied with a small thing like eating meat, they were distracted from what was really important -- their faith in God. Eating meat is nothing. Not eating meat is nothing. What matters is that whether you eat meat or vegetables, you are motivated by faith so that you are brought closer to God.

In every decision or act I am faced with a choice -- will I trust God that he will do good for me, or will I refuse to believe and try to protect my own interests. To have faith is to believe that the future God has for us is vastly better than anything we could construct for ourselves.

Everything that is not from faith is sin. How can we apply this? I see two direct applications:

First, combat sin with God's promises. Every sin springs from unbelief in God s promises. Learn God s promises, memorize them, rely on them. Believing them is the essence of faith. Believe God that the pleasures of sin are fleeting, but the rewards of obedience are infinite and eternal. Second, in trivial things, don t judge someone elses behavior by external standards. Sin is not a matter of externals, but of the heart. What is sin for you may not be for them. What is not sin for you, may be sin for them. You may be able to enjoy a particular book of movie without sin -- your brother or sister may not. Never encourage a brother or a sister to do something that will take them farther from God. Rather, let us encourage one another to base everything we do on the enduring promises of God.