Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

Last week Pastor Dan stood in this space and gave a very important message on the daily choice we make to Follow the Lord, and the blessings that come with that decision.

Today we are continuing our verse by verse study in the Book of Romans, chapter 8, if you have a Bible please turn to there.

It is my desire this morning for us to understand better the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

This chapter starts with the words there is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

And those words are followed by one incredible truth after another.

Romans is written by Paul to a church he was never able to visit.

It was written to a people he never ministered to personally.

So he didn’t know what they knew.

This church was off on their own - and he would have reasonably thought they were doing whatever they wanted.

So he writes to share with them a complete description of salvation and the Christian life.

So we keep seeing these layers of truth stacked one on top of the other as his description builds.

Message:

My intention today is to finish chapter 8.

I believe that we really need to process this passage all at once - even though we could spend a week on each verse, and there are verses in this passage that are at that level of awesome that I would say maybe even that we should break it down further than this, but if we force ourselves into the nuances of the text, we might miss how all of it fits together.

This is a very easy “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation.

My hope is that we can see some of the things closely enough, but maybe for the first time for some of us, tie all of this together so that we might start to understand what Paul was writing.

We can take a couple of these verses and be energized by them in the moment, but if we want to have a deep, rich foundation of truth, we need to see the whole picture.

In this passage we are going to see a few things - that aren’t really a part of my message but are really cool to look at and understand.

One of the things that I am just going to skim over this morning but that you might study out further in your own time is the process God has for salvation.

verses 29-30 give us a 5 step program for salvation...

Foreknew, Predestined, Called, Justified, Glorified.

I have titled my message this morning Not - all good things.

The first verse in this passage helps us to put the rest into context.

This isn’t the natural break in the passages that the translators added, we are jumping up a couple of verses from that break.

I want to look closely at verse 28, and then go through the end of the chapter.

We know.

Paul writes to the people in Rome all of these things, building layer upon layer of truth and foundation for us to understand, and then he gets to this verse and says: We know.

How do we know?

We know this in the same way we can know anything.

The first way that we know is that we have been told.

This is one of the reasons that I preach the way that I do, one verse after another, precept upon precept, so that we can hear the word of God, in the context that it was written, so that we can have a hearing knowlege of the things.

This i Know - for the Bible tells me so.

Another way that we know this is through our experiences.

The things that happen to us in life teach us and train us to eventually understand some fundamental truths.

There are things that you have never been told that you know because you have experienced those things.

To really know and understand something, most of the time you have to have a combination of those two different ways.

You have to be told, and you have to experience.

When you meet a new person, your knowlege of them is limited to the introduction that you were given, and anything you have heard about that person in the past.

And that leaves you with some deficiencies.

When you spend time with someone with out any formal introduction - no proof text, you only have your own experiences to rely on, and those experiences may or may not be reliable.

The know that is expressed here indicates that we are full of factual understanding and knowledge.

We have not only heard, but we have experienced.

We know.

We have not only experienced, but it has been explained to us - we know.

What do we know?

God works.

God is doing an incredible thing with the stuff that is happening to you in this life.

No matter where you are in your life, God is active in it.

If you are a new believer, God is working in your life.

If you aren’t a Christian at all, God is working in your life.

God is doing things you don’t see, he’s doing things you dont understand.

He sees things, hears things he knows things you do not know.

And he is in it.

For the Christian.

Verse 28 is book-ended with two phrases that make this promise not a universal one.

The promises of this passage are limited to a people who:

Love God.

Are Called according to his purpose.

People who are foreknown, predestined, and called.

If you don’t find yourself in this category of people, even though God may be involved in your life, God may be working in your life, this promise truly is for those who are IN Christ.

Paul has been describing this identity for 8 chapters.

We are in the spirit not in the flesh.

We are heirs with Christ, we are released from the law.

Those are the people he is writing to.

It isn’t just everyone.

So that begs the question.

Do you love God?

For the Good.

This doesn’t say that only good things are going to happen - but that God is doing things with the things that happen.

He is involved.

And that changes everything.

That is the preface to the rest of the chapter.

Things are happening, but God is in it - and working it - and we need not be afraid.

Bad things are going to happen to Christians.

We groan because we don’t know what to say.

There are going to be people who attempt to accuse.

There are going to be those who attempt to condemn.

There are going to be those who attempt to separate us from Christ.

We sill suffer tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, the sword.

We will be killed for His namesake.

God works those things together for our good.

We are going to look like Jesus.

We are going to share with Jesus.

We are going to be made right with God, justified because of Jesus.

We are going to be Glorified, with Jesus.

All things:

This is the pivot point of this passage.

All things work together for the good - What shall we say to these things - graciously give us all things - In all these things we are more than conquerors.

The problem is the things!

There are good things and bad things.

But its the things.

The lifetime that we live here on earth.

Full of things.

Birth.

childhood.

School.

Graduation.

More school sometimes.

Work.