Sermon Tone Analysis

Marks of a Christian

My grandpa Neal, my mom’s dad, was one of the neatest men I have ever met.

He was an Amish preacher for most of his life.

When I was in high school and early college I would love to go over and just sit and talk with him.

He was pretty hard of hearing, by that I mean mostly deaf so there was more sitting than talking but I just wanted to be around him.

He was one of those special men who just exuded Christ in everything they did.

The love and patience of Jesus just oozed out of him and it was infectious.

When I was a little kid, not much older than Addy, I remember going over there for afternoons while my mom ran errands or whatever else she needed to do.

My cousin who lived next door to them and I would run wild around the house and make all kinds of noise and ruckus, never once in my life did I hear him raise his voice, that could be because he couldn’t hear it because of his hearing but I don’t think so.

His correction was always in a way that we knew he was serious but never in anger, always quiet and to the point.

He would always say “a quiet answer turns away wrath.”

That is not the point of my story though, he was the rare man who could ask you a question and you knew immediately that he cared about the answer.

His greatest hope and ambition in life was that all of his kids and grandkids would find a personal relationship with Jesus.

When I would get up to leave from our visits, he would always tell me, “Let Jesus lead you, follow Him and let Him lead you.”

I pray every day for Jesus to lead me, and I hope that I am following well.

What is the point of this story then and what does it have to do with the text from today, you’re wondering?

After Grandpa died, I wanted a Bible of his to remind me of him, and I got one, it’s sitting on a shelf in my living room where I can see it every day to remind me to let Jesus lead me and for me to lead my family to follow Him.

When I opened the Bible and looked through it, I found this text underlined and when I was asked to preach again, the first text that came to mind was this one.

So here it is again in case you forgot.

I will be preaching on the entire chapter of between this week and next, but for today we will focus on the first 8 verses.

I know Lyle just read it, but you can never have too much Bible.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

How does the handout work?

My grandpa Neal, my mom’s dad, was one of the neatest men I have ever met.

He was an Amish preacher for most of his life.

When I was in high school and early college I would love to go over and just sit and talk with him.

He was pretty hard of hearing, by that I mean mostly deaf so there was more sitting than talking but I just wanted to be around him.

He was one of those special men who just exuded Christ in everything they did.

The love and patience of Jesus just oozed out of him and it was infectious.

When I was a little kid, not much older than Addy, I remember going over there for afternoons while my mom ran errands or whatever else she needed to do.

My cousin who lived next door to them and I would run wild around the house and make all kinds of noise and ruckus, never once in my life did I hear him raise his voice, that could be because he couldn’t hear it because of his hearing but I don’t think so.

His correction was always in a way that we knew he was serious but never in anger, always quiet and to the point.

He would always say “a quiet answer turns away wrath.”

That is not the point of my story though, he was the rare man who could ask you a question and you knew immediately that he cared about the answer.

His greatest hope and ambition in life was that all of his kids and grandkids would find a personal relationship with Jesus.

When I would get up to leave from our visits, he would always tell me, “Let Jesus lead you, follow Him and let Him lead you.”

I pray every day for Jesus to lead me, and I hope that I am following well.

For those of you who like to take notes, or those of you who have to just to stay awake, just like your Bible, I will break today into two parts.

The first two verses, and then verses 3-8.

What is Paul talking about?

The chapter starts out with, …therefore, present your bodies as living sacrifices… Therefore..I am no English expert, but when you see a “therefore” or “because”, it usually has to do with whatever came before it.

Remember last time I preached, I told you about how the Bible wasn’t divided into chapters and verses until long after the books and letters were written.

So just like every other verse, chapter, book and Testament in the Bible we have to read it in context.

I would love to go all the way back to verse 1 and walk all the way through, but that is more than I can do in just two weeks, so I will give you the cliff’s notes version, Romans in a letter from Paul to the Jewish Christian church in Rome.

In the letter to the Roman church, Paul lays out the Gospel in a similar way a lawyer lays out an argument to a jury.

He explains how we are saved, and how the patriarchs were saved.

Who were the patriarchs?

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on.

How was Abraham saved, or justified in God’s eyes?

Through sacrifice?

Through obeying the law?

Through circumcision?

No on all counts.

Abraham was justified through faith.

God made Abraham a promise and says, “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

Paul goes on to explain that, it is only through God’s grace by faith that we are saved.

The law that was given to the Jews, or at the time, the children of Israel, was not to save them.

It was to show them that no one can live up to God’s standards for righteousness.

quotes ,”None is righteous, no not one.”

So what Paul is saying is that we cannot be saved on our own.

There is nothing we can do to save ourselves.

We cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and save ourselves, because we can’t follow the law of God.

No amount of willpower, or church going, or serving on committees or Sunday school attendance will save us.

We are only saved through grace by faith in Jesus.

Not just believing that God exists as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even the demons in Hell believe that tells us.

It is not enough to say, I believe in God, we must put our trust in the risen Jesus, the only Son of the living God, who lived a perfect life, died as propitiation for God’s righteousness, and rose again to cover us with His own righteousness so that God can be just in punishing sin.

Now a quick note before we move on, what does propitiation mean?

The apostles liked this word, because it fits as well as a word can for what Jesus did for us.

Propitiation means, the satisfying of God’s holy law, the meeting of its just demands, so that God can freely forgive those who come to Christ.

So now, back to the therefore.

This is what Paul was saying therefore to.

Because of what Christ did for you, and because of God’s grace, give yourselves to God.

Before we are saved, we are dead, and once Christ saves us, we are alive, body and spirit.

Our bodies are now a temple for the Holy Spirit, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians.

We aren’t asked to just be sacrifices, but living ones.

The word “present” in present yourselves, has a finality to it in the original Greek.

It means, present your bodies as living sacrifices to God, once and for all.

Verse two says, 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

This verse is fairly straight forward.

Here Paul tells us, don’t get caught up with what the world is telling you.

Everything around you is trying to change your mind and conform you to something.

Whether it is a commercial trying to get you to buy something, or the culture telling you that you need to stop being such a backwards bigot and taking such a hard line on something as hazy as gender and marriage and abortion all the rest of the things that the Bible tells us in Galatians and 1 Corinthians are works of the flesh and will lead to death.

But how do we renew our mind?

How do we make sure to know what is the will of God? Can we renew our own minds?

Can we make ourselves into what God wants us to be by ourselves?

I would hope by now you have the answer ready.

Of course not.

God renews our mind, through the Holy Spirit, prayer and living in the Word, not just reading it to check it off our to-do list.

This is something I struggle with, we have to live in the word.

Soak in it, dive deep and wash in it, roll around and wallow in it.

If we do this, through the grace of God and the help of the Holy Spirit, God will transform us through the renewal of our minds from sinful things to spiritual things.

This is the process.

We give ourselves up once to God and are justified through grace by faith, we are only saved and justified once.

When I was a kid, like about Addy’s age, I remember distinctly driving in our old rusted out pick-up on the bench seat between my mom and dad and asking Jesus into my heart, I was three or four then, did I understand what I was doing?

In part, I knew that I wanted Jesus to come into my heart and forgive me for when I was bad.

What I didn’t understand however was that I only needed to do this once, I continued to ask Jesus into my heart periodically for a few years after that and one day I told my mom, I asked Jesus into my heart again today and she having more understanding than a five year old told me that, no I have already asked Jesus into my heart and do not need to do it again.

It was done, I had been justified in God’s sight.