Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Welcome to our special service this morning when we shall baptise Anne Smith AND anyone else here who decides that this is what they should do this morning.

We are prepared!

Let us hear the Words of Scripture as we come to worship:

Let’s pray.

HYMN Jesus is the name we honour

Notices & Collection

I am a new creation

Children leave to Sunday School

Sermon

The central verse to this is verse 5, so let me read it again:

I’ll break this down a little later but I want to pair this with a famous verse in John 3:

This is about our newness in Christ.

First, the Apostle Paul tells us a list of words about former lives.

And notice the ‘we’.

He is including himself in this list:

he adopts a list of sins as his very own.

And what a line of credits!

“We ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.”

We mustn’t forget that Paul was a good man by all reasonable human standards.

His list of good things prior to his conversion to Christ was set forth in Philippians 3:4–6.

How can he point to himself as blameless concerning the righteousness which is in the law (Phil.

3:6) in one breath and then admit to this list of sins in the next?

The apparent dissonance dissolves once we get a handle on the pervasiveness of indwelling sin.

We tend to measure sin and unrighteousness primarily in terms of outward acts.

But the Bible penetrates more deeply into the inner recesses of our very being.

Look again at Paul’s list of sins in our passage.

Recall that as Paul lists them as his own, this is Paul the Pharisee, Paul the religious perfectionist, Paul the striver-for-goodness, who now admits to these elements of his former behavior.

Do you get the point?

Sin is not necessarily a matter of destructive or unacceptable outward behavior.

It is also a matter of inner attitude and maturation.

How clearly Jesus spoke to the “good” people of His day: “For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts… .

All these evil things come from within and defile a man” (Mark 7:21–23)

Let’s look again at these sins each in turn:

Foolish.

That is the opposite of wisdom - some think that they are wise but ignore God and His ways - they might be wise about the world and completely foolish when it comes to standing before God - and it might only be when they stand before Him on Judgement Day that they will realise too late.

Of course, it is also foolish to act in a way you know is not wise but do it anyway.

We are helpless, this, in fact, is what we do both inwardly and outwardly.

Disobedient.

Since God made us He has the right as creator to say what we can or cannot do.

Now His command is to put your trust in Jesus to save you.

It is sheer disobedience to God not to.

Deceiving and being deceived

Slaves.

(We are slaves of whatever we serve.)

Living in pleasure.

Living in malice and envy.

Hated and hating.

This may seem obvious in our current political climate and debates.

Hatred is on the rise especially in the public sphere.

But how about personal withdrawal or withholding of love from someone; this can be the most devastating form of hate.

And then Paul moves to the contrast between then and now: He uses four words to describe this one wonderful change (saved, washed, regenerated, renewed) but all describe a single event.

- the day we put our trust in Jesus.

We are told two things: We have been

1.

Justified.

Just if I’d never sinned - in its most simplest term this is what justified means - in truth it means that our sin will not be counted against us.

In the Old Testament

on the Day of Atonement all sins were placed on a goat who was released outside the city and, thereafter, the Jews, cleansed from sins, were now “clean” before the Lord.

But we are in the New Testament era and the sins that were placed on a goat are now put upon another, who is much more precious:

Jesus permanently took on the sins of the world to purify those who believe in him.36

Because of Jesus’ death, the unrighteous who had no inheritance but now believe in Jesus have been declared righteous heirs of God’s kingdom by the righteous Judge

Scripture puts it like this:

2. Heirs of eternal life.

And this is something that begins now and, of course, will go on forever, known as eternal life.

The inheritance that we have can never decay, perish, be defiled or fade and is awaiting our resurrection.

And how is this possible?

II.

Here Are Two Important Facts

A. We are not saved by works of righteousness.

So many people think that if they do good whether little or a lot that this will balance out all the bad.

Doing charity or going to Church do not save us but they are things we do once we have been saved.

Try standing before a magistrate and say “ignore my speeding of 100 mph, your honour, look at all the good I have done!”

How is what good you have done relevant?

It is not.

You still have to pay for the crime.

So, if we are not saved by our good deeds how are we?

B. We are saved by God’s mercy and grace.

We do not deserve to be saved.

We rebelled against the One who created us and told us how we ought to live and we said ‘no’ to Him.

And this makes it all the more wonderful that He sent His own Son into the world to save and reconcile us to Him.

Mercy is not being given what we deserve.

Grace is being given what we don’t deserve.

We deserve judgement but instead we have been set free.

God’s love for us is plain in the most famous verses in the Bible:

Once we have trust in Jesus we are washed, born again and renewed:

Today we are symbolically showing what is our reality in Christ when Anne is baptised.

But it is not the water that cleanses us for we have been washed by the Word of God and by the blood of Jesus shed for us.

And to make it clear Peter declares:

And so Jesus says

The word regeneration in Titus 3:5 means the same thing as the words born again in John 3:5.

We now have a new life in Christ and we are made new creatures as a result.

We can never be the same.

Paul elsewhere writes of this new life:

All these things reveal the character of God

God has done everything to reconcile us to Himself, gone the extra mile and more.

He gave His own Son for those He should have simply wiped off the planet but God had mercy, loving kindness, mercy because He is good.

Conclusion

What we do today is only in response to what God has already done.

It is always true that we are saved by grace.

It is always true that we are washed in the blood, even though we are baptised in water.