Sermon Tone Analysis

JR. Church

Call two men up to play...

How many of you have ever played tug-of-war?

What is the point of this game?

How do you play it?

How do you win?

Do you ever feel like there is a tug of war inside of you?

Your parents do too!

Sometimes they have tug-of-war inside their hearts and minds.

Paul tells us that it is not always easy to follow Jesus but that we can when we have the Holy Spirit that gives us strength.

Call up another man to pull on the side of one of the others.

PRAY

Oh God our Father in Heaven we praise your Holy Name.

We thank you for your text this morning in Romans 7. LORD as we gather together today to hear your word we want to bring our confessions before you.

Individually and corporately we agree with your Holy standard and we agree that we have fallen far short of it.

We recognize our sin before you and we come to you with nothing to offer in ourselves but humble submission to you as we ask for your grace and mercy of forgiveness.

We praise you for those who have come before us in the faith.

For Paul who you selected as a herald to us as gentiles who speaks to us even today through your Holy Word and the power of your Holy Spirit.

Help us to be encouraged and or rebuked this day as we place ourselves under your teaching.

Let us not be hearers only but seeking the power you give through the Spirit to be renewed in our minds so as to be doers also.

God we praise you for Romans 7 and how transparent your servant Paul is in it.

Please hear our supplications now as we turn to the reading and preaching of your word!

Amen!

Message

If someone showed you a caricature of Richard Nixon—a man’s face with oversize shaggy eyebrows, a bulbous nose and pronounced jowls—you would probably recognize the former president immediately, even though the drawing is not true to life.

A cartoonist creates such a sketch by taking the average of many male faces and subtracting it from Nixon’s face, then amplifying those distinctive differences.

To an observer, the result looks more like Nixon than Nixon himself.

Why is it that our brains respond so intensely to extremes?

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When the cartoon’s “Nixon-ness” jumps out at you, you are experiencing what scientists call “peak shift.”

To understand the concept, imagine, for argument’s sake, that you want to teach a rat to distinguish a rectangle from a square.

It’s quite easy to do.

Simply give the animal cheese every time it picks the rectangle, and it will soon learn to select the rectangle every time.

Once the rat has developed this preference, let’s say you show it a longer, skinnier rectangle.

Inevitably, you will find that the rat prefers the exaggerated one to the original.

What the rat has learned to recognize is not a particular rectangle but rather rectangularity itself: the more rectangular the better.

The savvy rodent looks at the longer, skinnier quadrilateral and goes, “Wow, what a rectangle!”

In scientific parlance, the rat’s “peak response”—its strongest reaction—has shifted away from the original—hence the term “peak shift.”

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carried-to-extremes/]

“Peak Shift”

Something in human nature makes us want to go to extremes, a weakness from which Christians are not wholly free.

“Since we are saved by grace,” some argue, “we are free to live as we please,” which is the extreme of license.

“But we cannot ignore God’s Law,” others argue.

“We are saved by grace, to be sure; but we must live under Law if we are to please God.”

This is the extreme expression of legalism.

Paul = Correcting Extremes

Antinomianism

Legalism - slavery to God…

Law-fulfilling Freedom

What really is “legalism”?

It is the belief that I can become holy and please God by obeying laws.

It is measuring spirituality by a list of do’s and don’ts.

The weakness of legalism is that it sees sins (plural) but not sin (the root of the trouble).

It judges by the outward and not the inward.

Furthermore, the legalist fails to understand the real purpose of God’s Law and the relationship between Law and grace.

The Authority of The Law [Rom 7.1-6] = Defining our right relationship with the Law.

The Illustration [v1-3]

v1

Jews & Romans = know the law / religious / secular

Binding = “complete dominance” = Mark 10.42

v2

Marriage = bound - law [Gen 2.24; Matt 5.31-34, 19.1-12]

Death = release = “to be exempt” - null and void = No Longer a wife!

v3

free from that law - Rom 6.18 = free from sin

We died to the Law [v4-5]

v4

Likewise = symbolically = way of explanation

belong to another!!

died to the law = died to sin [Rom 6.2]

Christ = flesh = under law [Gal 4.4] = raised = exempt

NOTICE | release from law and marriage to Christ = church is christs bride!

v5

What does it mean to have our sinful passions aroused by the law?

= Paul will answer this later… 8/9

Fruit / marriage = children | / Christ = obedience

We are released from the Law [v6]

NOTICE | the law does not die rather we do; what the law failed to do in us Christ will do through us

The shift from law to Spirit is a shift from legalism to true spirituality.

How unfortunate that so many believers continue to understand their Christian experience within an ethical framework determined by law.

To be “dead to the Law” does not mean that we lead lawless lives.

It simply means that the motivation and dynamic of our lives does not come from the Law: it comes from God’s grace through our union with Christ.

Legalism

Antinomianism

Law-Abiding Free People!!

The Ministry of The Law [Rom 7.7-13] = What the Law does and was meant to do.

The Law unfolds Sin [v7]

Logical step of V5… “our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”

= Does that mean LAW = BAD

Shoot a arrow into the woods, will you hit a bullseye?

NO, why?

You must have a target to shoot at in order to truly miss the mark!

SIN = requires an absolute standard

SIN = sin / mistake / accident / laps in judgement / character flaw [Rom 3.20; Jam 1.22-25]

Letter of the Law VS Spirit of the Law… JESUS Says...

The Law arouses Sin [v8-9]

Explanation: v5 question “What does it mean to have our sinful passions aroused by the law?”

v8a

Opportunity = used of a military base of operations… a starting point

all kinds of covetousness… We want what we cannot have!