Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO....

OUR COMMON Assurance - Romans 8.12-30

Dear Abdias & Perrine,

We’re taking a break in Luke for a couple months, because we’re entering the holiday season.

INTRO....

Today is our Thanksgiving celebration (Thanksgiving was actually this past Thursday), and we’re going to be celebrating as a church and trying to show others why we are thankful to our God.

It’s going to be awesome.

My wife Loanne and I have often had the joy of speaking to young couples about marriage.

Recently we were speaking to a young couple (about to be engaged), and this couple were asking all kinds of questions: How to make sure they were compatible, how to know the best ways to resolve conflict, how to best educate their children, etc.

You see, this young couple preparing for marriage were beginning to realize just how different they were from one another.

They were realizing that real life is not a fairy tale, but that there would be real difficulty and real heartache, and that often this difficulty would come not from outside their marriage, but from the other person in it.

So they were asking all these questions to prepare for themselves as much as possible, to make sure they would be okay.

In addition to the Thanksgiving celebration, just after the service today we’re going to do something new that we’re calling Group Connect.

We realized that for a lot of people, getting into a community group hasn’t been that high a priority, and even if it was something you wanted to do, you may not have been able to actually make it happen.

So we want to make that easier for you.

We’ve set up tables in the back of the room, and at each table is going to be the leaders and some members of the various home groups we have.

You can go chat with them, find out what they do and how it works, and hopefully get involved there.

After a handful of questions of this sort, Loanne and I looked at each other, and we were both thinking the same thing: “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

It’s not that those questions are unimportant, but they are not the fundamental.

After the break last week (we had Harry Noël preaching here while we were at Perrine and Abdias’s wedding), we didn’t want to jump back into Luke for only one or two weeks before going into Advent.

So today’s sermon is going to be a one-off.

I wanted to try to find a text that could in some ways combine our two events today—Group Connect and Thanksgiving—that would hopefully get us ready for both.

There are only two fundamental questions a Christian couple must ask themselves while preparing for marriage, and these two questions will make or break that marriage.

They are not practical in nature, but are rather the questions which will make all other practical considerations possible.

Fortunately that’s an easy thing to find: there are dozens of texts that speak about the reasons why we are thankful to God for his grace toward us not only individually, but corporately.

So I’ve done the easy thing and simply chosen my favorite—we’re going to be in Romans 8 this morning.

If you disagree on the answers to those two questions, your marriage will be difficult—and possibly doomed—from the start.

If, on the other hand, you agree on those questions, you can disagree on nearly every other question, and still be okay.

These two questions are the safeguards for all the others, the framework in which all the others fit.

Of all the passages in the Bible that have been precious to me over the years, this is the probably my favorite, the one that has done me the most good—because as many of you know, I grew up in a church context in which we could be sure of very little.

I was taught that Jesus opened the door to salvation on the cross, but it’s totally up to you to walk through it, and then to make sure you don’t wander back out the door at some point.

I didn’t become a Christian until I was in my early twenties, and I carried the weight of that uncertainty for a long time.

And the two questions are these: What is the gospel?

and What is marriage in light of that gospel?

You know Loanne and I pretty well; you know we’ve been married for a long time (fifteen years); you know how different we are, how we have different opinions on just about everything that you can’t find in the Bible.

Then I finally started seriously reading and studying my Bible, and realized that God is way better than I ever gave him credit for.

But we agree on, and have always agreed on, our answers to these two fundamental questions…and because of that fact, our marriage works, and will continue to work for the long haul.

This passage—v.

12-30—is particularly precious to me because, Paul has already given us the amazing certainty we see in v. 1-11, and he will reach his great crescendo in the passage that comes next…

I know we have talked about this before, but in case you’ve forgotten (it’s been ten years after all!), allow me to quickly refresh your memory.

But taken on its own, that all can seem a little too good to be true.

Firstly: What is the gospel?

That’s why in these verses—at least this is the effect this passage has always had on me—he tells us why we can trust all of these assurances that come before and after.

And in the early days of my own faith, it is that why which convinced me that everything Paul says actually isn’t too good to be true.

The gospel is the most important good news anyone has ever or will ever received.

God created this world for his glory; and he created human beings to live here and be happy here, fulfilling his call to them.

He created the man first, and gave the man the responsibility of “working and keeping” the world in which he had placed him ().

But God quickly declared that the man could not do this alone.

He says (Genesis 2.18) “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him.”

And upon this declaration, he creates the woman.

Now, lots of people have seen this as degrading, that he gave the man the first responsibility, and created the woman to be the man’s “helper.”

If you know anything about the Bible, you know that this is not the case.

The word God uses for “helper” here, when used elsewhere in the Bible, is most commonly used to speak of God himself.

And that why is rooted in one simple fact: that God has made us his children.

For example, :

Paul’s going to explain to us the common identity we have as God’s children, he’s going to describe to us the common glory we receive as God’s children, and finally he’s going to reaffirm the common assurance we have as God’s children.

5  But I am poor and needy;

So I’ll invite you to begin reading with me, starting in v. 12.

OUR COMMON IDENTITY (v.

12-17)

hasten to me, O God!

You are my help and my deliverer;

12 So then—

O Lord, do not delay!

Stop.

Or :

When someone starts a sentence like that, we’re supposed to think back to what they just said.

1  I lift up my eyes to the hills.

If you remember, Paul has just finished giving us the amazing antidote to the disillusionment he illustrated in Romans 7—there is a law of sin at work in us, and no matter how hard we fight against it, we’re unable to defeat it on our own.

From where does my help come?

So what’s the solution?

V. 1:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

2  My help comes from the Lord...

That’s the same word God uses when he talks about the woman being a “helper” to the man.

And I think we can all agree that David calling God his “help” is anything but a degrading term: God is his help because David is, as he himself says, “poor and needy,” and he needs God’s help, because God has something David doesn’t have.

Same here: God did not create the man complete in himself, but he created man to work in partnership with the woman, because each filled a void in the other.

We see in :

The Holy Spirit has saved us in Christ, and set us free from the law of sin.

Jesus fulfilled the law for us, condemned our sin in his body on the cross, and set us free to live according to the Spirit.

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And we have that firm assurance we saw in v. 11, that

So the man and the woman are given this mission to work and keep the earth, but very quickly they failed in their mission.

They failed miserably.

They rebelled against God, and in so doing they plunged the entire earth into chaos: the corruption that they let into themselves through their rebellion infiltrated everything.

11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Since then, mankind has suffered, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Created things, created beings, people, all get sick.

They die.

They kill.

People long for things that will never satisfy them, and pursue these longings their whole life.

In other words, this is going to work.

And the incredible central truth of the gospel is that before God ever created the earth, knowing full well what would happen, he planned to send his Son Jesus to repair this damage.

Jesus, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, came to earth as a man; he lived the perfect life God commands us to live.

He took our sin—our rebellion, our corruption—upon himself and allowed God to punish him instead of us.

When Jesus went to the cross, God poured out all of his wrath on him—the wrath that he felt towards our sin.

And three days later, Jesus was raised from the dead, renewed and perfect.

He took our sins on himself, was punished for them; and in exchange for those sins, he gave us his perfect life, lived for us.

So when God looks at his children now, he declares them righteous and just—because he sees the righteousness and justice of Christ that were given to us.

What God declares of you in Christ—that you are righteous—he WILL enable you to work out in practice.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.