Sermon Tone Analysis

God Does the Work

Intro: In , when Jesus is accused of working with Satan to perform the exorcism of a demon possessed man, Jesus says “if a house is divided against itself that house will not be able to stand.”

Abraham Lincoln quoted this or paraphrased this verse in his speech before

We need to get a little bit of background for Paul’s Letter, since we are jumping three chapters in the writing this week.

Paul is writing to the church in Rome and he is anticipating his coming to visit them, so he had never been there.

The tradition is that Peter founded the church, but it may be that Christianity was most likely brought back to Rome from Jerusalem either by Jews who were converted, so what we call Jewish Christians and or Gentiles, non-Jews, who were converted at some point.

“As Paul writes, the Roman church was a mixed community, partly of Jewish, but predominantly of Gentile background.”[1]

Luke tells us in that in the crowd at the day of Pentecost, there were “visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes.”[2]

It was probably a mixture of both groups being converted and bringing the message back home and then finding each other in the city and starting the church.

Paul has heard that there has been infighting or strife in the church between the two groups, the Jews and Gentiles and ahead of his visit, he is writing to try and unify the church and get them to understand that through God’s eyes, they are all the same.

Read Verses: 3:20-27

Main Point: God Does the Work in your Salvation, but that does not mean you have work to do.

I. God Does the Work Ahead of Time (v. 21)

Explanation: Paul seems to be speaking to the Jew Christians in the crowd here and he brings his argument to a point that levels the playing field for Jewish Christian and Gentile alike.

In verse 19 he says “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; 20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”

“But now,” Paul is giving a transition not only in his idea, but also time itself.

He does not only say but apart for the law, he says but now, giving a specific time frame to when this change that has taken place and the idea that they are now living in the “new era” of how and why salvation and justification works.

A. Through The Law

“Apart or separate from the Law.”

So without the Law’s help, the righteousness of God has been manifested or revealed.

When you testify in a court, you are telling people what you say or heard.

The law and prophets, so the Old Testament Scriptures, tells you what they know about the righteousness of God.

As we have seen in our time in Genesis with Adam and Abraham, God makes the covenants and he upholds the Covenant.

Men have failed to do so.

Later in the rest of the scriptures, a lot of the people who do not uphold the law are Jews.

It is a Jewish book mostly about Jewish people.

And they are proven time and time again that they do not have or live up to the righteousness of God.

God is the only one that does that.

As Charles Hodge puts it, “God’s righteousness is something that has nothing to do with the law.

It is not a product of the law and does not consist in our inward conformity to its precepts.”[3]

Paul is preparing to bring Abraham and David into his argument in chapter 4 which we just covered in the past month or so.[4]

Paul is making his case Jesus is the one that the law and prophets have testified about Jesus and Luke echoes this statements from what Jesus said to the travelers on the Road to Emmaus in , which is what we are doing this year, we are walking along the road to see Jesus in all of the scriptures.

“[Jesus] said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

B. Through The Prophets

The prophets existed a few centuries ago, and in them, the prophets are warning the people of what God would do and then that word was fulfilled.

They were rescued from Egypt and led by Moses.

They were warned of exile and punishment and the Assyrians and Babylonians both played their part in making that happen.

They were also told they would be restored to the land and at the last part of Daniel, all of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Israelites returned to Jerusalem and the surrounding area to rebuild and reclaim their city.

All the while God is orchestrating these major movements to get people in the right spots at the right time.

Abraham was saved through God’s righteousness not because of what he did.

And the same is true for us.

Illustration: Back in Pennsylvania, we hunted, and a big thing was spotting for deer at night.

You can do the same thing with frogs or alligators.

You use a very bright spot light to see any deer from the highway or if you are hunting alligators you can see their eyes because they shine and reflect the light.

You can’t do that during the day because the sun is too bright.

Nothing lights up or the beam doesn’t show up because the sun overpowers it.

Would you use a flashlight outside in the middle of the day if the sun was shining bright?

This is the relationship between your actions and God’s actions.

And the Law and God’s righteousness.

God’s actions overpowers yours.

Your flashlight does not help anybody see better at noon.

And we did not save ourselves.

We had no hand in that.

God’s righteousness did.

And so when we are welcoming people or you are sharing the Gospel with them, you can reassure them that you don’t have to wait until you are good enough to come to church or become a Christian.

God is building this church just as he was building the church at Rome and Paul was instructing them how to ensure it had a true and strait foundation built on Christ.

Application: You can control how you respond to the potential Christians that you meet

The Jews were God’s chosen people because of God, not because they had any special trait or luck.

God chose them.

God chose you too to become one of his followers.

You were justified.

Sometimes I think the longer we are Christians, the more we forget that and we start thinking we became a Christian because of our choice, like it something we can go buy or get with enough UPC codes.

It was Jesus who as Paul says in When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Instead we think like the Jews that Paul is writing and that we are chosen and no one else is.

And we may look down on people who don’t get it.

And then they look different than us, they are somehow, like the Jews viewed the Gentiles, maybe not worthy to be Christians.

So people say ok.

I am not coming here because those people think they are better than me.

Because you forgot that you sinned this morning and need God’s forgiveness, but you don’t feel like you have it and you don’t show the new person any forgiveness or love.

You forget you are being sanctified as you live your life and so you may be (hopefully) a little more spiritually mature, but you are not yet perfect until you are glorified.

How do we counteract these tendencies?

We focus on Jesus and how he lived his earthly life.

The longer list that Paul encourages people to their new lives by comes from But here are two to help us as we build our church:

1. Be Humble

Don’t think more of yourself than you ought to.

says “When arrogance comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.”[5]

I kind of like the use of arrogance here because having pride or being proud of your accomplishments is good, but arrogance comes when you think too much of what you did or overstate your role in the whole process.

Humble yourself to help in ways that are meaningful.

And maybe not so much meaningful to you, but meaningful to them.

This may mean getting out of your comfort zone more.

Who are the outcasts now in our community and maybe in your life that need to be taken in?

You may say, yeah but….There is no yeah but with God.

Because he takes us in when we

We should be motivated because we also have a heart of compassion

2. Be Compassionate

If you have a hard heart you look at people differently.

But the idea of the Lord is compassionate and gracious is written about in ; ; ; ; ); the Lord is compassionate and merciful ()

If we are striving to be more Christ-like, so when we are more compassionate, we become more like Jesus.

Christ Connection: Jesus humbled himself to the point of death on the cross.

A rebel’s death.

Out in the open in front of everybody, and we will come back to this in the final point, but he humble himself when he did not fight back or resist.

He knew what had to be done.

He knew the price for sin had to be paid and Jesus was the money that paid our debt.

If you look at his life, Jesus was humble.

He talked to everyone, especially the people no one talked to or wanted to be around.

Women, fisherman, lepers, the possessed, the tax collectors and even the Romans.

Women.

He was not always soft with them and he called them out when necessary but he showed them love first and then he corrected them.