Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

The problem: the head-heart lag.

There’s a gap between what we know in our heads, but what really grips in our hearts.

I know what a relationship with my friend is like, or a relationship with my wife . . .

but I’m supposed to have this relationship with God.

But I can’t see him, I can’t physically hear him.

In our heads we know more and more about the Bible, more and more about God and yet it often has such little impact on our lives.

We know Jesus died for our sins, but we struggle to be moved by that in our hearts.

We believe that Jesus is glorious, that in our heads following him is better than chasing after sin.

But in practice we find sin enticing and even irrestible.

We know we should be telling others about Jesus but we rarely are so bowled over by Jesus that we just can’t help but speak about him to people we meet.

We have a head-heart lag.

And it is suffocating our relationship with God.

Well this morning, we’re going to get a masterclass from Britain’s greatest ever theologian.

Let me show you a selfie of him.

Does anybody know who this is?

This is John Owen, and I should clarify that Britain’s great theologian was English.

By the way, britain’s biggest heretic was a guy called Pelagius and he was Welsh.

I just thought you should know that.

But John Owen was a guy who loved writing about God, and the book that encapsulates his passion, his masterpiece, his mona-lisa, is called ‘Communion with God’.

That basically means relationship with God, having fellowship enjoying God.

And he says the key to unlocking that, the key to enjoying God, is learning to relate to God as a Trinity.

And you might be thinking, how is that going to help?

That just makes it worse!

I don’t even understand what the Trinity is!

Well the word Trinity just means that there is something about God that is three and something about God that is one.

The Bible teaches that God one what and three whos.

There is one God and three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Three whos who shares a singular what, a singular nature and being.

OK, but how can I grasp onto this and actually picture it in my mind.

Well, come back with me to the baptism of Jesus.

The Father sent the Son from heaven to earth and when the Son began his ministry on earth, he was baptised.

You can read this at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel.

And as Jesus comes out of the water, a voice comes from heaven.

It’s not the Son, he’s on earth.

The voice of the Father says, “this is my Son, with him I am well pleased”.

The Father and the Son.

And then the Father sends the Spirit over his Son in the form of a dove.

And so you have a picture of who God is, Father, SOn and HS.

That’s at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel.

Then at the very end, the last thing Jesus says before he returns to heaven is this:

ThereforeBaptise them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy SpiritThe Father first sends the Son, and then the Spirit.

Baptise them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy SpiritThe Father first sends the Son, and then the Spirit.

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Just as Matthew’s gospel starts with Jesus’ baptism as a picture of the Trinity, it ends with a command to baptise others into life with the Trinity.

Don’t baptise them into three names but into the one name of Father, Son and SPirit.

It’s the Trinity!

OK so we’ve got the Trinity, we’ve got a picture of what that looks like in the baptism of Jesus.

But what difference does this make to my relationship with God?

This is when we come to our verse from .

It’s a famous verse, in many churches they will say this sentence to each other at the end of their meetings before they go their separate ways.

We’ll do that too at the end of our service.

It gets called ‘the grace’, because it starts with ...

Paul had a very difficult relationship

And it was written by the apostle Paul, right at the end of his long, long correspondence with the Christians living in Corinth.

Imagine you lived in first century Corinth all those years ago, you would have seen some shocking things happening at your church.

You would have seen sexual immorality as one man was having inappropriate relations his step mother.

You would have divisions and hatred between people in the congregation, who were suing other people in their church.

You would have seen the church turning to false teachers who claimed to be super apostles.

And amid that incredibly difficult relationship where Paul had been deeply hurt by these Christians, he has one final word to say to them.

After writing incredibly long letters to them, the last sentence that he leaves them with is his prayer.

He prays what he thinks they most need. . .

now that he’s finished his correspondence.

And what they need is…not to be told to have a relationship with God in the abstract.

But what they need is to relate to each person, to the Father, and to the SOn, and to the SPirit.

They need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

And friends that’s exactly what we need this morning.

If we’re finally resist sexual immorality and instead love God, if we’re to not just know about Jesus but really adore Jesus in our hearts, if we’re to love and be united with each other amid the hurt and sin we inflict on one another. . .

If we’re finally resist sexual immorality and instead love God, if we’re to not just know about Jesus but really adore Jesus in our hearts, if we’re to love and be united with each other amid the hurt and sin we inflict on one another, then we need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

then we need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

We need to relate to each person of the Trinity so that our hearts can not only catch up with our heads but our hearts can even run way ahead of our heads.

So that we can enjoy God and find delight in him.

So let’s start with

1) The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ

In the New testament, Jesus is particularly associated with grace.

Now I’m not saying that’s exclusive to Jesus, that’s not to say that the Father and the Holy Spirit aren’t adescribed as gracious.

But there is still a pattern, Jesus is most associated with grace.

Let me show you how we see that.

The Apostle Paul was so enamored by Jesus’ grace, that this phrase became his new way of saying good bye to his friends.

His standard way of finishing a letter was to say, “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” [SLIDE]

That’s the way he ended his glorious letter to the Romans, but also Galatians, his first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon and of course our one here too.

Letters ending with ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus [Christ]’

(; ; ; ;

So in Paul’s letters, grace is particularly associated with Jesus.

But it’s not just Paul.

And just in case you missed, he says it again almost immediately:

John 1:16

There was one man who was a follower of Jesus and who even lived life alongside Jesus for three years as one of his best friends.

He even wrote a biography of Jesus and in it he wrote this:

And just in case you missed, he says it again almost immediately:

In the New Testament, Jesus is particularly associated with grace.

So now we’ve seen that.

But what does that mean about Jesus and what he’s like?

Well thankfully, Paul unpacked exactly that for us in a most profound statement in the very letter we’re looking at 2 Corinthians.

In chapter 8 and verse 9 he says this:

And

If you want to see the grace of the Lord Jesus, look at how he leaves his riches in heaven to come down to our world, to live in poverty, to be lynched and murdered.

So that we through his earthly poverty, through his sacrifice, might become rich with all Jesus’ heavenly riches.

The Christian life is a life that starts when we encounter the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ for the first time.

Of all creation, we human beings were the black sheep that turned away from this Triune God of Love.

We were sheep a long way from home, and very lost.