Sermon Tone Analysis

*A BELIEVER’S THANKSGIVING*

*Romans 5:1-11*

 

I sometimes think if God weren’t so good to us we would be more grateful.

There seems to be an inverse ratio between God’s generosity and our sense of appreciation.

The more he blesses us the less thankful we seem to be.

* For example, if the leaves in the Fall turned only in one tiny county in the State of Maine, we would probably drive for miles and stand in line for hours just to be able to witness the turning of the leaves and experience the beauty of God’s creation.

But as it is, leaves turn all around us and we take them for granted and complain that we have to rake them out of our front yard.

* If a glass of water was available to you only once a year, you would probably be willing to pay $20.00 a glass to have your thirst quenched.

But as it is, we take it for granted, and waste what we do have, and complain that we don’t have anything else to drink.

* If we were healthy only one month out of every year, would be so ecstatic during that one month.

But as it is we complain about our little aches and pains.

* If salvation was available to only 100 people and you were one of those 100, you would feel so privileged that you wouldn't stop praising God.

You’d pay $10,000 a month if you could to ensure your salvation for life.

But since salvation is available to whosoever will may come, we take it for granted.

We go to church and complain about the choice of music that day, or the sermon was too long, or the sanctuary was too warm.

If God weren’t so good to us I think we would be much more grateful.

So it’s appropriate that we have this Thanksgiving season when we just stop and give God thanks for all his goodness to us.

And I’d like for you to look with me today in Romans the 5th chapter as we examine some of the spiritual blessings that we have in Christ.

This passage is not at all an exhaustive list, but it does provide us with an idea of some of the unique blessings we have because we are Christians.

Now, the world can thank God for a good harvest, and good health, a free nation, and a wonderful family.

And all of us should express thanks for those things on a regular basis.

But, as Christians, our gratitude ought to go deeper and we ought to express our thanks to God for the spiritual blessings that we enjoy and often take for granted.

Now, our text for today not only talks about our past blessings – what we have received, and our present blessings – what we have now, but it also reveals the blessings that God still has in store for us in the future.

So let’s look at the past, present and future blessings from God.

 

! I.                   THE PAST BLESSINGS

 

The first blessing is Justification.

Verse 1 reads*, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith…”.*

Now that’s a big word, but justified can be defined simply as */“just-as-if-I’d-never-sinned”./*

A more theological definition would be /“the act of God whereby a sinner is declared righteous.”

/ There are two words that describe justification.

The first word is *guiltless*.

I stand guiltless before God.

Even though I am a sinner and I am guilty, yet because of the blood of Christ I stand guiltless before God.

Verse 8 says, *“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”*

Since that has occurred, I am not guilty in God’s presence.

I heard the story of a little boy in elementary school who hated school.

And every day he would just scribble wrong answers in his workbook and he would draw ugly cartoons of his teacher in the margins.

For three weeks he did that.

But the teacher was so patient and loving that she finally won the little boy over.

But after 6 weeks there was that parent-teacher conference and the little boy dreaded what his parents would do when they saw the kinds of things he did in school for those first three weeks.

He stood at the back of the room and watched as his parents went over to his desk and watched as they picked up his workbook and began to scan the pages, nodding in approval and smiling as they examined his work.

They put the workbook down and went to another part of the room to see the other work the students had done.

The little boy raced over to his desk and picked up the notebook to discover that the teacher had torn out all the bad pages and left just the positive pages for the parents to see.

God has done that for us.

Acts 2:38 says, *“Repent and be baptized very one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins.”*

Jesus Christ comes when we give our life to Him and tears out the bad pages of life and leaves just the positive pages for God to see.

We are guiltless before him through Christ.

But the second word that describes justification is the word *righteous*.

We are not just left guiltless; God imputes the righteousness of Christ to us.

In Romans the 4th chapter, the 24th verse it says that */God will credit righteousness to us/*.

If a man is a multi-millionaire and he takes $10,000 and puts it in your checking or savings account, he credits that to your account and suddenly you become much wealthier.

Now, God does not just remove the bad pages from our lives, or there would be nothing left in our notebook.

Because even our good deeds are as filthy rags before God, Isaiah reminds us.

So when God sees us, he sees us as spiritually rich because we have credited to us the righteousness of Christ.

And God doesn’t see us as empty vessels, but he sees us as Jesus because the Lord has credited the righteousness of Jesus to us.

That’s what it means to be justified.

So let’s be thankful that we have been justified as a people of God.

 

! II.

THE PRESENT BLESSINGS

 

Now our text for today speaks not only of the blessings of our past, but also of the blessings that God gives us presently.

In the past we have been justified.

In the present we experience reconciliation.

We have been alienated from God by sin, but now we are on friendly terms again.

Look at the next phrase in Romans 5:1, *“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”*

Man is at war with God.

Man doesn’t always feel like he is at war with God, though.

Someone asked the dying Henry David Thoreau if he had made his peace with God, and he said/, “There is no peace to make.

I’ve never quarreled with him.”/

And some men are so naïve they don’t even realize they are at war with God.

You can go to a different culture and you through an innocent gesture or an inappropriate word can offend the people of that culture.

And some men are so far removed from God that they offend Him without even recognizing it.

Sometimes he offends God deliberately.

God says*, “Don’t take my name in vain”,* and out of the thousands of names in history we don’t say/, “Oh my Buddha,/ or /Oh my Confucius”./

We say, /“Oh my God.”/

We don’t say/, “Jimmy Carter!”./

We say, /“Jesus Christ.”/

Why?

Because man is in rebellion against God.

Verse 10 says that we were enemies of God.

But the good news is that through Jesus Christ we have been reconciled to God.

We now have peace with God through Christ.

The treaty was signed in Christ’s blood on the cross.

We are not enemies of God any more.

We are now his friends.

Verse 3 of Romans 5, *“and we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, character; and character produces hope.”*

That word for suffering means “/pressure/”.

We rejoice in our pressures.

Now, let’s be realistic about that.

We don’t say:

* /“I’ve got so many financial obligations right now I don’t know how I am possibly going to make my ends meet.

Isn’t this wonderful?”

/

* /“Management wants us to increase our production before the holidays.

But one line is down and another is staffed with new trainees.

I don’t think we can meet our quota.

I love my job!”/

 

Rejoicing in our pressures simply means that in the long view we understand that God is developing character, and we can rejoice that God is refining us.

That word “/character/” there is a word that means /to be reined by fire/.

It’s like Sterling Silver.

* You can take a metal bar of Sterling that is worth $5.00.

But if you heat it an turn it into a horseshoe, it will be worth $10.00.