Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Prayer Requests - updates

In the weeks to come, our Wednesday Night Bible Study time will likely look a little different than it will tonight as I love to have discussion and have a little more interaction than we normally get to have on a Sunday morning.

As a result, the plan for the new year is to be in the fellowship area and setup around the tables there.

We’ll likely go through a Bible study book or use a new resource offered through Midwestern that is specifically designed for Bible study groups like ours.

Until that point, we’ll be in here and we’ll study some good passages of Scripture as a group and, hopefully, have some good discussion and application from each text that we can take and grow as individuals and as a group!

In praying about tonight there were so many different directions that my heart was going.

Eventually I felt at peace with looking at the Christian hope.

We are living in a world where many people are searching for hope in many different places.

Some say that there is hope to be found in a thing or a place.

Others say there is hope to be found in an idea or a principle.

As Christians, we believe that there is hope that can only be found in a person and His name is Jesus Christ.

How has your faith in Jesus Christ given you hope in recent months?

Even in a time of chaos and unrest, I know that Jesus is my good shepherd and that He has a plan for my life.

He is good and He is still in control of the situation - even if it doesn’t seem that way.

He has provided in the past and I know He will continue to provide in the future.

In the Bible, one of the common themes of God’s people is that they are people who have hope in the midst of opposition and oppression.

We see Abraham have faith in the Lord even whenever he was old and didn’t have a son.

We see David have faith in the Lord even when he was a young man facing a giant in battle.

We see Peter have faith to walk toward Jesus on the water even though there were waves around him.

We see Paul have faith in the Lord even whenever he was imprisoned and about to face his death.

Christians throughout the history books have demonstrated more of the same.

How can Christians have this type of faith?

Where does our hope come from?

This is what we’ll study tonight in Romans 5:12-21 as Paul highlights how believers have moved from death to life because of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the founder and giver of our hope!

The Trespass (12-14)

Let’s start off this evening looking at the first few verses of our text, Romans 5:12-14.

The Bible says

This isn’t a “fun” way to start off our Bible study.

We read in our text that sin has consequences.

Now, we all could give a personal illustration of a time in which we were punished due to our sinful actions - or at least I’d hope we’d be honest enough to admit to that!

Think about such a time in your life where you sinned and there was a consequence.

Any volunteers want to give an example?

Climbed on roof of FBC Ozark as a Jr. High student to play hide and seek after an evening choir/orchestra concert and got caught by my boss… I had a whole lot of explaining to do, apology letters to write, and mistakes to make up for.

Sin is serious.

We see this throughout the Bible in both Old and New Testaments.

Perhaps no place do we see that more clearly, though, than Romans 5:12-21 as Paul opens up with a loaded verse and says that sin entered the world through Adam and death through sin.

What is the correlation here?

That sin leads to death.

We like to think that sin leads to consequences but not death.

Yet, the Bible tells us otherwise.

Look at James 1:15 with me

Romans 6:23 shares that the wages of sin is death.

What makes sin so serious?

God is holy and God hates sin because it goes against who He is

The really bad news about verse 12 is that Paul continues to share that death spread to all people because all sinned.

This is where there can be some debate regarding something called Original Sin.

Douglas Moo is one of the leading New Testament scholars of our time and has written 2 massive commentaries on Romans.

While he might be the leading commentator on Romans, he isn’t perfect so don’t take everything he says as truth, but he is certainly a respected voice in the Christian world.

Douglas Moo shares that there are 3 views on this subject:

Imitation View

Infection View

Inclusion View

The imitation view states that we imitate Adam but that Adam’s sin doesn’t impact us directly

The infection view states that Adam infected humanity with sin and therefore, we all sin as humans

The inclusion view states that whenever Adam sinned, he was the representative for all humans - just like Jesus is the representative for all Christians.

Both the infection and inclusion view are theologically sound - but this text seems to lean more toward the Inclusion view because of what Paul will share in the verses that follow.

Paul shares in these verses that this trespass has significant consequences for all of us.

Whether we like it or not, whether we think it’s “fair” or not, we read that through Adam’s sin, death spread to all humanity because “all sinned.”

In our world everyone likes to talk about what’s fair and what’s not.

Based on Romans 3:23, Romans 5:12, and Romans 6:23, aren’t you thankful that God isn’t “fair” with our sins?

Aren’t you thankful that He is full of grace and mercy with us?!

Paul continues in our text and shares that sin existed before the law and that death reigned from Adam to Moses.

What does this tell us?

How do you know that you’ve done something wrong?

You’ve been given a rule and you understand that you’ve broken it.

Think of the 10 Commandments for a moment.

The 10 Commandments tell us what God expects from us.

What do we quickly realize whenever we look at the 10 Commandments?

We realize that we’ve broken them.

We realize that the law says to do these things and we realize that we “don’t” do those things that we should do and we do things that we shouldn’t do.

Look at what Paul will explain in Romans 7 as he says

Paul shares this back and forth and gets to this conclusion

What does this tell us?

It tells us that sin is serious and separates us from the Lord.

Sin is so great, in fact, that it sets us off on a trajectory to death and destruction and we are powerless to change this trajectory by good works and good things.

Left to our own power, we are powerless and hopeless.

These opening 3 verses aren’t positive at all - until the end of verse 14 as Paul shares that Adam is a type of the Coming One...

What does this mean?

Paul is making a comparison between Adam and the Coming One… This is called a typology and he’ll dive deeper into this in the verses that come.

The Gift (15-17)

In the verses that follow there are 6 specific comparisons between Adam and Jesus as you see on your outline and we’ll do our best to at least go over each of them!

What Paul is hammering home in these 3 verses is that there is a difference between what Adam and Jesus did.

Essentially you could summarize these next few verses with this statement: Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded.

Where Adam hurt humanity, Jesus redeems humanity.

Let’s read what Jesus has done

(Insert picture on these verses) This image is a good summary of what Jesus Christ has done.

Adam’s sin impacts humans to this day and sin leads to death.

Yet, we see that through Jesus’ gift there is grace.

Verse 15 - #1: Adam’s trespass = people died.

Jesus’ gift = people receive grace.

Implication: Christ is much more powerful to save than Adam was to ruin!

Personal Application: How does it make you feel to know that Jesus’ grace is sufficient to save you from even your worst mistakes?

Verse 16 - #2: Adam’s sin = Condemnation.

Jesus’ gift = Justification

Implication: We deserve destruction but through Jesus we receive deliverance!

Personal Application: Am I saved through personal works or by grace through faith in Jesus?

Verse 17 - #3: Adam’s trespass = Death reigns.

Jesus’ gift = grace leads to life