Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and thank you for joining us this first Sunday of 2022.

I hope you all enjoyed a safe and happy New Year.

As we start this new year, I want to encourage each one of you to consider joining me over the next three weeks as we once again participate as a church in 21 days of prayer and fasting.

Our 21 days begin tomorrow, and go until Sunday, January 23.

During this time, I encourage you to fast from something, and use that fast to deepen your relationship with God and tune in to His work in your life and around you even more as we start a new year.

You can choose to fast from food by skipping one meal a day, or by skipping food for a 24-hour period once a week for the next three weeks, or by giving up a specific food item like coffee, meat, or sugar.

Pick something you will miss, and let that experience of missing what you’ve given up, and longing for whatever you are fasting from refocus your attention on desiring God and seeking Him with that same hunger and longing.

If you don’t fast from food, consider fasting from something else that is important to you.

You might fast from TV, from Social Media, or from some other activity that you enjoy.

Whatever you fast from, the point isn’t just to give something up, but to refocus your time and energy on your relationship with God.

Spend more time reading your Bible; pray a little longer; have times of silence where you think about God, His character, His values and plans.

If you have questions about how to fast, you can join us this Wednesday night and I’ll be going deeper into how you can participate in this emphasis on prayer and fasting.

And don’t forget that our studies on Hebrews and on Philippians are starting on January 12th.

At the same time that we are doing our 21 days of prayer and fasting, we are going to start a new sermon series about The Gospel.

We are going to look at some basic truths about the Gospel as well as some deeper insights on how the Gospel is something that not only provides salvation, but how it should affect every aspect of our lives, encourage us, and bring us greater freedom and joy than we’ve ever experienced before.

Today we are looking at a passage in Romans chapter 1 where Paul writes to the Roman church that the Gospel is the “power of God for salvation.”

If you have your Bible with you today, please turn with me to Romans 1. Today I’m reading out of the NIV translation.

Let’s pray...

Let me start this morning with a statement that should not be controversial or divisive or surprising to anyone who is a Christian.

THE GOSPEL

The Gospel should be the foundation of everything we do as a Church.

Everything we do should be in service to the Gospel and should support our mission to spread the Gospel.

The Old Testament tells the story of how God set the stage for the Gospel to be revealed, for humanity to understand our need of the gospel, and for us to be able to interpret the gospel rightly.

The life of Jesus and His teaching are the Gospel revealed and accomplished, and the writings of the disciples that fill the rest of the New Testament are the Gospel applied to life.

I keep using this word, “Gospel,” but sometimes we use a word so much that it’s detail and meaning gets lost or blurred.

As Christians sometimes we use words like “Gospel” assuming that everyone understands what that word means, but even among Christians it is good to remind ourselves what the Gospel is.

So let’s quickly define what the Gospel is.

In the most basic, simple definition, we can say that...

The Gospel is the announcement that God has reconciled us to Himself by sending His Son Jesus to die as a substitute for our sins, and that all who repent and believe have eternal life in Him.

Last Sunday I shared the verse that is probably the most famous verse from the Bible.

Let’s break our definition down quickly so that we understand it a little better.

God has reconciled us to Himself.

What does that mean?

Restoration of friendly relationships and of peace where before there had been hostility and alienation.

Ordinarily it also includes the removal of the offense which caused the disruption of peace and harmony.

According to the Bible, lost humanity isn’t just distant from God because of sin, it is God’s enemy.

When Jesus sent His Son Jesus to die for our sins, He did all that was necessary for people to go from being God’s enemies to being His children.

Jesus’s death didn’t just cause God to ignore our sin, it completely removed our sin, our offense that caused enmity between us and God.

Shannon and I love fresh fruit.

In fact, one of the first things we did when we bought our house a year and a half ago was to order some fruit trees and plant them in our yard.

We planted peaches, apricots, nectarines, apples, figs, pomegranates, tangerines, persimmons, kiwi vines and grape vines, and more.

In order to help the tree put down good roots and grow strong, you are supposed to remove the fruit that grows the first two or three years you plant a tree so that the tree puts its energy into growing strong, but this past year Shannon allowed one of our tangerines to grow just three tangerines, just so we could have a small taste of what we are looking forward to in the years to come.

Imagine if that fruit had been infested by bugs, if it had rotten, and gone bad, but Shannon picked them and said, “Just pretend it’s good.”

We could have pretended, but it would not have been good.

Jesus didn’t just ask God the Father to pretend we don’t owe Him anything for our sin, He didn’t ask the Father to pretend we were clean and sinless.

He paid for our sin and REMOVED our sin so that when we stand before Him we are completely whole and blameless, and God doesn’t have to pretend we are on good terms, we actually ARE on good terms.

Our definition also says that...

Jesus’s death was a substitute for our sins.

According to divine law, each person has a debt that has to be paid because everyone has sinned.

The payment of that debt is death.

But Jesus offers to pay for our sins by His death if we will put our faith in Him and let Him do that for us.

That’s how we are able to stand before the Father completely blameless.

However, the way that we receive Christ’s payment requires us to take action.

Not action that earns us forgiveness, but action that accepts His gift of forgiveness.

First...

We must repent of our sins.

We have to acknowledge that we need forgiveness, that the things God calls sin really are sin.

But repentance is more than just saying something is true.

Repenting means that we turn away from the sins of our past.

That we change the direction of our lives, with God’s help, and turn to Him instead.

Second...

We must believe in Jesus.

Believing in Jesus also is more than just a mental exercise.

True belief like what the Bible teaches we have to have in Jesus, means that we believe that what Jesus says and teaches is true, and that we then apply it to our lives and obey His word.

Saying we believe in Jesus but not letting His words change our lives so that we are living like He asks us to live is hypocrisy.

It is when we repent and believe that we receive Christ’s forgiveness and our relationship with God is reconciled, it is then that we have the guarantee of eternal life.

This is a brief and basic definition of the Gospel.

So let’s look at todays’ passage in light of what the Gospel is...

The Gospel brings salvation to everyone who believes, no matter their background.

Paul’s ministry as he traveled throughout the Roman world took place both among the Jewish communities in the cities he visited and among the Gentiles who also became followers of Jesus.

For many of the Jewish people scattered throughout the cities that Paul started churches in, it was a new and challenging concept that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also wanted to offer the gift of salvation to non-Jews.

One of the challenges that the early church had to work through was that they had to learn to live with and love people who were different from them.

Jews and Gentiles had hugely different cultures, from what they ate, to how they talked, to the way they dressed, to different life experiences based on their cultures, and so much more.

But no matter their background, the Gospel was the glue that united them and brought them all salvation.

Their differences did not disappear, but their common faith was stronger than the things that divided them.

It wasn’t always easy, but obeying God and living how He wants us to live, which includes living in unity and love with one another, was what Christ had called them to do.

It is what God calls US to do.

Church, my goal as your pastor is to lead our church to reflect the biblical model and ideal of what God wants us to be as much as possible.

I want for everyone who comes to this church to experience church as God intended it to be.

I don’t think there is any church that has figured out how to do this perfectly, and so we are a work in progress, just like all the other churches around us.

Still, I desire for us to grow so in love with God, and become so passionate about bringing Him glory and being a part of what He is doing, that we are constantly doing whatever we need to do to be more and more like the Church Christ calls us to be.

I want the light of Christ that shines out of this family of faith to be so attractive that it draws people to God.

And when people are drawn to God, people from all different backgrounds, we become a better reflection of that ideal that we are called to.

It’s not easy, it’s not always comfortable, but I believe that it is absolutely biblical and that it is what the Gospel calls us to be.

Paul goes on to write about two different kinds of righteousness: God’s righteousness, and the righteousness of believers.

that the gospel reveals God’s righteousness.

rom 1:17

The Gospel reveals God’s righteousness in that God brought His righteous judgment for sin.

Payment was made and punishment was exacted.

God did not ignore sin and did not let it go unpunished.

God’s perfection and holiness and righteousness demands that He not ignore sin.

There must be payment for sin.

There must be punishment because otherwise justice would not be met.

For believers, payment was made by Jesus, and punishment fell on Him at the cross.

This is the good news that we call the Gospel.

In the Gospel, Jesus pays for the sins of those who put their faith in Him, so righteousness has been maintained, and at the same time grace and mercy has been extended to humanity.

Paul mentions this second righteousness and emphasizes that our human righteousness as believers is by faith and will always be by faith.

Believers’ righteousness is by faith alone when it is received, and continues to be by faith alone throughout our lives.

In other words, the Gospel isn’t just how we are saved, it’s how we live our entire lives as followers of Jesus.

We don’t receive salvation by faith and then have to work to keep our salvation by our works.