Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Good morning everyone,

I hope you have all enjoyed this week as Winter gives way to Spring

I want to thank everyone who participated in building our garden-beds

They look great and I’m excited to see how God will use this work

I’m really excited to see how God will use your faith and labor of love

We want to start thinking about how to connect this garden to our community

So if you have any ideas, please send your suggestions to us!

Move very FAST > > >

I spoke with the Sojourners this week and things are really shaping up:

They will be here for two weeks from August 15th to 25th

They will do our Wednesday class and Sunday services

One of their wives wants to do a special ladies class that I think sounds very exciting

On the second week they will do a revival-style meeting from Sunday through Wednesday

They are bringing in a special speaker to hold the revival meeting named Calvin Warpula

His wife’s name is Judy

He is a retired preacher from Texas

He preached for over 50 years

He has proven quite effective in his gospel meetings

And I was excited to learn the Sojourners are personally connected with the H2H ministry

My goal is to bring the H2H ministry here in 2023 to kickstart our evangelism efforts and then have the Sojourners come back in August to conclude these efforts, but H2H has to be booked well in advance because they fill up fast, so I’m trying to get us on their list.

H2H gives full-system support, including on-going training and curriculum including up to a full years curriculum if you want (I believe this is free).

Special Announcement

Many of you may already know because I’m pretty sure Naomi let this slip, which is okay, because usually I’m the one who can’t keep this secret, but Mary is pregnant.

She is about 10-weeks along.

So she is due sometime in November.

Assignments

Read Romans 5:1-8:39.

Move FAST

You will remember that one feature of this series is that we have four discourse sermons that survey the major themes of the four main discourses that compose Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome.

One of the reasons for this is because it’s easy to zoom in so closely to the text that we get lost in the dense arguments that Paul uses and forget where we are going.

So these discourse sermons help us resurface, take a breath of fresh air, so that we can dive back into the text without losing our orientation.

So your reading assignments are somewhat longer this week.

Challenge

Create friendship prayer list: pray over this list every week.

You may benefit from giving one page to each name

Write down specific prayers and keep track of how they have been answered

Your faith in God’s power will grow if you will be faithful and consistent in this ministry

God’s Promise According to Grace

Today’s lesson brings us into the part of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome that deals with how we access God’s promises through faith.

We will understand how these promises stand on the assurances of God’s grace rather than our own strengths, and therefore, are realized through our faith in the One who raised Jesus up for our justification.

What needs to stand out here is that this means these promises do not fail because of our own weaknesses or shortcomings.

They are assured by God’s own faithfulness.

Instead, we simply enter in and realize these promises in our life through faith, or, as is sometimes the case, we never enter into them or realize God’s promises in our life because we do walk by faith.

Exegesis

Quickly I want to make some exegetical observations that impact how we understand what is being said here.

First, you’ll notice that we’re encountering Paul’s “logical formula” again.

We haven’t seen these “for” (i.e.

“gar”) statements in quite some time because Paul was using a case-study on Abraham and David to illustrate his argument.

So now that his illustrations are made, he is going to give us the reasons why these things are true, which means that we’re going to see more “for”, “now”, “because”, and “therefore” statements.

So we want to pay attention to how he builds his points.

Move QUICKLY

Second, verses 13 to 21 are bound together by the “therefore” in verse 22, and so we really want to keep these thoughts together.

We want to hear God’s complete thought.

Complete Scriptural thoughts are important because they tell us what the individual parts mean together.

Some people call this “context”.

The idea here is that the meaning of the Bible is bound up together so that you need to draw your interpretation of God’s word from God’s word.

And by God’s grace, so we will do.

With these points in mind, let’s get into our text.

“For” (“γὰρ”) (v.

13): By now we’re very well acquainted with this logical formula; it’s Paul’s preferred way to give the logical reasons for his preceding propositions.

When Paul makes an argument, he likes to explain the reasons that validate the underpinnings of his prior claims.

“The promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law” (v.

13): Sometimes we’re tempted to think Paul is a little bit redundant in his writings.

Afterall, Paul has either directly or indirectly made this point four times in the previous twelve verses.

But he’s not being redundant, he’s constructing clear logical arguments to ensure we can understand him.

And, of course, if he didn’t do this, we might object as people do elsewhere and say that “that’s just one verse”.

So to understand the significance of this logical argument, it is necessary to connect it to the idea he is justifying:

The Law came after and followed the promises that Abraham received by faith.

So to those who look to Abraham and the promises that God made to their forefathers, Paul is arguing that they should follow in Abraham’s footsteps, which are the footsteps of faith.

“But through the righteousness that comes by faith” (v.

13): One of the ways that we miss the significance of Biblical teaching is through our familiarity with them.

Sometimes we become so familiar with something that we don’t stop to recognize its significance.

We are so accustomed to hearing “righteousness comes by faith” that we don’t stop to think about those words.

We short-hand them.

And in short-handing them, we erase much of their meaning.

I really like the Common English Bible’s rendering of this verse:

You see, for Paul, faith is the mechanism through which righteousness comes.

Far from being passive, inactive, and even permissive, faith is the means by which we live out our right-standing with God.

Faith is the means by which we access the fullness of life that God is restoring to the world through Jesus Christ.

In other words, the trust I place in God by which I am assured of his promises is how I realize the substance of the life he has promised us in Jesus Christ.

So to the person who understands the lessons taught by the law, that God is righteous, holy, and just, and that we are sinners rightfully deserving God’s punishment, we observe in the life of Abraham how the only way to truly be made right with God is to entrust our whole lives to him and cast ourselves before his mercy.

Only God’s manifold grace can set things right again.

“If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise nullified” (v.

14): Again Paul turns his attention to refuting those who think they can be right with God through the paradigm of the Law.

And we don’t want to miss how this connects to the prior three arguments that Paul has made, namely that the promises that God made to Abraham, which were received when he believed God, are not the promises made by the Law.

Take a moment to imagine a scenario that we are all very well familiar with in the modern world:

You come home on Friday afternoon after work, change into comfortable clothes, and tell the family you’re going shopping.

Your work has paid off and you have some money to spend.

So the family piles into the car, and you go to your favorite store.

You’ve had your eye on something there for a long time, but you know it’s well out of your range, so you have in mind some other things that will do for now.

You get to the store and decide to take the family the long way round to the department you want so that you can pass by and take a look at what you’ve been eyeing for so long.

And as you are passing by, you notice something different: there’s an offer!

You’re naturally skeptical of such offers, but you slow down enough to glance and you can’t believe your eyes: they’ve given incredible financing, and not only that, but with all the rebates, the final price has been slashed in half!

In disbelief you ask the store rep if you understand this offer right, that if you take this offer, you get all this financing and rebates?

He says “yes”, smiles, and helps you sign up.

You practically float out of the store, and your family is beaming because they know you are so happy.

After several months of living your dream, you get a notification.

A new bill is due.

You can’t believe the sum-total.