Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Colonel Wilbur Rogers was ordered to let loose an artillery barrage in a World War I battle.

He was right there on the battlefield, and he could see what the commander could not see.

If he fired as ordered he would shell 10,000 American infantry just ahead of him.

He refused to obey an order that would have killed his own soldiers, and the result was he was immediately removed from his command and arrested.

Charges were preferred against him, and he was reduced to a class B status, which means he was deemed unfit to hold commission in active service.

Colonel Rogers fought in court for 14 years to prove that there are circumstances where disobedience to orders is a manifestation of common sense.

Finally in 1934 he was vindicated and President Roosevelt signed a bill that reinstated him to class A status.

Blind obedience to orders that you know are based on ignorance of the circumstances is not a virtue, especially when you do know the circumstances and can make a wiser decision.

On the other hand, when you are the one who is ignorant of the circumstances it is a virtue to give blind obedience to those in authority over you.

This is illustrated by the Eastern King who hired two men to pull water out of a well and pour it into a basket.

After awhile one of them said that it was foolishness.

The water runs through the sides of the basket and the labor was in vain.

The other one said that they were being paid good to do it and so it is the master's business.

The first man was not satisfied and just threw the basket down and quit.

The other man went on doing the job, and when he got to the bottom of the well he learned the purpose of his labor.

There was a precious diamond ring that had fallen into the well.

Had it been brought up before they got to the bottom it would have been found in the basket.

It was not useless labor at all.

The worker who remained faithful to the task was greatly rewarded because he worked on when he did not understand the purpose of it.

The king had planned the whole thing, for he was looking for a reliable servant who would obey him even when they did not understand his plan.

This has been God's search all through history.

He has ever sought for servants who would obey him.

Abraham was one of his best servants and we read in Heb.

11:8, "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."

In blind obedience he did what God ordered, and became the number one example of a man of faith.

He even obeyed God when he was asked to sacrifice his own son Isaac.

It made no sense, for God had promised him a great host of descendants as vast as the sand of the seashore.

But he had faith that God would keep his promise, and so he was ready to do what made no sense to him.

God, of course, did not let him do it, and provided the substitute lamb for the sacrifice.

If you study all of the heroes of the faith, you discover that the virtue they all had in common was the virtue of obedience.

They were different in many ways, but they were all obedient to what they knew was the will of God.

Obedience was the key virtue in the Bible and still is today.

The first sin in the Garden of Eden was the sin of disobedience, and this is the essence of all sin.

It is those who obey who will have access again to the tree of life in the eternal kingdom.

Some may be thinking that love is the supreme virtue, and this is correct.

But the Bible so links love and obedience that they are married and become one.

You cannot have one without the other.

Jesus said in John 14:21, "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me."

Then two verses later he says, "If a man love me, he will keep my words."

We make a distinction between a professing Christian and a possessing Christian because it is not words buy obedience that makes a true believer.

In Matt.

7:21 Jesus says, "Not every one that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."

It is in obedience to God that we demonstrate faith and manifest love.

Without obedience all the lovely language and professions are mere stubble that will quickly perish in the fires of judgment.

We do not grasp the goal of God at all unless we see that the bottom line is obedience to his will.

F. B. Huey Jr. wrote an article for Christianity Today that was titled Obedience A Neglected Doctrine.

In this article he tells us that obedience is so practical that we would rather focus on other doctrines that are merely intellectual groping for the truth.

Obedience is hard because it demands that you act and back up your profession with behavior.

He wrote, "If we are completely honest, we will admit that obedience is the biblical doctrine most difficult to put into practice.

We preach, teach, give a tithe or more, go to the mission field, may even be willing to die for the faith; but how many of us will at the end of this life be able to say: 'I led every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.' (II Cor.

10:5)?

Total surrender is often talked about, but it is far easier to preach than to practice."

Because we do not like to submit to be a slave to God's will we tend to let obedience slide.

Professor Huey wrote again, "The alarming statistical decrease in conversions in recent years is partly explained by the lessened insistence upon obedience of children in the home.

A well-known evangelist has pointed out that it is very difficult to win to Christ people who as children never learned obedience.

If a person does not respect his earthly parents, how much more difficult it is for him to obey the Father in heaven.

Parents who teach their children the importance of obedience are preparing them for salvation."

Obedience on any level has eternal implications.

We are spending a lot to time looking at the first few verses of this great letter because it is universally agreed upon that Paul gives us a mini-outline of the entire letter in this introduction.

John MacArthur is one of the most popularmis Bible teachers of our day and he says, "...the entire thrust of all 16 chapters of Romans is distilled into the first seven verses-Paul is so thrilled by what he wants to say that he can't wait to say it.

He capsulizes his foundational thoughts in Rom.

1:1-7.

It is as if the seed of the Gospel is sown in the first seven verses and then fully blooms throughout the rest of the epistle."

It pays to go slow when you are panning for gold, for those who go fast are sure to throw away nuggets with the pebbles.

Some lost is inevitable for no man has ever gotten them all.

Martin Lloyd Jones preached on Romans for 8 years.

Donald Gray Barnhouse preached on it for 3 and a half years, and greatly influenced Chuck Swindoll who preached on it for nearly a year.

None of them claimed to cover the subject thoroughly, for it is a lifetime task.

John Calvin in his commentary on Romans wrote, "...when anyone gains a knowledge of the Epistle, he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture."

Most of us usually skip through the introduction and miss the treasures.

So far we have looked at 1.

The Preachers Of The Gospel. 2. The Promise Of The Gospel. 3. The Person Of The Gospel.

And now we are looking at 4. The Purpose Of The Gospel.

Paul spells it out in verse 5 where he says the whole purpose of his receiving grace and apostleship was to call people from all the Gentiles to the obedience which comes from faith.

This is just another way of stating the Great Commission of Christ who said in Matt.

28:19-20, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."

The bottom line is obedience, for the finished product is to be obedient disciples.

Walter Isenhour tells of the English farmer who saw a party of horsemen riding toward a field that he did not want trampled.

He sent one of his boys to shut the gate and not let it be opened.

He got there just in time.

When the horsemen came they ordered the gate to be opened.

The boy refused stating his orders.

Threats and bribes failed to move him.

Then one of the riders said, "My boy, I am the Duke of Wellington.

I command you to open that gate that I and my friends may pass through."

The boy removed his cap to honor this man all England delighted to honor, but he said firmly, "I am sure the Duke of Wellington would not want me to disobey orders.

I must keep the gate shut and not allow anyone to pass but by my master's permission."

Greatly pleased, the old warrior lifted his own hat and said, "I honor the boy or man who can be neither bribed nor frightened into doing wrong."

Handing the boy a sovereign, the old Duke put spurs to his horse and galloped away.

The purpose of the Gospel is not just to save people for heaven, but to produce people on earth in all nations who will be that kind of obedient servant, and be loyal to Christ above all others.

But notice carefully what Paul says about this obedience in verse 5.

It is obedience that comes from faith.

There is obedience that comes from force and from fear also, but this is not the kind of obedience that Jesus wants.

He wants obedience that is by choice and not by coercion.

The purpose of the Gospel is to get people of all nations to be voluntary slaves of Christ.

These are people who choose to obey His commands because they want to, and because they belong to Him, and they believe His promises.

Obedience that comes from faith is not an I have to obey attitude, but it is an I want to obey attitude.

I want to please my Lord.

We have not arrived at God's goal for the Gospel until we do His will because we love Him and want to do His will.

If we obey because we feel guilty if we don't, or feel pressured by the need to conform, or by some other external motive, we have not yet arrived at Christian maturity.

A rich man had a son that he loved dearly, but who died at a young age.