Sermon Tone Analysis

December 21, 2014

*Intro* – Grandma handed her present to Grandpa: “Honey, I bought you something unusual this year.

For the man who has everything.”

He said, “You shouldn’t have.

What is it?”

She replied, “The deed to a cemetery plot.”

Unique indeed!

Next year she didn’t buy him anything, so he asked, why no present.

She replied, “Well, you still haven’t used the one I bought you last year!”

Good point!

If you get a present you ought to use it, right?

Perhaps there are some presents lying around your house, unused -- presents from Jesus Himself.

It’s His birthday, but let me tell you, He gives incredible presents.

This passage has 3 eternity changing gifts -- ours for the taking – but often laid aside in favor of others of far less value.

Look at 3 priceless gifts.

*I.

Peace With God (1)*

1) Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t everyone have peace with God? No.

That is not what this verse teaches.

“Therefore” refers back to the first 4 chapters of Romans.

In the first 3, God makes the point that all people are sinners by birth and by choice.

We are therefore at war with God – not at peace! Why?

He is holy and we are not.

He is sinless and we are sinful.

He is judge and we are those who will be judged.

In fact, His verdict is already in.

Rom 1:18: “18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

God’s wrath is no temper tantrum.

It is His settled, persistent, constant rejection of all sin and anyone tainted by sin.

Any error, any unrighteousness, any slippage, any selfishness, any naughtiness, any sin at all disqualifies us from acceptance by Him.

That puts every person on the planet in the same sinking ship.

Disqualified from God’s presence.

We even disqualify ourselves!

We don’t need God as a judge; we condemn ourselves.

Rom 2:1: “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.

For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.”

Put a tape recorder around your neck and you will make enough judgments against other people about things you do to deep six yourself.

Paul summarizes the whole rotten mess in Rom 3: 10) as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11) no one understands; no one seeks for God.

12) All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Skip to 23) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

There it is.

The judge has already rendered his verdict.

Guilty!

This means the greatest enemy of any person who has ever sinned even in the slightest is God Himself.

Not the harsh boss or the demanding self or even Satan.

Oh, no.

The greatest enemy of every person who has ever gone astray is God.

Jesus warns that we’ll all know it one day when every secret is revealed.

And He warns in Mt 10:28, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Outside of Christ our greatest enemy is God Himself.

And unless our guilt can somehow be expunged, there can be no peace with Him.

God consistently uses marital unfaithfulness to depict mankind’s betrayal of Him with our idols.

Remember the movie Camelot?

King Arthur and Guinevere build the Round Table which champions peace over war.

But then Lancelot turns up – the greatest knight of all.

Despite themselves, Lancelot and Guinevere fall in love and betray King Arthur.

They are tormented by Arthur’s goodness, but they choose each other thinking he doesn’t know.

But he does.

In a heartwrenching scene Arthur says, “If I could choose, from every woman who breathes on this earth, the face I would most love, the smile, the touch, the voice, the heart, the laugh, the soul itself, every detail and feature to the smallest strand of hair- they would all be Jenny's.

If I could choose from every man who breathes on this earth a man for my brother and a man for my son, a man for my friend, they would all be Lance.

Yes, I love them.

Even in their betrayal, I love them, and they answer me with pain and torment . . .

and they must be punished.”

That could be God talking.

He is not our greatest enemy because He hates us but bc we have betrayed Him.

And the wages of sin is death.

God’s wrath against sin does not spring from a heart of hatred, but from a heart of love that has been violated.

For love’s sake, sin must be punished.

And we all find ourselves on the wrong side of that love naturally.

That’s Romans 1-3.

All hopeless lost.

But – chapter 4. The solution.

It is not what we might think.

We don’t get a “do over”.

But we can accept a gift by faith.

Abraham’s the example.

Rom 4:2, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Why Christmas?

Why did God become man in Jesus?

To save Abe.

To live the life we could not live so He could die the death we could not die to pay the penalty we could not pay to give us life we could not have.

That’s good news, the gospel.

The peace with God we can’t earn, Jesus already earned.

And we can accept by faith.

Our greatest enemy is also our best friend.

What He demands, He provides by dying in our place so He can pardon our guilt.

But that pardon must be accepted, by faith.

It’s not automatic.

In 1829 George Wilson killed a man during a robbery.

He was arrested, found guilty and sentenced to hang.

Amazingly friends got a pardon him from President Andrew Jackson.

But Wilson refused the pardon!

The sheriff, not wanting to violate a presidential order sent word of the refusal to Jackson.

Equally perplexed, Jackson appealed to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall who ruled that a pardon must be accepted to be valid (a ruling later upheld again in 1915).

No one could imagine that a condemned person would refuse a pardon, but if it is refused, then it is not valid.

Shortly thereafter, George Wilson was hanged as his pardon lay unused on the sheriff’s desk.

So have you accepted Jesus’ pardon?

“Then, since [you] have been justified by faith [you] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”