Sermon Tone Analysis

Mercy and the Church…

If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, let me invite you to open with me to .

Community may not be the easiest thing in the world.

When you get together with a group of people with different passions, different gifts, different skills, different life situations, different life experiences, you can’t really expect everything to go completely smooth.

Mercy and the Church…

I heard about this book.

It’s called, Everybody’s Normal Until You Get to Know Them.

Community would be a lot easier if you didn’t have to get to know people in the process, but somewhere along the way, this is the way God has designed us, and He’s created us to share life with each other.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve missed out on some of this, in our culture of individualism, what it means to really … to really share life with each other, and that’s why we’re talking about small groups.

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 880.

Our growth in Christ as individuals is based on being a part of the community of faith.

So, we engage in Christ through small groups.

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 880.

We engage in care.

Last week, we saw how the suffering we go through is not intended only for our sake, and the comfort we receive in the middle of that, but it’s intended for others’ sake; how God comforts us not to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 880.

What I want us to do this morning is I want us to think about how small groups might enable us to engage the kind of biblical community that is at the core of the New Testament church.

I want us to look at this passage of Scripture in .

We’re going to read through the whole chapter.

We’re going to be in this text this week and next week.

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

This week, I want us to look at a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in this text and think about engaging in community through small groups, and then we’ll go to another facet of this text next week.

However, I want you to follow along and just picture this.

I want you to notice how over and over and over again, it talks about how we relate to each other in community.

Listen to ...

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 880.

Now listen to this, talking about how we relate to each other...

Romans 12:9-21

What I want us to see this morning in this passage of Scripture is how we relate to God, how we relate to each other in the church as a community in faith, and how we relate to the world.

I want us to see how those three relationships are highlighted throughout this text.

However, before we dive in, we’ve got to see that the primary word, the word upon which this whole chapter is based, is in the very beginning of .

What I want us to see this morning in this passage of Scripture is how we relate to God, how we relate to each other in the church as a community in faith, and how we relate to the world.

I want us to see how those three relationships are highlighted throughout this text.

However, before we dive in, we’ve got to see that the primary word, the word upon which this whole chapter is based, is in the very beginning of .

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

Therefore… we know that what follows is based on what’s come before that.

The mercy of God is at the foundation of all that follows.

Chapter starts off with the wrath of God being poured out on all sinners.

So a brief synopsis of the first eleven chapters of Romans would be...

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 881.

“In light of the fact that you used to be under the wrath of God in your sin, and Jesus Christ took your place, and by trusting in Him, He has given you His righteousness and His grace and His peace, and now you stand not only free from your sin, but victorious over all sin for all of eternity all because of the grace of God.

In light of that, you worship God.

In light of that, you love each other.

In light of that, you bless your enemies, those who persecute you.”

So we see that all of the following commands are rooted in the mercy of God.

This whole text teaches us that we are...

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 883.

We are mercy-driven worshipers.

As we gather together this morning to sing, praise and honor and glory to Him; as we live lives of worship, it’s all motivated by mercy.

Worship used to involve dead animals.

What Paul is saying in is that you no longer put animals on the altar.

You put yourself on the altar.

So we...

We live to worship…

As we gather together this morning to sing, praise and honor and glory to Him; as we live lives of worship, it’s all motivated by mercy.

“In light of the fact that you used to be under the wrath of God in your sin, and Jesus Christ took your place, and by trusting in Him, He has given you His righteousness and His grace and His peace, and now you stand not only free from your sin, but victorious over all sin for all of eternity all because of the grace of God.

In light of that, you worship God.

In light of that, you love each other.

In light of that, you bless your enemies, those who persecute you.”

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 883.

David Platt, “Small Groups: Engage in Community,” in David Platt Sermon Archive (Birmingham, AL: David Platt, 2007), 883.

We live to worship…

We live to worship…

This is not just a religious routine any more, this is not just singing, this is not just religious activity.

This is your life.

We live to worship.

As we worship we are...

Sacrificing our bodies.

Verse 1 - We offer ourselves to God.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we put our bodies on the altar and we say, “God, use my body to display your holiness.

God, use my body for your pleasure.”

That’s worship.

So we are sacrificing our bodies and we are...

Surrendering our minds.

Verse 2 - Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

We are surrendering our minds to be saturated with the Word of God and we will be thinking differently.

And we are...

Submitting our wills.

Then you will be able to test what the will of God is.

Verse 2. Here’s the picture that we need to see about this idea of being mercy-driven worshippers...

Worship is not our religious duty; it is our greatest delight.

Worship is not our religious duty in this church.

We don’t worship because it’s what you do on Sunday morning in our culture.

On the contrary, we live to worship because our greatest delight is found in worshipping because we’re worshipping in a view of the mercy of God.

We’re mercy-driven worshippers.

It drives our worship.

We’re mercy-driven worshippers.

Worship is not our religious duty in this church.

We don’t worship because it’s what you do on Sunday morning in our culture.

On the contrary, we live to worship because our greatest delight is found in worshipping because we’re worshipping in a view of the mercy of God.

We’re mercy-driven worshippers.

It drives our worship.

We’re mercy-driven worshippers.

We are a mercy-molded family.

Now I want us to see how that, throughout the rest of this passage, how God’s mercy affects the way we relate to each other.

We are mercy-driven worshippers and...