Sermon Tone Analysis

Opening

Personal opinions, values, and beliefs all across the world, and particularly here in the West, appear to be polarizing into various camps more and more every day.

Liberal and progressive ideologies, conservative politics, religious thinking, national affiliations and the list goes on – all these different worldviews are aggressively competing every day across the news sites, social media, and office cubicles.

All across the fabric of our daily lives.

And we here in this room are not immune.

We each have our own worldview – some of our worldview is shared with others in this room and some of it will not be.

And my guess is that for most of us here, our worldviews are also polarizing to some degree, just like in the rest of the world.

This is nothing new.

Worldviews have always competed and polarized groups throughout history.

But we are seeing something today that we haven’t seen for a long time in the Western world.

As the worldviews on both the left and right, the liberal and conservative, polarize, they are also hardening and growing deaf to all other viewpoints.

Today’s debates and discussions about issues and ideas have become shouting matches and sucker punches.

As a culture, we are losing the ability to disagree respectfully and walk away in friendship.

To live and let live.

Rather, it is as Ian Fleming titled his second James Bond novel, “Live and Let Die.”

his is nothing new.

Worldviews have always competed and polarized groups throughout history.

But we are seeing something today that we haven’t seen for a long time in the Western world.

As the worldviews on both the left and right, the liberal and conservative, polarize, they are also hardening and growing deaf to all other viewpoints.

Today’s debates and discussions about issues and ideas have become shouting matches and sucker punches.

As a culture, we are losing the ability to disagree respectfully and walk away in friendship.

‘My ideology and worldview must come out on top and yours is just plain evil.’This

causes great confusion for us as Christians when we state our beliefs and viewpoints on the various issues and ideas of the day only to than get branded as haters or bigots or killjoys.

Why is this?

Our world is losing an experience of grace – the ability to disagree and love at the same time.

We as Christians have experienced exceptional grace through the forgiveness of our sins by the death and resurrection of Jesus and we now live with a worldview that includes cosmic grace.

This frees us as Christians to extend grace to other people because we know that we are free only by the extraordinary grace of Jesus.

We can freely love any and all people, even if we disagree passionately with them.

This is a culture of grace, and the world is forgetting it.So how do we as Exchange Church live as a people of grace in an ungracious world?

And why should we even bother?These are the questions that we will be addressing this morning.

And to aid our thinking, we will look to .

Let’s turn to it now…

This causes great confusion for us as Christians when we state our beliefs and viewpoints on the various issues and ideas of the day only to then get branded as haters or bigots or 'on the wrong side of history’.

Why is this?

Our world is losing the experience of grace – the ability to disagree and love at the same time.

We as Christians have experienced exceptional grace through the forgiveness of our sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus and we now live with a worldview that includes cosmic grace right at its heart.

This frees us as Christians to extend grace to other people because we know that we are free only by the extraordinary grace of Jesus.

We can freely love any and all people, even if we disagree passionately with them.

This is a culture of grace, and the world is forgetting it.

So how do we here as Shepp Baptist live as a people of grace in an ungracious world?

And why should we even bother?

These are the questions that we will be addressing this morning.

And to aid our thinking, we will look to .

Let’s turn to it now…

Read

Opening Thesis

Paul has a clear view of what a grace-filled church should look like in a graceless world.

The Roman world of Paul’s day certainly had its share of polarized worldviews.

I don’t know if it was more or less so than today, but Scripture reports plenty of intense friction between different worldviews.

For example, in , Paul is on trial before the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council which was made up of two primary factions that, of many things, differed on their views of the supernatural.

Paul just dropped the word ‘resurrection’ in to his defence and the room erupted into an all-in pub brawl.

Trial over.

Call in the military.

Literally.

Back here in Romans, Paul frames the question of how to be a people of grace in a graceless world around the theme of ‘genuine love’.

This is the overarching attitude and definitive characteristic of God’s people in God’s community.

From there, Paul lists several applications of genuine love within the Christian community, so that it can become a place of grace and then lists several applications of genuine love for those outside the Christian community, so that the Christian community can extend grace to a graceless world.

Let’s look at geuine love and its applications in turn.

Genuine Love

If you are following along with me from your Bible, and not just the screen here, you may have noticed that this section of Romans has been labelled, if your using the ESV, as ‘Marks of the True Christian’ or if you’ve got the NIV as ‘Love’ or ‘Love in Action’.

And you probably know that these heading have been added by the publisher to aid in navigating the Bible – they don’t appear in the ancient manuscripts.

Normally that is.

But here in , we find a genuine heading.

The first sentence in verse 9 – ‘let love be genuine’ is Paul’s heading for this section of his letter.

It is the glue that sticks all the other, at times random seeming, bits together.

This love is the Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love of God, as Sally Lloyd-Jones puts it in the Jesus Storybook Bible I read to my boys.

It is a comprehensive and expansive love that should be billowing out of us, filling the whole room, just like a spilt bottle of Chanel No. 9.

This love is spectacular because it doesn’t matter who is being loved.

It is not dependent on somebody’s character, attitude, personality, beliefs, or worldviews.

Rather, it is dependent on the quality and character of the love giver.

This is a very lofty love.

It is too lofty for us to wield on our own – we are too corrupted by sinful self-love.

By God’s grace and through the Holy Spirit living within us, we can, however, extend God’s infinite love to people.

This love is one of the famous “Fruits of the Spirit” in .

And it must be genuine.

Christians often stumble at this point.

We have the appearance of love, but it is often, sadly, not genuine.

Genuineless love is more like billowing mustard gas – it smells lovely like lilac, garlic, or horseradish and it too fills the room like the perfume – but leaves people in agony or death.

So when we are engaging with a graceless world, are we a fragrant perfume or a lethal blister agent – genuine love or fake love?

When we are discussing politics, moral issues, or even the colour to paint the lounge room, are we emitting toxic fumes or the aroma of Christ?

Scripture calls us to be people of grace through genuine love.

Abhor Evil, Cling to What is Good

Paul adds two qualifiers to love here in verse 9 and at the end in verse 21.

Genuine love abhors what is evil, and holds fast, or clings, to what is good.

It is not overcome by evil, but overcomes evil with good.

Living as a people of grace in a graceless world is not a call to abandon God’s truth, call black white or white black, or fall into moral relativism.

This is not love and it is not Biblical.

The world may want us to go along with it in all of its rebellious directions, but as lovers of Christ, Paul calls us to hate exceedingly what is evil and to cling so tightly that it is like we are married to goodness.

But here is the catch – Scripture, here, is speaking about evil and goodness within our own hearts and wills.

Paul is not speaking about us being the moral conscience of the world.

That is the Holy Spirit’s job according to Jesus in .

Rather, we are to cling to goodness like a spouse and be goodness to those around us in the world.

We will look at this a little more a bit later.

Living in genuine love is challenging, especially when we discuss it only in the abstract, so let’s turn our attention to some of the practical things that Paul teaches here in about living graciously in genuine love.

Cultivating Grace within Our Community

Popular wisdom says we should put our own house in order before we try to put others’ houses in order.

So let’s look at what Paul says about cultivating a community of grace right here first.

Brotherly affection

The first thing that Paul says is that we should love each other with the warmth and affection of a family, verse 10.

This is a different type of love than the one that we have just talking about.