Sermon Tone Analysis

In 1980 Herb Brooks coached the United States Men’s Hockey Team.

The team went on to win the gold medal, and it has been called the Miracle on Ice.

There were documentaries, and movies about it.

In 2004 Walt Disney made a movie about it called Miracle-Now, if you have seen the movie the team wasn’t a talent powerhouse mostly college kids, the Russians on the other hand were even more talented than our professional players.

When the the team started playing together, Herb Brooks would have the players call out their name and then he asked Who do you play for?

For Instance my name is Mike Eruzione, who do you play for?

Boston University or My name is Jim Craig, who do you play for?

Boston University.

To prepare for the olympics Team USA played an exhibition game with Norway, throughout the game the players were more interested in themselves, who was scoring, who wasn’t.

They were even making plans for after the game.

They ended up with a mediocre performance at best, and tied a poor Norway team.

So immediately after the game Coach Brooks had the players skate.

He lined the team up at one end and made them skate, to the blue line and back then the red line and back and so forth.

Time ands time again the coach would blow the whistle and the players would skate.

And He made them skate and skate and skate.

They even turned out the lights in the arena.

The players were collapsing.

This scene is from the movie miracle.

Play Video

Later Herb Brooks would say Gentlemen..the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back.

Slide TItle

Prayer

I need to tell you this.

This is not all there is.

What you see, what you touch, what you think is not all there is.

There is something else out there, there is a complete world apart from what you see and what you touch and what you act upon.

There is a spiritual world and that world has influence on this world.

It has influence on you, and me.

Now, You may be thinking well of course Greg, that is obvious, we are in a church, of course we believe in a spiritual world.

What I am saying is although we may believe it exists, practically we have difficulty living everyday, making every decision with the spiritual in mind.

In other words, most people who come to faith in Jesus, practically live life here in this world focused on this world.

They are trying their best under their own power.

They have a picture of eternal life, but it is out there somewhere in the future, when they die.

There is a lot of time before we die until that happens, so we don’t really concern ourselves much with it.

We have good intentions, we may not really bad, but basically we are living for the here and now, our family our jobs ourselves.

We work, we take care of raising the kids, manage the household.

Maybe read a friendly devotion here and there to give us encouragement for this life today, and what we hav e to do to get through today.

The main goal is to get through life without a giant meltdown.

Truth be told, some churches even perpetuate this.

They reduce Christianity to this moral set of rules of right and wrong behaviors.

Some behaviors more repulsive than others.

To be a Christian you figure out which are the big sins that your church will not accept, keep yourself from doing those.

You make a commitment to Christ, then it is back to the real world, someday I will go to heaven.

Our life does not look very different than it did, except now we add Church on to it.

A class here and there, a devotional, post a few things Facebook, keep away from being really bad.

Our main motivation for being or staying a Christian ends up being, to keep our life together.

To stay above water-to live our part of the American dream.

My fear is that we are staying a Christian for ourselves-We are doing Christianity on our own for our own life.

That is not it-That is not Christianity-What Paul has been writing about is that something happened when you were justified by if indeed you were justified.

If you really placed your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, something happened.

You changed, and you continue to change.

You do not continue in sin, you grow.

One of the keys to living this new justified and changed life starts with being part of the spiritual life, while you are living life in the physical.

Eventually when we get to Romans chapter 8, Paul will tell us the key to being a Christian is to live a life in in the spiritual, but now he is preparing us to live life in the Spirit.

He is laying the groundwork by explaining the rules of living in the physical world and how it interacts with the spiritual world.

He has been using language and terminology setting us up for what is coming is Chapter 8, life in the Spirit.

He is heading that direction, we are not there yet, but he has been using language that points that way for instance.

Because it is the power of God-the spiritual world God gives us power-

However, sin also has power…we learn in chapter 3

Under the power of sin...

We are getting this sense that there is another world or realm.

That has power over us.

Either sin of God, In chapter 5, we learn more.

We were still powerless.

Without power on our own under the power of sin-Christ died

Then by the end of that chapter Paul is writing about what reigns in your life, does Christ reign or does sin reign?

Even in our physical life, the spiritual is reigning or in control, the question is it Jesus or is it sin?

Before we were justified, sin reigned.

For those justified through faith in Christ.

Grace reigns through righteousness that is Christ’s righteousness to bring eternal life.

He has been building this case about these two rulers in the spiritual realm.

Either our life is rules by sin and death, or our life is ruled by grace and life by Jesus Christ.

While Christ defeated death, and sin, by his death on the cross, and while sin was defeated in the spiritual world-sin was not removed from the physical world.

It will be some day, as we read in the book of revelation, and we can look with hope to that day but for now, sin still exists in the world and it is still present, and we have to learn to live here.

That is where we pick up the text today-

Starting with verse 14

Sin Paul writes shall not be your master, Sin is personified here, as if sin is a a slave master forcing you to obey it.

Or as if you are under control to do what it tells you.

It is only by Christ, and his rescue that you can break free.

You are no longer- under that master- You were bought by Christ from that master when you were justified, because that person that you were that was under sin died.

In 6 2 Paul said we died to sin- You no longer are forced to obey that master.

Since you died to sin-that realm ruling you-you are in a new realm or kingdom-you are not under law of that kingdom, but instead under grace.

Now as we know by now, Paul anticipates objections to that statement, because it is a bold statement.

You are not under the law but under grace, so Paul addresses that possible objection.

This may sound familiar to you.

It should be---it is very similar to a question Paul posed at the start of the chapter in 6:1- Let’s compare the two for minute- First 6:1

This is slightly different.

In verse 1 the objection is to the thought that we can go on sinning because God provides grace, in accordance with our sin.

The more we sin the more grace God gives that is from a couple of verses before chapter 5.20

So Paul anticipates this and writes....

So first objection-Id grace increases when sin increases can’t we keep sinning.

His answer is NO! or God Forbid!

We died to sin.

This objection while similar is a little different.

It is based on 6, 14

Here the objection is ok if we are dead to sin-from the previous section-then being dead we are not under the authority of the law any longer, but under grace.

SO if we are not under law any more-why do we have to follow it?

The answer-is the same-By no means-or again-God forbid- the strongest negative-Again if you want or desire to keep sinning-or to remain in sin-ongoing-you are not understanding being justified by faith.

So Paul writes..

Don’t you know-Paul says-after all that Don’t you know know, that when you offer yourself to someone to do as they say, you are slaves-you are slave to the one you obey.