Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Whether you are joining us online or you are here in person we are so thankful and blessed that you would be here with us this morning.

Please take your Bibles and turn with me to Romans 5, Romans 5. We’re in our fourth week of the Advent season and thus far we’ve really scaled to the utter heights of the human experience.

As Kyle so ably reminded us last week the Advent season is both a celebration and remembrance of Christ’s initial incarnation on earth and it is also a time for us to look forward to the glorious return that He has promised us.

And so we’ve really spent the last few weeks looking at the heights of the human experience - in fact as I was studying for this sermon and that truth came out to me I thought that maybe we should have titled this series “The Highs of Humanity” but then I remembered where we live and that that title might be taken out of context.

Nonetheless, that is what we have been looking at.

During the first week we looked at arguably the second highest emotion that a human can have in hope - and we’ll look at the highest emotion a human can experience on Christmas Eve when we culminate this series by looking at love.

Then we looked at the highest attribute a human can demonstrate in the attribute of faith.

The ability to trust in something we can’t see but intuitively know is true and to operate out of that belief as we navigate our daily lives.

We looked last week at the highest human condition that a man or woman can live in - that being the condition of a joyful life, despite the circumstances surrounding our lives we as Christians are called to exude and live in the condition of joy.

This week we come to the highest human desire of peace.

Peace is a rare commodity in our world.

In fact, in all of human history only 8% of recorded human history has been peaceful.

In over 3,100 years, only 286 have been warless and 8,000 treaties have been broken in this time.

This may be cliche but there also hasn’t been a single beauty pageant in the history of the world in which one participant didn’t express the desire to achieve world peace.

Political platforms used to be built on it and political reputations were made by it.

Who can forget Ronald Regan’s impassioned statement “Mr.

Gorbachev tear down this wall” as he sought to bring an end to the Cold War and peace to the world.

But there is something missing in the statistics and desires and speeches.

It is a failure to acknowledge that in fact the world has never been at peace and that even when human is at peace with other humans, there is a battle that still rages that is the one we really need a reprieve from, where we really need to find peace.

And this is what the peace of Advent is all about so if you have your Bibles open to Romans 5 please look with me at verses 1 through 11.

We will be focusing most of our time on verse 1 but I want to read all of this to give us some context for what Christ through Paul has to say to us this morning.

We live in a day where there are many who are crying out peace, peace but there is no peace.

But as we look at this passage this morning we’re going to find that peace is possible - and it’s not even that elusive.

First though, we need to understand why we need peace.

Only then can we understand how we have peace and with that understanding we’ll be able to discern what the implications are or what do we do with this peace.

Look back at this morning’s text with me and let’s understand the peace that God has provided for us.

Why We Need Peace

Therefore - just stop right there.

Circle the word.

Let it marinate in your mind for a minute.

Let the implications of this nine letter word wash over you - you see it is in the therefore that many of us lived and the majority of the world still lives.

It is the therefore that sums up all of why we need peace.

It is important for us this morning not to take these verses and think that it is the beginning of Paul’s thought and that he is simply declaring us righteous and peaceful.

That is not the case.

He has been building to this and the entirety of his discussion is summed up in the word therefore.

But what has he been saying?

Keep your finger in chapter 5 and turn back with me to chapter 1.

After a nice and friendly introduction and a beautiful statement regarding the righteous being saved by faith Paul switches his direction and begins a rather lengthy and comprehensive condemnation of all of humanity.

He begins with the ungodly.

There is a group of people who by their own desire suppress the truth and deny God despite the fact that creation reveals Him - and is being ordered by Him.

In our day God is denied through the foolish ideology of evolution being foisted upon our children in school, through the concept of global warming that leads to teenagers being named the “person of the year” and through the continual push of the sexual revolution to force everyone to affirm their particular truth to the derision and complete denial of the created order of humanity.

Paul goes on in chapter 1 to talk more about that but what I specifically want us to see this morning is what he writes in Romans 1:29-32 as he describes the mindset of our world

The world - in their condition as God-haters - actually encourage and applaud the behaviors of others that are condemning them to death.

And lest we think that we are safe because of some perceived righteousness within ourselves Paul moves on to address those among his initial audience who felt the same way - that’s not me anymore.

There were those in the church of Rome and there are those in the church today who think that they are at peace with God because they have determined it to be that way.

They keep all of the commands.

They go to church.

They give their 10%, read their Bible, they volunteer on holidays, they might even volunteer on days that aren’t holidays.

They show up for every event - and yet look at Paul’s words to them

You see there’s no way that anyone can keep the law or obtain righteousness by their own actions.

There are those who think that they can put God in their debt by acting according to His laws but with impure or immoral motives.

They reveal themselves to the world daily by claiming the name but wearing it falsely and demonstrating through their actions that they never believed to begin with.

And they bring reproach upon the name of God and validate for the world the way they feel and act.

Also in this group are those who, instead of seeking to attain peace with God, are simply content to reach more of a detente with Him.

An agreement of sorts that says I’m good with you, you’re good with me and one day I’ll stand before you and we have this agreement but until that time I’m going to operate on my own standards but don’t ever forget we have this agreement.

This analogy isn’t perfect but it’s much like the conditions that existed between Russian and Germany in the late 1930’s.

The year was 1939 and the Nazi party reigned in Germany.

All political signs demonstrated that Europe was headed towards another catastrophic war.

That’s why it was a shock to the world when Germany and the Soviet Union - two diametrically opposed political and ideological systems - signed a non-aggression pact that neither would attack the other for 10 years.

This ultimately allowed Germany to invade Poland unopposed and two years later, in 1941, to break the pact by invading Russia.

As I said, the analogy breaks down a bit because the circumstances aren’t quite the same - but many of us try and make a non-aggression pact with God, more of a mutual existence agreement.

I acknowledge Your Son, and I’ll even agree that He died for my sins (what a bonus for me I get all the benefits and there’s no real cost to me there) but that’s about it, I’m going to continue to live my life and You go Your way.

I know this mindset because it is how I tried to live much of my life until Christ brought me face to face with just how fragile life is and how But there is no such thing as a non-aggression pact with Christ, there is no partial agreement, there is no detente.

Either you are fully at peace with Him or you are fully at war and a friend of the world.

The apostle James writes it this way in James 4:4

Paul sums up this whole section in that well known section of Scripture Romans 3:21-26 where he leaves all men undone regardless of their station or condition in Romans 3:23

This verse is the great equalizer because it leaves none innocent.

No matter how you were raised, where you were born, what color your skin is, your gender, your iq, or any other factor in your life can prevent you from sinning and falling short of the glory of God.

And the thing is when we live in the therefore we would have it no other way.

We really don’t want God and are happy to be at war with Him.

Kyle made a profound statement last week saying that God will give us “the punishment we desire” - when we live here we don’t desire peace with God because we don’t want to submit to what that requires of us.

Now I’m sure there are some here this morning, or maybe watching online, who are thinking “This is not a Christmas sermon.

How can you stand up there and preach this on Christmas Sunday of all Sundays.

This is supposed to be an uplifting morning full of manger scenes and shepherds and gloria in excelsis deo.”

Yet there are some today who are here who I would provide a grave disservice to if I glossed over their condition and allowed them to leave this place thinking they were at peace with God.

There are some here today who are living in this “Therefore” and their eternal souls are in severe peril.

It is because of them that I cannot, I will not merely skip over the depth and gravity of this therefore.

There may even be some here today who think they are beyond this therefore but in reality are trying to live on a moment in time, a moment in which they attempted to reach a detente with God and who need to hear that peace has not been declared in their lives and that hostilities still exist.

That

But - and that is one of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture because as much woe and gloom as is found in the therefore, there is glorious hope found in the but.

The but is significant because the glorious truth is that this therefore is not the end and there is more to the truths of this passage and the hope, joy and yes peace that it contains.

It comes in the form of two declarations that we’re going to look at now.

How We Have Peace

Paul makes two successive declarations that build on one another that demonstrate our condition as Christians - we have been declared righteous by faith and as a result of that peace has been declared in the war that existed between God and man.

Neither of these are dependent on the individual but instead are declarations of God - it is His righteousness that is a result of the faith that He gives us.

It is He who declares that we are at peace.

And all of this is made possible by the life and death of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we celebrate this first advent of Christ we must, and we haven’t, ever get far away from the truth that His advent is the precursor to the salvation event that would end His life and was His sole reason for coming.

This peace was promised by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 32:17

And it is the reason that the seed of David promised in Isaiah 9 would be called the Prince of Peace

And oh what a peace we has been declared.

This isn’t the mere peace of mind that something has changed although that is a factor or a byproduct of the peace that we find here.

This peace is solely concerned with the cessation of the hostile condition that exists between God and the sinner.

James Montgomery Boice said it this way

We have been at war with God and he with us, because of our sin, and that peace has nevertheless been provided for us by God—if we have been justified through faith in Jesus Christ.

The other beauty of this peace is that this peace is comprehensive and life changing.

Unlike treaties or peace agreements in our world where the combatants retreat beyond different borders we are ushered into the very family of the One we were at war with.

Nor are we simply made like prisoners of war - because in a sense peace now exists between the prisoner and the capturing nation.