Father, there is so much going on that it is hard to keep track of it all. I am so grateful that that is one of the multitudes of things at which You excel! My heart is much more content knowing that You’ve got everything covered and that You are most definitely in charge!
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I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while now, so I am just going to do it! It may look different in the future, but I’d like to share my sermons on my blog. I don’t know who will benefit from them, but I feel that they are important to share. My goal will be to post them on Sundays. They will be an additional post each week – not taking a weekday slot from my blog. (Today is an exception!)
Right up front, where I write all of my blogs – noting other sources where applicable – I rarely write the entirety of my sermons. Being bi-vocational, I build my sermons around the core of someone else’s work. (Writing sermons from scratch is very time-consuming!) I always acknowledge my source, giving them credit where credit is due.
Most recently my source has been the Worship portion of the United Methodist Church’s Discipleship Ministries website. It serves as my core, but I expound and edit quite a bit. I want the Lord to work through me and feel He can do that best when the sermon is “mine” and not just reading off “someone else’s”.
Now mind you this is not a devotional, but a sermon so it will be a fair amount longer. I am now doing online services so I will also include a link to each respective service.
Also, a note on my coloring of text. Black text is what I have written, blue text is from my source (which I always note at the end of my sermon), the purple text is from the Bible, and usually, the green text is from another source (which, if necessary will also be noted at the end of my sermon).
So, without further ado, here’s my sermon from July 12th, 2020!
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Nothing Shall Separate Us Series: 01 – Set Your Mind
1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. Romans 8:1-11 (NRSV)
If you are determined to follow Christ, you will agree that it can be very frustrating! How’s that for an opening statement?! Before we go any further, let me clarify. Hands down, serving Christ is absolutely the most rewarding thing we can do with our lives. So that is not the frustrating part of following Him. What is frustrating in that endeavor…is me…
On many an occasion, I can wholeheartedly echo Paul’s proclamation from Romans 7:24,
Oh, what a miserable person I am! NLT Who will rescue me from this body of death? NRSV
We have to ask ourselves, “Why is he talking like that? He’s a leader in the church! He led so many to a vibrant relationship with Christ! What’s going on?!”
A couple of sentences back in his letter to the church in Rome, he writes his reason.
I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. v19 NLT
I can sure relate, can’t you?
Interestingly enough, my blog post from this past Wednesday was about how we can relate to certain characters in the Bible – namely King David and the Apostle Peter – because we can see that they were anything but perfect. Yet in spite of their sin – and just like us, there were not just a couple of indiscretions – God loved them.
In some ways maybe we can relate to Paul even more. Have you committed adultery or murdered anyone as David did? Have you, in front of everyone, denied even knowing Jesus, especially when He needed you most, as Peter did? Maybe not, but how many of us in our quiet comfortable little Christian lives, still crash and burn…and not a soul knows anything about it – except us…and God.
That is why we can relate to Paul. In his writings to the Romans he is so brutally honest, to admit to his own failings, to confess his own wrestling with sin in his own body and life! It makes him more human, more like us; and we can sympathize.
Because Paul came clean with his inadequacies and struggles, it helps us to understand that we aren’t alone. It helps us realize that it is not just us, but that others – other followers of Christ – aren’t perfect either but often find themselves in the same boat in which we find ourselves.
19th-century pastor, Phillips Brooks, author of O Little Town of Bethlehem, said that “preaching is bringing truth through personality.” So, here is Paul bringing this truth through his own personality.
We need this message! Paul was not just crying out for himself, but he was crying out for all of us. His message is about the human condition—a condition of ultimate helplessness to bring about our own salvation; or, in Paul’s words, to rescue us from this body of death!
Thankfully, we don’t have to rescue ourselves. We’ve already been rescued. Paul says in Romans 8:1,
Therefore there is now no condemnation [no guilty verdict, no punishment] for those who are in Christ Jesus [who believe in Him as personal Lord and Savior]. AMP
Wow! Did that verse impact you? Or have you heard it so many times that it’s become just a little too familiar? Read it through with me, except this time, let’s take it slow and easy.
Therefore there is now no condemnation [no guilty verdict, no punishment] for those who are in Christ Jesus [who believe in Him as personal Lord and Savior]. AMP
We have been rescued! We were all at death’s door, but our Savior died in our stead and in the process conquered death and the grave!
I’m not a shouting-in-church type of person but if I were, I’d holler over something like this!
Before we leave this spot, let’s pause here for just a moment. Stand in the grace and freedom that these verses share. Celebrate the gift; taste the life that is offered here. Revel in it, as Paul does, before we try to understand it. Realize how countercultural this faith thing is.
We nod along and mumble, “Thank you, Jesus” without grasping the depth of the gift…the radical nature of grace. Our culture is a “can-do” culture, with a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” kind of faith. To begin with, the proclamation that there is something you can’t do is to swim against that tide. To admit that you are helpless in the face of your own sin is a shame and an embarrassment in our cultural climate.
Yet…that is the crux of Paul’s argument. To skip over this makes everything that follows empty and powerless. It is only by diving into the depths of Paul’s plea, “Who will rescue me…?” that we can begin to experience the glory of what Christ has done for us and in us.
And what is it that Christ has done? How do we describe this gift? “No condemnation” is how Paul describes it. No guilty verdict, no punishment …freedom …freed from a law whose purpose was to show us the error of our ways. Its purpose was not to free us and because there was no freedom to be had, it became a burden. It condemned us by showing us our problem. No longer could we sidestep, claiming ignorance.
But when Jesus came, He did all that we could not. He fulfilled the Law in its entirety. He stood in our stead. And because of His supreme sacrifice, we now have the freedom to live…really live!
That is the gift. Yes, it is life eternal, but that life begins now, in the freedom of the grace of Jesus Christ, the Resurrected One. And this Christ will “give life to your mortal bodies…” v11 meaning we don’t have to wait, meaning that this isn’t just about someday, but about this day…right now…here. The gift is ours.
From a spiritual perspective, we might be tempted to think that this is too good to be true…yet it is most certainly true! But what many of us balk at is the fact that there are conditions. To live this life, to claim this freedom, there is an invitation to which we need to respond. “There is…now no condemnation,” writes Paul, “for those who are in Christ Jesus.” v1 What does Paul mean by “in Christ Jesus”?
Later, in verse 9, Paul contrasts “in the flesh” with “in the Spirit.” And we have to be careful here. Flesh doesn’t mean just bodily things. Paul doesn’t argue that bodies are bad. In the early church, there was a false belief system called Gnosticism which held that to have a relationship with God meant separating ourselves from the physical with a special knowledge they said was available. Early church fathers rightfully condemned it. Physical things, our bodies included, are not in and of themselves evil. Paul is not saying that anything done in the body is to be avoided.
Last week, a portion of our text was from Galatians 5:19-21. In it, Paul cataloged a list of “works of the flesh”. Listen as I read through it once more.
…sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. vs19-21 NLT
Obviously, there are bodily sins on that list, but there are also spiritual sins like idolatry and jealousy and division included. Paul’s argument was not that bodies are bad. His goal was to point out that this gift of life comes to our mortal bodies!
Again, we touched on this last in our sermon but as followers of Christ, we need to be determined to distance ourselves from the idea of being self-directed. Paul argues that when we live being guided only by self, it leads to death. On the other hand, if we strive to live lives that are Spirit-directed then we will truly begin to know the fullness of life.
Where the struggle arises in living by the Spirit, is with the surrender of self. We know but we refuse to acknowledge that we are powerless, in the face of our own sin.
Too often, we want to use our faith. We want to use Jesus, as an add on, as a “spiritual booster,” as commentator Blair Alison Pogue calls it (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol.3, p.231). We use our faith and Jesus as that something extra to get us over the hump.
But the problem is, we are the hump. If there is anything that hinders the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives – so that we can be “in Christ” – it is ourselves.
Let me repeat all of verse 1 with emphasis on that important phrase. We need to hear it very clearly.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1 NRSV
It says, “in Christ,” not Christ in us.
Dr. Derek Weber, from whom the core of many of my more recent messages has come, says, “It is not our wills, but Christ’s will that guides us. We are subsumed in Christ”
Weber is a pretty well-educated guy and will use words that I don’t know. Often, I’ll change them to something more familiar. That word subsumed was a new one for me, so I looked it up and realized that no other word communicated it the way that subsumed did.
According to Merriam Webster, subsumed means to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive.
Would we not all agree that Christ is larger than we are? Is He not more comprehensive than we are? So, to be “in Christ” means that we are included or placed within Someone larger and more comprehensive than we are!
Our fear here is that somehow, we will be less ourselves when we surrender to Christ. But, in fact, the opposite is true. We become more of ourselves.
Hear Paul’s words from Romans 8:11 NRSV,
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
We are more fully ourselves when we set our minds on the things of the Spirit. When we set aside what this culture calls “looking out for number one,” then we become more truly alive!
That is the invitation. Set your mind on Christ. Set your mind on the things of the Spirit. Then live out the salvation that is ours “in Christ”, today and every day.
Core by DEREK WEBER / https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/nothing-shall-separate-us/sixth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-a-lectionary-planning-notes/sixth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-a-preaching-notes
July 12th, 2020, Sunday, 8:07 pm
