The Children Of The Spirit

Transcript

Good morning Trinity Church. How’s it going? Y’all doing okay? It’s a sunny day in October, 82 degrees, pretty warm, unusual weather, but given that we live in Portland I am not complaining that we are blessed with hot weather when it is so often rainy the rest of the year. If I’ve not had the blessing of meeting your brothers and sisters, my name is Christian. I am one of the lay pastors here at Trinity Church and I also have the distinct pleasure once in a while to preach God’s inspired word to the people of God, you Trinity Church, and it is a great delight for my soul. This morning we are starting our third sermon in a sermon series focused on the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. This chapter is so rich with theological truths that many people call it the great eight because of all the punchiness and power hidden inside its

text. So brothers and sisters if you are able I’d like to have you stand for the reading of the Word of God and then after we read it you may be seated. The Word of the Lord speaks to the people of God, starting in verse 12, So then brothers we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh for if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba Father the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs of God and

fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him this is the word of the Lord Trinity Church thanks be to God you may be seated let us start where we always ought to start in every aspect of our lives and that is going to the Lord to seek his help and his blessing father in heaven what is a more fitting response to these glorious verses than to give you praise and to thank you we thank you for the gift of being counted among your children that we are free from us from a spirit of fear and from slavery to sin we pray this morning that you would send your Holy Spirit and use your word to show us the beauty the power the endurance of the great salvation that you have given us through your son we ask for receptive

The Spirit’s Three-Fold Leading

hearts to not only hear your word Lord but to change our lives accordingly and we ask these things for your glory with the help of your spirit in the name of the Lord Jesus amen it was a mystery that could rival anything written by Agatha Christie the famous mystery writer but it just so happens to be true at the beginning of 2015 detective Peter Hadley with the San Bernardino County had a really unusual case on his hands by that point he already spent 20 years investigating a missing persons case he turned over every lead he re-examined all the evidence only to be disappointed time and time again the thing that made this particular case so unusual was that detective Hadley already knew the missing woman her name was Lisa he spoke to her on a regular basis he had come to realize in the course of that 20-year investigation that Lisa went missing at

a young age though he knew her he didn’t know her real name he didn’t know the place that she was from and he certainly did not know the people that missed her every day so in 2015 Lisa’s case gained some prominence with people who are experts at using the various DNA websites antistry DNA 23andme my heritage and so on these are experts who are good at connecting long-lost family members and dozens of these people came out of the woodwork to help Lisa find her family and in the process pioneered a new technique that single-handedly revolutionized the world of forensics so they work backwards they found distant relatives of Lisa who had their DNA on these websites third and fourth and fifth cousins and through a long process that took many hours and a whole lot of work they finally narrowed down the possibility of Lisa’s parents to one man

and one woman when she reconnected with her extended family some 30 years later it was an emotional reunion to say the least and the truth is that memories fade people forget the trail goes cold and our perceptions can be out of touch but DNA the basic building block of our physical bodies holds the key to who we are and to the people that we are descended from have you ever thought about your DNA I’m not talking about your physical DNA that you can look into with a test from Amazon but your spiritual DNA the stuff that clues you into the most basic questions of who you are and whose you are who are you deep down who is your who is your father what family do you belong to and what is your destiny if you’ve been with us during the last two terms we learned that the

Holy Spirit is intimately involved in the life of every Christian and the Spirit is present in all moments of our Christian journey and this morning we will see this passage take us further still the passage shows us how the Spirit guides the people of Jesus towards three things in verses 12 through 13 the Spirit leads Christians towards our flourishing and this 14 through 16 the Spirit leads us towards our father and in verse 17 the Spirit leads us towards our future so look down at verse 12 as Paul shows the people of God the Spirit’s role in our flourishing in verse 12 Paul is wrapping up his teaching kind of giving us a logical conclusion to verses 1 through 11 in verses 1 through 11 Paul is pretty much telling Christians what’s up there’s not a whole lot of commandments about do this or do that he’s telling us the

reality of what is it’s a dense summary of what God has done for us through his spirit and his son and since Jesus has paid for our sins there is now no more condemnation for us and not only so but a switch has happened in a dominated by the flesh to being ruled and led by the Spirit of God so here in verse 12 the text shows us what being led by God’s spirit means for how Christians engage with this pesky thing called the flesh now the flesh isn’t your body your physical body is created good and as we learned last Sunday you can be sure God will resurrect your physical body on the great and final day because as a Christian the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now lives inside of you so the body really is neutral it’s that’s the best way of

Our Obligation to the Spirit

thinking about it our body can either be a channel for walking in the spirit or for walking in the flesh so the flesh isn’t your body but the flesh is the part of this world which includes aspects of our lives that does not submit to the will and leading of King Jesus so in verse 12 in the I read it in the ESV it says so then brothers we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh I like the ESV that’s a really faithful way of translating that but it comes across as choppy it’s a little bit awkward the NIV is more clear here so I’ll be reading this verse from that translation the NIV says therefore brothers and sisters we have an obligation but it is not to the flesh to live according to it this word here translated as being a debtor or

obligation is a word that has a lot of connection with the financial world I work for a bank so I could definitely roll with that more recently the talk of the banking world is that mortgage rates are going up and that means a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people now let’s think for a moment about mortgages when you sign up for a mortgage you don’t just buy a house you take on a large loan and you tie yourself to that loan by signing a mountain of paperwork and this all of this creates an obligation for you to pay so you build your budget you limit your monthly expenses there are habits that you form intentionally so that you can make those mortgage payments maybe you don’t go out and eat as much as you want and you certainly ask your sister

to borrow her Netflix password the list could go on and on now in our former lives we were walking hand-in-hand with the flesh the everything in this created order that is in rebelling against the Lord we belonged to the flesh and outside of God’s intervention even our best deeds went to serve our twisted and rebellious desires but since conversion the Christian life isn’t lived in the world of the flesh it’s lived in the world of the spirit by the power of God you have moved if you are a Christian kingdom the kingdom of the flesh to the dominion and kingdom of the spirit you have died to sin to the sinful world your life is hidden with Christ in God there’s no more obligation to the flesh the debt is paid and thus the old sinful habits that we still struggle with don’t reflect the new reality that

we actually live in now don’t get me wrong Christians still struggle against the flesh but it cannot be a rule of our lives that the flesh gets what it wants all the time believers have freedom from its power and tyranny because it doesn’t have authority over those who belong to Christ and I know having said all of that that’s much easier said than done if you’re anything like me you’re good at justifying yourself it’s not hard to find excuses for all kinds of sins have you been impatient with your co-worker you must have had trouble sleeping or it’s really your anxiety kicking in did you speak ill of a brother or sister did you gossip about a brother and sister well you just want people to know how they could be praying for that brother and sisters you see how easy it is for our flesh to make excuses for our sin but here’s the thing

minimizing and making justifications for our sin is another way of saying that we do have an obligation to the flesh to do what the flesh invites us to do nothing can be done nothing can be done about it and so discouraged God’s people are tempted to make peace with a half-hearted obedience neglecting to press on in the hard work of confessing of repenting and of running towards the Lord but of course all of these tendencies ignore the victory of Jesus over sin and the flesh that belongs to all Christians everywhere the way that we think about the flesh how we deal with sin itself now the path to flourishing in the Christian life isn’t to fulfill every desire it’s not to meet every goal it’s not to get that next promotion living truly as redeemed human beings as faithful Christians is always marked by struggle by repentance and by

violence or against our sinful desires verse 13 says if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live did you catch that language it’s a violent language it’s to execute to hunt down to target to destroy the only way for the people of God to put sin to death is by the power of the Spirit that resides in us now if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time you know of at least two temptations that we run up against when encountering how to put the flesh to death the first is the moralistic approach this approach is hyper focused on fighting sin by white knuckling it usually looks like an excessive focus on the right techniques or programs or reminding yourself of all kinds of reasons why sin is bad and that is the course that goes on in your mind

and that if you really have it in you if you’re strong enough and persevere enough you will finally get the results that you want but without the Spirit strength to put sin to death this approach becomes inward focus centered on our own power to control our lives and it’s really anti God because it feeds the sins of pride and self-reliance some people see the foolishness of this moralistic approach and run in the opposite direction the opposite camp is what some like to call the let go and let God camp it’s an invitation to stop striving don’t concern yourself with putting your sin to death instead you gotta trust God in his work because that’s when the Lord steps in the Lord will fight for you no need to do anything this is tempting because it sounds spiritual but it really is an invitation towards laziness

in our sanctification none of these approaches are right and none of them offer us as Christians the kind of long-lasting sin-killing power that will lead to greater love and fellowship with Christ so what does it look like to put sin to death by the power of your spirit open your Bibles to Philippians chapter 2 will be reading verses 12 through 13

Paul says in verse 12 of Philippians chapter 2

therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed so now not only as in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling that’s the command work out your salvation with fear and trembling why for it is God who works in you both to do and to work for his good pleasure

— Philippians 2

(ESV)

you see that dynamic we have to work out this great salvation into every nook and cranny of our lives but all the while this approach is God’s work because it is God who gets the glory and the credit for all of it and here’s the thing putting our sin to death isn’t done by focusing solely on your sin and how bad you are just before he tells us how to work out our salvation with fear and trembling Paul is doing the work of

worshiping King Jesus brothers and sisters look up a little bit from verse 12 to verse 5 in Philippians chapter 2 if you already turn there

have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross therefore God has highly exalted him and bestow on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father

— Philippians 2

(ESV)

do you

see how he’s warming the affections of the heart by worshiping the Lord the power to kill sin and sinful habits cannot happen outside of growing in our worship and love of Jesus and yet God’s Word goes further to me in the midst of our discouragement that we feel so often Romans 8 takes us to the next action of the Holy Spirit and that is that the Spirit leads us into fellowship with our father look at verses 15 through 16 for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the spirit of adoptions as sons by whom we cry Abba Father the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God it is by the Spirit that you know and experience the father who joyfully welcomes you into his family the spirit of adoption is a reference to the Holy Spirit as a child of God this is not

just a theological truth this is something that cuts through all the layers of your humanity that you are in fact one of the sons the children of God the people of God can be confident truly abidingly you can take it to the bank that you are a child of God we are sons of God the text says and this is a phrase that definitely incorporates women as well so this is a true promise for the children of God who are men and women boys and girls who have put their faith in King Jesus now here’s the interesting thing the Spirit leads us to cry Abba Father the first word was the language that Jesus spoke when he was on earth but the translation father typically if you hear a kid call his dad father it comes across as a bit cold as a little bit distant but the has an

intimacy to it’s used in a family setting [Audio issue resolved - continuing with the message] we were talking about the word Abba that the Spirit leads the people of Jesus to cry out Abba in the ancient world was used in a family setting it was deeply personal it both recognize the father for who he was as the father but it also was drenched in intimacy and confidence in the child’s acceptance by the father the first person to talk to God using Abba in the New Testament was none other than Jesus himself and here’s the thing it would have been shocking to hear a Jewish man of that time refer to God as Abba before Jesus the Jewish people of the day with on occasion refer to God as

the father of the nation but never ever as a personal Abba to each and every believer in fact in the Gospel of John the Jewish leaders try to kill Jesus all the more why John 518 says because not only was he breaking the Sabbath but he was calling God his own father and here’s the thing Trinity Church if you have come to believe in Jesus you are brought into the family of God you have God for your father there is no sweeter and more secure identity than to be a child of God no one in and nothing in all of creation relates to God the way that you do brothers and sisters not even the angels in heaven and contrary to popular belief not everyone is a child of God only those who believe in the Son of God become children of God and the mighty

Children and Co-Heirs

God who sustains and rules over all the world and over all of creation that same God becomes our father and this all means that God has pledged himself to you forever to guide you to discipline you to counsel you to plot for your good and to take you home so that you spend eternity with him J.I. Packer a theologian that many of us are fond of says regarding adoption he says quote in adoption God takes us into his family and fellowship he establishes us as his children and heirs closeness affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship to be right with God the judge is a great thing but to be loved and cared for by God the father is greater brothers and sisters are you captivated by being a child of God when is the last time that you have basked in the sheer joy of being his child how often does it show up in the

way that you encourage that you comfort you’re discouraged and struggling brothers and sisters this is who we are truly and if it’s not something that comes to mind at all spend some time asking the Spirit of God to work in you the kind of affection and joy and thankfulness for being the children of God that we actually are through Christ here’s the thing your struggle with sorrow sin and discouragement has an expiration date when you die or Christ returns it will be no more but who you are as a child of God has no expiration date if you are a Christian no day is coming when you will cease being your father’s child that’s a great comfort but alongside the sweetness of being God’s children there’s a flip side that we have to be mindful of the words Abba father here in this text are links to

something that Jesus said in the gospel of Mark open your Bibles to mark chapter 14 or read verses 32 through 36 it’s also on the screen behind me the Word of God says starting in verse 32

and they went to a place called Gethsemane and he said to his disciples sit here while I pray and he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled and he said to them my soul is very sorrowful even to death remain here and watch and going a little further he fell on the ground and pray that if it were possible the hour might pass from him and he said Abba father all things are possible for you remove this cup from me yet not what I will but what you will

— Mark 14

(ESV)

do you see the agony that Jesus is in as he anticipates the coming cross his body and soul are

spilling over with sorrow and distress and in the darkness of the night he pleads with God his Abba he says remove the cup take it away the cup here is a symbol for the judgment and wrath of God for the sins that Jesus is soon to receive he pleads with the father in his agony to take it away the father heard him the father always hears him and he said no so Jesus goes to the cross to fulfill all that was written of him in Trinity Church we are children of God only because the father crushed the son and raised him to life on the third day when you are graced with faith you are clothed in his righteousness you are united to Jesus and you become the children of God and like the Son of God the adopted children of God slowly and surely begin to say in this life not my

will but yours be done lastly the spirit leads us to understanding our future look at down at verse 17 in Romans 8 Paul says that if children then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him beyond the fatherly intimacy of God shows that he treats Christians like legitimate children and not like stepchildren by giving to them an inheritance and all brothers and sisters, what an inheritance the Bible holds out for those who have God for their father it is not afraid to reveal what God has in store for those who love him pretty consistently when you read if you search in your Bible app the word inheritance really consistently you’ll see that our future and present inheritance has direct bearing on how we live our lives in the present so I’m reminded of the

apostle Paul who writes the church in Corinth the church in Corinth had some deep painful church issues and they have problems so bad that by our standards we probably would struggle to even identify them as a church but not Paul sees them as a church he addresses them as the Church of God in Corinth and he knows that these Christians are called to be Saints so in 1st Corinthians 6 he deals with one particular problem these Christians are taking each other to court they are suing each other and their strife and conflict is bringing shame on the name of Jesus because they’re suing each other in a secular court in front of non-believers but here’s the thing Paul doesn’t say to them cut it out stop it pay attention to what he says in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 verse starting in verse 1 he says when one of you has a grievance against

another does he dare go to the law before the unrighteous instead of the Saints or do you not know that the Saints will judge the world and if the world is to be judged by you are you incompetent to try trivial cases do you not know that we are to judge angels how much more than matters pertaining to this life there’s wisdom in these words brothers and sisters Paul isn’t throwing condemnation at them for their sins so they can finally feel bad enough to stop it he’s not trying to guilt them this is a radically different approach this is an approach that reminds Christians of what God will do for them in the future so that the aim is to warm the heart with affection and love and thankfulness towards God and because of love of him we lay aside our sin and sinful practices he’s bringing their future inheritance as the people who will one

day judge the world with God to bear on their petty quarrels and squabbles he’s saying that if you will judge the world in the future you can definitely sort out your differences in a gracious and understanding way brothers and sisters I encourage you to take the same approach in the privacy of your alone time when you are tempted to listen to the same chorus of condemnation reflect on the now and future blessings that are yours in Christ and here’s a simple ask as I hinted at before at some point this week go home and search inheritance in your Bible app it’s gonna take three seconds and spend some time meditating on those verses that will not be wasted time so in verse 17 of Romans 8 Paul calls us Paul calls you heirs of God it’s true that Christians inherit the promises of God but that’s not what heir of God actually means as his children you don’t

Suffering and Glory

just get to benefit from God stuff to be an heir of God is to have gone and the greatest and sweetest blessing of being a Christian starts the moment that you become one you become a forever inheritor of the triune God Father Son and Holy Spirit so that you can say with the psalmist, even in moments of discouragement when you don’t feel like it my flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever as the children of God your inheritance means that you will encounter some of the same challenges that Jesus encountered when he was on earth Christians are after all co-heirs with Christ we aim and seek to follow in his footsteps Jesus is the only true Son of God the one and faithful heir that is deserving of all of God’s blessings and promises but the life that Jesus had was hard it was arduous he was constantly

assaulted by all types of opposition because he was the Son of God doing the Father’s will in the sinful world Jesus endured opposition that drove him to the cross the cross though it was the plan of God and we do well to remember that was also something that the sinful world plotted to destroy the life of the Son of God and we will face opposition if you are a child of God the way this text is written it’s a non-negotiable you will suffer for his sake the loss of a job the end of a friendship the venom of co-workers or neighbors and misrepresentation by those in the world who hate Christians and the God we worship and the list could go on and on and on but all of this brothers and sisters is by God’s design because suffering has a way to bring things into

focus it cuts through the fog so that we see what is truly important and we see the Father in our identity as children and we hold fast to that all the more tightly in another part of the New Testament to suffer for the sake of Christ is something that is spoken of as if it’s granted to you as a blessing from God to remind you of who you are and the Savior through whom we are counted and brought to the Father Trinity Church I want to close by reading the beginning of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount these are the Beatitudes and as you hear these verses hear them as the inheritance of God that he has promised to you, his children and he opened his mouth and taught them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted blessed are the meek for they

shall inherit the earth blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you let’s pray Abba our Father in heaven what an indescribable never-ending joy is ours to know you and to be a part of your family thank you for sending your spirit to show us who you are to drive us into deeper

relationship with you father I pray that we would put our flesh to death and the sins of the flesh not by our own efforts but by the power of your spirit that shows us who you are and who we are in the great calling that you have given to us for those of us father who are suffering I pray that you would strengthen us and for those who are suffering for Christ’s sake I pray that you would help them see the blessing that is theirs even in the midst of the difficulties that you are the God who has pledged yourself to us and we hold fast to your words that you will never leave us or forsake us we praise you and pray these things in Jesus’s name amen