Dr. Mark Turman: Good morning, everybody. Glad that you're here. Yeah, that song is actually a gift that I learned when Sheila picked it out probably a year ago and has become one of my favorites and something I really, really do treasure.
Dr. Mark Turman: So glad that you'RE here this morning and glad that YOU've come. In some sense, I suppose that all of us being here is us, again, running to the Father to to be with him, and to enjoy his presence, and to once again hear about his love. If you want to follow along with today's message from Romans chapter 8, you'll find it in the Bible on the chair. Depending on what version you have, it's either page 1118, that is 1118. Or, if you're in one of the other translations, the Bibles are not all exactly the same. It's on page 916. You can follow along as we talk about this gift that we're going to celebrate in a few minutes through communion, this gift that God has given us that we call salvation, we call it redemption, we call that restoration, we called it by a lot of things but the best thing to call it is the greatest gift of all. Now by a show of hands, a little survey, how many of you remember who won the Super Bowl in January?
Dr. Mark Turman: wearing? Who was it, Jim? All right. One out of however many people are here. How many of you remember who won the Masters back in April? One or two? All Right. Good deal. How many of know who won The Stanley Cup? Well, Nikki knows. Who was it? I think that's right. I don't have any idea really. Okay. If it sounds right to you i'm going with how about the nba championship new york knicks only because it was the knicks and we never thought they would ever be there again uh we're about to the time of the fedex cup champion in golf anybody remember who was the fedEx champion last year i have no clue how about the world series that will be the next big thing after the fedEX cup la okay likely or is that a prediction or is that from last year well yes i mean they they all you know they made a prediction this week that we should just stop the season now and give the world series trophy to the dodgers but we're not going to do that because oh by the way they've lost six straight games in case you're wondering you know for all of the ways that we're enamored with who is first best best and greatest, we really forget very quickly. As a matter of fact, I bet you don't even remember on the 4th of July, just a little more than a month ago, who won Nathan's hot dog eating contest. Do you remember? Joey Chestnut. Well, now you, not surprising, Nicky, that you remember remember that one very quickly. Do you remember how many hot dogs? 66, which was a little bit down from his previous record of like 76, but still good enough to win. And oh, by the way, Joey won the hot dog contest for the 18th time. How the man is still alive, we don't know. All right. I mean, of all the ways that you could be gifted by God to live on this planet and do good works could eating hot dogs really be one of those things I mean really but you know if if we're gonna play this game we might as well play it the way church people play it and I've listened to people like you for the last 40 years have conversations around what is the best part of the Bible what is best verse what is best passage what is the best chapter if you were lost on a desert island and you could only have one chapter or one book of the Bible what would it be I think God just giggles when we make those kind of statements I would imagine if Billy Graham is having coffee with Jesus this morning he's going there they go again even though I played the same game Billy did he said you know what if I could only have one book in the Bible it would be does anybody know now Romans the The Gospel of Luke was his favorite. Well, I don't know if you have a favorite, but for many people, it might be not only the book of Romans, but what many theologians have called, chapter 8, the mountain peak of the New Testament. That's kind of strange when we start doing this, because the Bible says in 2 Timothy chapter 3 that all of Scripture is breathed by God and is useful for our lives to teach us, correct us, to rebuke us, to train us in righteousness that we might be pleasing to god in all things but you know what it's like when you come back to an old friend to something that's familiar to something that you're anchored to about once every 10 days i find myself unable to go to sleep I'll thrash in my bed for somewhere around an hour until I finally surrender and God has given me an alternative solution what what you might call a hack to get back to sleep and I don't know when I'm gonna die or how I'm going to die I just know that when I die the first thing I've asked judy is wrap me in this quilt it's a quilt that her grandmother made i keep it in one particular place in my closet i can walk to it and grab it without ever opening my eyes i will grab that quilt no matter what season of the year i will go to my lazy boy recliner and in less than 10 minutes i will be sound asleep because that quilt has some kind of magic comfort to it that's the way this chapter is for me when i wander around wondering what god is doing in my life i come back to this chapter it has powerful themes themes about how we have been restored in christ how we are preserved in his protection how he watches over us until we see him face to face it tells us what our status is as god defines the relationship the strength that is available to us on any and every given day and the security that we can claim no matter how close or how far we may feel we are with god at any given moment we're going to walk through this chapter over the the next couple of weeks while i'm with you but let's just chew off the first 17 verses would you stand let me read them you'll find them on the screen and in your bible this is the new international version of romans chapter 8 it says this therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus because through christ jésus the law of the spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death for what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh god did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be an offering and so he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh but according to the spirit those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the flesh on what the flesh desires but those who live in accordance with the spirit have their mind set on what the spirit desires the mind governed by the spirit by the flesh is death but the mind govern by the spirit is life and peace the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to god it does not submit to god's law nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You however are not in the Realm of the Flesh but are in The Realm of The Spirit if indeed The Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have The Spirit Of Christ they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you then though your body is subject to death because of sin The Spirit gives life because because of righteousness and if the spirit in of him who raised jesus from the dead is living in you he who raised christ from the death will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his spirit who lives in you therefore brothers and sisters we have no obligation but we have an obligation but it is not to the flesh to live according to it but if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live for those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God the spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again rather the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship and by him we cry Abba father father the spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children now if we are children then we are heirs heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory God bless you may you be seated wow did you feel the tone of this the more I thought about this this week prayed about it pondered it how paul just seems to have this not this but that kind of tone in all that he's saying that your gift your salvation your restoration your redemption it's not this it's that and that change that pivot has happened totally because of what jesus did for us when he came as our savior year died on the cross and rose again and will come again to consummate all of this gift how do we think about it that way as we ponder these elements of the lord's supper as we think about the cross as we anticipate jesus's return how do we appreciate this gift in a better way today it's not this but it is that the first question is is that it is not condemnation it is reconciliation does that word hit you hard it is a big weighty courtroom kind of word to be condemned you know almost intuitively what this word means in a sense of strongly disagreeing with something you say that you rebuke it you condemn it you denounce it because you know that it's wrong but in a formal sense in a legal sense in a judicial sense if you were in a courtroom this is what a judge might pronounce over you or over a defendant no you are guilty as charged you are judged to be wrong you are punished or condemned and when it comes to spiritual matters you know that this is the strongest kind of sentence that you and i could ever face it is profound as a matter of fact it is so profound that when you read this letter of the romans that paul wrote and that many could would consider the fifth gospel of god's work in jesus you have to understand that when he gets to this point and he says in the very first sentence therefore he's actually pointing back to everything that he has said in the previous seven chapters getting here because he has been building argument after argument giving example after example of two things just how desperately condemned we are as human beings because of our sinfulness and how great is the gift that god has answered our need with in the person of christ theologians call this the doctrine of depravity that lies behind the doctrineof grace and salvation but it's something that as modern day 21st century christians in a chapel like this in a beautiful resort like this that you you and I might have trouble getting our minds around. Not that we are simply forgiven, that we aren't forgiven, that we're absolved of our sin, that we our cleansed in every way that you can be cleansed, that we actually are reconciled into a right and beautiful and eternal relationship with God because of His mercy and grace. But do you realize, it's really hard to appreciate jesus the way we auto appreciate him if we can't get a real grasp on how much we need him that's talking in the back just before worship started we were talking about how enormously rich and blessed we are in our lives are we not it would be easy and many Many are guilty of this. Maybe you've been guilty of this at some point, to think, why would I need religion? Why would I mean prayer? Why would i need faith? Why would need this whole story of Jesus and an incarnation and a cross and a resurrection and an eternity? Look how good my life is already. Why do we need to talk about any kind of forgiveness or mercy or covering or cleansing?
Dr. Mark Turman: amazing it's taken paul the best of his work listening to the holy spirit to try to get his heart his mind and his life around these two realities some of us are more attuned to it than others some of Us have been pretty bold in our styles of sin over the course of our life that could be you right now and nobody in here might know it other of us might be more like the jews that paul talked to particularly in chapter two of this letter you don't think you need god because you're doing most if not all of the right things according to the letter of the law the only problem is is you'redoing it for many of the wrong reasons you're not doing it out of gratitude you'redoing it to try to impress god with who you are and to tryto control what he might do for you in the future you see our problem is not simply what we do but why we do it and sometimes we We can be horribly wrong on both fronts, but we are often wrong on at least one. God calls us and reminds us and tells us that in one way or another, one style or another. Every one of us has fallen short of his glory.
Dr. Mark Turman: Romans chapter 3. All of us have missed the mark. All of Us has trespassed and gone where he told us not to go. And whether we've done it a little or a lot, whether it's been bold and brash or quiet and meek.
Dr. Mark Turman: it breaks our relationship with god and brings us to a place where god can legitimately say that we are all deserving of being condemned and not just rebuked not just denounced for a thing or two that we've done here or there but our problem is so deep so profound as to say that if this doesn't change in your life, you will be separated from God forever. That can be hard for us to get our minds around, but God gave insight to the Apostle Paul that God came with a new law to set aside the old law. The old law was what God set up in the very beginning, a law that says if you sin, you will die and when adam and eve broke that law they experienced and brought into all of creation the principle of death but now god in christ has supplanted that law he's replaced that law he's canceled the law of sin and death with the law of grace and mercy and love he's placed it by what jesus did so that he said to the corinthian church, God in this way can be both just and justifier. He doesn't throw away the original law. He fulfills it, completes it by the sacrifice of what Jesus did for us. But on this morning and through this week, I just come back to this. It's a big, heavyweight, thousand-pound gorilla of a word that you need to ask God to help you get your hands on. There is now no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Have you noticed, late night television hosts make fun of it, but have you noticed when you go to CVS and you check out that you get a receipt long enough to write your entire obituary on? Have you notice that? There's only one organization in town that gives you a longer piece of paper and it comes when you get to stop and talk to a nice little police officer like I did on Tuesday I mean that that right there will rival any CVS receipt right there you see this week on Monday I stumbled back into work after about nine days of vacation and it's been a hard landing as this piece of paper will prove so on Tuesday i was trying to get to my office down in Plano and I rolled out of my neighborhood at 6 45 in the morning and I don't know how it happened but in less than 100 yards I went from zero to 60 in a 40 and why he was there at 645 in the morning on this very little traveled road it makes no sense to me I'm quite sure it was a conspiracy but me and that wonderful officer we got to have a little conversation and the good news here is is unlike some of you it's been been so long since i held one of these pieces of paper probably a decade or more that i qualified in the city of mckinney for this little thing called deferred adjudication so i am standing before you guilty but hopefully in receipt of some level of mercy as well because when i contacted the court they said yes you do qualify and if you will behave yourself for the next 90 days we will tear this piece of paper up y'all can pray for me in that i wonder however if that's how a lot of us as christians live do we think that we've executed some kind of deferred adjudication with god okay god i repent i'm sorry i need forgiveness i need cleansing not nearly as much as you say that i need it but if you say okay i need to god i'll straighten up and i'll be on own probation, and hopefully, you know, I won't violate my probation until you come again, and then it'll all be good. There's only two ways I can think of that you and I can really appreciate the Lord's Supper and its reflection back to what Jesus has done for us. There are only two ways, and that is that you ask God to show you in your own way and in his own way how much you really need grace? And the second way is that you keep looking at the cross over and over and over again in all of its incredible brutality and you realize that Jesus's level of suffering is what it took for you and for me to no longer be condemned and not just not condemned but befriended by god it's not condemnation anymore it's reconciliation with our father which leads to the next thing that he writes about starting really in the fifth verse the apostle paul gives his longest explanation to the presence and power and help of the holy spirit in most of this passage that we read he says that now it's not domination by sin but rather inspiration in the spirit that word inspire you know at the root of it you can hear it when you say the word it means the spirit within and this is unique to us as followers of christ no other religion in the world offers you a god willing to suffer on your behalf no other religious religion in your life offers a god who will not just forgive you but actually come and indwell you and be with you present in your soul for all of time there to equip encourage and empower you to know him and to live the best life that only he can guide you in all of that is unique to the christian faith and so he breaks the domination that sin held over us and he begins to set us progressively more and more free starts in our soul when the spirit comes and convicts us of our need of our sin and it convict us of what jesus did on the cross as being sufficient to pay for all of our brokenness by which we would have been condemned for but then you notice what it says he says in verse five that we have a new mind now that's important right jesus said love the lord your god with what all your heart are your soul all your mind and all your strength and we're not exactly sure how that unfolds but it seems to happen along all of those tracks somewhat simultaneously and that god gives us in our salvation a brand new way of thinking or at at least we would say, the capacity for new thinking.
Dr. Mark Turman: That we don't have to continue to think in dead-end ways that lead us to dead-in destinations of sin, but rather we have a new ability to think, to think the way God would have us to think about any and everything.
Dr. Mark Turman: That's why when you read the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest scholars that the world has ever known you see the holy spirit putting things into his pen that over and over again have to do with change your thinking because you have the spirit of god inside you to empower you to do just that you don't have to continue to think along those lines that lead you further and further away from god in the 1600s there was a scientist his name was johannes kepler kepler loved to look out at the stars at night this morning i got up it early so that i could work on this message a little bit more and it was dark enough as dark as i've seen it all summer long i walked out looked up at the stars like kepler might have and as soon as i looked up i saw a shooting star across the sky that was god's way of saying he likes me at least i'm interpreting it that way johannes kepler loved to look at the stars and building on the work of people like isaac newton and others it was kepler who realized that the sun that the that the earth doesn't go around the sun in a perfect circle instead it goes around it in what he called an ellipse or what we would call more more like an oval fashion so that when the earth is far away from the sun in the wintertime it's colder and when the sun gets closer to the earth we call it august because we are well suffering in august ways it gets hotter and kepler was the first one that kind of figured out that whole thing that it revolves in an ellipse rather than in a perfect circle but not only was he a great astronomer he was a great follower of Christ and on one occasion he famously said I was simply thinking God's thoughts after him do you realize that that same capacity is yours and mine every single day because the Holy Spirit lives in our soul and is eager to have a daily working relationship with us where he can coach and guide us where He can empower us verse 10 says that not Not only is our soul changed, not as our mind, our thinking empowered to think differently, but that can become willful obedience and ultimately will be fully completed and manifested when we see Jesus face to face and our bodies are resurrected into their eternal state.
Dr. Mark Turman: So here's the application, verse 12. You have a debt, but it is not to sin and it is is not to satan your debt is a debt of gratitude not a debt of obligation or obedience to sin but rather a debt of gratitude and praise to the god who lives in you and frees you and empowers you because our god this is we're not swapping taskmasters we're now swapping the the taskmaster of sin and death for a god who wants to oppress us in other ways god would never do that because he is not that kind of god instead he frees us to resist temptation at times gives us the wisdom to run away from temptation i can remember it it's clear as day it must be in my life 20 or 30 years old but but when i was a young christian our our town started a christian radio station and they went looking for programming and there was this up and coming popular california preacher named charles swindoll and they would put insight for living on the radio every evening at about seven o'clock and i ate it up and i remember when charles wendall said in one of those sermons one night do you not realize it is possible it is impossible because of god's spirit in your life for you to have sustained experiences of not sinning. That you could actually go an hour. You could go two. You could do it.
Dr. Mark Turman: You could have been convinced by the culture and by your own conscience that you can't make it five minutes. That is a denial of the Holy Spirit of God living in your soul. i understand that our battle with sin is strong and regular and daily but if we start leaning into this with a humble spirit we can claim the promise that the spirit of god in us can purify our minds clarify our motives and empower our actions you could actually make it a whole whole afternoon is anybody in here in agreement with what i just said because in church and from preachers like me and from others keeping this alive we have somewhat convinced ourselves we can't make it 90 seconds and we are short-selling the holy spirit of god do you remember what happened that very first Easter Sunday Jesus not only was resurrected but he started showing up pretty randomly and he didn't need a door John tells us how he showed up in that upper room that night his wonderful beautiful first words peace my peace be with you he talked with them for a while he said if you can't comprehend this I know but come and touch where the nails were in my hand and in my side in my feet and be believing not unbelieving and then there's this very strange comment that John records in John chapter 20 verse 19 it says that as Jesus talked with them as he invited them to come close and touch him as they ate together as they must have been just filled with all kinds of all it says Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit now don't you wonder what that actually must have been like. Now we are a little bit confused because we think that the Holy Spirit didn't come until the day of Pentecost 50 days later but actually that's not true. The Holy Spirit's always been around and it is verbalized and expressed by Jesus in this very interesting moment when it says in John 20 19 he breathed on them and they received the Holy Holy Spirit now you want to know what the very next thing that he says he says to them you now have the power to forgive the people who hurt you now that's graduate level living right there but that's what's possible when you live in the freedom and the power and the force of the Holy Spirit in your life one last thing he casts this off with this thing that we received called redemption it's not avoidance from god it's not even toleration from god its adoption with god if you have any doubt about who you are this morning i want you to hear these words again for those who are led by the spirit of god are the children of god the spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again rather the spirit your received brought about your adoption as sons and and daughters. By him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are his children, we are His heirs. You have to understand that when Jesus ransomed your life by his life on the cross, instead of condemning you, you he condemned sin in around you and set you free he doesn't dominate you as a taskmaster rather he pulls you close as his child when you have these elements in a few moments and you hold them in your hand as simple and as meager as they are to represent jesus's body and blood i want you to realize that everything about this gift everything is not one of god tolerating you it is one of God having the greatest affection for you above all things in the universe he holds you close and this resurrected Jesus who offered us his personal peace brought with us brought with him absolution and intimacy at the same time so that we would dare to call him dad because that's what the word abba means and it is not accidental that the holy spirit of god inspired the apostle paul to put both those words side by side abba father that we would hold him in great and high reverence as the eternal god that he is but we would know that he He has drawn us close to his heart. And the greatest and wonderful, most beautiful bear hug you could ever imagine, he says, you're my child, whom I have loved with a perfect love. Not only are you a child, but you're mine.
Dr. Mark Turman: You're my heirs to the kingdom. And this inheritance is unique. You know normally you don't get an inheritance until somebody dies. Well, somebody already did.
Dr. Mark Turman: and because he died his father said this kingdom is yours i'm going to invite our servers to come and we're going to take our elements from the lord's supper today and we can be reminded in a physical way what this gift is all about this gift of reconciliation this gift of inspiration this gift of adoption that is ours now and forever as you receive the elements I want you to think about what your response ought to be to