Therefore

Good morning. If you get your Bible with you,

please open up to Romans, Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

You're on the back of possibly one of the most significant

series through the book of Ecclesiastes.

We are going to be changing gears and getting into a new

series called More than Conquerors, and it's going to be

taken out of the book of Romans and just one chapter, Romans

Romans 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8. So I really hope you get your

Bibles and got your notebook here.

What I want to do today is I want to cover 2 angles and then

send you out to lunch. The one angle is I want to give

you an explanation as to why we are doing this series.

And then on the other angle, I want to give you an explanation

on why Romans 8 is in the book of Romans and what it is all

about as we launch into the series.

So we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive just to give

you a broad understanding of where we're going through the

series first before we get into Romans chapter 8, but hopefully

Romans 8 · chapter mention

there by now. To give you the context of the

the series. I've got a political map that I

want to show you. Firstly, you pop it up on the

screen there that I know, OK, don't tell Donald Trump, but

that's that's the Middle East as it stands now can change

tomorrow. It's changing today.

But I'll show you this picture because when Israel was taken

out of captivity, God sent the 10 plagues that were released

from under Pharaoh's regime. They're coming out of Egypt.

And in Exodus 23, we actually find God explaining to the

Israelites where it is he is going to take them and what the

boundary lines are going to look like.

And so according to rabbinical tradition, we actually got

another. Our second image is one of where

it lies. So it says from the Red Sea to

the Sea of the Philistines to from the wilderness to the

Euphrates. Now, rabbinical tradition has

taken a little bit of licensee because that's not quite the Red

Sea, that's the Nile River. But you know, they've got all

the excuses. But I just want you to see when

they're coming out of Egypt, the area that God had set aside for

them, it was called the Promised Land, and that was what God had

called them to. Now our final slide shows you

where Israel is currently as it stands today.

It's all that they live in, all of what God promised, all that

God had apportioned to them. Just a tiny little bit there.

Thanks. Take it down.

Don't tell Donald. But we were talking about this a

few weeks ago and Rory made an interesting comment.

He said that single image there of what they were living in is

the Old Testament in one picture, the whole of the Old

Testament in one picture. It's God saying to his people,

this is what I have for you, but not walking in it.

You know, you start with Saul and you made some good decisions

and King Saul. And then David comes along and

increases the boundaries and, and you think Solomon and all

his wisdom, he's going to stretch it to the NTH degree and

they're going to live in the fullness.

But instead there's disobedience, there's wicked

kings, there's wickedness and sinfulness, and eventually the

nation implodes. And they were living in a sense

we corrected. But I can remember the last time

we spoke about this, I Googled and Israel's about the size of

the Kruger National Park, tiny, tiny little frame of what they

were called to. OK, not a political statement

for, you know, if you see a red dot, just let me know.

But this is the Old Testament in an image.

But Romans is in the New Testaments, and we have a very

similar image in the New Testament, but this time from

Jesus himself. And John 1010 says, you know,

the enemy has come to kill, steal and destroy.

I have come that you may have life and life to the full the

boundary lines. And he uses a Greek word for

life, Zoe. So there's there's 3 words that

you can use. Well that we translate translate

into life. Sorry, I'm low on caffeine.

I wasn't allowed to bring my coffee inside here.

I said, but I'm preaching. They said well sucks to be you.

So apologies this morning and highly medicated some happy

place. Bear with me.

Yeah, Four guys are going to edit the daylights out of this

soon, so I don't even know where I was.

I've come that you may have life and have it to the full.

Thank you, my baby. It's Zoe.

So there's three Greek words translated into English as life.

The one is BIOS. It's everything that you see.

The other one is sachi, which is everything that sort of happens

here and here. The third is Zoe, if you're

pregnant ladies in the mom's room.

Zoe, one of the richest and most theologically profound words in

the New Testament. Zoe, life in its absolute

fullness. Zoe, all that God has for you,

you, me, you. Zoe.

Nothing missing, nothing broken. The same picture there.

So in in sort of New Testament context, I suppose it would look

something like this. Zoe, the fullness of what God

has called you and I too, and what raw loves to say is what

percentage if they're living in, I think 10% is a bit of a push.

But if they are living in 10% of what God called them to, what

are you living in when it comes to the fullness of what God has

for you? Because if you're anything like

me, you take that fullness and then, well, you know, I think

I'd drink a little too much. And, you know, we did a little

bit of pub crawling the other day and we crossed the line.

I mean, I didn't really. But if you had to ask her, she'd

say I did. And if you had to ask my

conscience, that would say I did.

And I think work is a bit of an idol at the moment.

And it means that I really don't get to see my kids much.

And, you know, I don't think I'm the best dad.

Father's Day was a bit of a sham.

If I get another pair of socks, you know, I think the kids are

trying to tell me something. And my marriage, you know, if

I'm really honest, my marriage is becoming a statistic.

And yeah, I'm under business, business rescue at the moment.

And if they dig a little deep, they're going to find out some

creative accounting and that that might be prison sentence

for me and my dad. I will not forgive my dad.

And you live in not a fullness, an emptiness.

And so we are going into Romans chapter 8 because what you find

Romans 8 · chapter mention

in Romans 8 is Romans 8 gives us the boundary lines of the

fullness that you call to the the enemy comes to rob, kill,

steal and destroy. And you're probably here

believing the lie that you don't deserve.

You're not worthy, actually not even that.

I mean, let's talk about what you've been watching online.

Let me let me have a deep, meaningful conversation about

how you're treating your wife and your kids.

I mean, they don't like you, let alone love you.

But Romans chapter 8 will show you and I over the next few

Romans 8 · chapter mention

weeks the fullness of what God has called us to.

So we are going to go to war with the Romans 8.

We are going to go, you see, because when the Israelites

moved into the promised land, they had to push back the

enemies to get to those boundary lands.

And we're going to allow Romans chapter 8 to do exactly that, to

Romans 8 · chapter mention

push back the lies, to bring light into those dark places,

those lies that you've believed for years that have dictated

your relationship with your heavenly Father, yourself worth

your identity in Christ. And we're going to allow the

king into the room. We're going to do some business.

So that is where we're going over the next few weeks.

Don't miss a moment. It will change your life because

the Bible says He confirms His word with signs and wonders

following. We are waiting for miracles upon

miracles, breakthrough upon breakthrough, redemption,

restoration, renewal, rescue. So that is why we're doing

Romans chapter 8. That is why I'm so excited about

Romans 8 · chapter mention

the series. But why is Romans 8IN Romans and

what is it that we are looking at?

And to unpack that, to give the context to that, I'm going to

look at just one word in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

If you have your Bibles, we've sung it this morning.

Romans 8 verse one says therefore, there is now no

condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And I want to look at one word. Therefore, I know Rory preaches

the entire Bible in one sermon. Yeah, me, my IQ only manages one

word. So bear with me.

We're just going to look at Therefore, but I'm going to

impress my English teacher. I did some research.

Therefore is an elective participle.

Yeah, I know Ror knew this. Yeah, I keep telling the guys at

the bar I know a thing. It's an elective participle.

And basically what it means is therefore has a before and it

has an after. OK, but it is so weighty in

Scripture and it is so weighty in the place that it finds

itself in the meta narrative of the book of Romans that this

single word therefore not only has an after all that we have

the fullness of life, but it has AB full and it stands as a

gatekeeper. There is no after unless you are

qualified according to what has gone B full.

So if you're asking is this for me too, well, you need to find

out what therefore is therefore, and if you qualify according to

therefore, then the gatekeeper allows you to live in this

fullness. So we're going to take a look at

that. We're going to take a look at

what therefore is therefore by taking a look at what went

before. All right.

So we're going to have to go way back, right before the beginning

of the church in the in the Book of Rome, Book of Romans, sorry.

So this church, the Roman Church, was very young.

We're looking at what went before.

He was younger than three CR and it had been through unbelievable

turmoil, persecution. So what had happened was there

was this Emperor Claudius in between the years around about

41AD and 53AD, Claudius got sick and tired of the Jews and all

their bickering and the law this and the Torah that's and the

idolatry and Caesar is not Lord and all of this.

So he eventually, he threw his toys and threw all the Jews out

of Rome, including the Christian Jews.

If they found you on the streets, that would execute you.

And so Rome was emptied of its Jewish heritage.

It was emptied of, let's say, the fingerprints of the Old

Testament on the church. Now that was between 41 and 53

AD. The letter to the church in Rome

was written between 57 and 58 AD.

So Impreclaudius had thrown the mouse and over the years they

slowly started sneaking back in. So they've been about 5 or 6

years of these Jewish Christians coming back to a very gentile

church. When I, whenever I use the word

gentile of you, you don't quite know the context.

If you weren't a Jew by family, then you were a gentile.

It's pretty much everybody else. So it's not a derogatory term,

it's just different camps. So these Jewish Christians would

come back to a very different church because it didn't really

have what they had grown up with this Jewish law and history and

everything like it. And it not only was a different

church, it was a divided church. And it was divided straight down

the lines of what we are talking about today.

Therefore, it was divided on the therefore.

And it's this very big juicy Bible word that you're going to

hear a lot today. So I want you to understand it.

They were divided on the lines of justification.

Justification essentially is how am I made right with God?

I have this past of this family line.

I've got this history, this guilt, the shame.

What do I need to do to be made right with God?

And so you have these divided camps.

It's like I want the fullness. But this is therefore there's a

gatekeeper here and it is asking me, am I justified?

So now we're saying, OK, what do you mean by justified?

So to the Jew, and I quote to the Jew justification, they

would say the law was considered the greatest guarantee of holy

living. Not, not the Bible, the law, the

first five books of the Old Testament, the law, the law was

considered the greatest guarantee of holy living, of

pleasing God, of being made rights with God.

So the Jewish Christians would lean to the side of saying,

listen, you've got to be justified by works.

Now you might be one of those, you know, you come to church,

you've got a serious past, you know, fresh out of prison, maybe

also from the bluff, shady don't look you in the eyes.

And now you come to church and now you got to clean up your ACT

because you want to be right with God.

And So what do you do? There you go and you find you

Google what are the 10 commandments and you make sure,

OK, I'm maintaining. And then Rory talks about

tithing it. I'm going to double tithe the

20% baby, drop the mic, watch me perform.

And I don't just come to morning service.

I come to the evening service and I wear a tie even in the

evening service. I know that the demographic is a

little younger, but I dress smart.

I like it. I really like it because to you,

the win is behavior modification justification by works.

And so you stop smoking, you drink a little less, you watch

your swearing road rage to the ladies, you come to church and

those heels get a little lower and the cleavage gets a little

higher. But just for Sunday, because we

don't want to push it, you know, like I still want to live.

And then you find out about a pray Shoal and a team.

You are importing pray Shoals from Israel.

I've got to get me one of those. And it comes with a free shofar.

So smashing it, baby. And then you hear that you don't

pray to Jesus. His name was Yeshua.

So you pray to Yeshua because you have a performance, you need

to maintain justification by works.

So they're essentially Paul's writing the letter to the church

in Rome to say this is actually what justification is, because

on the one side you've got the Jews saying, no, no, it's

justification by works, works of the law.

You've got to smash it. You've got to own up.

And then you've got on the other side the Gentiles, and they're

saying, well, which is it? You see, the Gentiles, they knew

something was wrong. They'd lived in a very debauched

society. They'd seen sin abound, and

they'd realized that they needed to somehow make right with God.

And the Holy Spirit had drawn them in.

And they'd heard about a church, and they'd come, and maybe you

did the same. Come to church.

You've heard about Jesus. Maybe Jesus can fix my mess.

Maybe he could forgive me. And then you hear this free gift

of salvation to his death on the cross.

Is it possible because you go to church and you bump into these

Jewish Christians as they did, and all of a sudden it seems if

you, if you read between the lines in Romans chapter 2, that

Romans 2 · chapter mention

these Jewish Christians were saying, no, no, no, no, no,

sorry. You know, there's judgment and

condemnation for you because you're not doing all that we're

doing. And Paul actually quotes, this

is the Old Testament verse that he quotes.

It seems like it was on their lips.

God will repay each person according to what they have

done. How's that for welcome to

church. Good to have you here.

God will repay each person according to what they have

done. I know what you've done.

I know what you've done. And the Gentiles were faced with

this and they started asking this question like, OK, then how

am I justified? I also want to live in the

fullness of of eternal life and Zoe life.

But is that the gatekeeper? And so on one side you got these

religious justified by works crew which might be you, and on

the other side you've got those trying their darndest to get it

right. And I would call them those

struggling with imposter syndrome.

Yo, I've met people struggling with imposter syndrome over the

last few weeks. I don't know if you know what

imposter syndrome is. I'll read it for you.

The internal experience of believing that you are not as

competent or capable as others think you are and that you'll

eventually be exposed as a fraud.

Even if you've earned your place through success, skill, effort,

or qualifications. Even if you've earned your place

by raising your hands at the right time and and knowing how

to order coffee outside and saying bless you brother and

bringing your family Bible. One translation said imposter

syndrome is chronic self doubt. So you got the Jewish Christians

on one side who are saying we are smashing at 125% baby and

you got the others. I just hope you don't get

noticed and I can squeeze in the back door and God doesn't bring

his health failure down on me. Chronic self doubt.

And they are saying essentially to Paul, which isn't, and you

don't know this, but subconsciously you are saying

that every single Sunday. Which is it?

Do I need to try harder, do more, be better, dress better?

So I just need to fake it? Can I really trust him?

And so Paul goes for the jugular and he says no one can be

justified by works, not even works of the law.

What thing do we do? And a friend who's telling me

about one of his mates, everywhere he goes, it's his

shtick. He loves to say, yeah, if you,

how certain are you that if you were to die, you'd go to heaven.

And he always gets like these little deer in the headlights.

But the one time he asked the guy, how sure are you if you

were to that tonight, you'd go to heaven.

The guy said 80%. He's like, oh, haven't heard

that one before. It's like, tell me more said,

no, I'm Muslim. I do really, really.

I work really, really hard making sure and going through my

day and correcting where I need to correct.

But sort of about 80%, I think 80%, I'm going to make heaven,

baby. Now tell you that story.

Because justification by works makes you a good Muslim, not a

good Christian. Now that should freak you out.

But for some of us, that should set us free because it's not

about what you've done. And it's also not about what

you're doing because Paul makes it very clear that not only are

we not justified by works, but the the minute we try to make

right with God by what we are doing, all you're saying is that

you don't even begin to understand what a terrible thing

sin is. You don't understand what a

terrible power sin has. So this guy, Martin Lloyd Jones,

he says sin is the greatest power known to man next to God

himself. Sin is so powerful, even God's

holy law cannot deliver us. That should shock the system

because in Romans 7, he basically says sin hijacks the

law and uses it against us and our relationship with God.

It takes that law and disqualifies us.

And he, he basically summarizes the fact that if you are going

after justification, remember. Trying to be made right with God

by living will and being good and being a nice person.

You don't understand the power of sin.

It has to be put to death. We're not talking about behavior

modification. He's not writing to them saying

well, the therefore is looking back on your life history, how

well have you done 80% while still try a little bit harder.

That will. No, no, no, no.

There's some something completely different at play

here because that's not the gospel.

That's not good news. Are going to try harder.

That's not good news. How?

How much harder? How much more?

What is good enough? Yeah, that Muslim is smashing

it, but he even recognized 80 percent, 99%.

OK imagine you go to the bank and you deposit 100,000 Rand

check and they give you 99,000 Rand back.

Like hang on a second. Ah, but you know my heart, my

heart is right. That's not 100%.

The New York Times did a study on Google search history.

It was an article called Googling God or something like

that, and they found the third most Googled question when it

comes to Christianity is why does God hate me?

You know how you get there is you try really, really, really

hard to impress God, Do your best, try harder, live better,

do more, and still just life is falling apart still.

It feels like he's pushing you back.

Still He's blessing everybody, but it doesn't seem like he

cares about you. You get to that place because

you're trying to justify yourself by works.

So Paul says, firstly, we cannot be justified by our good works,

not even works of the law, he says to the Jews.

And then secondly, he says that was never the intended purpose

of the law. The law was given.

The Bible says the law was given to incite sin.

I don't know if you've read that.

You know what he means by that is basically the law wasn't

given for you to have a greater knowledge of salvation.

The law was given to give you a greater knowledge of your sin,

to show you out for who you are apart from God.

It says in Romans 319 the law was given so that every mouth

may be silenced and the entire world held accountable to God.

Right before we reach the good news in Romans chapter 8,

Romans 8 · chapter mention

there's this lion in Romans 7 that says, wretched man that I

am, who will save me from this body of death?

If you haven't gotten there justification by law, how then

do we enter? What is it that finally silences

there for this gatekeeper and lets us in or in order to do

that, Paul extrapolates across the whole Old Testament and the

new. He weaves together in one verse

this meta narrative that we find throughout the entirety of

Scripture. And I want to hop, skip and jump

through some of my favorites starting right at the very

beginning, goes right back to the first few pages of Genesis

when Adam and Eve sin. I'm sure you've heard the story

even if you've never been in church before.

They sin. But what you haven't heard, if

you've never been in church before, is what God says first.

God doesn't say what have you done?

He says, where are you? Because sin separates.

Sin stands as that gatekeeper. He says, where are you?

And what he does, He is the first one to shed blood.

He sacrifices an animal because they had thought, well, this is

a great plan. We're going to cover our

nakedness with fig leaves. But that will last all of three

hours. And God sacrifices an animal to

cover them with the animal skin. And what we learn in the very

first thing, and what Paul wants us to know, is that it's only

through the blood that your guilt and your sin, your shame,

your nakedness is covered. Only through the blood are we

accepted by God. Only through the blood can we

have fellowship with God. And then you Fast forward and

you get to Noah. You might have heard of Noah.

What you probably know of Noah is that the animals come two by

two. But actually it says in Genesis

7, this is God speaking to know. He says take 7 pairs of every

kind of clean animal with you. Why 7 pairs?

Or because those were to be set aside for sacrifice.

Because what Noah got to realize is that that water and those

floods would not cleanse the earth.

He can't scrub away sin. The first thing he did when he

landed back on dry ground was build an altar, sacrifices

animals, and baptize A sinful world in blood.

Abraham, in Genesis 12, God says to him, to your offspring, I

will give you this land. What does he do?

He bolts and altar. There's blood because there's no

promise, there's no purposes of God apart from the blood.

And then in Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with him, and

those covenants require him to cut animals in half.

It is a bloody, earthy, gory mess because there's no

covenant, no relationship with God.

There is no entering in without the blood in Egypt right at the

very beginning, before they let out.

What does Moses say to the people of Israel?

Take the blood of the land and put it on the doorpost, because

you are bound to slavery and sin apart from the blood.

Before they were set free, it required blood.

Yeah, I could tell you. But Mount Sinai, for those who

want to go after the law, before God gave the law, before the law

was established, there was blood.

I could tell you about the Tabernacle.

The presence of God is wanting to draw near Adam.

Where are you? The Tabernacle is covered in

blood. The priests who minister there

have blood on the ears, on the hands, on their feet.

You walk into the Tabernacle and right in front of you is the

Altar of Sacrifice. Blood everywhere, not only on

the altar, but sprinkled on the sides.

The high priest, the only one who was allowed into the Holy of

Holies with the presence of God Word, needed the anointing and

the shedding of blood as well. And then when he entered into

the Tabernacle, into the Holy of Holies, it's an unusual space,

had no windows, 4 layers of skin to keep it dark.

There was no candles, no lighting, no LEDs, but it was

lit by the very presence of God. It's called the Shekinah, glory

of God, and it says this. God declared that he would dwell

above the mercy seat. So you've got the Ark of the

Covenant, you've got the mercy seat.

God declared He would dwell above the mercy seat, the place

where the high priest would pour the blood to atone for the sins

of his people, because the presence of the Lord is where

the blood is. When you apply the blood of the

Lamb, God comes. When you apply the blood, the

king is in the room. I can tell you there's so much

more. We don't have time, they tell

you, but they're all shadows, They're all pictures.

They're all pointing to the one Paul points to, the one

Scripture points to the one that John the Baptist points to.

Behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the

world. And so Paul in one verse, he

weaves this meta narrative together.

And when he writes to the church in Ephesus, he says we have

redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

We are brought near, Adam, where are you?

We are brought near by the blood of Christ to the Colossians.

He says we have peace with God by his blood.

And when he writes to the church and run, he says we have been

justified by his blood. So if you're wanting to know

what is there for there for it stands as a gatekeeper not only

to Zoe life, but to your eternal life and your relationship with

Jesus Christ. And it asks you, have you been

justified not by works, not by the law, but by the blood of the

lamb that was shed on the cross for your sin, your guilt and

shame, your past? That and only that?

What, what allows you and I into this fullness that God is

calling us to? So before we get anywhere near

this, I want to ask you, have you been justified by the blood

of the lamb? Have you allowed the blood shed

on the cross to cleanse you of your sin?

Or are you still trying to earn it?

Earning it will get you nowhere. Actually, here's my favorite

verse in the whole book of Romans, Romans 4, verse five.

He justifies the ungodly. So you're sitting there going

like, yeah, but you don't know my past.

Is your past ungodly? Then you're the poster child for

his forgiveness. He justifies the ungodly.

Ah, my background. My, you don't know, I went to

prison because wow, He justifies the ungodly.

I'll close with this. 1987 New York was struggling with its

landfalls. It was overwhelmed with the

amount of garbage that it had. And one businessman, savvy

businessman decided he, what he's going to do is he's going

to take a whole bunch of this rubbish and just go dump it

somewhere else. And so he hired the MO bro,

which is a barge. Actually got a picture of that?

It carries something like 3000 tons.

Take a look at that, 3000 tons of rubbish.

And he figured, well, what he's going to do is he's going to

take it from New York and he's going to take it down the coast

and he'll just dump it where the landfalls are needing to be

filled. And so he went down to North

Carolina and they blocked him at the port.

Thank you. You can take your shipment of

rubbish somewhere else. What to the pure?

All things are pure. He tried Florida, 10,000 people

came out to protest, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi.

We've got a picture there where he tried Mexico, Belize,

Bahamas. The Mexican government since a

Navy blockade said over your dead body, you are not bringing

your rubbish and dumping it here.

You try to go back up to New York and they had a temporary

restraining order. Long story short, the guy ends

up bankrupt and in prison. But at the end of the article it

says the following. It says it resulted in America's

increased exploration of disposal methods.

I look at it, I thought that is just like America, we will find

a new way to dispose of our rubbish.

That is just like South Africa. We will find a new way to

dispose of our rubbish. That is just like South Africa.

We will find a new way to dispose of our rubbish that is

just like mankind, the blood. No, there must be another way.

And we end up Sunday after Sunday coming like that barge

dragging 6000 tons worth of baggage and background and shame

and guilt and you dare not come to church because as you can

see, it's sort of, you know, it's trickling in the background

there. They'll know, they'll see,

they'll find out your shocking treatments at work and how you

handle your finances and what you saw last night.

And so instead, we settle for finding an alternative method to

dump our garbage. But there is none.

There is no other name by which we are saved but the name of

Jesus. There is no other way for us to

live in the fullness of what God has but through the shed blood

of Jesus on the cross on your behalf.

So say all of that to say this. How are you trying to make right

with God? He will not let you pass.

That gatekeeper will stand. It's God.

He invites US1 and all to enter by the blood of the Lamb alone.

And that is your invitation this morning.

Would you enter all that? We've sung everything we've

heard this morning, the meta narrative of Scripture.

Don't come this morning and leave with the tons and tons of

baggage and brokenness. Instead, leave it at the cross.

And then next week we come and we find out all that God has for

you is your journey together. Thank you.