The Greatest Chapter - Romans 8:15-18

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week.

I know not all y'all are ready to jump in both feet right now,

but know that that's our, that's our vision, that's our mission

for this body believers, to build you up and encourage you

in the truth of Jesus Christ. So there's not a great way to

transition out of that. So we're just going to

transition to God's word because that's a good place to go at any

time. We're in Romans 8 and I'm going

to start at verse 5. Our text for this morning is, is

later on in, in kind of 14 through 18.

But I want to read these verses as a way of reminder here,

Romans 8, verse 5. And then we'll jump ahead.

Romans 8:5

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.

Paul has this ongoing narrative here, this tension, this war

between the flesh and the Spirit.

Verse 6 for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set

the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

We have two paths forward. I think the life and peace one

is, is the more appealing path. That's what we're going to

pursue. Mindset on the Spirit is life

and peace. We jump ahead to verse 14.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

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, 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 reading of God's

Word. How many of you in here and some

of you are currently children in in the childhood sense?

All of you at some point were children in the childhood sense

and still some of you still have relationship even with adult

parents. But how many of you in here

children you can answer to when you had parents to submit to

you? How many of you were rule

followers? They said it, you did it.

OK. I was I, I honestly was the rest

of you not judging, just we know now we know.

For those of you that were rule followers, did you do it out of

out of joyful obedience like you believe?

Oh, yeah. Mom, Dad, that's that's a great

idea. That's the way I should do this.

I'm. I'm going to follow that because

it sounds like a good idea. How, how many of you just, like,

joyfully obeyed? How many of you did it out of

fear for what would happen to you if you didn't?

OK, little more, little more. OK, we got one, one in the back.

Yep. I honestly feel that I, I'm

more, I was not a perfect child at all.

And my parents were not perfect parents, but I was a pretty

typical first, first born who just, yeah, followed because

they were the rules. Those were the rules.

So you just follow them because they're the rules.

I'm not saying that's that's right or wrong, but I at times

was also ruled by a spirit of fear of the wait until your dad

gets home sort of sort of essence.

Now, in my own broken, sinful, earthly parenting, I never want

the spirit of fear to be what rules and leads my children.

I know not all of you in here have a perfect picture.

How many of you in here had a perfect parents?

Nobody didn't get anybody, OK? Nobody thinks they had a perfect

parents. Some of you I know, had very

broken relationships with your parents.

What's important as we enter into this passage of sonship and

as children of God, we need to guard really hard against

letting our broken experience either as parents or with

parents. We need to work really hard not

to let that brokenness inform our view of who God is as a

heavenly Father. We can't go bottom up with that

relationship, OK? God is the perfect example of

fatherhood, of a loving father. And that should then inform and

model how our parenting on earth happens.

No, we don't do it perfectly, but we shouldn't let our

brokenness inform what we think about God and what fatherhood

is. He's the model.

He's the start. He's the root of what that's

supposed to look like. OK?

It's supposed to look more like this.

You guys go ahead from. I don't know why this isn't

working. There we go.

OK, We have these two options, right?

When we need help, when we do something wrong, when we mess up

inevitably because we will. I never want my kids to mess up

and think Dad's going to kill me.

That's a spirit of fear, right? The perfect Heavenly Father, the

posture that he offers is the second one.

I want their first thought to be I need to call my dad.

That's how our Heavenly Father views us as his children, and

that is the opportunity that we have to go to him.

That's the way we can approach our Heavenly Father.

I'm broken and I can't figure this out.

We don't need to shrink back in fear and uncertainty.

We need to turn our eyes towards our perfect heavenly Father and

say, I know you're the one who holds tomorrow.

You're the one whose power will see me through.

This passage tells us that we are children of God and this is

the posture that we get to have as children of God is I need to

go back to my father, the brokenness, the suffering, the

understanding that I lack in this situation.

My father has it. He has it.

I need to call my dad. We go to him in prayer.

We go to his word. We're encouraged in a body of

believers in wise counsel. Paul has a couple conditional

statements in this passage. You click ahead and he calls out

a spirit of fear as not being what we are made for.

I'm going to read a quick little commentary.

This is called reading Romans with Luther.

It's a great resource as you're working through Romans by a

theologian, RJ Grunewald. I have fractions of a couple

excerpts of this paragraph that I'm going to read, but I'd like

you to take in his thoughts on what a spirit of fear is and why

we have it. A spirit of fear is what you

experience when you don't trust that God has your best interest

in mind. What you experience when you

don't trust that God has your best interest in mind.

How many of you as kids? Nope, whatever your parents say.

Doing the opposite thing. That's not the best way, Dad.

I got better ideas. I got a better plan for that.

This isn't it. I know that's that's mine.

A spirit of fear is what you experience when you don't trust

that God has your best interests in mind.

When you go along with the rules because you're afraid you'll get

caught, that's a spirit of fear. When you are obedient only when

it's convenient, that's a spirit of fear.

When you begrudgingly submit to the law because it's the law,

even though you don't want to obey, that's a spirit of fear.

For some reason, when it comes to our relationship with God, a

parent child relationship, we have difficulty understanding

this concept. God's rules aren't those of a

tyrant trying to rob us of our freedom.

They are the rules of a loving father trying to do what's best

for us. Though I followed or feel like I

tried to follow most of the rules my parents had for me, I

don't. I know I didn't do that

perfectly in my adulthood, and I did have a good relationship

with my dad, with my parents. But in my adulthood, looking

back on the guardrails they tried to put up for my life, on

the rules that they orchestrated for my right living, I can't

come up with anything that my parents were dead wrong on that

were just a rule for the sake of having rules.

Every single thing that I can think of were the rules of a

loving father trying to do what was best for me.

The sooner we realize that in our Christian walk that that the

rules and guidance that God has has for us in here is not

oppressive, is not tyranny or just squashing our freedom.

It's actually the blueprint for how we experience the fullness

of God and the relationship that he has for us.

They are the rules of a loving Father trying to do what's best

for us. When we enter into that, then

being children of God is a desirable thing.

It's not an oppressive rule following thing.

It's a spirit that cries ABBA Father, that cries Dad.

I need help, and I know you're gracious to give it.

When we come to this realization being a child of God is

desirable. It's kind of an odd thing to say

sometimes, especially as a guy. Honestly, I had a good

relationship with my dad, but it wasn't like an intimate,

hugging, emotional thing, like, I don't know, it was the

relation to the guys. How would you?

Yeah. What's up?

OK, Paul paints a very different picture in this passage.

He uses tender words. You guys go to the next slide.

He uses some tender words that we did not receive the spirit of

slavery. We did not receive the spirit of

fear to squash our freedom. We've received the spirit of

adoption as sons to cry ABBA father, to have this tender

relationship with God. If I need to call my dad, he is

the rock I can rely on. I have No Fear approaching him,

and I know he has the answer. When we come to that realization

that it's our best interest in mind that our Father in heaven

has for us, becoming a child of God is desirable.

Paul then writes the Spirit himself bears witness with our

spirit that we are children of God.

How can we be sure that we are children of God?

Well, those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be

saved. That that seems to fall in

parallel line with us being children of God.

If we're saved with Jesus, then we're then we're heirs with with

of God. We're Co heirs with Christ.

It makes sense then that we would be children of God, but

how do we know? Do we feel sure of that?

Paul writes that the Spirit himself bears witness.

Think of a courtroom. What do witnesses do?

They testify to things that they have seen.

They speak things that they know.

They say I've seen this and this is what it looked like.

The Spirit bears witness with our own spirit, our own being,

that we are children of God. How does the Spirit work this

out in our lives? How do we know that we are

children of God? What does that look like in our

lives? The first thing that the Spirit

does, it wages war on our sin. Paul writes that we're not to

return to that spirit of fear, that spirit of slavery that we

had with sin. Those are the only tools the

enemy has, our lies and fear and hate and death.

If we're in Christ, that's not our relationship with our

Heavenly Father, our lies and fear and hate and death.

No, the spirit is life and peace in the Heavenly Father.

So if the Spirit is in us, we should be waging war, putting to

death the deeds of the body. We should not be excusing and

justifying our sin, that we should be actively fighting

against it, not out of anything that we could earn, but because

the Spirit works and changes in US.

It's OK to not be able to overcome those struggles on your

own. That's what the Spirit is there

for. The Spirit is there to fight and

beat sin for you, with you as a helper.

It's unnatural for our sinful earthly bodies to want to not

sin in our earthly bodies. We want to sin, we want to

justify it. The Spirit brings that change.

The Holy Spirit of God makes sin an enemy, something to be

opposed and fought against in the Spirit we're hating sin and

putting to death. If you have those things inside

you, if that is your proclivity to sin, you are a child of God.

If not, if you're stuck in that justifying, excusing, making

peace with your sin, you've got you've got some more convicting

words in in the Bible to hear. And it's not anything so great I

said, I said last time, 2 weeks ago, it's not anything so great

that we need to fear our worst or hoping our best that we could

do. It's by the Spirit that we are

children of God and God isn't going to leave us on our own to

sort it out on our own. We don't fight alone.

We have the Spirit with us. We have the body of believers

with us. That's why I didn't think it was

such a stretch for the events of this week that I shared at the

start. Somehow that person was

overwhelmed by a spirit of fear. In that moment of weakness in in

whatever was overwhelming this week, he succumbs back to that

spirit of fear, that slavery to fear.

He lost sight of his inheritance as a child of God.

What was waiting for him? Because this is conditional.

If we are children, then heirs, we are heirs of Christ, provided

we suffer with him. That doesn't sound very fun.

Sounds like God's cramping my style here on earth.

Unfortunately, Jesus promised we would have trouble.

John 1633 says in this world you will have trouble.

He said that right to his disciples, the ones who are

closest following Him in this world, you will have trouble.

But take heart. I have overcome the world.

We have an immeasurable glory. Next slide to look forward to.

One more. I consider the sufferings of

this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is

to be revealed. Whatever is facing us as

children are God of God. Whatever sufferings are present,

we have a Father in heaven. We can cry ABBA Father too.

We have a Spirit who advocates on our behalf, witnessing and

testifying to our sonship and daughtership.

So how do we know we have the spirit?

Are you waging war against sin? Are you approaching God in that

ABBA father? Oh, I messed up.

I need to call my dad sort of way.

And then ultimately, are you submitting to Jesus, Lordship,

that these sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory

that is to be revealed? Paul writes more on this.

Philippians 38I count everything as lost because of the

surpassing worth of knowing Christ.

Second Timothy 312 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life

in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

And Hebrews 12, the Lord disciplines the one he loves and

chastises every son he receives. It was asked this week in the

Thursday morning Bible study. OK, so then if we have to suffer

to be heirs, what, what kind of suffering can we expect?

I have more good news. It's all the suffering, all, all

any kind of suffering that you can think of.

Suffering, struggling with sin, suffering, struggling with

physical, mental, emotional, financial, overwhelming things.

But Paul writes these words that he does not consider the

sufferings of this present time being worth comparing with the

glory that is to be revealed. The life of a Christian picking

up that cross daily and following Christ as brothers and

sisters with him, as Co heirs with him.

The sufferings of that life, the hardship of that life, Paul

writes, is not worth comparing with the glory that is to be

revealed. That song Echo Holy that we sang

before. A million angels fall face down

on the floor, all to echo. Holy is the Lord.

That's the inheritance. There is not a thing on this

earth that will get worse in heaven.

Everything will be made new and made better.

Even the greatest things that you have in this life, the best,

happiest, most joyful, most pleasurable things you have in

this life, they pale in comparison to the most boring

thing in heaven. So much so that Paul says it's

not even worth taking the time to compare the things of this

earth to the things of heaven we can't comprehend in our finite

minds. Suffering with Jesus simply

means that when these things face you, when the world

overwhelms you. And I can't put myself in each

and every one of your individual situations.

And some of them I can't fathom. Some of them I wouldn't handle

very well either. But how you handle them well is

running back to Jesus, bringing your burdens with Him.

For His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, because he is

that caring father that has the posture of come home, my son,

come back to me, my daughter, because I can help a child of

God wages war on sin, cries out ABBA father to one that will

answer him well, and submits to Jesus.

Tech has been really friendly today.

A child of God wages war on sin, cries ABBA father to a father

who cares and answers and submits to Jesus as Lord, even

in his suffering, even in our suffering.

So this morning I don't have much more to offer you than the

hope that is in Jesus. That should be the greatest

thing you take hold of, but also to encourage you that when your

life feels dark and hopeless, I can testify that there is a God

who cares about you. You might have your own personal

wrestlings with that. I promise He does.

And there are people here who will also bear those burdens

with you. Yeah, it's scary.

And it takes an act of humility and brokenness to bear those

burdens to others. Yes, we we bear them and lift

them together, but we also have to take the step of being

vulnerable with them. We worked really hard for there

not to be a spirit of judgement here, but a spirit of life and

peace. We can bear these burdens

together by the power of the Spirit for the promise of

eternal life to come. Love you church, let's pray.

Our great God, we thank you for the freedom of not having to

live in or submit to the fear of our sin.

Jesus, you made away. You suffered more than we could

ever think or imagine. The joy that was set before you,

your creation, your children, your people, you endured the

cross. So I pray that as your children,

as your people, we would not shrink back into fear, we would

not fall victim to suffering and hopelessness.

We would find our identity rooted in you.

We would find our hope in life eternal.

May the truth ring out in our hearts and minds today, but we

are no longer slaves to fear and the evil one.

We are your children. We are loved, we are protected,

we are yours. Most comforting truth we can

have. In the holy name of Jesus, we

pray. Thanks for listening to the ERC

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