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Jul 23, 2023

More Than Your Moral Life in Mind

More Than Your Moral Life in Mind

Passage: Romans 8:1-11

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: That’s the Spirit: Learning to keep in step with Him who indwells

It’s a superficial understanding of the Holy Spirit to think He is mostly concerned with our moral lives–whether we are doing what is right (as though that weren’t important). But as we’ll hear Paul continue to elaborate on what life in the Spirit is we’ll discover the Spirit’s work is out to awaken and unite us to something larger than the truncated way to see or experience the world. Our happiness and hope in God summarize the Spirit’s work for and in us, and while those have moral implications they reach deeper than right choices.

PREPARATION: Psalm 147:7-11

LEADER: Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make melody to our God on the lyre!
He covers the heavens with clouds;
he prepares rain for the earth;
he makes grass grow on the hills.

ALL: He gives to the beasts their food,
and to the young ravens that cry.

LEADER: His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,


ALL: but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER: MATTHEW 16:13-23
LEADER: Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

CENTRAL TEXT: Romans 8:1-11
Rom. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Rom. 8:9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

CONFESSION OF SIN:

ALL: We pause and consider our hearts and find them at best distracted and at worst divided. We have no good answer for why we do what we do not want and why we don’t do what we should want. We know the way forward begins with grief, but even in that we need your help. Help us once more to see our foolishness in light of your love and begin again by grace in the way of wisdom and holiness.

ABSOLUTION OF PARDON: Romans 8:1

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 10:21-23

LEADER: Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,

ALL: for he who promised is faithful.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Matthew 16:23
  • Galatians 1:3-14
  • Galatians 5:17
  • Hebrews 13:14

Illustrations

QUOTES: 

  • Our hearts and our thoughts are not in our power.’ Everyone who is humble and genuinely religious recognizes that this is entirely true. . . .Who is so happy as one who always ascends in his heart? But without divine assistance who can make it happen? Augustine
  • Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them. . .  or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake. Martin Luther
  • The underpinnings of society as we know it, already sagging dangerously, may collapse completely. As Western civilization expends what little biblical capital it has left, we may find ourselves living impoverished, not in just the post-modern age but in the New Barbarism, a sort of fluorescent Dark Age, like the inside of a mall. On the other hand, those who dream of something brighter than fluorine and neon—or pastel posters—to illuminate their lives, may, by these living words, be lured outdoors into the true light. Virginia Stem Owens
  • The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. . . . It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman — glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things”
  • every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. . . .You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things”
  • …all talk of heaven seems absurd to me, though I believe that we have souls and that they survive our deaths, in some sense that we are entirely incapable of imagining. . . The only thing more absurd than categorically denying all life beyond this one is attempting to describe or have some sense of that life. . . not love as we have ever known it, but love as being finally, fully known. Christian Wiman
  • What inclines even me to believe in Christ's Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. -- If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be really saved, - what I need is certainty - not wisdom, dreams or speculation - and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection." Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
  • And in his blessing thou art blest:
    For where thou onely wert before
    An executioner at best;
    Thou art a gard’ner now, and more,
    An usher to convey our souls
    Beyond the utmost starres and poles.
     “Time,” George Herbert

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