Sermon Tone Analysis

Pray

Anybody love to read biographies?My Father loved to read biographies.

He was always fascinated by the back story of famous people.

He loved to find out what it was that drove them to their accomplishments.

Biographies can be very motivational.

Most of the time very successful people came from humble beginnings.

Sometimes, they started out with even less than we did.

Rarely, do they rise to the top from the start.

Often they have many failures before they have successes.

That is the excitement found in biographies.

Finding out how they overcame their obstacles.

Then we cant’t help but try and apply it to our story.

We try to learn from their wins and losses, and use that to motivate ourselves.

The problem is our story is usually different from their story.

The circumstances, maybe similar, but different enough that makes applying it difficult.

The other challenge is while we can learn from the biography, we don’t have access to that person.

We don’t have the means or the same resources they have.

We don’t have them available for questions or for help.

What would be really nice is if we could find someone that had been through the same things we had been through.

Who knew exactly what we feeling or thinking, and then if that persona could actually walk us through our story helping us make the right choices, following us along.

It would be helpful if that person could give us access to the same resources they had.

Or at least what if that person was there to cry with us in our failures, and was there to cheer us on in our victories.

What is that person was an advocate for us, always speaking highly of us, even when we felt like failures.

What of there was a living biography like that?

We don’t have the same resources they have.

We don’t have access to them to ask questions or for help.

What would be really nice is if we could find someone that had been through the same things we had been through.

Who knew exactly what we were feeling or thinking, and then if that persona could actually walk us through our story helping us make the right choices, following us along.

It would be helpful if that person could give us access to the same resources they had.

Or what if that person was there to cry with us in our failures, and was there to cheer us on in our victories.

What if that person was an advocate for us, always speaking highly of us, even when we felt like failures.

What if there was a living biography like that?

Biographies can be very motivational.

We take what made that person successful and we try and learn from it, and use it to motivate ourselves.

The problem with that is that our story is not exactly like their story.

We don’t know what they have been through.

We may have had similar

The main problem

Well, there is.

And I going to tell you about it today.

ro 1:1-

This is the introduction of Paul’s letter to the Romans.Paul first establishes who He is and what He is called to do.

That is what I challenged you to do these past two weeks.

Reflect, focus---- better yet make a statement and write down who you are and what you are called to.

I’ll put this slide back up from last week to refresh your memory.

Paul is

a servant of Jesus Christ,

called to be an apostle, and

and set apart for the gospel of God.

set apart for the gospel of God.

In the next verse, Paul talks about this gospel, the gospel he was set apart for, this gospel of God.

Paul writes

Remember, gospel means literally good news.

So we could think of it this way.

Paul, set apart for the good news of God.

What good news?

Is this some new news?

A new and novel approach to God? Do we just throw away everything we already new about God and believed for these thousands of years?

No this gospel or good news, is the same good news that were promised beforehand, years ago.

hundreds of years ago by the prophets, and written down.

There is a real basis for this happening.

people didn’t just make it up, it was written down in all kinds of places.

Actually, I have heard some Pastor’s say there are over 300 prophecies.

I looked up a source that says there are 414 prophecies concerning Jesus in the Old Testament.

Personally, I think both those numbers are low.

I had a professor who was doing extensive work showing how through the whole Old Testament there are even more than that.

He used to tell us to avoid that number because he had work that showed extensively higher numbers, but here are the ones you may be most familiar with.

and

Mica 5.2

and

and

and

and

Ezk 36.26

That is just 7, we could go on.

Three hundred times, or 400 times, or according to my professor, even more.

That took about a minute.

Now using the conservative estimate and reading just the verses, it would take me about 45 minutes just to read through the verses, using the 414 for the number of prophecies and it would take over an hour, that is reading just the verses, not even paging to them.

Just reading them out loud, and the actual number could be quite a bit higher.

The point I am trying to make, is the point the apostle Paul is making.

This Gospel, this good news from God has been promised long beforehand, at the fall actually, and written down in God’s word.

Then and only then did Jesus come to live it out, exactly as it had been written.

This was not a random occurence.

It was God, telling us how he would save then doing it-through Jesus.

pause

Then, so that we are absolutely clear what the center of the gospel is Paul writes this.

The gospel is inseparable from his son, Jesus.

The gospel is the story of who Jesus is, and what He has done.

The good news is who Jesus is and what he he has done.

Who Jesus is

and what He has done.

Jesus is the sinless, God-man son of God.

What he did was died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead three days later.

You remember that from our series on what is the gospel it is straight out of 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

The Gospel of God is inseparable from Jesus it is regarding Jesus.

It does not have the word social in front of it.

You may have heard of a social gospel.

Do not be fooled.

The social gospel is not the same as the gospel of God, because the social gospel is not regarding Jesus.

The social gospel has an emphasis on good works.