Romans 8:1-11

• 1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
• 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
• 3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of flesh, to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,
• 4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
• 5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what that flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
• 6 The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;
• 7 the mind of the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.
• 8 Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.
• 9 You, however, are controlled not by the flesh but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
• 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
• 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

Introduction: Today is Fathers Day...A little history

The idea for an official Father’s Day celebration came to a married daughter, seated in a church in Spokane, Washington, attentive to a Sunday sermon on Mother’s Day in 1910-two years after the first Mother’s Day observance in West Virginia.

The daughter was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. During the sermon, which extolled maternal sacrifices made for children, Mrs. Dodd realized that in her own family it had been her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, who had sacrificed-raising herself and five sons alone, following the early death of his wife in childbirth. For Mrs. Dodd, the hardships her father had endured on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.

Her proposed local Father’s Day celebration received strong support from the town’s ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA. The date suggested for the festivities, June 5, Mrs. Dodd’s father’s birthdays were three weeks away-had to be moved back to the nineteenth when ministers claimed they need extra time to prepare sermons on such a new subject as Father.

Newspapers across the country, already endorsing the need for a national Mother’s Day, carried stories about the unique Spokane observance. Interest in Father’s Day increased. Among the first notables to support Mrs. Dodd’s idea nationally was the orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan, who also backed Mother’s Day. Believing that fathers must not be slighted, he wrote to Mrs. Dodd, "too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child."

Father’s Day, however, was not so quickly accepted as Mother’s Day. Members of the all-male Congress felt that a move to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day. And in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, should hold their own Father’s Day observances. He wrote to the nation’s governors that "the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations."

Many people attempted to secure official recognition for Father’s Day. One of the most notable efforts was made in 1957, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who wrote forcefully to Congress that "Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable."

Eventually, in 1972-sixty-two years after it was proposed-Father’s Day was permanently established by President Richard Nixon. Historians seeking an ancient precedent for an official Father’s Day observance have come up with only one: The Romans, every February, honored fathers-but only those deceased.

In America today, Father’s Day is the fifth-largest card-sending occasion, with about 85 million greeting cards exchanged.

(Above info from http://www.ideafinder.com/guest/calendar/fathersday.htm)

If your father was a good father, you have much to be grateful for. If he is still alive, you should let him know how much he is loved by you. If your father was a bad father, remember that you have a Father in Heaven who loves you, and who is watching out for you. You may trust Him to take care of you. In Romans chapter eight Paul writes about four things our Heavenly Father has done, and is doing, and will do for us...

I. Our Heavenly Father loves us without condemnation (Romans 8:1).

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus..."

Sometimes parents treat their children very badly. There are parents who scream obscenities at their children. There a parents who curse their children. Their are parents who strike their children in anger. There are parents who browbeat their children. Their are parents who constantly point out to their children that they are too fat or too thin. There are parents who tell their children that they are stupid and will never do well in school, and will never get anywhere in life. There are parents who constantly criticize their children. Their are parents who constantly control their children, and who push them around, and who drive their children to despair.

Some of you may have had such parents. Some of you may BE such parents. But God is not like that. God our Father is loving, He is kind, He is merciful, and He does not condemn His children.

• 8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
• 9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour his anger for ever;
• 10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
• 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
• 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
• 13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
• 14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
  (Psalm 103:8-14)

• 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
• 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
• 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned
  (John 3:16-18)

• 2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered round him, and he sat down to teach them.
• 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
• 4 and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
• 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"
• 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
• 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
• 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
• 9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
• 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no-one condemned you?"
• 11 "No-one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
  (John 8:2-11)

In Luke 6:37 Jesus taught us to be like our Heavenly Father...

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

II. Our Heavenly Father loved us by sending His only begotten Son to be our sin offering (Romans 8:3).

"For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of flesh, to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh."

The Law of God is good, but the Law cannot save anyone. The Law cannot take away sin. The Law has a ministry of condemnation. The Law tells me "you are a sinner, and you must die."

But God sent His only begotten Son to be my sin offering. What is a sin offering? A sin offering is an offering that is received by God in place of the life of a person. Someone, or some animal, dies in the place of a person.

The story of Abraham and his son Isaac is a great illustration.

• 1 ¶ Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.
• 2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
• 3 ¶ Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.
• 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.
• 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."
• 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together,
• 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
• 8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.
• 9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
• 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
• 11 ¶ But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.
• 12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."
• 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
• 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
  (Genesis 22:1-14)

Isaac did not die, because God accepted the ram in place of Isaac. In fact, God not only accepted the ram, God had previously arranged for the lamb to be there, ready for sacrifice.

We should die for our sins. But God arranged for a Lamb to die in our place: the Lord Jesus Christ.

• 11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp.
• 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.
  (Hebrews 13:11-12)

III. Our Heavenly Father loves us by sending the Holy Spirit to help us live the Christian life (Romans 8:9).

"You, however, are controlled not by the flesh but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ."

There are many other New Testament verses telling us that the Holy Spirit lives in all those who are believers in Jesus.

• Ac 2:17 "‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
• Ac 2:18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
• Ac 2:38 Peter replied, "Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• 1Co 2:12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.
• 1Co 3:16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
• 1Co 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
• 1Co 12:13 For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
• 2 Co:21 Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,
  22 set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
• Ga 4:6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."

IV. Our Heavenly Father loves us in His faithful promise to give life even to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11).

"And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you."

Our present problem, in our attempt to lead holy lives, is our struggle with the world, the flesh and the temptations of the Devil. There will come a day when we no longer have to deal with any of those. This world will pass away, and we will live on a new earth, a restored Paradise. The Devil will be cast into the bottomless pit, and will deceive the nations no more, according to the Book of Revelation. He will no longer be walking about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And our bodies, which now have a principle of sin and mortality and corruption, will be changed.

• 51 ¶ Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—
• 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
• 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.
• 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
• 55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
• 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
• 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
  (I Co 15:51-57)

People who have died and gone to Heaven do not yet have their new bodies. Their bodies are in the grave, awaiting the resurrection. (Some people are very concerned about cremation, because they cannot see how God can raise up a new body from the ashes. But this is nothing to worry about. Abraham was buried 4,000 years ago, and he was not cremated. But his remains long ago turned to dust. If God can restore the dusty body of Abraham, He can also restore those in our time who have been cremated. Is there anything too hard for God? No!) But we shall receive our new bodies when Christ returns for us. Paul tells us that the bodies of the dead will rise first...

• 13 ¶ Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.
• 14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
• 15 According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
• 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
• 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord for ever.
  (I Thess 4:13-17)

Aren't you looking forward to receiving your resurrection body? No more sickness. No more pain. No more missing limbs. No more alzheimer's disease. No more aching back in the morning. No more blurred vision. No more being hard of hearing. No more cancer. No more...no more...no more...Only health, and life and happiness forever and ever. God our wonderful and good Father, has this in store for us.

Conclusion: What has our Heavenly Father done for us? Is doing for us? Will do for us?

• I. He does not and will never condemn us. He treats us with kindness, love and respect as His chosen children.
• II. He sent His only begotten and beloved Son Jesus to be our sin offering.
• III. He sent the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts, and to help us to live for Jesus every day.
• IV. He has promised to give life even to our old, wearing-out, diseased bodies, when Jesus returns.

On today, Fathers Day, honor the important men in your life. But more than all that, honor your Heavenly Father. Amen.