Remain standing for the reading of God's word.
We're looking at Romans chapter 8 verses
9 to 11. Again, Romans chapter 8
verses 9 to 11.
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.
But if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is life because of righteousness.
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.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks
be
to
God.
Please
be
seated.
Well, one of my favorite stories
about,
Augustine
of Hippo,
is probably fictional,
but it makes a good point.
We're told that one day,
Augustine was walking on the shore of the
Mediterranean
Sea
trying to comprehend the depths
of the Trinity's
essence,
and growing frustrated
at his inability, he noticed a young boy
in the distance
running back and forth from the ocean
to this hole that he had dug up
in the sand, and he was using a
seashell
to pour water from the ocean and into
the hole.
So intrigued by the boy's,
single mindedness in this task, Augustine approached him
and asked him, what are you doing?
And the boy replied, I'm going to pour
all the water in the sea into this
hole that I've dug up.
At that moment,
Augustine realized that it will just as it
was impossible
for the vastness
of the water in the sea to be
contained in the small hole that this boy
had dug up in the sand,
so also was it impossible
for his own finite mind
to comprehend
the infinite mystery
of the Trinity.
Our text this morning in Romans 8, verses
9 to 11, you'll notice is the same
text that we preached on last week.
1 in particular, last week we looked at
the role of the Holy Spirit
in our salvation.
But as we shall see today,
Romans 8 verses 9 to 11 also teaches
us
about the triune God,
a subject so profound
that it is worthy of us revisiting the
same text even as we humbly recognize
the the limitations
of our finite
human minds.
So the main point for today's sermon is
this,
our assurance of salvation
rests
in the grip
of the triune God.
Our assurance of salvation
rests in the grip
of the triune God, and we will unfold
this beautiful reality
by dividing the sermon into 4 headings which
come from the Westminster Larger Catechism 11,
which tells us that the scripture
manifests that the Son
and the Holy Spirit are God equal with
the Father
ascribing unto them such names,
attributes,
works,
and worship
as our proper to God only.
Listen to this again.
The scripture manifests
that the Son and the Holy Spirit are
God equal with the father
ascribing unto them such names,
attributes,
works, and worship
as are proper to God only.
In other words, the Bible teaches that the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
are one God
because it ascribes to them the names,
attributes, works, and worship that are proper to
God alone.
So let's consider our sure hope of salvation
in the triune God under these four headings,
the names,
the attributes,
the works,
and the worship. Let's begin by considering the
first heading,
the names.
Consider with me Isaiah 42 verse 8.
I am the Lord,
that is my name.
My glory
I give to no other
nor my praise to carved idols.
Notice the connection
between God's name
and his glory, a glory that God shares
with no other.
Look also at Psalm 29 verses 12 which
read,
ascribe to the Lord o heavenly beings.
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his
name.
Worship the Lord in the splendor
of holiness.
These and many other passages in the Bible
make it abundantly clear that God is zealous
for the glory of his name, a glory
which he does not share with others
for it is proper
only
for God.
Now with this in mind, look at me
again at Romans 8 verse 9
where we read,
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.
Notice that the Holy Spirit
is called the spirit of God and
the spirit of Christ.
That is to say in our text,
scripture assigns a functional equivalence
to the names,
Holy Spirit,
Spirit of God,
and Spirit of Christ.
Do you see that?
We had just read that God does not
share the glory of his name with anyone
and yet in just this one verse
we see an interchangeability,
a sharing as it were
among the three names.
So did God lie
about
his zeal for the glory of his name?
In the Old Testament, did God say that
he does not share his name
only to then change his mind in the
New Testament?
As Paul would say,
by no means.
As numbers 23/19
tells us, God neither lies
nor changes his mind.
The reason the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit share names
or titles
is that the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit are 1
God
in 3 persons.
In fact, let me zoom out
of this one text to demonstrate how the
Bible describes
the 2 most significant
and consequential
names,
the name God
and the name Lord
to each person
in the Godhead.
Look at 1st Corinthians 8 verse 6,
there Paul says,
for us there is one God, the father
from whom all things and for whom all
all I'm sorry. For whom are all things
and for whom we exist,
and one lord Jesus Christ through whom are
all things and through whom
we exist.
Again, for us, there is one God,
the father.
There's a lot of profound stuff going on
here, but for our purposes, I want you
to remember that. The father here is called
God very clearly.
Now look at Titus chapter 2 verse 13,
which calls on us,
as Christians to live godly
lives, quote,
waiting for the blessed hope,
the appearing of the glory of our great
God and savior,
Jesus Christ.
Here Paul describes Jesus to Jesus glory and
the name
the great God
and savior.
Finally, look at Acts chapter 5 verse 4,
where Peter having condemned Ananias
for lying to the Holy Spirit,
rebukes Ananias
saying,
why is it that you have contrived this
deed in your heart?
You have not lied to man
but to God.
Notice therefore that the Bible asserts that lying
to the Holy Spirit
is equivalent to lying
to God.
So it is
no small thing
that in the Bible, we see the name
God
shared among the father
and the son
and the Holy Spirit,
But that's not
all, we also see the name Lord
shared among the 3 persons in the Godhead.
For example, in Isaiah 64
verse 8 we read,
but now, oh, Lord,
you are our father.
We are the clay and you are the
potter.
We are we are all the work of
your hand.
The word Lord in in, in our in
your Bibles, you'll see, is capitalized
because and I mean every letter there is
capitalized
because in the Hebrew text,
the covenant name of God is used.
Sometimes
that name is pronounced Jehovah
or more likely
it was pronounced
Yahweh. So you hear that sometimes you hear
you Jehovah, sometimes you hear Yahweh,
but it is the name, the covenantal name
of God that is used and that when
the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, was translated into
Greek the Greek the name Kurios was substituted,
the name Lord was substituted
so that nobody would accidentally take the name
of God in vain.
Okay? So Kurios
was used instead, Lord. And in the New
Testament, that was preserved because the New Testament
is written in Greek and so you kept
the name, Kurios,
Lord to refer to the covenantal name of
God.
But you'll see it in the Old Testament
in all capitals when it's represents the four
letters in the Hebrew Bible which means
Lord or which was used as Lord. Alright.
So here the father is called Lord in
Isaiah 45 verse 23.
It's significant that the Lord
says also in,
I'm sorry that was in Isaiah 64 verse
8. It's significant
that in Isaiah
45 verse 23,
the same Lord
in all capitals
speaks and he says this, by myself,
says the Lord, by myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return.
To me,
every knee shall bow
and every tongue shall swear
allegiance.
It's significant that it is the Lord who
says,
to me
every knee shall bow and every tongue confess
or every tongue shall swear allegiance
because in Philippians chapter 2
verses 9 to 11, Paul writes the following,
He writes,
therefore God has highly exalted Christ
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow
in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is
lord
to the glory
of God
the father.
You see here in no uncertain terms
that Paul ascribes to Jesus the name Lord,
the covenantal name of the God of Israel,
and he does so by quoting Isaiah 4523
which is about Yahweh, it's about the Lord,
and he ascribes that
text to Jesus
explicitly,
unequivocally,
amazingly.
Finally, look at second Corinthians chapter 3 verse
17
where Paul writes,
now the Lord
is the spirit
and where the spirit of the Lord is
there is freedom.
Here we clearly see the name Lord being
ascribed
to the Holy Spirit.
We have seen therefore that Romans 8:9 uses
the name
the names Holy Spirit,
Spirit of God,
and Spirit of Christ interchangeably.
And we have also seen that the Bible
ascribes the name God and the name Lord
to the father,
to the son,
and to the Holy Spirit demonstrating
by ascribing to them the same names,
the divinity of the father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Now, it is a profound mystery
that there is only one God
and yet the father is God
and the Son is God
and the Holy Spirit is God, 3 distinct
persons who share the divine name.
But you know what else is amazing
about this,
The fact that Christians are given the right
to share in the name in a way
by virtue of our adoption
into God's family.
Think about that.
In Matthew 28 19,
Jesus commands his followers
to quote, make disciples of all nations
baptizing them
in the name
of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Christians are to be marked
by God's
covenantal name.
You see, baptism is a naming ceremony
where men and women,
boys and girls
are ceremoniously
engrafted into God's visible
household
and are given God's singular
family name,
the name
of the father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, since the father
decreed that we should be united to his
son
through the spirit,
through a spirit wrought faith,
we are made partakers
through adoption in Christ
of the divine name
with all the amazing privileges
and awesome responsibilities
that this entails.
This is why we are planting this church
because in God's providence,
we have been tasked with fulfilling the mandate
once given to Adam
to fill the earth and to multiply,
to expand the family of God by making
disciples, to make known his holy name
through gospel proclamation
and holy living,
that the knowledge of the glory of God
may cover the earth as the waters cover
the sea.
That is our call right now
as a church plant, a mere acorn for
the moment,
that through the life giving power of the
Holy Spirit
and the gentle and tender husbandry of the
son,
shall one day grow into a mighty
cross shaped oak tree
that shall yield this fruit in season,
whose leaves shall not wither, and that shall
prosper in everything that the father calls it
to do. That is why the Lord has
called us to plant this church,
so that we can faithfully administer the sacrament
of baptism
here in the woodlands,
so people know that they are not alone,
but can be a part of a family
of sinners who have received mercy and of
beggars who have found bread and of orphans
who have been adopted
away from lowliness
and loved away from despair.
So people that can experience the grace of
a God who loved us before
we loved him.
That's the practical implication of our engrafting into
the family of the triune God and that
is why we are planting this church.
Now having considered the names, let's look at
the second heading, the attributes.
In Romans 8:9,
we saw that the Spirit of God dwells
in the Christian.
In Romans 8:10,
Paul writes,
but if Christ
is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is life
because of righteousness.
So from these two verses,
we learn that the Holy Spirit dwells in
the Christian
and that Christ himself
dwells in the Christian.
Furthermore,
again, zooming out of this text once again,
we read Jesus words
in John 1423
for example,
where Jesus says, if anyone loves me he
will keep my word
and my father will love him and we
will come to him
and make our home
with
him.
In other words, the Bible affirms that the
father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit make their
dwelling place, they make their home
within believers.
Now,
how can God dwell
within different persons
without he himself being divided.
The reason this is possible
is because of God's divine attribute of omnipresence,
meaning that God and only God
can be everywhere
at all times.
Yeah.
In Jeremiah 2324,
we read,
do I not fill heaven and earth declares
the Lord?
In Matthew 2820,
Jesus' last words to his disciples are, and
behold,
I am with you always
even to the end of the age.
And in Psalm 139 verses 7 and 8,
the psalmist declares,
where shall I go from your spirit
or where shall I flee from your presence
if I ascend to heaven you are there
and if I make my bed in shawl
you
are there.
Thus, the divine attribute
of omnipresence is ascribed to the
father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit demonstrating that each
person in the Godhead
is God.
Now when our kids were young,
we installed security cameras in our house, and
our kids were still too young to know
what these things did.
So for the 1st month that we had
cameras sometimes I would arrive home and I
would make comments
like, hey, guys, please don't eat ice cream
in the living room anymore, you can stay
in the sofa,
or, Santiago,
if you're going to be kicking the soccer
ball with your cousin, do it outside the
house so you don't accidentally break something,
and the kids will look at each other
astonished
wondering, How does dad know that? How how's
this possible?
One time, Santiago even told Waleska,
I think she had broken a toy or
something he told her to just go ahead
and confess his dad already knows anyway.
Of course,
God's attribute of divine omnipresence
is nothing
like parental surveillance
neither in his potential creepiness
nor in his superficiality,
God's divine omnipresence
means that he is actually
with his people.
As Romans 8 verses 9 to 11 makes
clear, if you are a Christian,
God dwells within you.
That is an expression of the intimacy
of God's love for us and of God's
commitment to work good in us.
This intimacy that we enjoy
with God
as Christians
can make our prayer life rich
and effective
because God is with us, he hears our
prayers.
Because Christ is with us,
he knows our needs.
Because the spirit
is with us, he comforts us
in all circumstances.
Listen, God isn't simply
okay with you.
He doesn't merely
accept you.
He loves you.
He calls you and welcomes you into his
presence.
He has a place for you at his
table.
He delights in enjoying fellowship
with you.
In fact, the ultimate expression
of this glorious fellowship takes place
when we enjoy communion
at the Lord's table.
A sacrament that communicates God's presence in Christ
with his people
through the work of the Holy Spirit.
That is why we are planting this church
because when we administer the sacrament of the
Lord's supper, we proclaim peace with God through
the sacrificial and atoning death of our Passover
lamb.
Because at the Lord's table, we are reminded
that the wall of hostility that used to
separate us
sinful human beings
from the Holy God has now been torn
asunder
through the cross of Christ
because the Lord's supper is a sermon
that can be
heard and seen and touched and smelled and
tasted
inviting sinners to taste and see that the
Lord is good, to know that in Christ
there really is forgiveness of sins that through
his spirit we are enabled to walk in
newness of life.
In a society which in which communication is
easier than ever
and yet people are more disconnected
and lonelier than ever before,
communion with God
at his son's table
in the fellowship of the spirit is a
gift of life,
of hope,
of joy,
and of peace that needs to be witnessed,
tasted, and experienced
by us, and by our families,
and by our friends, and by our neighbors,
and by our co workers, and by our
peers. This is why we are planting this
church
because by God's grace when we partake of
the supper
and when we fellowship
with God's people, the Holy Spirit lifts us
into the very presence of Christ, the very
presence of the one who nourishes our faith
and makes us whole.
So that we can say
with the prophet Isaiah,
when Isaiah 25 says, on this mountain,
the Lord of hosts will make for all
peoples a feast of rich food,
a feast of well aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged
wine well refined,
and he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death
forever.
And the Lord God will wipe away tears
from all faces.
And the reproach of His people, He will
take away from all the earth
for the Lord
has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
behold, this is our God.
We have waited
for him that he might save us. This
is the Lord. We have waited for him.
Let us be glad and rejoice in his
salvation.
This is why
we are planting this church.
Having considered the names
and the attributes, let's look at the third
reasoning
the works.
In Romans 8:10, we read that the spirit
is life
because of righteousness.
And in Romans 8:11, we read that if
the spirit of him who raised Jesus from
the dead dwells in you,
then he who raised Christ Jesus from the
dead will also give life to your mortal
bodies
through his spirit
who dwells in you.
Therefore,
from these two verses,
we notice that the resurrection of Jesus
was the work of the Holy Spirit who
is life,
but also of the father that is to
say of he who raised Christ Jesus
from the dead.
Furthermore,
if we zoom out from this text once
again
and we read in John 2 chapter,
chapter 2 verses 19 to 22,
we read what Jesus there told Jewish authorities
authorities.
He said this,
destroy this temple
and in 3 days I will raise it
up.
And John tells us that when he said
this he was talking about his own
body. He was talking about the resurrection
of his body.
I will raise it up, Jesus said.
In John 10 verses 17 18, Jesus said
that he has the authority to lay down
his life and he has the authority to
take it back up again.
What we have here therefore
is the Bible's teaching that the divine work
of bringing things to life
and resurrection life in particular
belongs to the father
and to the son
and to the Holy Spirit.
This unequivocally
manifests the divinity of the 3 persons in
the Godhead.
Now,
as we shall see,
the practical implications of this profound truth are
of monumental
importance to us
because you see this means
that our resurrection on the last day
is not in our hands.
It doesn't depend
on our own goodness nor on the merits
of our own godliness.
Instead,
our resurrection on the last day rest
in the power of the triune God.
And
the guarantee
that our bodies will be raised
from the dead
is that our spirits have already
been made alive when the Holy Spirit changed
our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh
and indwelled us.
That is why Paul
writes
that the outer man is wasting away the
last vestiges of our dying fleshly nature
while our inner man,
our regenerated
spiritual nature, is growing in conformity to Christ
through the life giving spirit.
The Holy Spirit,
the Lord and giver of life who proceeds
from the father and the son was sent
by the father and the son so that
those who are spiritually dead can be born
again,
can be made alive by the Spirit who
is life as he works faith in us.
This is why Paul in Ephesians 2 writes,
that though we were dead in our sins,
God has made us alive.
By grace we have been saved
through faith.
This is why we are planting this church
because Paul tells us in Romans 10 that
saving faith comes through the preaching of God's
word
and that through the preaching of the word,
the Holy Spirit renews minds so that they
can discern the truth and transform hearts
persuading them to trust in Christ's resurrection
and moves lips to joyously confess
Christ's lordship
over their lives and to call upon the
name of the Lord trusting in God's unbreakable
promise
that everyone who calls upon the name of
the Lord
will be
saved.
This is why we're planting this church
because as citizens of an eternal city in
a heavenly country,
God has called us to be his ambassadors
here in a transient city in an earthly
country that moth and rust will destroy
to be his heralds of hope,
proclaiming the message of resurrection life and snatching
souls from the flames of hell
by the power of the triune God. That
is why we are planting this church.
Because people dwelling in darkness and liable
to eternal damnation need to hear the gospel
of Jesus Christ, a gospel that will shine
light in their darkness
and their darkness will not be able to
overcome it.
Death is no match
for the resurrection power of the triune God.
This is why we are planting this church.
Having considered the divine names,
attributes, and works ascribed to each person in
the Godhead
and demonstrating their divinity, let's conclude the sermon
by looking at the final heading,
the worship.
Last week, we looked at Romans 8 verses
9 to 11 and considered the role of
the Holy Spirit in our salvation.
Today, we looked at the same verses
and learned that our resurrection is guaranteed
by the power of the triune God.
But here's the thing,
the reason we were created
and the reason we are saved
and the reason we will be raised
to eternal life
is that we may glorify and enjoy God
as we worship him in all eternity.
That's what we see
when when God rends the heavens for John
and he looks and he records this vision
in the book of Revelation where in chapter
5, we see that there are saints
from every tribe
and language and people and nation together with
myriads of angels
and creatures in heaven and on earth and
under the earth and in the sea,
worshiping God in the presence of the Holy
Spirit crying out with a loud voice,
worthy is the lamb who was slain
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and
might and honor and glory and blessing to
him
who sits on the throne and to the
lamb be blessing and honor and glory and
might for ever and ever.
The father,
the son,
and the Holy Spirit will receive worship unto
the ages of ages.
And we will know no greater joy
than to offer such worship.
And that is why
we are planting this church
because as Peter tells you in 1st Peter
29,
you
are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
a people for God's own possession that you
may proclaim the excellencies
of him who called you out of darkness
and into his marvelous
light.
By God's grace, this royal priesthood
does not have to wait until after the
resurrection to proclaim the excellencies
of the triune God.
Right now,
right here,
in this place,
every week as the word is preached, as
we pray, as we partake of the sacraments,
we have the privilege
of practicing
what we were made to do for all
eternity
because the father
called us to be his.
We have the privilege
of singing his praises
every Sunday.
Because the son tasted death in our place,
we have the privilege
of tasting this of tasting the sweetness
of the gospel
each Lord's day.
Because the spirit changed our hearts,
we have the privilege
of pouring out our hearts in his service
and of rejoicing
in the fellowship of believers
around the Lord's table.
That is why
we are planting this church
because we were naked,
and our father clothed us with his robe,
and we were hungry,
and Christ fed us with his body and
with his word, and we were dead,
and the spirit breathed life into our dead
bodies.
We're planting this church
so that we and others can taste and
see
that the Lord
is
good. Let's pray.