In a previous video, I defined sermon application as follows: Application is the process by which the unchanging principles of God’s word are brought into life-changing contact with people who live in an ever-changing world.

In today’s videos we look at how that definition shapes the way we apply the truth in our sermons.

Video 1: Principles of Application (1)

1. Passage: The faithful preacher bases his application not on anecdotes or inspiring stories, but on God’s Word, and on that particular preaching passage.

2. Primary: Preachers must not draw applications from the accidental, incidental, or coincidental parts of a passage, but from its essentials alone

3. Persistent: Although at times it may be appropriate to leave application to the conclusion of a sermon, it is usually best to apply throughout.

4. Prepared: Unprepared application usually means repetitive application.

Video 2: Principles of Application (2)

5. Present: Applications should be up-to-date and relevant.

6. Personal: Hearers must know that they are being addressed personally and even individually.

7. Precise: The general principle must be pointed to specific, concrete, everyday situations by asking “How? Where? When?”

8. Proportionate: Application must be varied and balanced.

Video 3: A Plea for Passionate Christ-centered Application

For other videos in the How Sermons Work series click here.

INTRODUCTION

Do you remember the time you first realized you were saved by grace alone. Do you remember the joy, the laughter, the exhilaration of embracing salvation through faith in Christ? Do you remember the relief, the liberty, the freedom you experienced when you realized that God was offering you a salvation that had zero contribution from you? Do you ever wonder where that joy has gone? What happened to that exhilaration that spiritual high? Do you ever wish you could get it back again? Are you asking, How do I recover the joy of my salvation? Paul has a surprising answer for us in Romans 4:1-12.

BACKGROUND

In general terms we can summarize the first three chapters of Romans as follows:

• Chapter 1. The Gentiles are guilty
• Chapter 2. The Jews are guilty
• Chapter 3:1-19. Everyone’s guilty
• Chapter 3:20-31. Get from deadly guilt to healthy joy through faith in Jesus.

Paul got us from deadly guilt to healthy joy by introducing us to seven characters (see previous sermon). But how do I stay joyful? How do I restore my joy? How do I increase my joy? Paul answers by introducing us to two other characters, Mr Abraham and Mr David.

What can we learn from Mr Abraham?

1. FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF ABRAHAM

Paul attacked opponents of justification by faith with what they thought was their strongest argument: Abraham (1). Jewish teachers regarded Abraham as perfectly righteous by his own works. Paul conceded that if the Jews were correct, then Abraham had a reason to boast (and therefore all who follow his example do also). But Paul rejects that hypothetical (2), arguing his point by appealing to what the Old Testament said about Abraham.

Abraham believed God (3)

When it comes to salvation, everyone believes. We just vary in what we believe. Some believe in themselves: their riches, wisdom, goodness, or pedigree. Some believe in the church or religion. Some believe in science. Some believe in an idol. Some believe there’s nothing to believe in. Everyone believes; we just differ in what we believe in.

What about Abraham? He believed God (Gen. 15:6). It’s as simple and straightforward as that. He put no faith in anything or anyone other than God. God was the sole and only object of his faith. It wasn’t God +, or God *, or God-, or “God but…” It was God completely, totally, simply, and exclusively. It wasn’t just faith in God’s Word but faith in God personally and relationally. He didn’t just believe there was a God but believed in (into) God.

The literal translation of “believed” in Genesis 15:6 is “kept on Amen-ing.” Abraham kept on believing, kept on considering as reliable, kept on trusting the Trustworthy.” This was not a new faith but a new exercise of a faith begun in the past (Gen 12:1-4; Heb. 11:8).

God justified Abraham (3)

Just as Gen 15:6 was not the first time Abraham believed, it was not the first time Abraham was justified by faith. It was the first time Abraham’s faith in God’s promise of a Seed was revealed in the Bible (Gal. 3:16). It was the first time God openly attested his justification. Whenever that first moment of of “God-alone-faith” connected Abraham with God, something miraculous happened. The whole of God’s righteousness transferred irrevocably to Abraham’s account. God declared Abraham just, righteous, perfect, and accepted. That wasn’t a lie because God actually credited Abraham’s account with his righteousness. That’s the “it” in this verse. The “it” was not Abraham’s faith but what Abraham’s faith was in: God’s righteousness.

God justifies all believers (9-12)

We’ll come back to David’s experience in verses 6-8 in a moment, but let’s jump down to Paul’s application of the Abraham story in verses 9-12. Anticipating that some Gentiles might say, “Well this gracious salvation is only for the circumcised,” Paul reminded them that Abraham believed and was justified before he was circumcised and therefore a massive encouragement to the uncircumcised (9-11). But the Jews were also to learn from Abraham’s example not to put their faith in their circumcision but to follow the faith of Abraham in God alone (12).

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

There are only two ways to be saved (4-5). Working for God or not working for God. Wages or gift. God owes us a debt or God pays our debts. Deserved or undeserved. Works or faith. Justifying ourselves or justified by God. Rewarded or redeemed. Which is the happiest way? It also happens to be the only way.

Believers have the whole of God’s righteousness. As soon as you believe, the whole of God’s righteousness is transferred to your account and it’s an irrevocable transfer. When God counts you righteous, he’s not lying.

Any other Old Testament character to support this?

2. FEEL THE EXPERIENCE OF DAVID

Paul then turned to the experience of David not only to further assure the Romans of salvation apart from their works but to experience the blessed joys in this way of salvation

Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (6-8).

Paul encourages his readers to enter into four blessed joys:

• The blessed joy of Christ’s perfect character and conduct being counted as ours (6).
• The blessed joy of not contributing one good work to our salvation (7)
• The blessed joy of getting all our evil works forgiven and covered (7)
• The blessed joy of God not counting our evil works against us (8)

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

Quadruple your joy at the beginning of each day. Before you start the day, follow Abraham’s example to feel David’s experience. Nothing you do or fail to do can increase or decrease your righteousness account.

Quadruple your joy at the end of each day. As you close your eyes, reflecting on the days successes and failures, let faith in Christ give you joy in Christ. Nothing you did or didn’t do, increased or reduced your account.

Quadruple your joy when you fall and fail. Don’t wait until you feel better or do better, but believe and be justified as soon as you sin. Let faith determine your feelings rather than feelings determine your faith.

Quadruple your joy when you remember past sin. For some of us, when we look back on our lives, we remember a particularly sinful time or moment and shame steals our joy. If anyone was vulnerable here, it was David, and yet he used four joys to overwrite the pain of that memory.

Quadruple your joy when you feel worthless. Maybe childhood or domestic abuse has made you feel you are worth nothing. Perhaps it’s bullying at school. Maybe it’s that you are not as clever or gifted or successful as others. Or could be you feel lonely and forgotten.

Quadruple your joy when you are dying. Whether thinking about our death or actually dying, death scares us. Sometimes it’s fear of the process, but sometimes it’s fear about whether we’ll go to heaven or hell when we do die. Every thought about whether we are good enough drains joy and fills with fear. Every thought about whether Christ is good enough fills with joy and drains fear.

YOU CAN TRUST TRYING
OR TRY TRUSTING

SUMMARY

A NEW CHAPTER

Stop. Stop trying and start trusting. Trying harder is hard. Trusting harder is easy. Please don’t take another step of life until you stop trying (even 1%) and start trusting (100%).

Restore. Restore joy to your faith by restoring your faith in Jesus. The more you try to find joy in what you’ve done, the less you will find joy in what he’s done (and vice versa).

Practice. Practice joy-restoring faith this week. As soon as you sin, remind yourself, you have not lost one ounce of God’s righteousness in your account. You are as righteous after you sin as before you sinned. See how much joy that gives you.

Prayer. Joyful Savior, you save joyfully to give us a joyful salvation. Please restore the joy of my salvation by helping me to follow Abraham’s example of faith and David’s experience of joy.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What was your greatest joy when you were first saved?

2. On a scale of 0-10, how would you rate your present level of joy in your salvation?

3. What has reduced your joy and what have you tried to restore it?

4. What is justification? See Heidelberg 60-64 and Shorter Catechism 33.

5. How much of God’s righteousness is yours right now?

6. Which of David’s four joys is your greatest joy?

PDF OF SERMON NOTES

INTRODUCTION

‘No pain, no gain.’ We’re all familiar with that well-known saying. Whether we’re trying to diet, pass an exam, save money, or get fit, ‘No pain, no gain.’ We’re not so familiar with the application of that principle in our spiritual lives. We can understand how pain in these other areas produce gain, but how does pain produce gain in our spiritual lives? If we don’t get a good answer for this, we will do everything we can to avoid suffering, resent it when it comes into our lives, and lose the potential for gain from pain. Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 for God’s answer to this question: How does pain produce gain in our spiritual lives?

The answer involves three exercises in God’s gym.

BACKGROUND

Paul saw that the Corinthians were at risk of losing heart because of his present sufferings and the likelihood of their future sufferings (1, 16). He therefore gives six reasons not to lose heart in suffering:

First, because of the light-giving transformative power of the Gospel (1-6).

Second, we do not lose heart because our weakness is the platform for Christ’s power (7-12).

Third, we do not lose heart because God uses our witness in suffering to spread grace, thanksgiving and glory to God (13, 15).

Fourth, we do not lose heart because powerful resurrection is ahead for us (14).

Fifth, we do not lose heart because God is renewing us spiritually even while we are dying physically (16).

Sixth, we do not lose heart because God is preparing incomparable eternal compensation for us (17).

These reasons enable us not only not to lose heart in suffering but also to gain heart in suffering.

What’s the first exercise?

1. GOD EXERCISES US FOR PRESENT RENEWAL (16)

Outward Pain

Though our outer self is wasting away… (16)

Our ‘outer self’ is primarily our body, property, and status. It’s everything that this world sees and measures when it’s calculating someone’s success or value.

God exercised Paul with age, pain, conflict, disappointment, service, and persecution, resulting in him losing his health, wealth, and status. God’s providence had weakened him physically, socially, and financially. Anyone looking at pictures of Paul would say, “Wow! He’s aged badly.”

Inner Gain

…our inner self is being renewed day by day (16)

Our ‘inner self’ is our soul, our heart, our spirit. It’s everything that this world cannot see when it comes to assessing someone’s success or value. It’s our unseen relationship to God and includes our faith, repentance, hope, love, worship, patience, submission, and so on.

The same events and experiences that weakened Paul outwardly, strengthened him inwardly. It’s the same divine exercise machine that’s having such different effects. His physical, financial, and social muscles were withering and wasting, but his spiritual muscles were being honed, sculpted, and strengthened with every rep. It’s in the present continuous tense, meaning this is a constant daily process.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

Pain is gain. It’s not just no pain, no gain, it’s that every pain causes gain, every pain produces gain. We may not like to think of our wrinkles, our gray hair, our scars, our arthritis, our diabetes, our eczema, our deafness, our missing teeth, our Parkinson’s, our MS, our weakness. We try to deny or minimize, but if we do, we are missing out on this encouraging exercise of contrasting the outward loss with the inward gain. We may not see it ourselves, but the Bible tells us it’s there, it’s happening, and therefore let’s be encouraged by this fact. This is a very different way to view old age. “Yes! I’m getting weaker and sorer. That means I’m getting bigger and stronger!”

That’s the present. What about the future?

2. GOD EXERCISES US FOR FUTURE GLORY (17)

Light and short pain

For this light momentary affliction… (17)

Paul’s pains and sufferings were far from light or short; they were weighty and lengthy (2 Cor. 11:24-31). How then can he call them light and short. They did not feel like that at the time (2 Cor. 1:8). There were moments and periods when Paul felt he could not go on; he could not lift another weight for another second. How can he now say they were light and short? They are light and short only when compared to the heavy and long reward that results from them.

Long and heavy glory

…is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (17).

God leverages these sufferings so that every pain and every day is multiplied in the opposite direction. Short pains produce eternal gains, light pains produce glorious gains. It’s so unequal a comparison, that it’s not even worth calling it a comparison. It’s like saying “My ingrown toenail resulted in a purple heart.” Or, “My running up the stairs resulted in me winning the New York marathon.”

Notice especially that it’s not ‘despite the sufferings we get great glory.’ It’s ‘because of the sufferings.’ Christ’s sufferings get us into glory, but our sufferings are connected to our experience of glory.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

Pain will be gain. Just as the more we stretch and push our muscles, the more we grow and strengthen our muscles, so every sanctified pain produces heavenly gain. The heavier the weight of suffering the heavier the weight of glory. Not one moment of pain is wasted. Every moment of pain here is producing eternal gain in heaven for the Christian.

How can that be?

3. GOD EXERCISES US WITH NEW GLASSES (18)

We stop seeing the seen

…as we look not to the things that are seen…for the things that are seen are transient (18).

The Corinthians, like us, tended to just see the seen things. They viewed the visible world as if it was the only world and the lasting world. Paul said that he deliberately looks away from the seen and the visible world. He chooses to stop looking at it. How do you do that? There’s only one way, and that’s to look at something else.

We start seeing the unseen

…we look….to the things that are unseen. For…the things that are unseen are eternal (18).

If you ever get bi-focal glasses, you know it takes time for your eyes to adjust to them. It takes a bit of effort. Paul is encouraging us to do some visual exercises here, to take God’s glasses and train ourselves to look at the world differently, in fact to look at this world less and the world to come much more.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

Pain sees gain. We will never see gain without pain. Without pain we cannot see gain. Pain is what helps us see this world differently and the world to come differently. Paul calls us to feast our eyes on the forever world not the fallen world. If we look better, we will see better.

SUMMARY

PRAYER

My Trainer, help me to believe that my pains result in incomparable gains.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What pain has God brought into your life? How has that affected your spiritual life?

2. Where have you seen gain producing pain in your life or others?

3. What role does faith have in seeing inner renewal?

4. “Christ’s sufferings get us into glory, but our sufferings are connected to our experience of glory.” How would you explain this to a suffering Christian?

5. How has pain improved your sight?

6. What can you do to improve your sight?

PDF of Sermon Notes

Being welcomed warms our hearts, being rejected rips them out. We’ve all been rejected at one point in our lives, haven’t we? A college rejected our application. An employer let us go. A coach cut us from the team. Someone we asked for a date said no. Our spouse started an affair. Rejection rips our heart out. If we think about these rejections too much, we sink emotionally and mentally, so we generally try to put it behind us.

But can we think about rejection in a way that will be good for us? I believe we can. For example, if we remember the pain of rejection, we will be less rejecting and more welcoming of others. What about spiritual rejection? Can we turn that to good? Can we use the rejection of Christ to increase the reception of Christ? Let’s look at John 1:10-13 for our answer.

Sermon notes on John 1:10-13.

Many parents have good intentions for daily times of family worship. But these good intentions often fail because of three main problems: an overly ambitious plan, the absence of a plan, or the perceived lack of spiritual benefit. This new resource will help families establish regular devotions through realistic aims, a clear plan and direction, and stimulating interaction with Scripture and prayer.

Exploring the Bible Together: A 52-Week Family Worship Plan covers key passages in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, providing a big-picture overview of the whole Bible over the course of a year. Fifty-two weekly “expeditions” are each divided into 6 days, with a small passage of Scripture, two questions, a brief application lesson, and a short prayer prompt. Artwork by illustrator Scotty Reifsnyder accompanies each page. In just a few minutes a day, families can explore the whole story of the Bible together.

Features:

• Covers key passages in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation
• Includes 52 weekly plans, each consisting of 6 daily readings with two interactive questions, one sentence of application, a brief prayer, space to fill in family prayer requests and needs, and a verse to memorize
• Offers instruction on how to conduct family worship using this guide
• Each day consists of an average of 5 verses to read and can be completed in 5 minutes or less
• Includes artwork by illustrator Scotty Reifsnyder, illustration and design instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, whose work has been featured by Time magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more

Find out more here.