First Church of the Nazarene
Pastor Henecke's Sermon Outlines

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Pastor Henecke's Sermon Outlines

The Woodland Street Pulpit

Nashville’s First Church of the Nazarene

September 29, 2002 A.M.

God

We have arrived at the climax of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans – next Sunday we have the Apostle’s great summary:

Romans 12:1-2

In summary brothers, through God’s compassions I call upon you to offer your bodies in a decisive spiritual act of worship as a sacrifice that is living, holy and pleasing to God. Do not be shaped by this age - but be transformed through the renewal of your mind to discern God’s will - comprehending what is good, acceptable, and absolute.

Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

He concludes the first chapters in a Doxology:

Introduction: The Doxology:

God has consigned all mankind to disobedience, so that he may have mercy upon all.

Romans 11:33-

O how beyond explanation and discernment is the depth of the wealth of God’s wisdom and knowledge – how impossible to comprehend are his decisions and ways!

For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

Has shut up to shut together like a net

All "The all" (both Gentiles and Jews).

So that he might have mercy

O the depth Paul's argument concerning God's elective grace and goodness has carried him to the heights and now he pauses on the edge of the precipice as he contemplates God's wisdom and knowledge, fully conscious of his inability to sound the bottom with the plummet of human reason and words. Unreachable Some of God's wisdom can be known (1:20f.), but not all. Past tracing out

Who has known? From Isaiah 40:13.

Isaiah 40:11 - 13

He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?

Ancient Job heard God say:

Job 38:4

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Then the conclusion of the truth in doxology:

Romans 11: 36

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever (through all the ages). Amen.

Out of him

Through (by means of) him

Unto (returning to) him

In these three prepositions Paul ascribes the universe For ever "Throughout the ages."

  1. Beyond Our Corruption
    1. What we are about is LIFE
      1. If we are not careful this will be about church
        1. Or religion
        2. Or the community
        3. Or ministry
      2. The issue here is life and its Creator

Isaiah 55:8-9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

    1. Yet how shall we know God? How are we to grasp him?

John 1:18

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is in the Father's bosom, who has made him known.

2 Corinthians 5:19

God was in Christ reconciling the world (cosmos) to himself, not holding men’s trespasses against them,

    1. Scripture says God has made himself known:

Colossians 1:15

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;

    1. Here it is

      1. God was in Christ reconciling
      2. In Christ God revealing
      3. And presenting life

John 5:37-40

The Father who sent me has testified about me. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

    1. The issue is life itself
      1. Life that originated in God
      2. And is defined by God
  1. Beyond The Momentary
    1. God has summed up all humanity as disobedient:
      1. All have sinned
      2. All are gone from the right
    2. Life is not the way it is supposed to be!

      3. Romans 1:21

      Though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

      1. For we did not glorify God as God
      2. Nor were we thankful
      3. And became less than we were intended to be
    3. We lived to the momentary – to the NOW
      1. Life was lived centered in preservation of self
      2. As a natural or animal man
    4. The Gospel is a call to live in Doxology
      1. Beyond the momentary
      2. Beyond our-self

Jude 24-24

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before his presence with rejoicing in glory, to and through the only God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever. Amen.

  1. Beyond Trivia Pursuit
    1. Even in Christ we must learn to live beyond the petty
      1. The church, and you as a believer, are always being pulled into the trivia and out of the eternal
      2. The causes that use the church

Colossians 2:8

See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.

    1. God has revealed himself in Christ
      1. The center of that revelation is the crucified One
      2. Who calls us – whoever we are to unite our being with his in a world transforming new creation
    2. Beyond our little causes
    • Fundamentalism – fossilizes the Scriptures
    • Dogmatism – freezes the spirit
    • Legalism – deadens the intellect
    • Secularization – (opening the church to the world) leads to the abandonment of the cross and the essence of Christianity
  1. Into The Absolute Reality
    1. God has established his own righteousness
      1. Determined by the Divine nature
      2. Not according to us
      3. Not established by us
        1. Given in Christ
        2. Measured by the fullness of Christ

Philippians 2:5-11

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though existing in the Divine nature did not regard unity with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave to be born in human likeness. When assuming human nature, he submitted himself in obedience to the point of death-- even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

    1. Here becomes the nature of godliness
      1. Achieved by God alone
      2. Not based on our sin
      3. A miracle of Grace
        1. A life of Doxology and praise
        2. To which we are called

Galatians 6:14

But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

    1. All else is illusionary in importance
      1. Is manmade
      2. A diversion from Christ

Colossians 2:20, 23

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees … These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

Conclusion

It is all from God

Through God

For God

And exist only through him

1 Corinthians 10:31

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.



Pastor Henecke's PM Sermon Outline

The Woodland Street Pulpit

Nashville’s First Church of the Nazarene

September 29, 2002 P.M.

The Final Prayer

Reading from Luke 23:24-34

Text: Luke 23:34

And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

Introduction:

It was a sad procession – one you could not have mistaken that this was an execution. The four Roman guards and the shrieking crowds around three obvious criminals - and one badly beaten. Then, the cry that pierced all of creation:

Luke 23:35

And the people stood by, watching; and the rulers sneered at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!"

In their torments they were pronouncing true religion. He had come to seek and to save Luke 19:10 "The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." – but he could not do it by saving himself. This was the very core of his teaching:

Luke 9:23

Then he said to them all, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.

The sad procession wound its way through the narrow streets and out the Garden Gate to an old quarry area where a garden was being developed and some of the wealthy were digging new tombs – Golgotha. The sky grew a peculiar gray as the sun refused to shine and the eastern mountains were faded from view:

The chief characters:

    • Simon of Cyrene

    • The women of Galilee, and Mary with John

    • The chief priests

    • The centurion and his cohorts

    • The professional mourners and the tourists

Mark 15:29

Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

  1. The Final Prayer:

    1. Those holy, swollen lips parted and he spoke

      1. Not torments

      2. Not curses

        3. Luke 23:36

        The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine,

      3. Not the words of one full of wine

      4. Those holy words:

        5. Father

        1. Unbroken relationship

          1. Unshaken confidence

          2. With no external confidence

          Romans 8:16

          The Spirit himself is bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

        2. A relationship not dependent:

          1. On the physical

          2. On human judgment

          3. On surrounding pressures

      5. Here is the foundation of prayer and life conquest – the inner awareness of God as our source

1 John 3:1

See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

2 John 1:9

Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son.

forgive them

    1. The elements of his forgiveness

      1. When he was the most human – humiliated

        1. When we sing "Oh To Be Like Thee"

        2. Naked – nailed – neutralized

        Hebrews 12:2

        Looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

      2. In the midst of jeers

        1. Before The Veil was rent

        2. Before the third day

          1. And the new Temple

          2. Built without hands

      3. While he was being challenged

        1. Matthew 27:40 "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross."

        2. A new meaning to ‘Messiah’

        3. More than the Son of David

      4. He was in charge when he was not in charge

      They Do Not Know

    2. Sins of Ignorance

      1. We know about sins of knowledge

        2. Psalm 51:3

        For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

      2. We understand sins of neglect

        3. James 4:17

        Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

      3. The ones we rarely pray over are sins of ignorance

        4. Leviticus 4:27

        If any one of the common people sins unwittingly in doing any one of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, and is guilty, when the sin which he has committed is made known to him he shall bring for his offering a goat, a female without blemish, for his sin which he has committed.

        1. Israel had provision for unintentional sin

        2. Paul understood this as under Christ’s blood

          3. 1 Timothy 1:13

          Though I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

          1. But not ignored

          2. It remains sin

      4. What had they not known?

      John 14:6-7

      I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.

      They do not know what they are doing

    3. What were they doing?

      1. The soldiers – just following orders

      2. Priests – keeping the faith

      3. The Twelve – staying alive

      4. Weeping love ones –misunderstanding

  1. The One Who Died Alone

    1. At the foot of the cross some very religious folks were engaged in moral suicide

      1. Locked in against their heart

      2. The chorus appeared to make them right

      3. This Psychology even reached one of the thieves

    2. The Priests

      1. Really worshipped their self

      2. Engaged in religion

      3. Missing their God

        1. The Soldiers –mocked the priests

        2. Those who passed by – gawked

    3. In this setting he spoke

      1. He is speaking still -

      2. Why did he split the silence?

      3. Why had he not had enough?

    4. Jesus is God loving in pain –

      1. The suffering God

      2. The eternal need of his people

Hebrews 6:1

It is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.







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Last updated: October 3, 2002