Abba, Father!

Video
Sermon: Sunday, 26th January, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:11-16

How can human beings experience lasting change? Think of communities in Scotland where there is high unemployment, widespread use of drugs and alcohol and high rates of crime. What will bring lasting change to these communities? Can politics alone deliver? A government could pump more money into the NHS and create more job opportunities and provide better care services and improve education, and in many cases that would be welcomed. It will bring about a certain kind of change. But people will only experience radical change if they come to know Jesus as Saviour and King. Why is that? Because only Jesus can change us from within. Only he can give us new hearts and new motivations. Only he can deal with our root problem of sin and provide a solution for that sin- his own blood shed on the cross.

I think self-help books have a place, as long as we recognise their limitations and are able to discern when they contradict Scripture or have an unhealthy worldview – and many of them sadly do. Nevertheless, we can learn a great deal from experts whether or not they are believers. For example, I keep on seeing the book by Robin Sharma called the 5 am club: own your morning and elevate your life. Sharma is described as one of the world’s premier speakers on leadership and personal mastery, and recently named one of the world’s top leadership gurus. I genuinely believe I could benefit from reading this book. Perhaps getting up earlier would help me to exercise more and become more productive. There might even be spiritual benefits, having more time with God. But this book will not change my heart or make me more loving or forgiving and it won’t give me peace with God.

I read an excellent article by Josh Maule on self-help books. He says: ‘Self-help books have one thing in common. They place you at the centre of your quest. You are the hero who must take charge of your life—thinking and acting better, starting your day smarter, finishing your day wiser — thus unlocking your full potential.’ He goes on to say something which is contrary to most self-help books, but which I believe to be true: ‘Christianity teaches universal brokenness. Worse, it teaches we are in active rebellion against our creator. Alcoholics Anonymous begins with a statement that: ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.’

Regular Christianity begins with a similar confession. We admit we are sinners —morally and spiritually bankrupt. We live ignoring God and his plan for us. And deep down, we like it a lot. I can’t help myself. The second step Christians have made is to acknowledge that we can’t do anything to help ourselves. Like an insect caught in a spider’s web, a sinner caught in sin can wriggle. But it only makes things worse. We can’t stop how we live. We can’t fix up past mistakes. We can’t make it up to God or others. We’re in what the English call ‘a right pickle’.’

Let’s continue to think about lasting change. The greatest change which happens is when we become Christians. This change is a work of God’s grace. He takes away our hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh. We are unable to pay the huge debt of sin we owe God, but God provides the payment in the death of his Son Jesus. Remember those words: ‘For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.’   (Romans 8:3)

Do you think God would have sent Jesus to die such a shameful and cruel and painful death if we humans were able to save ourselves from Hell? Of course not! If you are not yet a Christian, you cannot save yourself. All you can do is cry out to God for mercy, based on the death of Jesus on the cross. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, once we receive Jesus as our Saviour and King, God does something wonderful – he sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us in a mysterious but real way. All Christians have God the Spirit living within. There is no such thing as a Christian without the Spirit as a constant presence. It is God’s Spirit who gives us new desires to live for God, rather than for ourselves. God’s Spirit alone brings lasting change.

For the rest of our time, let’s look at 3 things which the dwelling of God the Holy Spirit brings us: A new hope, a new enemy and a new relationship.

1. A new hope

The fact that all Christians are temples of the Spirit brings us enormous and certain hope as we face death – our own deaths and those of other Christians. ‘But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 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 because of his Spirit who lives in you.’   (Romans 8:10-11)

Here’s a question – how much power do we have as Christians to change? Well, the power we have within us is the same power which raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. This is incalculable power. With God’s help, we can indeed change and become more like Jesus (more of that later). But notice the logic Paul gives us here: just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, so the Holy Spirit will raise the bodies of believers from the grave. As Christians, our bodies will die because of sin, but that’s not the end of the story. Our bodies will be raised one day because the Holy Spirit dwells within us.

My friend Douglas died just a few weeks ago and his funeral is here on Wednesday. I only knew him as a man in a wheelchair due to his MS. However, now I’ve seen lots of photos of him before his illness, when he was in full control of his body and could ceilidh dance and play shinty. Latterly, Douglas couldn’t use his hands so couldn’t drink a cup of tea on his own. But here’s the truth – one day, because of the Holy Spirit, he will be given a brand-new body which will be an everlasting human body. It will pulsate with energy and never grow weary or sick or stop working. It will be more glorious than any body we know of on earth. How do we know this will happen? Because the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, the first fruits of what is to come.

Death is the separation of body and soul. What is our certain hope as God’s children? That we will be made perfect in body and soul and that body and soul will be united once again, this time for ever. Christ’s resurrection is the pledge and pattern of our resurrection.

John Stott: ‘The ultimate destiny of our body is not death but resurrection.’

Friends, we have so much to look forward to.

Robert Haldane: ‘Christ the first fruits will be followed by that great harvest, in which…the bodies of believers sown in the earth, after having died like grain cast into it, shall be revived and raised up. The life which has been communicated to our souls will, at the glorious resurrection, be also communicated to our bodies… Believers, then, may defy the grave and glory over death, being assured of this resurrection… On Jesus then, the sure foundation, is the whole of our salvation built.’

2. A new enemy

‘For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.’   (Romans 8:15) What is our new enemy as Christians? It is sin! When we become Christians we are to wage an all-out war against sin in our lives. Sin is not something to be treated lightly or played down, or tolerated; rather, with the Spirit’s help it is something to be starved and smothered and slain. Is that your attitude to the sin in your heart? To help us focus on that personal question, I will ask, what particular sin have you been fighting against over the last few days? This must be a daily and constant fight. We cannot take our foot off the gas.

When we think of the work of the Holy Spirt, so often we think of Him guiding us in big decisions, like whether or not to take a new job or move to a new place. We talk about the Spirit leading us, or prompting us to speak to someone, and that happens. However, the ordinary yet vital work of the Spirit Paul speaks of here is to help us to put the sins in our lives to death. The fancy word for this is mortification. We need to rediscover this word. Mortification. It means that we must have a ruthless attitude to the sins in our lives. We must be radical in getting rid of them. After all, did not our Lord say, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off? That does not suggest a lax attitude to sin. That does not suggest pruning sin around the edges, like we often do, if we are honest. Before slabs were put down in our garden, I had to dig out an ivy which had been there for years. I dug a really deep hole, but it wasn’t deep enough. I pulled and yanked and tugged on the ivy with all my strength and managed to get a fair bit out, but not the roots. Often, we treat our sin like that – we try to get rid of it using our own strength, and it might seem like we are making progress. But what does Paul say in Romans 8: ‘…if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.’   (Romans 8:8) So, if you have a problem with gossip, or internet porn, or pride, then you need to ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Do you do that? You must. You have to ask Him in order to kill sin.

If we are honest, many of us probably have a peace-time mindset, as if there’s no war going on in our lives. Let’s be clear – the war only stops in Heaven. The whole of our lives is marked by a battle against sin. The wonderful news is that we are not on our own in this battle. The Holy Spirit is our Helper. If only we asked for his help more often.

Perhaps you are not taking your Christian faith seriously enough just now. Know this, whether you realise it or not, sin will be flourishing in your heart. Here’s a practical step we can all take- run through the ten commandments in our minds, and try and discern the different ways we are currently breaking these commands. Then take radical steps to pray for help and do all we can to eradicate them. For example, the first commandment is that God should have the first place in our lives. Ask yourself, what is really first just now? Then prayerfully, depending on the Spirit, and using the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, tear down that idol. We do not owe the flesh anything. We do not owe sin anything. Kill it! It promised us so much but failed to deliver time and time again. It promises life but leads to eternal death. This is serious.

3. A new relationship

‘The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.’   (Romans 8:15-16)

RC Sproul: ‘The greatest privilege of all is to be able to come before God and address him as Father. And we are not able to do that by nature, because by nature we are children of wrath.’

Do you realise that God is not everyone’s Father? It is only those who receive Jesus as Saviour and King who can call God their Father. In other words, very few people in Fife, a tiny fraction, are currently able to do this. That’s why we desperately need to share the good news of the gospel. For those of us who are Jesus’ disciples, do you realise the immense privilege you have?

What does it mean that God is our Father? I love the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith here.

XII ‘All those that are justified… receive the Spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him, as by a father: yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption; and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.’

Those are wonderful words – God pities, protects and provides for us. Satan wants us to cast a false image of God in our minds as a tightfisted, harsh, killjoy who makes unreasonable demands of us. This is nonsense.

Terry Johnson: ‘We pray not as we ought and live not as we ought. We stumble. We fall. We fail. How does God look at us? As a father does his children. He looks upon us with compassion. What could be more liberating that this? What could be more freeing and healing than to know that God is my Father? What could be more therapeutic than to know that He looks upon me with all my brokenness and strife with sympathy, with pity, with compassion?’

We ought also to be confident of our Father’s protection. If good earthly fathers protect their children, how much more with our heavenly Father? ‘… who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.’   (1 Peter 1:5)

When a young child falls and skins their knee, they will instinctively call out ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ We should have that same instinct in prayer when we are in trouble. Cry out to Abba Father for protection.

Because God is our Father, we can also be confident of his care in all areas of our lives. He provides. He knows what we need. He encourages us to ask him for all we need: ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’   (Philippians 4 v6).

Once I was on a bus and sat next to a nun and we got chatting. I asked her if she knew she was going to Heaven when she died. She said, ‘I hope so but cannot be sure’. The thing is, God wants us to be sure that if we trust in Jesus, we have become his children. In fact, the Holy Spirit gives us the assurance that we are adopted as sons and one sign of it is that in times of great distress, we find ourselves just crying out, ‘Father..

‘And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’   (Romans 8:15) It is the Holy Spirit who brings to us the awareness that we are sons of God. This word ‘cry’ is used around 50 times in the New Testament and almost always in the context of someone crying out in deep distress. For example, blind Bartimaeus is said to ‘cry out’ in all his distress. There’s something really significant here – when as Christians we go through times of deep despair, depression, loneliness, pain or suffering, isn’t it true that we instinctively just cry out ‘Father’. Sometimes that’s all we can manage to say. This cry is itself a sign that we are sons of the living God. In our times of great need, the Spirit ministers to us and enables us to cry out ‘Abba, Father’.

When we do, this is the hallmark of a believer. This is the cry of the child of God.