In the sermon titled 'The Unleashed Power of the Holy Spirit,' Scott Brown explores the profound themes presented in Romans Chapter 8, highlighting its significance as a theological cornerstone in the New Testament. Brown underscores the chapter's focus on the Holy Spirit's role in liberating believers from sin and death, shaping their mindset, and aiding them in suffering and weakness. He emphasizes that the Holy Spirit's work is not about dramatic transformations but rather a quiet, powerful presence that guides believers in everyday life. Brown explains that the Spirit assures believers of their adoption as God's children, providing them with hope amidst life's groans and trials. The sermon also addresses the certainty of God's work in a believer's life, ensuring that all things work together for their good. Ultimately, Brown encourages believers to appreciate the manifold blessings of justification by faith and the Spirit's transformative power, while inviting non-believers to seek these gifts through faith in Christ.

Please open your Bibles to Romans 8 and find verse 1. Romans 8 verse 1. Romans 8, verse 1, this is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. There is Therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. On account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for such a beautiful message for every man and every woman in the world.

I pray, O Lord, that you would help us to grasp these wonderful things, that you would take these words and encourage and bless your children and also, Lord, if it's your will to cause a longing for anyone who does not love you and want to follow you. That you would show them these things that are sweeter than honey. Amen. Please be seated. Amen.

Please be seated. Well, we have had nine sermons in Romans chapter eight, and this morning I want to do something that is difficult, and that is to walk through the entire chapter of Romans eight. And I hope that it could have a powerful effect in your life, that you might see the ministry of the Holy Spirit in a way that maybe you never saw it before, because it's communicated so clearly here in this chapter. And see the fact of the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed as a result of justifying faith but what it really looks like because people are confused today about what the power of the Holy Spirit looks like. And so I want, I want us as a church to see all these great themes come together in one session because We've cut them up and dissected them piece by piece, but today I want us to see the whole thing if we possibly can.

And of course you know that, what has Paul been doing in Romans? He told us at the very beginning, he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God unto salvation, for the Jew first and also for the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed, from faith to faith, As it is written, the just shall live by faith. And what Paul has been doing all along is he's explaining why he's not ashamed of the gospel. Because of justifying faith. And he's been explaining all the different facets of this diamond that is justification by faith.

And of course, This is the longest chapter in the book of Romans, and it's a towering chapter. A Luther called it the masterpiece of the New Testament. Douglas Moo called it the inner sanctuary within the cathedral of the Christian faith. He said it was like a tree of life in the midst of the Garden of Eden. And some have called Romans eight the theological center of the Bible.

So we're in a very significant section. And the focus of chapter eight is at twofold if you would maybe boil it down. And the first, in the first 27 verses, the exclusive focus is the person and the work and the power of the Holy Spirit and what it looks like. And then in the last 10 verses from 28 to 39, 11 verses, you have life with God the Father. So it begins with the Spirit and ends with God the Father and his kindness.

Somebody once said that Romans 8 begins with no condemnation in the middle It's no defeat and suffering and at the end. It's no separation So it really is a wonderful wonderful testimony But the focus of the first 27 verses is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And I want you to consider for a moment What you think the ministry of the Holy Spirit does Do you think that the the Holy Spirit puts you on a spiritual high all day long Do do you what does it look like this? Does it mean that you have a surge of passion or you have great surges of passion? Does it mean that you're like taken to the next level?

You have people who cry out and they say, God take me to the next level, you know, God I need a breakthrough. This is what people often associate with the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And if you could just get your breakthrough, somehow you could be a real Christian. If you could just get that level of passion, you could actually have confidence that you are a believer. But the Bible doesn't speak of the work in the ministry of the Holy Spirit that way, particularly in the first 27 verses of Romans chapter eight.

And so let's begin here. Now the apostle is actually answering a question that he posed, in a sense, in chapter seven, where he said that we should no longer serve, we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. And so he's explaining what it means to serve in the newness of the Spirit in Romans chapter eight. And of course, we know that it is launched with the washing of regeneration and the righteousness that is by faith alone. Now, I have eight answers to this question of what it means to serve in the newness of the Spirit.

And you have an outline in front of you, and I want to just walk through them one by one. And in this, you'll find a very clear and beautiful doctrine of the Holy Spirit that I think would be helpful to calibrate ourselves when we think about what it means to have the spirit of God. And I'll tip you off to have the spirit of God really means that you have, you have life every day And it's normal life. The Holy Spirit works in the normal ways of your life, not in the ways that are often thought of in terms of being filled with the Spirit. So I hope we see it.

So I have eight things, eight from Romans 8, eight things from Romans 8, and the first thing is that the Spirit makes you free from sin and death. The Spirit makes you free from sin and death. If you're a believer, I just hope this encourages your soul that you've been set free. When the Spirit of God filled you at your conversion, you are set free. And that's why we have these words, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

And what has happened, what has happened that has allowed you to begin to walk in the spirit is that you receive the greatest gift anyone could ever receive. And that is to have no condemnation from God. And in the gospel condemnation is diverted. Wrath is stopped. You will never be condemned again.

Never from God will you be condemned. Not now, not tomorrow, not even in the Last judgment when you meet him, you will not be met with a scowl of condemnation. You will be met with the smile of a justifying God. You know, we saw these hurricanes blast through the United States, you know, Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and South Carolina and Georgia, and then just last week, Hurricane Milton. And the forecasts were so dire that you would possibly have a 12 foot surge into Tampa Bay, an extra 12 feet of water into Tampa Bay would wash a long way across that state.

But what happened is that that didn't happen because the hurricane, the way it was spinning, it shifted to the north, and as a result, it pushed the water out of Tampa Bay, and Tampa Bay was saved. The water was held back, and that's really what happens with the grace of God. The grace of God is like that. The storm is on a trajectory to destroy you and It looks like you are going to be destroyed but something changes and something changes the whole course of your life and a some powerful force beyond your control has come in and God changes your heart and the direction of your life has changed. You're no longer headed for destruction God changes the wind by a sovereign power And instead of you being flooded and destroyed and washed away, you're protected.

And the water flows in the other direction. And Jesus Christ is holding back the wave of God's wrath for his people. He did it by the shedding of his own blood, by receiving the wind of the wrath of God for our sins. And the wrath was holding back the surge. You know, I was talking to my son about this this week, and he reminded me of Exodus 14, 21, which is the saving of the children of Israel at the Red Sea.

This is the most often repeated symbol or picture or metaphor of the gospel in the Bible. And you have the Egyptian army charging down the people of God to destroy them. And Exodus 1421 says that God caused a wind to blow. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night. It was the wind that blew that water back just like in Tampa Bay and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided.

Well, this is what happens in salvation, when one believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, the wind blows in the other direction, and the winds of wrath and destruction and flooding are averted. And what this says here is that the Spirit sets you in a new direction. And these verses in the first four verses make it clear that there are two groups of people. There are those who walk are walking according to the flesh and those who are walking according to the Spirit. Those who will receive condemnation and those who will not receive condemnation.

There is a life that leads to life and there's a life that leads to death and this it's the spirit that breaks the bondage of death by the power of the cross at the resurrection and at the intersection of the believing heart to receive Jesus Christ by faith. And so first of all The Spirit makes you free from the law of sin and death. It's the Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit that does that. When you consider the work of the Spirit in your life.

You should think that God, by His Spirit, has saved you from wrath. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. And then the second, the Spirit shapes your mindset. This is another one of the great and wonderful ministries of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit shapes your mindset.

We find this in verses five through 11 because one of the great gifts of having Jesus Christ is that he changes the way you think. This is such a blessing. You know that. You know the way that you used to think before you were a believer. You don't think the same way anymore.

And the spirit changes the things you want to think about. And there are things that you used to think about that you don't want to think about anymore because they're so harmful to you. They actually hurt you and for many they wrecked your life. But God is a Redeemer and He changes, He can change the way that you think. And so in these verses, you have these contrasts.

You have in verse five, the mind set on the flesh, and the mind set on the spirit. And he continues, then you have the mind set on death, in verse six, and the mind set on life and peace and then in verse seven you have the mind that's subject to the law of God or you have the mind that is against the law of God or at enmity with the law of God. So one of the great blessings of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit, is that you start thinking differently, and God begins to renew your mind. And he actually cleanses your mind. Now, we all know that our minds are not fully cleansed.

But what the Spirit does is he progressively cleanses our thoughts and the desires of our minds as well. And there's this lifelong increasing purification that takes place. Every Christian that I've ever known thinks that's too slow. Our sanctification is just so slow, isn't it? But God is sanctifying by His grace in His own time because He loves us.

And so the blessing of the Holy Spirit is that The spirit shapes our mindset. And then thirdly, the spirit puts to death the deeds of the body. It's the spirit that puts to death the deeds of the body. You, you may have been longing for some radical Holy Spirit anointing, but what you actually got is a progressive putting to death the deeds of the body. And this is spoken of in verses 12 through 14.

And of course, this what the spirit does is the spirit turns your life around so that you begin to put to death the deeds of the body. And it's an obligation, verse 12. Therefore we are debtors, in other words, we are obligated not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live and so the Christian begins to resist the impulses of the flesh and actually begins to wage war against the world and the flesh and the devil. But it's an obligation.

But it's an obligation that you will, that you freely engage in. And you want to engage in it more. If you're a Christian, you, you don't feel that you do it powerfully enough or devotedly enough, but you want to do it more. This is the heart of a Christian. And remember John Owen, he wrote an entire book on this one verse in Romans 8, verse 12 and 13.

And he made that memorable statement that we should always remember. He said, do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it while you live. Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

It's a very serious matter, but this is the trajectory of the life of the Christian to put sin to death. And when we were in this section, I asked this question. What needs to die? Because he's saying, stop presenting the members of your body to the flesh. What needs to die?

Stop paying the flesh. Stop pouring devotion to the flesh. Stop giving the flesh your resources. And then we talked about how do you do that and how do you, what does it mean to be led by the Spirit of God, to put to death the deeds of the flesh and to be led by the Spirit of God as the verses say. And it means that you seek the things of the Spirit and we set our minds on the things of the Spirit.

That's how we do it. And I spent a large part of one of my messages in Philippians 4, 8, and 9, where the apostle Paul says, finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. And this is how you put to death the deeds of the body, is by shifting the focus of your mind and set your mind on things that are above. Set your mind on pure things. And that's how you accelerate that.

And so not only does the spirit put to death the deeds of the body, the fourth, the spirit bears witness to our adoption as sons. The Spirit bears witness to our adoption as sons. Verses 15 through 17. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.

And here we just continue to encounter this testimony of the Spirit of God. You know, the Holy Spirit is mentioned 19 times in these 27 verses. It's the theme of the section. But here he says that that the believer has within his his heart someone who's crying out and our our spirits cry out Abba Father. The heart of a Christian is the Christian that cries out to his father.

And This is all about the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the sonship of believers and the Holy Spirit, all in one little section. Those three doctrines are embedded in these few verses. And what we learn is that we have a father and we have the spirit crying out within us saying, oh father. This happens especially when we run into hard times. We cry out, oh Father, help me.

We don't know what to do. It's the Spirit crying out, oh Father, Lead me. Teach me the way in which I should go. When you receive the Spirit, you receive the Spirit of adoption and you have been brought into a new family. It's the family of God.

And everyone in the family of God has a father. There are no fatherless in the family of God. There are no motherless in the father in the family of God. Everyone in the family of God has fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. It's important, especially in the broken up world we live in, where some people don't have earthly fathers around.

But you, if you have the Spirit, you have the Spirit of adoption as sons and you can cry out Father and you have the best Father there ever is. And then fifthly, the Spirit helps us in suffering, verses 17 through 25. Now the central message in this section is captured in one four-letter word, hope. Hope. It's mentioned six times in just these few verses.

And there are two key words, hope and groan. Hope and groan. This is like the reality of life. We do groan, it says in verse 22 that the creation groans, in verse 23 that we ourselves groan, And in verse 26, the spirit groans. But what the believer has when they groan is that they groan in hope.

We groan differently. We feel the pain and the imperfections of the world and the inadequacies of our own life and we grow. We grow over the lack of improvement that we want to see in our life. We groan over losses of different kinds. But here the believer groans in hope.

He says it like this in verse 18, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. And these verses say that God in wisdom subjected the creation to futility, but he did it in hope. So we grown differently. It says here that we grown as those who have the first fruits of the Spirit even we ourselves grown within ourselves eagerly waiting for the adoption the redemption of our body for we were saved in this hope but hope that is not seen hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

So the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we grown, but we grown in hope with an eager expectation because we believe that God will solve everything for his own glory. To one of the other churches, the apostle said that God was going to sum up all things in Christ. All of your troubles, all of your sins, all of the sins of others who've sinned against you, that what God is going to do, he's going to sum it up all in Jesus Christ. And you'll see how everything that happened in your life was meant for the glory of Jesus Christ. I guarantee you, you'll see that.

But we groan in hope. And this section makes it very clear that the whole creation is groaning and we are part of the creation and if you're groaning, God is not picking on you. But at the same time, we are part of an unstoppable force. This flow of history, this unstoppable trajectory toward glory. Every believer's life is on an unstoppable trajectory to glory.

This is what the Spirit of God accomplishes. Did you think of the Spirit? The work of the Holy Spirit? You see, the work of the Holy Spirit is working underneath the surface, deep within your soul, affecting you in very subtle ways every day. It's not all that dramatic, but it's part of real life.

You get up in the morning and you're experiencing life, all these powers of the Holy Spirit are working in the life of the believer. It's very normal. It's not outrageous, but it's something very human And it fits the way we are. And it takes us slowly to glory. This is the Christian life.

And sixth, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses, verses 26 through 28. Likewise, the Spirit helps in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. We talked about the reality of life, the Romans 826 moment in your life. What's a Romans 826 moment? A Romans 826 moment is a moment in your life when you really don't know what to pray for.

You don't know what to do. You don't know whether you should go to a doctor, you don't know what medicine to take, you don't know what to do about your cancer diagnosis, you just don't know. You don't know how to pray for a certain person, whether if you have a wayward child you don't know whether you should pray that they undergo such great pressure that they would turn to the Lord? In other words, that God would hurt them deeply so that they would turn to him? Or do you pray for something different?

You don't know. You don't know how you should pray. Should you pray for patience? Or should you pray for deliverance? There are certain times we just don't know, we don't know what God's will is.

And this is just a reality of life. But the Spirit knows. The Spirit makes intercession for us when we don't know what to pray for. Because the Spirit knows exactly what to pray for. And so you can, you can in a godly way, throw up your hands and say, Lord, Pray your will.

I don't know what your will is. This is the power of the Holy Spirit working. And the Spirit is working under the surface, often incognito. You don't really see it, but he's working. He's working in the midst of the normal things of life.

It's not flamboyant, it's not dramatic. It's a quiet work in your soul, always operating. In a sense, the way that an operating system works in your computer, when you open it up, There's all this going on behind the curtain, you know under in in your you know central processing processing unit, you know God's work is always in play And he's doing it by his spirit. You know, all of these, all of these works of the Spirit in the life of the believer, I think they can be summed up in one, in one word. He's the helper.

That's the word that describes everything that he does. And you know, he convicts of sin, he comforts, he does all these things. He reveals truth, But he is the helper. He's the one that's called alongside to help. And the believer always has the helper alongside him to help, even though you don't see him.

And you might not feel him, because there are hundreds of things going on under the surface that you can't even feel like His intercession for you. And all these other things. His making you free from condemnation, you can't even see that. Shaping your mindset, how your mind is working differently. It's just happening naturally and quietly and how he's putting to death the deeds of the body.

You're continuing to turn away from worldliness and fleshliness. And at the same time, he's crying out within you and he's saying, Abba, Father, he's always working. This is the blessing of justification by faith. Well, we move on to the second section of this. In this, well, the first 27 verses of the chapter have an exclusive focus on the Holy Spirit.

The last verses, verses 28 through 39, shift to God the Father. The Spirit is no longer mentioned from here to the end of the chapter. And this is all about God. What is God doing? And the power of conversion is that you find yourself with a father who's working everything for good in your life.

Everything. Quietly, silently, in ways you'll never know. Thousands of ways every day, He's causing all things to work together for good for you. This is the life of a Christian. You know, I've been so stunned, not just in the book of Romans, but to have the word of God every day, to be filled up with truth and encouragement every day, every day of my life, and to know that God is on his throne.

And it's in verse 28, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Everything in your life, he's working it out for good. There are many things in our lives that are happening that are not good. There are evil things that happen to us, and yet God is taking those things and he's working them out for good. It's not that you're protected from evil, But it's that God is taking every evil thing and he's going to work it out for good.

One of the most stunning things about this, even your sins, he's working out for good. Even the worst sins you've ever committed, God is working those for the good, if you love him, and if you're called according to his purpose. You can be so despondent about things that you did in the past, but if you're a believer you can know that God is going to make good out of them somehow. You all know how. But God has engineered Thousands of inputs that have brought about everything in your life Every single thing that God has done in your life.

He's working out for good You see the certainty of it we know and then the reality, all things work together for good. And who is this for? It's really only for those who love God. This is not true for the unbeliever. It's to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

The unbeliever has no guarantee. The unbeliever is actually bound for wrath and destruction. It won't turn out good for them. And so all things work together for good. And then in the very last verses of the chapter, we learn that God is for us.

God is for us, verses 29 to 39. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. Whom he called, these he also justified. Whom he justified, these he also glorified.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? And who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.

Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died and Furthermore is also risen who is even at the right hand of God who makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long.

We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So he concludes it with these words, that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And all of this is a gift of God that is not deserved.

It's a gift of justification. It's a gift that you were declared righteous before God. It is a gift that you could not give yourself. It only can come from God. This is the blessing of justification by faith.

You know, I heard a story one time of a girl who she went to an elite college, but she was poor. And she was there as a poor girl in the midst of many affluent girls. And the story goes it came time for graduation and all the girls were getting their graduation dresses and they were dressed to the nines. But this girl had no money. She'd worked her way through college and so even though she didn't know how to sew, she went to the fabric store and bought some fabric and found a sewing machine even not knowing how to sew and so she bought some cheap cloth and she made her own dress all by herself never done it before And she brought it back to the dorm and all the girls were there and she was showing the girls her dress that she had made.

And of course they smiled and they said it looked nice. And while she was there showing her dress, Lady Bountiful walked in the room. And Lady Bountiful was looking at all these beautiful dresses and then this girl's dress that had crooked hems and seams that weren't straight like that. And Lady Bountiful said, would you come with me? She called her limousine up and they got in her limousine and she was taken to the most expensive dress store in the town and the models would come out and model these beautiful dresses and there was one that she liked and she saw the tag flip out it was for $4, 000.

How could anyone have a $4, 000 dress? And so Lady Bountiful had the dress wrapped up and taken to her limousine and it came up and picked them up and took them back to the school. And all the girls were gathered around with their fashionable dresses on and when she came out in her new dress everyone, everyone gasped. It was the best dress in the room And she said, look at me. I have a dress I could not make on my own.

I have a dress. That's not the work of my own hands. She said, look at those crooked seams. That's what I did. And she says, I have a dress that could not have depended on me.

And I think that's an illustration of the grace of God. There's so much imperfection in us when we try to have the righteousness that is of our own. But the righteousness of Jesus Christ is a gift. It's a wonderful gift and it's not something that we can make by ourselves. And that's what it means and you can say The spirit made me free from sin and death That I could not do in my own The spirit is shaping my mindset.

I could not have ever done it on my own The Spirit is putting to death the deeds of the body. I could not do that on my own. The Spirit is bearing witness to my adoption as sons. The Spirit helps me in suffering. The Spirit helps me in my weaknesses when I don't know what to do.

The Spirit is working all things for good. And because of the Spirit of God, God is for me. So these are the blessings of justification by faith alone. The Apostle Paul has spent all these chapters giving multiple facets of this beautiful diamond and I Wanted to encourage this church Of those who are justified. I want you to soak in it and be so thankful to God for his grace.

But if you're not a Christian, you've just heard what God, the bountiful Redeemer, has for his children. And if you're not a Christian, tell him, I want to be free from the law of sin and death. Tell him I want the spirit to shape my life. Tell him I want the spirit to put the deeds, put to death the deeds of the body. Tell him that you want your spirit to cry out, Abba, Father.

Tell him that you need help in your suffering. Tell him that you want his help in your weaknesses Tell him I'm a sinner Tell him I want to be your servant Tell him I want your spirit If you tell the Lord that he will save your soul And you can have the unleashed power of the Holy Spirit that does all these things, these eight things are yours. Praise the Lord for such a bountiful gift. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this indescribable gift of the Holy Spirit and to have such a good Father to carry us through.

I pray, Lord, that this would be a day of rejoicing, such a day of delight, reflecting on the greatness of your salvation. Amen.