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- You've heard it said, no pain, no gain. A person can suffer in this life and they can endure and improve their character, but it will not save them.
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- The only way that produces any saving, lasting value is through Jesus Christ our Lord when we understand the text.
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- Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.
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- Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
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- Thank you, Becky. My darling wife, who is now attending to our children who are sick.
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- We have a new strain of something hitting the Hughes household. We just got over the last one and here we're sick again.
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- So pray for us. I'm thinking about this as I'm coming to the scriptures today, which talks about how suffering produces endurance.
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- Endurance produces character. We're in Romans chapter five, beginning in verse one, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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- Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
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- Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. Knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the
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- Holy Spirit who has been given to us. We go back to this statement again at the start of chapter five, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, and this is in light of what we read in the previous chapter,
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- Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. All of us receive the gift of grace of God that we have by faith.
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- And you think that Paul was talking to the Christians who were there in the church in Rome who had never seen
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- Jesus crucified or risen again, the empty tomb. Now, maybe some of the
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- Jews did see the empty tomb because they were there at Pentecost. They heard the gospel that was preached by Peter.
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- And maybe after that, maybe after they were baptized into the faith, they probably went and looked at the empty tomb for themselves.
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- I don't know. Some of them probably did see it. But the Gentile Christians there in Rome who came to Christ by the gospel that was preached to them, they had never seen any of these evidences before.
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- As Peter said, wrote in his letter, 2 Peter 1 16. We did not follow cleverly invented stories, brothers, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty.
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- So those who most people who came to faith in Christ, they were receiving a testimony by those who did witness these things, who were there.
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- Paul says in first Corinthians 15, over 500 brothers saw Christ alive after his resurrection, some of whom are still alive.
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- So he was telling the Corinthians, there are people you can still go to and ask them about what we witnessed. But most were receiving this message by faith, having never seen any of these things before, including those
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- Christians there in Rome. You and I, we've received Christ, having never seen any of those evidences.
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- But even those who did witness Christ's death and resurrection, they still receive justification by faith like anybody else.
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- We have been justified by faith. That is how we receive our salvation, by the belief that God has poured into our hearts and we have peace with God through our
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- Lord Jesus Christ. This is not just peace. That is a relaxation of the body is it is a peace that surpasses all understanding, as Paul put it in Philippians chapter four, because it is a peace that Christ made with God by his atoning sacrifice.
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- He died the death that we should have died. And because he spilled his blood for our sins, that blood was an acceptable sacrifice to God and it satisfied the wrath of God, a propitiation for our sins.
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- As we saw it put in Romans 325, propitiation simply means that God's wrath has been satisfied.
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- And that's a peace with God. That is peace where previously his wrath was burning against us because of our unrighteousness.
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- As we saw, Paul explained it in Romans chapter two. We now know through this sacrifice of Christ, which we have received his atoning blood is upon us that we have peace with God, an eternal peace.
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- And that does bring about a relaxation to our anxieties. But that's not primarily what we're talking about.
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- We're talking about something that is eternal, and it is that message of something eternal that goes through the remaining verses, the rest of the verses that follow through him.
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- We have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We have access to the very presence of God and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
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- So we're rejoicing in realizing that God's glory is going to come and all of this evil in the world will be laid to rest.
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- Our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body. That's the glory of God that Paul is talking about here in verse two.
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- But then he makes an interesting statement in verse three. Not only that, not only are we rejoicing in the glory that awaits us, but we rejoice in our sufferings in the present time.
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- Knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame.
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- So we're talking about a suffering that produces something. Now, a person who lives in this world who does not know
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- Christ, they can easily say, well, yeah, I can suffer and produce something. That's not just that's not just something that you
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- Christians have. I can do that. No pain, no gain, right? You go to the gym and you work out and you tear those muscles up.
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- Well, it might hurt, but you know that that suffering that you are enduring is producing a stronger body.
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- But that's just a worldly suffering. It does not produce anything eternal. Anybody can go through something that might improve their character and the suffering that they endure, but it will not save them.
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- You know, a person who experiences joy, their joy terminates on the experience. That joy has no lasting value and their happy memories are not going to save them from death.
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- So what is it that suffering produces in the life of the believer? Well, it is making us more like Christ.
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- We are enduring something that our Lord Christ himself endured. Do you understand that that that we can rejoice in suffering this way, knowing that our
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- Lord Christ suffered? He didn't just die. He suffered and died, and therefore he sanctifies and verifies suffering itself.
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- We have debates about whether or not a person should have to suffer. Oh, nobody should have to suffer.
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- I mean, for goodness sake, we've got pills for dieting so that nobody will have to go through the ache of the body of dieting in order to improve their appearance.
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- We try to find shortcuts so that nobody would have to suffer through anything. But our
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- Lord Christ came in the flesh. God in heaven left his throne and came to this earth, taking on flesh.
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- And he suffered. He experienced hunger pains. He experienced the the torture of death.
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- He experienced suffering in his own spirit as he watched the the people that he loved turn their backs on him, deny him, betray him.
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- Christ experienced these things. And so therefore, we can know that there is a process of sanctification that happens through suffering.
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- We are being made more like Christ. Every aspect of life from conception to natural death is verified and sanctified because Christ himself went through those things.
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- Why do we say something like from womb to tomb? You know, when we're talking about the defense of life from womb to tomb, from conception to natural death, it is because our
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- Lord Christ himself was conceived, came into this world by conception, conceived of the
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- Holy Spirit. But he went through the whole life process of spending nine, 10 months in the womb. Then he grew up as a young man.
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- He worked and he labored to earn a living. He spoke the gospel and was persecuted for the gospel and was put to death for that message as well.
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- When we experience even these things, we are sharing in something that Christ went through. It is making us more like Christ.
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- When we care for the sick, just as my wife and I are now caring for our sick children, we are doing something that Christ himself did.
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- When we are caring for a neighbor, we're caring for somebody in the church, we're preaching the gospel to the lost.
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- These are all things that Christ did. And by going through these things, we are being made more like Christ and something that has an eternal significance to it, not just something that's going to terminate on the experience, but has an eternal lasting value.
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- We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, just as Christ endured.
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- Endurance produces character, shapes us more like Christ, and character produces hope.
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- As we grow in this Christ likeness and the knowledge of him according to what is written in his word, the promises that we have here, we know this hope of the glory of the gospel of Christ.
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- And this hope does not put us to shame. We're not embarrassed about it. We are not concerned when people ridicule us or poke fun of us for the doctrines that we hold onto, the love of God that we cherish and we speak and share with other people, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the
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- Holy Spirit who's been given to us. What can man do to me? God is with us.
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- God, we love you. And we so appreciate this word and this message that has been given to us and all that we endure in this life through sickness and in health, whether good times or bad.
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- We know that these things have significance to them. You are using them to shape us more like Christ.
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- Help us to rejoice in all of these trials as James puts it in his letter. Rejoice when you face trials of various kinds, various kinds of trials, whether it is caring for our sick children or it is being ridiculed for our faith or even having to be persecuted or put to death because of this gospel that we love.
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- Hold us steadfast and help us to rejoice in all of these circumstances, knowing that we are being made more like Christ.
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- We are going through something that Christ himself endured, and it is a pleasure to suffer the reproaches of Christ.
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- We pray and ask for this joy to fill our hearts in Jesus' name, amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .tt
