Do You Even Rejoice?

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches his series in the

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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Recast Church, I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here and just really glad to be back with you after a couple of weeks away.

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I really am grateful for people like Dan DeVries who can step up and preach in my absence and I just tell you as your pastor that it is such a blessing to me to be able to step aside knowing that the word of God is gonna still be preached and is still gonna go forward and be carried to your ears and to your hearts through faithful men.

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And so, just very grateful that I've got guys to choose from who are able and willing to preach to you while I'm gone and hopefully it was a blessing to you to hear those couple messages on the

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Book of Daniel. This morning, we're gonna be diving back into the Book of Romans where we were before we left off and we have turned a corner in the book.

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For those of you that maybe haven't been here or you've been here through the series, we have turned a major corner in the book, moving from the first big outline heading of sin into the area of salvation.

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The first three chapters of the Book of Romans are focused on reminding us just how completely lost we are without God's intervention in our lives.

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We have all committed unrighteousness, we have all committed ungodliness, which is not a very popular message in our world today but is a necessary message for us and we were kind of beaten week after week after week by the text of God's word so that we were left with no excuses for ourselves and no ability to dance around in our own thoughts of our own righteousness.

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And so in our acts of unrighteousness and our acts of ungodliness, we have incurred God's wrath that was clearly stated in chapter one of the

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Book of Romans. And further, we can't do enough good to overcome our sin so that God doesn't weigh on a scale.

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That's one of the main implications of all of this that we've heard so far in the Book of Romans is that it's not gonna be on the final judgment day, you're good over here and you're bad over here and hopefully you're good outweighs your bad, there's no room for that because the unrighteousness of humanity has produced reasonably the wrath of the righteous and holy

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God. And so we can't remedy the situation and even the more that we seek to keep the law, maybe you've seen this in your own life but the more that you seek to keep the law, the more that you prove to yourself your own inability to keep that very law that you're trying to live by.

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And so all of that darkness in those first three chapters was there to highlight the importance of a righteousness given to us as grace from God.

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That's the real point of the entire Book of Romans is at the end of the day, a righteousness from God, a righteousness that is a gift of grace that comes to an individual through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God's only son who died for us on the cross.

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He was a sacrificial substitute for us. He stood in the place of our punishment, taking on himself the divine wrath of his father so that all of our sins, hear me carefully recast, all of our sins have already been punished.

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The sentence has been given and carried out already for each and every one of our sins. They were carried out by the father on the son who willingly gave himself for us.

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And so I say all of that so that when we come to Romans chapter five, which we're gonna read here in just a second, we're ready for Paul to move on to the outcome of that salvation, a salvation that is granted to us by faith, a justification and acquittal of us based on faith in Jesus Christ.

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And here in our text, he's gonna explain where we stand then now as God's children, as those who are justified by faith, as those, if you're here and you've given your life to Christ, then that's gonna be a message to you.

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Where do you stand now? And our status is amazing. Our status is glorious in the eyes of our

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God. And he roots our present standing in the past expression of his love for us and that love really, in our text, ought to result in two fundamental realities, two fundamental things that we ought to live differently as a result of being here this morning.

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Because you hear this word, because the spirit of God is alive in you, because the spirit of God is gonna take this word and bring it into your hearts, this is what ought to change.

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You ought to leave here living a day by day hope and a day by day rejoicing.

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Gladness and hope should be yours moving forward. All of our days in the here and now ought to be days of hope, ought to be days of rejoicing.

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And let me encourage you as we read the text together this morning to listen carefully. I'm giving you an assignment as I read this.

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It's not a super long text, but I want you to start off engaged, not wait till we're halfway through it to be thinking with ears open for the spirit to give you, as an individual sitting there in a seat right now, you a specific cause for hope, a specific cause for rejoicing.

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There is a phrase in here that the spirit wants to press on your individual heart with where you've been this week and where your life is trending right now, and there is something in here for your encouragement, for your rejoicing, and to just exalt your heart that you might walk out of here soaring in hope and joy this morning.

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So let's listen in, Romans chapter five, verses one through 11. Turn over in your Bible, grab the Bible under the seat in front of you, navigate in your app or whatever, and get over so that you can see the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word, and we can read together

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God's precious letter to us, what he desires to communicate to us, recast this morning.

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Romans chapter five, verses one through 11. 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, for the

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Holy Spirit has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time

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Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

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For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

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More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

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Let's pray. Father, I can use the word thanks right now and say thank you for saving us, for sending your son to die for us, for making peace where there was war, where there was an adversarial relationship with us, you have replaced that with peace and grace, productive suffering with hope for an eternity that goes beyond the difficulties of this life.

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Father, the word thanks doesn't do justice. I pray that you would move in each one of us to go so much beyond our heads this morning, to go so much more beyond an academic study of Romans chapter five, verses one through 11, but Father, that you would press in our hearts rejoicing, gladness, elation, smiles.

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Father, that the trivial inconveniences of this world would just fade into the background this week of lives that are redeemed and reconciled and brought near to you and sheltered from your wrath by your very son.

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And Father, I pray that that rejoicing ought to be ours even now as we have an opportunity to sing songs, that this would be so much more than singing, but it would be an outward expression of the joy as a byproduct of even just reading this text together.

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Father, I pray that you would allow rejoicing to happen even now in our midst and that you would receive it as worship to you this morning in Jesus' name.

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Thanks a lot to Dave for leading us in worship and for the band. I love it when the songs go together with the message and he reads my sermon each week to kind of go over that and it just sometimes lines up really good and so I just hope it was a blessing to you to be able to step before God's throne.

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Encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter five, verses one through 11, just so that you can reference that.

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I'll reference verses here and there throughout the message and you'll be able to see that I'm walking through that and remember if at any time during the message you need to get up and go to the back and get more coffee or juice, restrooms are out the hallway, are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side, barn door.

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But our focus really over the next half an hour, 45 minutes or so, is to really keep our focus as much as possible on God's word so that his spirit can speak to us through this text.

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We come to a text that exists for our encouragement. That's why it's written, that's why it's here and so I wanna encourage you to take that on right away, like right at the start.

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It's written to those who believe that Jesus Christ was sent by God to bear the punishment for our sins.

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So that's fundamentally the audience that he has in mind but I wanna just point out that if you're here and you're not sure about all of that, maybe you're here and you're wrestling with that so you're going, what does this have for me because I'm not quite sure about who

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Jesus Christ is? Well, I would suggest to you that this text will also speak to you if you have ears to listen and you pay attention and you listen to the logic and the flow of it.

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I believe that it can have an impact on your heart as well. For those who are all in with Christ, it's an encouraging passage about what has become true of us.

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But for those outside of Christ, it reads like a sales pitch for putting your trust in Jesus Christ.

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This text is gonna have three main movements to it for those of you who like outlines. Paul begins in verses one through five by telling us where we stand as God's children.

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Where do his children stand? That's the first outline point, where we stand as God's children.

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And that section is gonna be dominated by present tense realities, what is true of the one who has a saving understanding and faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

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Second, Paul's gonna move on to verses six through eight to remind us where we stood once as his enemies.

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Where did we stand as his enemies? Remember that chapters one through three really highlighted that, but Paul keeps going back to that, and he'll do so multiple times over the course of the book of Romans to keep us humble, to keep reminding us where we stood.

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This section exists to show us the extravagant love of the Father for those who were by nature ungodly and rebellious toward him, which is all of us.

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And lastly, the text wraps up in verses nine through 11, highlighting where we will stand on the day of judgment.

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This section is concerned for what the past and the present means for our future. And again, all with the mindset, all with the focus towards our hope and our rejoicing.

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So I fear sometimes that outlines and outlining things puts in our mind an academic learning mode.

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Okay, I've got the three points, now let me get to the point where I can fill in the bulk and the content here and get down to that.

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But the main point of this text, as I've said multiple times already, is for your hope and for your encouragement.

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We are not meant to leave this morning and go about this week going, I learned some stuff.

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We are meant to leave this text shouting praises. We are meant to leave this text rejoicing and glad, dancing a jig if you're into that kind of thing.

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We are meant to walk out of here with a life -transforming hope in the

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God who will, that's a definitive word, the God who will save those who are his on that final day.

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A rock -solid assured hope of salvation in his son Jesus Christ.

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So let's start with Paul's first movement. First he explains where we stand as God's children. In verses one through five,

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Paul basically lists out benefits for those who have been justified by faith. Now, justified by faith is a phrase that has occurred multiple times throughout the book of Romans, and if you haven't been here, it's just really important that we get down to the meaning of that.

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Justified by faith has been explained just really most recently in the most previous chapter to where we're at here in chapter four.

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It means that we've been acquitted of all wrongdoing before God. Acquitted in his courtroom.

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The word justified is a courtroom term that says that you are declared innocent before the judge.

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And we're declared innocent on the basis of trust in, faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to cover as the punishment for our sins.

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So that's where we're coming from, and that's kind of a given here at the start. He is talking straightforwardly.

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Therefore, he's basically taking it for granted. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, now, therefore, these things that we're gonna go on to talk about are true.

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And for anyone who is trusting in Jesus, anyone who is justified and acquitted by the blood of Jesus Christ for their sins, we have so many benefits.

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How many of you have studied some of the benefits of what it means to be saved before? Some of you have taken some time to look into scriptures to see what is true, what is promised to those who belong to him.

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But the very first thing that we see here in our text is that we have this amazing and glorious truth.

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We have peace with God. A standing that we have, a position that we are in, a position of peace with the

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Almighty God. This is not a generic peace. It's not the type of peace that every mother of toddlers is trying to find when they hide in the bathroom for a few minutes, not that kind of peace, which you don't get anyways, right?

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They're still knocking on the door. This is the kind of peace that comes when enemy combatants come together and sign a treaty of peace.

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This is a putting aside of hostilities. This kind of peace is only, only can be spoken of in the context of war, only be spoken of in the context of actual battle against one another.

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To obtain this kind of peace, there must have been conflict to begin with. And this is what we have received between us and the

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Father through the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace with God, the righteous and holy

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God whose pure justice requires wrath toward all sin.

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That God, the one who would have stood rightly and justly over us in condemnation, that God is the one that we now have peace with.

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It's been clear throughout the book of Romans that his divine wrath is being poured out on all ungodliness and unrighteousness.

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And then it was clearly spelled out that each one of us sitting here is ungodly and unrighteous.

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And so therefore we stood under the righteous wrath of God himself as enemies against him, as adversarial relationship.

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Humanity in general has an adversarial relationship with God. All of us born into an adversarial, that's gonna be next week, the second half, talking about Adam and the way that sin has passed down to all of humanity and all of us are broken because of that sin.

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But I'm still in my own thunder, that's next week. But all of us, all of us under the righteous wrath of God.

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I like to image it, in my mind, I like to have kind of illustrations or word pictures, but it's like now in Christ we have an umbrella of sorts.

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Picture Christ kind of like an umbrella to get out of the reigning wrath and judgment of the

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Almighty God. Jesus Christ is like an umbrella and as we draw near to him by faith we come under his protection from the wrath of God that's being poured out on the world.

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He takes the reign of God's wrath as we stand under his protective umbrella.

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Just like the umbrella gets wet so that we don't have to, Christ was punished so that we don't have to.

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Think about those three words, peace with God.

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Let that phrase sink in and consider what verse one is meant to produce in your heart.

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Why would Paul write this? Why include it? And I believe that in part it's because it's what we all crave.

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I think the human heart in general, every human heart is craving peace and it's really good to be told and reminded that we have it.

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If you're in Christ, you have peace with God. It is the positional standing of the relationship between you and the

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Father. Now how many of you would confess that you don't always feel that way? You don't always feel that way? And that's why we need to be reminded, that's why we need to come back to the text time and time again to believe what the word says is true of us versus believing what we feel about ourselves because I can tell you that even moment by moment

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I'm preparing a sermon this week and I can't tell you that every single moment of this week I felt peace with God while I'm studying the fact that it is true.

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And so we need to constantly, routinely, do you see the value of studying God's word? Do you see the value of coming back here to anchor our lives based on what is true of us, what the word says is true of our relationship with God?

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We all crave this peace. And so we now have peace with God, but through Jesus Christ we also have obtained something else that the text goes on to say, something even more amazing, more mind -bending.

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Peace is one thing, but we have now been brought into grace through faith. In other words, it's not just that God is no longer our enemy, but even more so, he now has goodwill, grace.

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Grace is a word of good favor, a phrase that there is positive toward you, good intentions towards those who are in his son,

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Jesus Christ. You see, how many of you would admit that, I mean, at times in your life, you just settle for a lack of hostility.

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Do you know what I'm talking about? You just be like, okay, it's okay if you just leave me alone, right? Just don't talk to me and it's gonna be okay, right?

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Like sometimes you just gotta get out of the room. Everybody married knows what I'm talking about. There are times where you just gotta duck and dodge and get out.

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So resolve it later, folks, right? Always make sure that you get back to the issue. And you will.

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But removal of hostility is not all that it's about. That's not the extent of it. He has goodwill and good intentions toward those who are his.

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If someone is bullying you on the playground, how many of you know it's a good thing if the bully stops stealing your lunch money?

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It's a good thing, right? Are you glad if he stops pushing you around to get your lunch money? Calvin and Hobbes, now you're reading that and you're not paying attention.

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I'll give you a second to read it there. Hey, Twinkie, give me a quarter. What? Why should

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I give you my money? It's for the let Calvin live through recess fund. Sounds like a worthy cause.

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Reach it into his pocket. So yeah, you get the picture there. It's a good thing if he stops stealing your lunch money, right, and I'm not here saying, hear me carefully,

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I'm using this as an illustration. God is not a bully, okay? Because his war against sin is just and right and pure and true and stems from his character.

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So that our war is based on the very nature of God's holiness and his righteousness and our nature as unrighteous and unholy.

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Do you see how those two, like oil and water, they collide and something has to give and God doesn't give.

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God doesn't bend and so we do in terms of his righteous condemnation.

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Hang in there. God's not a bully but I wanna follow this illustration a little bit. I use that illustration because we can all relate to a bully who steals lunch money and we can all imagine the relief that would come when the bully stops stealing your lunch money but now take it a step forward.

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What grace is saying is it's not just that we have peace with the bully, not just peace with God here but we can further imagine the disbelief that comes when the bully begins to share his lunch money.

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His own lunch and further, when the bully begins to defend the kids who he used to intimidate.

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We further get a sense of awe at the turnaround. Now again, I emphasize God is not a bully but we were indeed in an adversarial relationship with him prior to our salvation and the very one who would have rightly stood over us in condemnation is now the one who defends his children with the strongest and fiercest of loves.

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Can I just buy an amen from that one? Is anybody getting that? Is anybody feeling that?

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Is anybody, is it striking your heart that the very one who would have stood over you rightly and said be gone from my midst you worker of iniquity is now the one who will stand before you and say well done good and faithful servant.

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I only see the righteousness of my son in you and I rejoice. Come here and give me a hug and welcome into my eternal kingdom.

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Wow, what an amazing turnaround. This adversarial relationship to a fierce defensive love for his children.

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We don't only have the absence of war with God through Christ but we have access to his good favor as well.

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His undeserved but freely given kindness and goodness toward each and every one of us is amazing and I just encourage you to just meditate on these things.

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Let these things sink into you this morning. Through Christ we now stand on a firm foundation of God's good will toward us.

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What is that meant to produce in your life? How ought you to respond to that reality? But here in the text we're far from done.

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There's a third benefit mentioned at the end of verse two. Not only do we have peace with God and the grace of God through Christ but further we've been granted, the text says, the hope of the glory of God.

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Now what does that mean, the hope of the glory of God? Well first of all let's think about the word hope, this hope is not some generic feeling of some nebulous good thing that may or may not happen.

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Some of us hope that the Tigers will win, hope that the Lions will win, which is an unreasonable hope but we hope for things, right?

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We're from Michigan so there's all kinds of sports hopes that get dashed. Somebody might have wanted Michigan State to win a game recently or something but hope that just in something that may or may not happen, that's not what we're talking about.

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It's very clear that Paul wants to make sure that we root this hope in past trust, past evidences that God is one who continues forward what he promises he will do.

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It's a hope that flows from faith and trust and the things that God has promised to his people in the past. And we believe that the things he has promised in the past will actually happen in the future.

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The phrase, by the way, what we're hoping for is the glory of God. We're hoping for the glory of God.

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That's the content of our hope. And this phrase is a general way of wrapping up the future blessings and benefits that God has in his eternal kingdom for his people.

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All different kinds of things that are wrapped up in this idea of the glory of God, that God would be exalted, that God would be glorified.

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By the way, often we think of the future hope that we have is for our own benefit, for our own blessing, for streets of gold and really good stuff.

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And he does promise those things but at the end of the day, the real hope is that God would be glorified to his rightful place and that the son would receive the glory, do his name for his sacrifice in redeeming his people.

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That's the kind of hope that we're talking about. What are some of the contents of this hope? The hope of the glory of God is nothing less than the resurrection of his people.

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It's nothing less than an eternal kingdom without sin, without pain, without death. An eternity with which to worship him with all of our creative capacities forever and forever and forever.

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His final exaltation is our God rejoicing in his glory forever and ever.

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We rejoice in hope of that kind of glory of God. That's the content of it. He alone is the light of that place.

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He alone seated on that eternal throne. His son who loved us, his son who lived for us, his son who bled for us, who died for us and rose to new life for us, who now sits at the right hand of the

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Father interceding for us and reigning forever and ever over us with goodness, with kindness, with mercy, with love, with grace.

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Do you rejoice, recast, in that kind of hope, in that kind of glory of God that he promises for those who are his?

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Do you have hope? Do you even rejoice? Let me encourage you.

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Let your face know it. Let others who work with you know it. Let your neighbors know it.

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Let your kids know it. Let your parents know it. Let your family know it. If you're getting this, if this is really impacting your life, then this will change the way that you respond when you stub your toe this week.

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It's gonna impact the way that you respond when somebody cuts you off in traffic or when your wife says a biting remark to you or your husband is a loaf and doesn't get on that list that you have for him.

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It's gonna have an impact on the way that you high schoolers are actually interacting with your teachers and those of you that are in college are working with your professors and other students and all of these relationships and friendships, it's gonna have an impact because you're gonna be a person who rejoices, who doesn't expect this life to give you everything that you need, who already understands that this life is not the end and that's where he's gonna go here in a second because you see, we have this hope for the glory of God.

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But how many of you know that that hope for the glory of God is completely misplaced if you put it in the here and now? If you expect it to be all health, wealth, and prosperity in the here and now, you're gonna be sorely disappointed.

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I'm telling you that. That is definitively true. If you believe that this is a promise that everything is gonna go peachy keen for you, watch out because so far as I can tell, the mortality rate of humanity is 100%.

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All of us die. So how dare we kind of go, well, but this cancer can't take me because I believe by faith it can't.

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Something's gonna take me, right? Isn't that pretty definitive? What's gonna happen? So it's as if here in the text, it's as if here in the text, the last, well, the second to the last thing that he issues to us as a benefit to us is productive suffering.

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He says it's not only peace with God, not only standing in the grace of God, not only hope for his glory, but we cannot be knocked off of that hope by the sufferings of this world for those who are his.

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It's as if Paul anticipated someone raising their hand and raining on his parade. He's in the middle of exalting, he's in the middle of rejoicing, he's in the middle of setting forth the cause for us to rejoice in this life.

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Why ought you to leave this place rejoicing with gladness, with hope? Is it because you're gonna get a promotion next week?

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Is it because he's promising that your 401k is heading for the stars? Is it because your fame is gonna increase?

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No, it's because he has an eternity for you. But he anticipates that somebody's gonna say, you know what,

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Paul, you've just said, we have peace with God, we have grace with God, we have hope in the glory of God. And to be honest,

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Paul, that sounds like pie in the sky to me. It's a nice looking piece of pie.

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It is French silk. I asked Hope to put French silk on there and she did, but Rixie's French silk pie is the best pie.

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I'm just making, that's an unpaid endorsement, but it's the best pie on the planet. Hear, hear.

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But you know, you might expect somebody to ask, what is, what is the good of pie in the sky when what it feels like is life is serving crap pies down here?

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Do you know what I'm talking about? He said that word. But you know what I'm talking about.

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Do you know what I'm talking about? I mean, do you feel that sometimes? You feel like, wow, it's really great that there's this future thing out there, but boy,

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I'd like a piece of pie right now. That's where we kind of get into sinful patterns, right?

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Boy, I'd really like it to be a blessing right now. I'd really like to have fun right now. What about, what about these streets of gold?

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That's great for the future, but could I, could I have some things here? And so Paul tackles the cynic in each and every one of us here, because he acknowledges, just like the cynic would acknowledge, that suffering is real.

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And even through suffering, he says, God's people rejoice. The in there, not rejoicing about the suffering itself, but rejoicing in the midst of suffering.

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This is actually, by the way, the fourth benefit that Paul is expressing for those who are all in with Christ, and you go, suffering?

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A benefit? Well, you see, the reality is, everyone suffers. Did you know that?

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Christian and non -Christian alike, everybody suffers. Everybody goes through hardship. Did you already know that? Everybody that you've encountered in life has had some sense of suffering, some sense of difficulty, something setting them back.

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But only the Christian, hear me carefully, only the Christian can truly make sense of, or have a productive suffering.

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We have one up on the rest of the world by having meaningful suffering.

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Everyone suffers, but for us, who have faith in Christ, the suffering is productive.

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We live in the midst of our sufferings, and rejoice in the midst of our sufferings, because we know that it only serves, at the end of the day, to fuel our hope.

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The logic in verses three through five goes like this, to summarize. Suffering forces us to grow in endurance.

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It gives us kind of a marathoner's view of life. The long -term, the end goal in mind.

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The well -done, good, and faithful servant at the end of the day drives us, and motivates us, and puts us in a long -term perspective.

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Not running a sprint, but the long -term perspective. And the word choice for suffering here, by the way,

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I wanna clarify, is not restricted to religious persecution, as you might tend to spiritualize this text, and go, oh, this is only talking about like when you share your faith, and somebody spits at you, or punches you because you said something about Jesus, or something like that, it's not that.

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It is not a limited word, there's other words, there is a type of persecution in the Greek language that he could have used that word, but instead he used a very generic word for suffering here, intentionally.

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So that all of human experience that is unfavorable could be covered in this cancer, the loss of a child, the loss of a parent, the loss of a job, the fracturing of a marriage.

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All, anything you can identify as a result of the fall on this planet that causes physical or emotional pain, are sufferings being addressed here.

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Suffering, all types of suffering, require endurance. And that endurance produces a tested and tried character of faith for those who belong to God by faith in his son,

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Jesus Christ. And that trial -tested character of faith produces hope, the text says.

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So I believe that the flow of these few verses can be summarized by one simple statement. If you're dozing off, listen in for this point.

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For the follower of Jesus Christ, sufferings produce hope by weakening our ties to this world.

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By weakening our ties to this world. Like a boat that's moored to a dock and every successive wave of difficulty is starting to tear at that rope and is starting to move us further from shore and further from shore.

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To the point where I think there comes a point in our lives, and some of you can relate to it, where there comes a point where the other shore looks kind of nice.

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You begin to recognize the place of your hope is not here. You begin to recognize that, oh my goodness, my athletic prowess is limited.

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My physical beauty is limited. I mean, you know, I'm getting better, I'm more like a fine wine, but I mean, most people, you know, it's like, it's, it's getting.

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Sorry. I can just make these little statements and make my wife blush, it's awesome.

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Because she knows it's true, so. But no, you get it.

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There's a point where I turned a corner where my basketball skills increased and they got better and then they kind of spiked somewhere around 20, 25, and then they, you know, kept, kind of started to plateau.

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And then somewhere around 40, I kind of started to tail off and then somewhere around like 44, I was like,

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I'm not playing basketball anymore because I keep running. The doctor literally said, you know what, if you want to be running when you're 60, you might want to choose between running or basketball.

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And I was like, okay, I can make that choice. But what I'm saying is that, I'm just using that as an illustration, that's kind of personal, but what it really comes down to is recognizing, and I think that part of the aging process is that we accumulate sufferings.

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We accumulate difficulties, we accumulate setbacks. And I'm not saying you just rest in the setbacks, I mean, certainly we still conquer in Christ's name, we still are taking on more and more by faith, but at the same time, there's a point where you turn a corner and you're like, how many of you know what

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I'm talking about? Probably don't even need to keep talking about it because there's a point where you recognize, wow, there's a lot on the other shore waiting for me.

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I've experienced 46 years of life on this planet. I've suffered the loss of parents, both of my parents.

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The pain of watching those that I love shipwreck their lives, some of you have experienced this. I've walked with people through darkness and I have watched people be consumed by darkness.

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And with every successive wave of hardship and sorrow, the other shore gets more appealing and that's the product of hope.

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That's where it begins to settle our hope in the right direction. And for those of you that are young, I'd encourage you to start thinking in those terms now.

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Don't wait until you're in your midlife to start to have a crisis and think through what really matters. I'd encourage you to start thinking about it now.

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What really matters is that other place. What really matters is the place of eternity, the place of hope, and then rejoice in the here and now.

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And that puts you in a perspective of being able to rejoice in all of these difficulties that come your way. Can you shift your focus?

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I really think you can. I really think you can change your perspective on suffering. I believe that you can arrest your mind to consider that the next wave of suffering, and there is a next wave,

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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's just a reality. I think a lot of times we don't like to face that, but there is another level of suffering that's coming for each and every one of us, but it is meant to deepen your hope in the salvation and the

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Savior who is coming for you. It's meant to shake you from putting your hope in the chintzy, trivial, little baubles of this world, and in turn, recognize that there's a much more rock -solid hope that is an eternity for each and every one of us who are

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His. You see, those without Christ cannot hope in suffering. It's antithetical.

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It makes zero sense. If you are outside of Christ, if you are an atheist, if you are an unbeliever, there is no reasonable hope in suffering.

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As a matter of fact, suffering can only stand in the way of our utopia, of our self -made pleasures and our self -made plans.

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Suffering is a blight on the plans for the one outside of Christ, for their hope in the here and now.

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It's getting in the way of their heaven. But for those in Christ, all of it is hope.

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All of it is glory. All of it is rejoicing, because suffering will not and cannot have the final word for the one that is in Christ.

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So the benefits of being justified by faith in Christ are, first, peace with God, second, standing in the grace of God, third, hope in the glory of God, fourth, productive suffering, and the last thing in this section is we stand in Christ with hearts, and here it is, hearts full of his love through his spirit.

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That can be a confusing phrase, because hearts full of love makes us think immediately about giving. Oh, my heart is so full of love,

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I can give that love to others, but the emphasis in this text, in the original language, is a receiving of God's love.

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His extravagant, overboard, pouring, like, I mean, he's got like a fire hose, pouring love into the believer's heart.

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It's full to overflowing with love, why? Because the Almighty is the one who has loved you through his son.

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It's an amazing thing, a glorious thing. Paul begins verse five by expressing his full confidence that our hope will not leave us empty -handed, and he turns to love, because the final benefit of our acquittal is the pouring of his love into our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit, that very Holy Spirit that he has given to his people, the text tells us.

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His love has been poured into our hearts, the Holy Spirit has filled us up with his love for us, and the fact of the matter is, as I said earlier, you might not always feel loved by God, you don't always feel forgiven, you don't always feel like you're under his protection, or that you're justified.

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At times, if we're honest, it seems too good to be true. And so you will not be moved to hope or to rejoicing in things that you don't believe, and if you don't believe that you're loved by God, you're gonna have a hard time leaving here with rejoicing, you're gonna have a hard time leaving here with hope.

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And so Paul sets out in this next section to explain how we can know that we are loved by God.

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He says, God's love has been poured into your heart if you belong to Christ, but I know that you're gonna forget that, I know that you're gonna have a hard time believing that, so let me go back and root this in some things concrete that were true of you that demonstrate, abundantly clear,

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God's extravagant love toward those who are his, and in case you're questioning it, he's gonna spell it out so that we can believe it, hope in it, and leave here rejoicing in it.

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And so in verses six through eight, our second section, Paul reminds us of where we stood as God's enemies.

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In other words, how, the mechanism of his love, how his love came to us, where we were at when he first loved us.

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You see, Paul can't leave the past alone. In a proper theological perspective on your past, rightly understanding who you were before you came to faith in Christ, fuels a proper life in the present and the future by giving us all a humble gratitude with which to live.

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No room for pride, no room for arrogance, only humble gratitude when we really understand the mechanism of salvation.

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He starts off by reminding us that we were at one time weak, that's spiritually weak, incapable of saving ourselves, and we were ungodly.

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How many of you have already noticed that you're different than God? He's a bit different than us, isn't he?

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We are ungodly, and he is righteous, and he is God. So Paul interposes verse seven as a side note to show the depth and extravagance of God's love.

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It's there to emphasize, it's there just straight up for emphasis and for illustration. Because logic and human experience, really, through verse seven, he's highlighting that logic and human experience that shows that self -sacrifice is rare in human culture.

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Among humanity, it is rare, rare, rare that a person would sacrifice themselves for another.

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He says a person would rarely die for a righteous person. A righteous person there, we don't want to get too caught off into the weeds, but a righteous person there is a person who is well -respected by society, a good civil servant, a person who does justice in their society and their culture.

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So a person would rarely die for somebody that's kind of an acquaintance that does good stuff, is what he's saying there.

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They might be more likely to die for a good person. A good person is somebody who does good things for you. Think of it that way. Righteous person, just in society, a good individual.

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But a good person, somebody who does good for you, now that's more likely, right? Isn't that more likely than just dying for somebody that's an acquaintance that has done some good for society?

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It's less likely that you'd die for that. But for somebody who's good, well, you might do that. But let's not get hung up in the details because this text, verse seven, only serves really to remind us how rare it would be for a person to die for another person.

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Now it happens, but it's rare. But God shows his love. God shows his love for us in that while we were still stinking sinners, disgusting rebels against him,

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Christ died for us. This is a past event.

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He's pointing to the past. He wants you to think about the past. The Christian life has always got a backwards glance and a forward glance.

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A backward glance is the place where we find stable and rock -solid hope for the future.

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We always look both directions as Christians. This past event reveals a present reality.

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Ask yourself this question. How loved are you? How loved are you?

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So loved. So loved that Christ died for you even when you were a rebel against him.

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He rescued you by his love. By the way, this is the first instance where love is associated with the salvation of God in the book of Romans.

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The first time that those two come together and we see that the very motivation for the almighty God in his saving us is pouring love into our hearts to show his great love for his people.

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He rescued you by his love. The instance of Christ's sacrifice is so rare and unique because in his sacrifice we see one dying for his enemies.

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Not for a righteous person, not for a good person, not for one who served him well and so therefore he died for you.

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And I would suggest to you that one of the most toxic poisons in the church today is the notion that I was a pretty good person and Christ saved me because I figured it out.

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I was good enough, I was bright enough, I was likable enough that God saw me, valued me and gave me the boost that I needed so that I can live a good life.

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Every one of us to a person was an ungodly enemy of the almighty. Before he saved us.

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Now some of us have to take that by faith, right? How many of you were saved under 10? When you were under 10, when you gave your faith, you have to believe this is true of you because I've joked before, like I was saved when

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I was eight and it was not like I was cooking meth in an Easy -Bake oven or anything like that, okay? So it's not like I was the dregs of society as an eight -year -old, right?

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You know what I'm talking about? So you believe by faith that this is true but some of you, how many of you were saved after 10? You were after 10 and you got maybe a little bit of chance, maybe 10's not a great cutoff, maybe

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I should've said 15 but you got a chance to see a little bit more of your depravity before you came to faith in Christ.

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You got to see a little bit of your own personal rebellion against God and it takes a little less faith for you because you're like, yeah, that pretty much defines me, ungodly, unrighteous,

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I get it. God has reached down into our hearts and so let that sink in, pouring his love.

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We were condemned as enemies. This is us before he reached down to save us.

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Hopeless, peaceless, graceless, lifeless, joyless.

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And then he loved us and that changed, that changed everything.

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The conclusion of the text now deals with the future. So we see what we once were, what we've been made in Christ and now we need to be reminded once again of what does that imply for that day of judgment.

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Where will we stand on the day of judgment is the final point to the text. We've seen our standing in Christ, where we used to stand as his enemies but in verses nine and 10,

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Paul argues, since we have been acquitted by his blood, we've been justified by his blood, we have been declared innocent by his blood and if he died for us while we were his enemies, how much more shall we now be saved now that we have been reconciled?

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In other words, now that we're his friends, now that we're brought into the family, now that we're redeemed and reconciled and in a right relationship with him, how much more should our assurance be that he will save us if he died for us while ungodly and unrighteous and enemies, how will he treat those he has reconciled to himself?

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In other words, if he treated us, well, I kind of said that, if he treated us so well as his enemies, he will certainly make good on his promises now, now that we've been made acceptable by his son.

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Paul is seeking to fuel our hope by arguing and debating and kind of spelling out how sure

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God's salvation is toward those who believe in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and he ends this text with a final, more than that, think about all that he said, all that he said and now here in verse 11, he's gonna say, and more than all that, more than all that, more than a firm belief that God will rescue us from his wrath, more than just a trust that we will be raised to new life just like Jesus Christ, more than that, we rejoice.

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More than all that, we rejoice. You see, what he's saying is we are not just people who believe, we don't just let it rest here, we don't let it stop at our heads, we don't just believe, we don't just trust, we rejoice, we rejoice, we worship, we celebrate, like celebrations in the streets, like a ticker tape parade, the war is over, peace is here for us, reconciliation has been achieved and we are loved by the almighty

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God who had the right to condemn us, but instead reached down and poured his love into our hearts.

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We are loved by the almighty, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Why do we rejoice?

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More than for any other reason, we rejoice here at the end of our text because in Christ, we have now received this one long, glorious, beautiful word, reconciliation.

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We have received reconciliation, justification, a legal courtroom term, reconciliation, a relationship word, a relationship word.

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The broken relationship between man and his creator is healed in Christ Jesus, the fractured enmity between the children of Adam and Eve and the almighty

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God comes to peace through the cross of Jesus Christ. Reconciliation is a great word.

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By the way, the majority of, really, I need to fine tune this, but I'm pretty confident in saying other world religions and pagan religions of this day would not use the term reconciliation in religious terms.

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They might use it out in the street or something like that, but not in any of their writings, not in any of their understanding of their relationship with the gods or God because it is a relational word.

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And the notion that the gods wanted a relationship with man was foreign to other religions.

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But the entire Bible is a quest for a restored relationship. God has done the work to reconcile himself with mankind.

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So as we come to communion this morning, I want you to take a moment to consider where you stand. Do you stand as an enemy of God without faith and trust in his son?

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If that's you, then I'd encourage you to skip communion if you've not drawn near to Jesus to let his sacrifice cover your sins.

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But I would encourage you to consider these things and feel free to talk with me about the hope that can be yours through Jesus Christ.

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But for those who belong to Christ here, let's celebrate this sacrifice together. Let's rejoice in this time, this little time that we have together to remember the beautiful standing we have with God through the cross of Jesus Christ.

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So as you take the cracker and the juice, consider peace with God. Consider the good favor of God towards you.

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Consider the hope of the glory of God that is yours, that defines your new future in him. Consider the way that even suffering is productive in your life.

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And remember his love that is poured into your hearts through his Holy Spirit. And then a simple ask on the application.

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Rejoice. Rejoice, recast. This is your application point for the week.

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This is what you can do about taking on this text. This is what you can do about encountering this.

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Although you have a choice to either believe it or disbelieve it, if you believe it, then go rejoicing. Be glad, smile, and show your hope to a hopeless world.

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While you were still an ungodly, weak, adversarial sinner, Christ loved us enough to die for us.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the salvation that is ours in your son.

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That we were given all these glorious and beautiful things, peace with you, hearts filled with your love, now standing in your good favor, you're sharing your grace and your goodness with your children.

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Father, I pray that you would move in each one of us to recognize where we were and where you have brought us in reconciliation.

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Our relationship is healed through Jesus Christ. And so I pray that you would make us a joyful people.

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I confess in my own heart I can be very petty. Little, simple things can get me down pretty quick, and I can see the glass half full.

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Half full. Father, I pray that even this communion time that we have to reflect on the blood of Christ and the body of Christ broken for us would set our minds in the right framework, would set us back to a remembrance of the cross and his sacrifice for us where we've been reconciled, where we now have peace and all of our sins covered, all of our sins forgiven, all of our sins punished and dealt with by Jesus Christ, your son.

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Help our hearts to exalt, to rejoice, to be glad this week, and to put our right perspective on the eternal kingdom that you have waiting for us in Jesus' name.