Sunday Sermon: The Grace in Which We Stand (Romans 5:2-5)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Opening the Romans 5 Passage and the Grace in Which We Stand

Well good morning.

Good morning.

If you would open your Bible please to Romans chapter five. As we continue our series in the book of Romans, picking up where we left off a couple of weeks ago, as the apostle Paul has been making the argument for being justified by faith in Christ alone, we have that summarizing statement that comes up for us again here at the beginning of chapter five.

But then Paul is going to open up and unpack some other great things that we receive by faith, not just our justification, but other wonderful treasures and gifts that have been given by the Lord. So we look at Romans chapter five, verses one through five is going to be our passage this morning.

In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? Romans chapter five and beginning in verse one. The apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome, hear the word of the Lord. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our 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. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 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 Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we are thankful to you for the passages that we read this morning and these reminders of the goodness of God that has been given to us in Christ our Savior.

We see that all things that we may face as Christians are ultimately building us up into something for your glory. What we should even be seeking after as worshipers of Jesus Christ is the glory of God, desiring as we read here the hope of the glory of God.

And so Lord, I pray that in what we read today and even as we go from this place taking the words that we have read and applied, we desire to see your glory made manifest. Just as we've been taught to pray in the Lord's Prayer, your will be done, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

There is an end to this plan that you see perfectly from your throne in heaven. God may we be privileged to see what it is that you are doing. And show it to us that we may see and understand and trust and hope in the goodness of God that is working even in the midst of all our circumstances for your glory and for our good.

We humble ourselves before you today and even through these short verses, may we gain insight into the goodness of God. And it is in Jesus name that we pray and all God's people said, Amen. Well, I have not preached in two weeks, but boy, is there sure been a lot going on in the world in those two weeks.

Living in a World of Wars, Rumors, and End-Times Speculation

As we were gathering this morning for prayer ahead of church, one of the things that I mentioned to the group as we were pondering the word and thinking about coming into worship this morning and think about individuals and different prayer needs that existed even within our own congregation.

We live in such a time of technological advancement. In the history of mankind, there has never been the kind of technology that we enjoy even in the United States of America today. Having these things in our pockets, we're connected with the news all the time.

And in a moment that something happens, we get to hear about it, which may not always be a good thing. The kinds of conflicts and the fights that are going on in the world right now, even just a matter of a few years ago, we would not be as instantly connected with knowing what's going on, if not for the speed of news and how quickly it can circumvent the globe through the electronic devices that we carry in our own pockets.

And now suddenly we know about bombs that are being dropped between this nation and that nation and conflicts that are going on. And everybody has their own end times theories even connected with some of these nations, forgetting what the Lord said to us perhaps in Matthew 24, you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet.

These things must happen and then the end will come. Nonetheless, people have asked me about, you know, especially when something happens with Israel or happens with another nation in the Middle East, is there something end times related connected to this?

Does the book of Revelation say anything about this or any other prophetic book in the Bible? If we want to consider those things, perhaps we may. As I'm even thinking about what I'm going to be teaching about on Sunday night as I finish one series and moving into the next, maybe we could do a book like Revelation.

But in the meantime, we have nothing to fear of the things that are happening in the world. We simply hold fast to Christ and know that He is working all things out together for good and for His glory.

And should our lives be taken from us tomorrow, we simply get promoted and we end up in the presence of God and all the cares and concerns of those things that are going on in the world right now will not be our cares and concerns anymore.

But we continue to trust in God who raises up kings and tears down kings, as Daniel prayed in Daniel chapter 2. And knowing that even the sufferings that we may endure, the trials that we go through on an individual level, folks, I got enough to worry about in my day today to be concerned about what one nation is doing to another nation on the other side of the planet.

And those struggles and sufferings that we may go through now, what's the meaning behind.

This?

What's the purpose in this? What is God using this for? And how do I commit this to His glory? That I may be shaped all the more in the image of Christ and come to a knowledge of His Word. The Apostle Paul here in Romans chapter 5, as we're kind of heading into a new section here after the arguments that he's laid out regarding justification by faith, what we're reading here is giving application.

This is not just more theological insights that Paul has to share, particularly with this body in Rome to whom he is writing, but he's even giving application to the fact that we've come to know and understand that by faith in Jesus Christ, we've been justified.

And Paul kind of unpacks some other things there. Not only are we justified, but we also get this. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. Now you'll notice here, and this kind of works as an outline for this text that we're looking at, you have past, present, and future realities of what's expressed here in Romans 5.

And again, giving application to the understanding that we've been justified by faith. What else do we get by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ? The expression that we've been justified by faith, that's a past reality.

When we put our faith in Jesus, we're justified. It's a present reality, of course, but in the past. When we came to faith in Jesus, we were justified. But then our present reality, through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we rejoice in hope. Now we have a future reality of the glory of God. And not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces something. It produces endurance. Endurance produces character.

Character produces hope. We have hope. It produces more hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Now you notice we go from future to present to past again, right?

It produces hope. Hope is a future thing. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. We have God's love now. The Holy Spirit has been given to us.

So again, looking through these past, present, and future realities of what we have gained in Christ Jesus as we come to understand today the grace in which we stand. So let me come back to the beginning again.

I know that we, this was the subject of the sermon that I preached two weeks ago, but we consider again that verse, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, now that's the summarizing statement of what we have seen from the middle of chapter three through chapter four and here in the beginning of chapter five.

We have been justified by faith. Paul has laid that out, that argument out, and he's done it extensively and thoroughly. Though we have books and systematic theologies that go into this on a much deeper level with thicker, a thicker number of pages, more pages committed to this sort of a thing.

Yet Paul is able to do that so thoroughly over the course of a chapter and a half. Not only making the expression that we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, but even showing the example of that justification from our father Abraham, which we saw through chapter four.

So just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness by his faith, he was declared righteous. So is the reality for every one of us. And all of us are children of Abraham because we have faith in Jesus Christ and fellow heirs with him in Christ, as also stated in Galatians chapter three.

So we've been justified by faith and in this faith that we have, we also have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's summarizing what Paul had expressed back in chapter one, that the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

So how is it that I can get out from under the wrath of God? And it's by faith in Jesus Christ. Now you're not under his wrath. You have peace with him. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nothing to fear now of the judgment of God coming against the unrighteousness of men. Because with Abraham, I've been declared righteous by faith in Jesus Christ. And so I have peace with God. God is not my enemy.

Just as God had called Abraham friend. So I have become a friend of God and there's peace between friends. Folks, at least there should be. You don't have peace with your friends. They're probably not your friends.

You may need to evaluate a few relationships. We have peace with God. We are friends of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus even saying to his own disciples, I have called you friends. He is our God.

But praise God condescending himself to the place that we may call him friend. And we have fellowship with God even now, knowing that he hears our prayers and we can call upon him. And he listens to us.

He loves to give good gifts to his children. And this is the kind of relationship that we have come to have with God through our faith in Jesus. But then Paul goes on to say, there are some other great things that we have received in addition to being justified by faith and having peace with God.

Through him, verse two, we have also obtained access. We get access to God, as said in the book of Hebrews, that Jesus is our access into that holy place. We can now come into the very throne room of grace.

We can come to the throne of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We've obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And that is not only a statement of the favor of God that is upon us, but that is also a statement that expresses God is the one who is keeping us in his favor.

We stand in that grace. We're not wandering through it. We're not passing by. We're not chasing it with a butterfly net, attempting to grab a hold of it and then make it our pet. We stand in this grace.

And we are held in this grace by the grace of God. Through him, we've obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. So Paul is expressing here, we've been justified by faith, but understand, brethren, that wasn't just some sort of conversion experience that you had in the past.

It is the opening to the reality of which you are presently in. You are in the grace of God in which we stand. And the expression of standing there is an expression of we are solidly there. Our feet are firmly planted.

God is keeping us there and upholding us there. We're not continuing to fall down under the weight and pressure of our sins or the works that we would never be able to do enough of in order to gain the favor of God.

He has lifted us up. He is standing us there in his presence. And we are with God by his grace. This was hammered into me at a young age, and I'm so grateful for it. An understanding of the perseverance of the saints, or as R .C. Sproul has retitled it, the preservation of the saints, which is probably a better title for that particular doctrine.

Because it's not the perseverance of the saints as if we are continuing to do something so that we may persevere. It's the preservation in the sense that God is the one who is preserving us in his grace.

We didn't have the ability to get to God and save ourselves. We don't even have the ability to keep ourselves saved. It's God who keeps us in that salvation. And even at a really, really young age, I remember my parents speaking to me about the assurance of salvation.

I've done some dumb stuff in my life. And yet, as stupid as some of these decisions that I've made, there still was never a doubt in my mind that God still loves me. And I'm so grateful to my parents for teaching me that lesson when I was really young.

It really seemed to prepare me for the dumb stuff that I would do later on. And yet, not feeling like when I had made especially grievous sinful errors, that God must not love me anymore. Now, there was still that understanding that I've sinned and I need to come before God, but I know that I can.

I know that I can come to Him and say, God, forgive me for this wicked thing I've done. I hate my flesh. And I'm given the assurance that when we ask forgiveness for our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1 .9. And that's by His grace. That I would experience that kind of conviction and want to come before God and ask for forgiveness. One of my favorite songs on the radio, even as a kid, was from Keith Green.

And it was a song entitled, Grace By Which I Stand. Listen to the lyrics. Listen to what Green wrote here about this. Lord, the feelings are not the same. You tell this as a Southern boy. Feelings. The feelings are not the same.

I guess I'm older. I guess I've changed. And how I wish it had been explained. That as you're growing, you must remember that nothing lasts except the grace of God by which I stand. In Jesus, I know that I would surely fall away except for grace by which I'm saved.

Let me continue on. Lord, I remember that special way I vowed to serve you. When it was brand new. But like Peter, I can't even watch and pray one hour with you. And I bet I could deny you too. Well, nothing lasts except the grace of God by which I stand.

In Jesus, I know that I would surely fall away except for grace by which I'm saved. We sing it also in that great hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, Lord. Take and what? Seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. And friends, that's not something that we do by our power. We don't will ourselves into heaven. It is by God's grace that we stand in the salvation that we've been given.

And we are maintained and upheld in this salvation by the mercy and grace of God. And so through him, we have obtained access by faith into this grace, this favor that we do not deserve. But God shows to us and shows it to us every day.

God loved you today as much as he loved you yesterday. He's going to love you tomorrow as much as he loved you today. God's love for you doesn't grow. It's always the same. Your love for God may grow, and I certainly hope it does.

That is in our sanctification. But you can be confident in every day that you come before God that he is just as loving and as affectionate to you today as he was the day before. And so in this grace in which we stand, what does Paul goes on to say in verse 2?

We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Now, let me read verse 3, and then I'll come back and explain something. So not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.

Hope in the Glory of God and Rejoicing in Suffering

So we have which word in both that appear there in both verses 2 and 3? We have the word rejoice. So there's joy. There's an expression of joy, of elatedness, of praise unto God because of the grace that we've been given by faith in Jesus Christ.

But the word actually means a little bit more than just that. In most places throughout the New Testament, the Greek word that's used there for rejoice is translated a different way. It's usually translated boast.

We boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we boast in our sufferings, which is crazy. Like boasting in our sufferings, it seems to be the American way, or probably even just the way of humanity in general, to try to avoid suffering at all cost.

Who would boast in their sufferings? Yay, I get to suffer today. And yet the grace that we have in God would really actually cause us to praise Him because we have to go through something difficult. And that drives us to praise God.

We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. So we have a future reality there. It's something that's going to happen for us in the future. As Paul describes hope later on in Romans, hope is not in something that you can see.

If it's something that you could see, then it wouldn't be hope. So we hope in what we cannot see. We are trusting in what God is going to do, even what He has done, what He is doing, and what He's going to do with the present circumstance or situation that we might be in.

We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We hope in the glory of God. So what does that mean? We know that whatever is happening in the midst of these circumstances, God will be glorified. Expressions of the glory of God in the Old Testament were generally expressions of the presence of God at the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

Remember, the mercy seat is that place there on the top of the Ark where you have made out of one piece of gold. It's not pieces that have been fashioned together, but fashioned out of one piece of gold.

You have the lid to the Ark of the Covenant with two angels that are on top, prostrate toward each other, bowing down with the wings extended inward, pointing to each other. And it would be right there in between the angels, just right on the top of the mercy seat, would be where the presence of God was.

And when Moses would converse with God, the voice of God would emanate from that exact place. And that was considered the presence where God was, that place where he chose to descend and dwell with his people.

That was called the glory of God. The glory of God is there. And you couldn't approach it because God's glory was so magnificent, we as unholy creatures could not dare be in the presence of that glory.

Which was why the only people that could go in there was Moses conversing with God and the high priest who went in once a year to make sacrifice for the people. When later on the Ark of the Covenant was transferred to the temple and it would be inside the Holy of Holies and it was still on the poles.

The poles were so long that they're extending outside. The Holy of Holies is the description that we have of the placement of the Ark there in that place. But even there in the temple, the only person that can go in is the high priest and only once a year to make sacrifice for himself, for the rest of the priests, and then for the sins of the people.

And when Solomon built the temple and he prayed that God would make this house that I have built the dwelling place of the creator of the entire universe. It says there that the presence of God came down as a fire from heaven and filled that place.

And it was so magnificent and so glorious that the priest could not even stand up. Nobody else could enter that place or they would be incinerated. But they were faced to the ground because they couldn't even stand to look at the presence of the glory of God.

And so that's generally the reference to God's glory when we will have it in the Old Testament. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. The expression, the way that it is used here is that God would be glorified in all that he says and does.

So we know that no matter what is happening in the world, no matter what's happening to us, no matter what's happening to others, you know, people that we may even sympathize with, wish that we could do more for, but we cannot.

Or whatever is happening in our community, whatever's happening in the nation in which we live, whatever's happening globally, on the world international stage, we know that God is going to be glorified in the midst of all of this.

He has his hand on all of it. And he is using everything to ultimately accomplish some great good that he is decreed and even in his providence is working out to the end that he desires. God will be glorified.

And so we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Now we have certain things that we certainly desire and hope for that will be to our advantage and to our benefit, right? Whenever we talk about things that we hope for, we'll talk about heaven.

I hope for heaven. I long for heaven. There won't be any more sickness and disease there. Praise God. I won't have to be struggling in this body that's breaking down on me anymore. There won't be any more hurt.

There's no more backstabbing. There's no more enemies that are oppressing me, which is a theme to so many Psalms, David praying that God's justice would be done against his enemies. All these things on and on.

We look for like the absence of the struggles that we go through here. We look to heaven because it's the absence of all of our trials here. But let's not just look to heaven for those things. Even greater than that is heaven is the place where God dwells.

We get to be with God. We get to worship God and glory in him for what he did through Christ Jesus and even what he was doing in the midst of the world. In those circumstances, we didn't even know how this was going to pan out.

But on that day in which we enter into glory, we will see and we will understand. So it's beyond just, he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Sure, that's going to be great, but that's not the reason why we want heaven.

We want heaven because it's Jesus who wipes every tear from our eyes. And we know that he can wipe every tear from our eyes because all of the sin and death and everything that was the result of that will be no more.

He's the one who brings it to an end. The glorious thing about glory is Christ. And that's our longing and our desire, that hope and rejoicing in the glory of God. And not only that, Paul says, that's a future reality.

That's something that we get to someday. But how about right now? Paul says, even in the midst of this, even in the midst of the life that you're living now, there is reason and cause to rejoice. It's not just rejoicing at a future reality.

It's rejoicing in things that God is doing now, even in the midst of the most difficult of our circumstances. Verse three, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. And again, as I said, we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces something.

So there's a meaning and a purpose to this. When we became Christians, our suffering did not just automatically end. I know you wish it probably would have. Why didn't life just get easier when I became a believer?

But God is still working even through our sufferings to accomplish something. Christ suffered for us. And the apostles talked about sharing in Christ's suffering. So as he suffered, we will also suffer.

Jesus assured his disciples, in this world, you will have what? Tribulation, troubles, trials, however your translation comes out on that. But in this world, we will have difficulty. He told his disciples that.

But he went on to say, but take heart, for I have overcome the world. So while we will have sufferings, things will get hard. It will not always be easy, yet we trust in the one who has overcome all of this.

This just occurred to me. I didn't think of this before the sermon this morning. But I'm gonna start using that with my kids when they complain about their homework. You're suffering, but rejoice. Rejoice in the suffering of your homework.

Yes, math is hard. But God intended for you to have to do your math homework so that you would give him glory. Kids, remember that one. Okay, we'll come back to that one again later. My daughter, my oldest daughter is taking math classes over the summer so she doesn't have to do it during the school year.

Math is not her favorite subject.

It's yours.

Okay, yeah, Mariah said it's her favorite subject. We rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces something. Now before going on in that, when we became saved, when we came to Christ and we became Christians, our struggles, our hardships, our sufferings didn't end.

But there was something about them that did change. Now we understand the meaning and the purpose of them. Whereas for those who don't know God, there's no point to suffering except it just makes living miserable.

But what's the point of suffering? One of my brothers is not a Christian and I was trying to help him to understand this because my brother is a cultured individual and he enjoys good dining and good fellowship with good friends.

And so one of the things that I was trying to explain to him and sharing the gospel with him is that whenever you go out with friends and you enjoy good dining like that, all of the joy that you think that you experience in that good dining, it perishes on the experience.

In other words, you can go out with friends and you had a great time but after that time's over, there really wasn't any point to that good time that you had. And all you're left with is a good memory of the fellowship and the conversation that we shared, the good food that we ate, the wine that we may have consumed, but there's nothing else beyond that.

What ultimately is the point in all of that except the good moment that you just shared. But the joy perishes on the experience. I said for the Christian though, everything has purpose and meaning to it.

And that fellowship that we enjoyed with good friends, the joy didn't terminate on the experience, it rolls up into praise to God. And so now this good dining that I enjoyed, man, this is but a taste of the wedding feast of the lamb, which is gonna be so much greater and glorious than even the best moments that we can experience here on earth.

God doesn't mean for us to just go through life completely a burden and weighed down by suffering. He doesn't mean for us to just constantly be morose melancholy people for the rest of our lives.

Oh, I'm a Christian.

Some people seem so sour in the expressions that you just wonder, are you sure you're a Christian? God does give us good things. Again, back to the Lord's prayer where Jesus teaches us to pray, give us this day our daily bread.

And we would ask that God would provide and the fellowship that we enjoy is meant to be enjoyed and meant to be something that points to something greater ultimately. We enjoy this fellowship now as we've talked about regarding church, this is heaven practice.

I hope you enjoy church.

Because you're gonna be doing it for a long time. That we would be together with one another in such a more glorious capitalizing fellowship than this and that we would be celebrating together even around the throne, the focus being Christ and rejoicing in Him for all the good things that He has done for us.

These moments that we experience now that are good moments are but a taste of even something greater that is to come in Christ. And so I'm sharing this with my brother and I'm telling him, so for a believer, when we experience these moments, it just rolls up into praise to God.

But for the purpose who's not a believer, then the joy that you had terminated on the experience. You will long for that experience again, but you'll never have it exactly the same way that you had it in that moment that you enjoyed dinner with your friends.

Now, take that concept and now apply it to suffering. That's just talking about the good things. What about suffering? If even the good things don't have any ultimate purpose or fulfillment for the unbeliever, then how much less does suffering have any purpose or meaning for the unbeliever?

But for the believer, when we've come to Christ, now there's a meaning and a purpose to suffering. Now there's a reason for it. And we would rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering is producing something.

If anything, my friend, suffering should be producing in us a longing and a desire for Christ. God, get me out of here. That's an okay prayer. When John says, come quickly, Lord Jesus, I kind of hear that, right?

Get me out of this place. Let's get together soon in glory. And so the sufferings that we go through make us long for that time in which God will have lifted us out of these sufferings. He will have taken these lowly corrupted bodies and as said in Philippians 3, transform them to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

Give me that body. I remember preaching a sermon on the resurrection of the dead one time and a woman came up to me after that sermon and said, you mean I have to come back into this body? I said, yes and no.

It will be resurrected, but it will be different than what it is. And so we suffer, but it causes us to long for the better. As Paul says in Colossians 3, set your eyes on things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds not on earthly things, but on those things that are of Christ above in glory. For when Christ who is your life appears, Paul says in Colossians 3, 4, then you also will appear with him in glory.

The apostle Paul, I've shared this verse with you many times in 2 Corinthians 1, talking about having gone through such sufferings in the preaching of the gospel. He said, we thought we had received a sentence of death, but this was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

So Paul's speaking there about his suffering that would cause me to long for Christ. And then later on in 2 Corinthians 12, saying, I will boast all the more in my weaknesses, in sufferings and hardships and persecutions, for where I am weak, there he is strong.

And so we rejoice even in our sufferings, knowing that suffering is producing something. Suffering produces endurance. And how does it produce endurance? Well, just the same thing that I said. When you suffer, it causes you to long all the more for Christ.

I've used this illustration before from Ray Comfort, where he talks about, he's giving an illustration of the gospel. Say, you're getting on an airplane and somebody says to you that at some point during this flight, this plane is going to go down.

I'm giving you this parachute. So when this plane goes down, you're ready to jump off and the parachute will save you. Well, the parachute as you're wearing it on the plane is very uncomfortable. You already don't get a lot of room in the seat you're given on the plane.

And suddenly you have even less room than you had before because I've got this weighty parachute on my back. And as you're there, people are making fun of you for wearing a parachute in your seat. And even as the drink cart comes by banging into you because your feet are hanging out into the aisle.

Now, a person who doesn't hope in that parachute is going to take it off and go, okay, forget this. I'm tired of this. The struggling and the suffering here that I have for this parachute, I'm not wearing it anymore.

But the person who knows that the parachute will save them from the accident that you've been told is going to happen in the midst of this flight, they're going to cling all the more tightly.

To that parachute.

And then when the plane goes down, they're off and saved by the parachute that they were given in advance. And so it is with us, even with our sufferings, it produces endurance. It makes us cling to that salvation all the more.