Sunday Sermon: This Was to Show God's Righteousness (Romans 3:25-26)

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You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

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Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

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Here is Pastor Gabe. Before we get to our text today, David Clark sent a

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English Puritan in the 17th century. He said, the word brings one nearer heaven or further from it.

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It does good or it does harm. It makes better or it makes worse.

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It is either a quickening spirit or a killing letter.

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And so I pray for us today as we come back to Romans that this would be nurturing to our souls.

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It would be encouraging to our spirits out of this letter that Paul wrote to the church in Rome 2 ,000 years ago.

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So as the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today, let us stand together as I read Romans 3 beginning in verse 23 and going to verse 26.

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I'm reading from the English Standard Version. Hear the word of the Lord. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

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This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance,

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He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we come to this word today desiring once again to be taught by Your Spirit.

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How can we as mere humans comb the depths of God's truth that You have revealed to us in Your word?

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The Apostle Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 2 about how the naturally minded man cannot understand these spiritual things because they are spiritually discerned.

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And it is the Spirit of God who reveals to us these deep and spiritual truths. It was the

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Spirit of God that quickened our hearts, awakened us, restored us, gave us an understanding of the word as we first heard it.

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That doctrine that we call regeneration. So that we might hear and be convicted of heart and so believe.

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And may we in that belief continue to walk in the truth that we have heard. We hear the gospel presented to us again today because we need those constant reminders of our sin and need for a

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Savior and what You provided for us in Your Son Jesus Christ.

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May this be glorious truth to us today and even awaken and open our hearts to the reality of the future promise, that glory that awaits us in Christ, that heavenly kingdom that we will enter into and hear the words of our

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Master say, Well done, good and faithful servant, for great is your reward.

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Keep our hearts, our minds turned heavenward toward You. It's in Jesus' name we pray,

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Amen. When the prophet Jeremiah told the men at Anathoth what

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God told him to tell them, and the people there did not receive it,

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Jeremiah was heartbroken. He was even a little bit frustrated with God.

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So he complained before God, Righteous are You, O Lord, when I complain to You.

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It's a great way to start your complaint, I think. Yet I would plead my case before You.

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Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?

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You plant them, and they take root. They grow and produce fruit.

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You are near in their mouth, but You are far from their heart. God responded to Jeremiah, and instead of addressing the complaint exactly the way that Jeremiah raised it,

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He basically told him, If you couldn't handle it when the men of Anathoth resisted you, even your brothers in the house of your father, how are you going to handle the men of Jerusalem when

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I send you to them and they reject you? You need to be prepared for this thing to get worse.

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God warned him, The Lord would bring destruction upon the Jews, and He would drive them off the land, not because God did this,

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He said to Jeremiah, but because they brought this upon themselves by sinning against God and worshiping false gods instead of Yahweh, and they lived in the ways of all the pagans that were around them.

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However, God said, Though He would bring judgment upon them in His justice,

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He would also have compassion even on the pagans, when they turn from the

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Baals and learn the ways of His people and swear by His name as the

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Lord lives. Even they too, who once worshipped Baal, would worship

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God. Now as we have been going through Romans 1 -3, we have been reading one of the most comprehensive arguments of the totality of sin that we have in the

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New Testament. And it felt like as we went through it, things were just getting worse.

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Sin affects every person and every part of that person, Jew or Gentile. Verse 23 has summed it up for us,

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For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. As I pointed out last week, we read back in chapter 1, they have exchanged the glory of God for the glory of man, and birds and animals and creeping things.

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In a sense, we all would turn to the Baals rather than worshiping

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God. But then, this glorious truth of the gospel was given to us last week on Resurrection Sunday starting in verse 24, we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

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God has had compassion on us. We have been justified by His grace through Jesus Christ.

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And as we proclaim last week, as the Lord lives, He is risen.

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He is risen indeed. I want to start out by reviewing what we read in those verses, 24 and the first half of 25, defining those words again, justification, redemption, and propitiation.

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Then we will pick up where we left off with the rest of verse 25 into verse 26.

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And we have here a past, present, and future reality to examine as we go through this verse and a half.

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So, first of all, we have in His divine forbearance, He passed over former sins. That's in the past.

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It was to show His righteousness at the present time, obviously that's in the present, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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The future reality is not explicit in the passage that we're looking at today, but it is implied, and it certainly comes up later in the letter.

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But for the sake of summary, I'm going to cheat and pull the language from Titus 3 .7, that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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That's our future reality. So we are justified now, and being justified, we have the hope of future glory.

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So previously, here is our recap of the words that we looked at last week.

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We looked at those three words in verses 24 through 25, justification, redemption, and propitiation.

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Let's briefly recap our definition starting with justification. So as I mentioned to you,

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Martin Lloyd -Jones said of this word, it is strictly a legal declaration, specifically to be declared innocent.

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The definition I used from Louis Burkoff was this, to be justified means, quote, to declare judicially that one state is in harmony with the demands of the law, unquote.

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If we are all lawbreakers, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, then how is it that our state has come in harmony with the demands of the law?

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Because we finally just turned and started keeping the law? No. That's not how justice works.

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We don't even see justice operate that way in a secular context. If a guy breaks the law and he gets arrested, he goes, fine, now,

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I'm now keeping the law. I broke it then, but I'm keeping it now. That's not what he gets judged upon. He gets judged upon the fact that he broke it.

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So we are not justified, or we are not meeting the demands of the law by suddenly keeping the law.

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But because Jesus paid the price for us, Jesus Christ sacrificed himself on the cross in our place and paid our sin debt.

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So now in him we are justified. The second word was redemption.

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We have been justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

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Redemption simply means a release affected by payment of ransom. So you see how all these words are kind of going together here.

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This is also synonymous with deliverance. Justification, we've been declared innocent, redemption, because Christ has paid the price.

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As Jesus said in Mark 10, 45, for the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a what?

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Ransom for many. So that is our redemption. And then the third word was propitiation.

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As a propitiation by his blood, meaning that God's wrath is replaced by his mercy.

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Jesus Christ satisfied the wrath of God with his death on the cross, spilling his blood, taking

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God's wrath upon himself. And now through Christ, we are no longer in danger of the wrath of God, but we are delivered by his mercy, his wrath replaced with his mercy.

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So these are the main action words that God has exercised by his mercy and we have received by faith.

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We are justified by his grace as a gift, verse 24, to be received by faith, verse 25.

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And that is all. None of our works get us to that state of justification.

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We do nothing to earn it. As we sang this morning, God, by his grace, declares us innocent, greater than all our sin, through his

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Holy Spirit working in our hearts to that faith in Jesus Christ, through which he applies

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Christ's payment on our behalf to our account. Let's say you've gone to the debt collector's office to make a payment on your debt.

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It's a discouraging trudge. Every time you have to go and pay this bill because you know you have to pay it, but at the same time, you can't pay it.

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Everything you do and everything you earn, it's like it's always going toward this and you're only doing it for this, to give it to a debt collector who will never be satisfied.

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Your whole life is about this. You'll never get to the end of it. One day you will die and there will still be debt that has not been paid.

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It is the same thing day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, paying and paying and paying.

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And no matter what you pay, there is still more debt to pay. Some of you, your mortgages feel that way, right?

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You open the door, you walk up to the debtor behind the glass and you pull out your method of payment and the debtor looks at your account and says, oh, it's been taken care of.

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You're free to go. And stunned, you say, but I didn't do anything.

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And the guy says, that's right. Someone paid it for you. And you say, what?

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How can that be? And he says, says so right here, paid in full. It is finished.

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And you say, but that's impossible. And he points at the motivational poster over his desk, which says, with God, all things are possible.

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It's probably a cat hanging from a rope. And you say, so the person who paid this for me, do

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I owe him anything? And the guy says, oh yes, you owe him everything. And you say, so then

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I need to do something to pay it back. And the guy says, you couldn't do anything to pay it off. So there's nothing you can do to pay it back.

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And insisting that you still have to make a payment, you say, well, here, surely I have to do something. And the debtor says, don't even try.

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You'll just mess it up. And you say, I don't understand. And he says, believe it.

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It's true. And you say, so what do I do now? And he says, I don't know. Go and sin no more.

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Go and tell the world. Go and worship God. Just don't come back here. You're free.

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And again, it's all of grace. As we read back in verse 20, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight.

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We are justified by his grace. Grace, grace,

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God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within.

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Grace that is greater than all our sin. Those wonderful lyrics written by Julia Harriet Johnston 115 years ago.

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It was true before her. It's true now. It will be true forevermore.

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We are saved by grace. So now, with that recap in place, we consider next this past reality.

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Look at what's after the period in the rest of verse 25. This was to show

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God's righteousness. Because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

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So not our righteousness. We had no righteousness to speak of. This was to testify of the righteousness of God.

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Now what's going on here in saying, in his divine forbearance he passed over former sins. It's kind of complicated.

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And you might be tempted to think, he's passed over my former sins. That's true. But that's not really what

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Paul means here when he says this. Remember that this is still in the context of Jew and Gentile.

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For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So all in context are all

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Jews, all Gentiles. And remember back to verse 21 that the righteousness of God has been manifested or revealed apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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In speaking of forbearance, Paul is explaining what God was doing before the justifying payment was made by Christ.

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Forbearance is another legal term. See the theme that's going on here. But it's not as absolute a term as to justify.

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To forbear is to refrain from something or to put a temporary hold on something or to be patient about something.

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If you've ever had a student loan and you were struggling to pay your student loan, you could apply for student loan forbearance.

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Right? I heard some of you say it. According to the Federal Student Aid website, yes, I'm quoting that as a source in my sermon today.

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Quote, with forbearance, you won't have to make a payment or you can temporarily make a smaller payment.

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However, you probably won't be making any progress toward forgiveness or paying back your loan.

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Unquote. God's divine forbearance is far more merciful than student loan forbearance, but the analogy is applicable in that his divine forbearance is still not the same as God just forgiving our debts.

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So forbearance is not God's forgiveness. Jameson Fawcett Brown's commentary on this verse says the following, quote, through the forbearance of God, God was not remitting, but only forbearing to punish them or passing them by until an adequate atonement for them should be made in thus not imputing them.

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God was righteous, but he was not seen to be so. He was not seen to be righteous.

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There was no manifestation of his righteousness in doing so under the ancient economy.

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So talking about the Old Testament system of sacrifice, but now that God can set forth

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Christ as a propitiation for sin through faith in his blood, the righteousness of his procedure in passing by the sins of believers before and in now remitting them is manifest, declared, brought fully out to the view of the whole world, unquote.

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So Paul's meaning here doesn't necessarily apply to you personally, but to redemptive history.

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Christ's justifying act applies to sinners even in the past, but it's only in the present that God has revealed or made manifest how he was going to forgive the debts of sinners and this being a testimony to his righteousness, not ours.

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We had no righteousness to speak of. No one of mankind had any righteousness to speak of past, present, or future.

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But as a testimony to God's righteousness in his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins.

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R .J. asked me a question this past week. I hope you don't mind me revealing this, R .J. He simply asked, how did people prior to Jesus get to heaven?

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And the answer then is the same answer now, by grace through faith.

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Only before Christ, the saints hoped in a promise that was to come and in this time we hope in the promise fulfilled.

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Paul is going to open this argument further when we get to chapter 4 in a couple of weeks. Even Abraham and David were saved by grace through faith.

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So he'll draw examples from the Old Testament. But in that time, God in his divine forbearance was passing over their sin, looking at the payment he was going to make through his son by his death on the cross.

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It's a divine forbearance because it's divine, emphasis on divine here because it's not

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God sitting around going, hmm, what should I do next? How should I take care of this sin problem for the people that I love?

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He knew what he was going to do. He knew the time and place he was going to make a payment on our behalf.

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He had foreordained it from before the foundation of the world. It's not that he created Adam and Eve and everything was perfect until they messed up.

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So okay, I guess I need a plan B. Then God destroyed the world, saving only

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Noah and his sons and their wives. Finally, everything is right again, and then they messed up.

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I guess I need a plan C. Abraham, by his free will, messed up, so now

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I need a plan D. Israel messed up, so plan E. The judges messed up, plan

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F. Saul messed up, so plan G. David messed up, plan H. On and on it goes. Now Chris and I were talking theology this past week, and at one point he said, one of the greatest comforts of Reformed theology is knowing that God is still working out his plan

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A. Christ was not plan whatever. He's plan

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A. No one's messing up God's plan. You and your sin, you messed up, but you didn't mess up what

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God is doing. In his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins to fulfill the plan of sending his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

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And that's what Paul means. But now you can apply this understanding of divine forbearance this way, in understanding that he has also passed over your former sins.

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When you came to faith in Jesus Christ, you came to realize the sin you had done in the past that God had not judged you for.

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But you certainly deserved his judgment. He was patient towards you to bring you to this day of repentance.

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As Charles Spurgeon said, I'm so glad that God saved me in the past because he certainly would not be saving me today.

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And he loved me in the past. My sins today would not be worthy of his love at all.

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Remember that we had read this back in Romans 2, 4, that his kindness and forbearance and patience is meant to lead you to repentance.

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You know, 2 Peter 3, 9, right? The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but is patient toward you, addressing the church, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

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And we'll be coming up on Romans 5, 6. While we were still weak, at the right time,

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Christ died for the ungodly. And you could apply that the same way. At the right time, God revealed to you the forgiveness of your sins in Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. As C .S. Lewis has said, God always reveals himself at exactly the right time.

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Not a moment too soon and not a moment too late. So that we see the past reality.

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And next we have in verse 26, the present reality. It was to show his righteousness.

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We see in God's righteousness, in his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins. Now we have him showing his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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In the Legacy Standard Translation, it says that this was for the demonstration of his righteousness or his rightness.

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That God is always right and good in all that he does at the present time. The King James says that this was to declare at this time his righteousness, to declare.

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So we have show, we have demonstration, we have declare. Meaning that in this time, this is the declaration of the gospel.

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This is the pronouncement of the good news. In Acts 2, when

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Peter and the other apostles went into Jerusalem and proclaimed the gospel for the first time. It was the first time that this was heard.

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Forgiveness of sins by faith in Jesus Christ who died to save ungodly sinners. From James and Fawcett Brown again, quote,

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The best need to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. So best meaning the best of us, right?

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In whatever human standard we might look at it. The best need to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ.

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And the worst need only that. On this common ground, all saved sinners meet here and will stand forever.

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It is on the atoning blood of Christ as the one propitiatory sacrifice, which

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God hath set forth to the eye of the guilty, that the faith of the convinced and trembling sinner fastens for deliverance from wrath.

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Though he knows that he is justified freely by God's grace, it is only because it is through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus that he is able to find peace and rest even in this, unquote.

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And all of this is for what purpose? The rest of verse 26.

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So that he, God, might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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Understand that no matter what, God is just. He is always just.

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He is just in punishing the wicked sinner. And he is just in saving the wicked sinner.

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But his justice in saving the wicked sinner is demonstrated in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf to pay our debt.

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He doesn't just expunge the sins of the sinner. That would be unjust.

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And we understand this concept. If you were to have a judge that just let a person go no matter what, is anybody going to look at that judge as a just judge?

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Even in a culture of moral relativism as we exist in today, people are not just walking around praising judges who forgive people for sins no matter what.

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If a judge was always doing that, we would call him unjust. You have a rich man in town, kills a child.

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The whole town is in an uproar. It's on every local news site, television station, everything.

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This guy, so well known, so wealthy, done so much for the community, he killed a child.

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And he stands before the judge, and he pleas his case this way. Yes, I killed a child, but judge, look how much good

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I've done for the community. All the money that I've poured into the community. Think of the people I've saved. I mean,

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I've built hospitals. So sure, I killed this child, but surely you can see I'm doing far more good than bad.

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And if the judge is convinced by that plea, and the judge says to that man, you know what, you're right.

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I mean, we need you more than if we just threw you in jail or gave you the death penalty,

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God forbid. So you know what, you're free to go. What do you think the response in the news is going to be the next day?

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What do you think the people are doing outside the courthouse that afternoon when the verdict is read? Is anybody going, oh, oh, what a good judge?

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There might be one or two idiots that would say something like that. But for the most part, the outcry of people, conservative, liberal, they're all going to go, what?

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He killed a kid. What are you doing? Letting the guy go, that judge is what?

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He's unjust, and he's a wicked judge. Because the man who had done unjustly didn't have to pay anything for his wicked crime.

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As we read in 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins,

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God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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Why is God just? Because we ask for forgiveness? That's usually about as far as the exposition goes whenever you will hear most preachers explain that verse.

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You ask forgiveness, so God is just to forgive you. Why is

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God just? John is so careful there to say that God is just to forgive us our sins because someone died in our place.

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Someone paid the price for us. And it is the greatest sacrifice

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God could ever have made. The greatest gift He ever could have given. The Son of God putting on flesh, living the perfect life that we could not live, dying the death that we were supposed to die, rising again from the dead, ascending into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God, where He intercedes for us on our behalf.

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He is our advocate before the Father. That's a couple of verses later in 1 John 2, 1. That's the price that was needed for us to be made right with God.

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It took the sinless Son of God to pay the debt that we owed.

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But now the debt being paid in our place, and God has so graciously developed this mechanism to transfer to us all of the benefits of that price that Christ paid.

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What is that mechanism? Faith. We do nothing by our works.

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We believe and we're saved. We are justified by His grace as a gift.

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And because Christ has paid it for us, and that has been credited to us, now

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God is just to forgive us of all unrighteousness. Every once in a while on social media

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I'll hear these arguments that will rise up by somebody who at one point did some heinous crime in the past, and it's understood that in that person's time in prison, or somewhere in there while they were under the penalty of the wicked crime that they had committed, they came to know

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God and were saved. Jeffrey Dahmer is actually one of these persons.

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You know what he did, right? He ate people, and yet in prison he came to know

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God, and he was saved by faith in Christ. Now, he was murdered while he was in prison because some other prisoner wanted to make a name for himself.

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He made such a name for himself I can't even remember the guy's name. But he was killed while he was in prison, and yet if Jeffrey Dahmer knew

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Jesus Christ, you know what? He's going to be standing there next to me praising God when we're in glory. Sam Berkowitz was another one.

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Son of Sam. It wasn't Sam. What was his first name? David Berkowitz. Thank you.

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Yeah, you got it right. David Berkowitz who had that murder spree in New York City back in the 70s that just terrorized the entire city, but now he has come to faith in Jesus Christ and is saved.

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And he's come up for parole several times. I mean, the number of people that he's killed, and yet he's come up for parole.

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And he himself has said, I don't want it. I deserve to be in here. And I'm going to continue to glorify

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God here leading other prisoners to Jesus. And likewise, with that guy, we would stand shoulder to shoulder with him and praise

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God for the goodness of his grace that he's given to us in Jesus Christ. And yet there is someone in our community, someone that you may even know personally, who has lived their entire life making a profession of faith, but they did it only from their lips while their heart was far from God.

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They did it to look good before others. They may have done all sorts of wonderful things for the community.

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You would have said in your review of that person's character, what a good man.

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And then you come to find that none of it was ever actually genuinely for the

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Lord. He never truly believed in Christ. And then we will be there on that day looking around going, we're so and so.

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And you know what? God will be just to punish him. Because his righteousness was not from God.

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It was self -righteousness. And he thought that by his works and his own efforts and his own declarations, that he could be saved and he turns out to be among those that Jesus warned about in Matthew 7.

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Not everyone who says to me on that day, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of God, but only he who does the will of my

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Father who is in heaven. And on that day, many will come to me saying, Lord, Lord, did we not do all of these mighty works in your name?

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And he will say to them, depart from me, you worker of iniquity.

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I never knew you. Even more important than our knowing

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God is that he knows us and has applied to us that wonderful grace that we have in Christ, who died for us and paid it all.

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God would not be just to just forgive us with no payment. That would not speak to his justice, nor to the holiness of his righteous perfection.

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His justice is demonstrated not only in the wrath he pours out on the wicked, but in the wrath he poured out on his own son on our behalf.

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He is just to forgive those who have faith in him because Jesus paid it all.

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He is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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He is not only just to forgive us our sins, he is the justifier in that he has made the payment for our sins.

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It is all of God. It is all to his glory. As 1

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John 2 .12 says, your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

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We do nothing but reap the wonderful glorious benefits of his goodness to us.

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To God be the glory. Great things he has done.

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And now in light of this, the present reality, may our eyes be open to see our future reality.

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As I quoted to you earlier from Titus 3 .7, being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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Or in the New King James, we should be made heirs. We should be made heirs.

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Maybe if might sounds a little soft to you, the New King James, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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Now I borrowed from Titus 3 .7 to make this point, which Paul will certainly make as we go through Romans.

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And sometime if you get the chance, you ought to go to one of the Bible search engines and type in the word justified, and just see all the uses and applications of the word either just or justified or justification that Paul uses just in the book of Romans alone.

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He comes back to this point over and over again. Here are just a few. As we go on from here, Romans 3 .28, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Amen? Romans 3 .30, still coming up in this chapter, since God is one, he will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

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Romans 4 .2, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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Romans 4 .5, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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Romans 5 .1, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5 .9, 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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Romans 8 .30, and those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

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Our future reality painted there for us as well. In Romans 8 .33, who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

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It is God who justifies. You know,

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I get to this point in my sermon, and I'll tell you that as a pastor, I struggle to find practical application sometime.

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It almost feels like there's a responsibility for me to give you practical application. So in light of this that we've read, now here's what you should do, now go out and do it.

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And is there practical application in that sense? Certainly there is. But sometimes, my friends, the most of what we need to hear, the most of what we need to be reminded of on a day -to -day basis, is that your sins are forgiven.

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By faith in Jesus. And you're going to heaven. And you're living there forever.

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And this time that you have here is so, so, so temporary compared to that future eternal glory.

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You couldn't even put the two side by side. The present would be so infinitesimally small compared to the reality of glorious future that we have with Christ.

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Why even put them next to each other? But how often do we think about that?

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How often do we think about our glorious future and reward in Christ? We come to church week after week after week, saying to the preacher, give me the five -point sermon to make my life better this week.

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When this glorious truth should uphold our every waking and sleeping moment, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

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And there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And those whom

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He has justified, He is glorified. And we will enter into that glory with Him on that day.

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We could go down each row this morning, and every person would testify of their present struggles.

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And some we might say are greater than others. And some, even though the weight may not be as great as another person's testimony, yet in their spirit they feel even more weighed down than the other person who might be going through more.

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What is the relief? What uplifts our souls? What lifts our heads higher that we may gaze upon Christ and see

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Him and His glory? It is the beautiful testimony of the gospel. It is knowing that as Paul said to the

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Corinthians, we dwell in these tents, and these tents are wasting away. Like I almost feel it with Paul right there going,

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I hate this. This feels terrible. In 2 Corinthians 1 .9, we felt like we had received the sentence of death.

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But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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And to the Colossians in Colossians 3, set your minds on things that are above where Christ is.

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And that may be the reminder that we need from one day to the next. Yes, it can feel like the trouble that we're going through now is our whole world.

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And it just occupies our every thought. How can I relate to Chris when he stands up here on a

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Sunday morning and says, let's put away all other distractions and focus on worshiping God. And you bow your head and you're going, nope, still there.

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But daily, we submit ourselves to Christ and say,

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God, thank You for forgiving me. Thank You for this trial. Because I know it doesn't even compare to the glory that awaits us if we endure to the end.

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And that endurance that we have is not even by our own strength. It is by the Spirit of God that He has poured into our hearts.

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Michael Horton once said, often the cry for more practical preaching is actually the call of the old

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Adam for more law -based self -help. When the reminder that we actually need is, all that's been satisfied.

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Jesus paid it all. And by faith in Him, my friends, you have the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, and eternal life through Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. May that glorious truth minister to you today and every day.

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You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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For more information about our church, visit our website at ProvidenceCasagrande .com.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again