Romans 5
- Read Romans 5:1-11
As we study this passage together, I’d like you think first about the love of God. Turn to someone near you and tell them, “God loves you.”
I. GOD LOVES YOU
Tom and I have been friends for a long time. As a matter-of-fact, the only folks here who have known me longer than Tom are Bobby and Julia. We went to high school together.
Anyway, Tom and I have been friends since shortly after I came back from college in 85. We used to go on visitation together every Monday night. Then we’d go to the Shake Shack in Sanford, where we’d get footlong fries and he’d order a disgusting milkshake.
We were part of the same single’s group at the church we attended. Tom broke his ankle on my parents’ trampoline over there in the playground area during a single’s outing here. It was while he was in the hospital recovering from surgery for that ankle, that his now wife, Alex, played nurse good body, and they fell in love.
I remember when he picked out the ring that he gave her when he asked her to marry him. Speaking of which, aren’t engaged people just sickening, all of that lovey dove stuff. Hanging on each other, talking about how great the other person is, and all of that. It’s enough to make you sick.
Speaking of which. we want to say congratulations to Hannah and Drake. Last Sunday morning, at 6 am, at the beach, Drake proposed, and Hannah said yes! And then, they were here at church at 9!
Speaking of lovey dovey, yesterday morning we started roofing the admin building at 7. Was my wife here with me? No. Was Jason’s wife here with him? No. Was Daniel’s wife here with him? No. Was Russ’s wife here with him? No. But Hannah was here with Drake.
I later complained to Gladys about it, and she waved me off. She said, “They’re still at the stage where they’ll do anything to spend time together. She’ll get over it.” Drake, Hannah, when it’s time for pre-marital counseling, ya’ll come see me, don’t see Gladys. I’m still a hopeless romantic. She’ll burst your bubble.
As I was saying, I still remember when Tom picked out the ring he gave Alex when he proposed. I had to hear all about it. He didn’t pick it up at a local jewelry store. No, this one was special, with no flaws, extra clarity, and all of that stuff. It was a really nice ring. He was going all in.
When I asked Gladys to marry me, I was a poor country preacher, and the ring I was able to offer her reflected my financial condition. I didn’t have to buy her a big fancy ring to get her to agree to marry me.
George, on the other hand, had to offer Kit, the Hope diamond to get her to agree to marry him. You know, the more I’ve worked with George this year, the more I’ve wondered how in the world he ever got sweet Kit to agree to marry him. Then the other day I noticed her wedding ring and I figured it out. He bribed her.
Isn’t it amazing the things we will do to show our love, to demonstrate our love for another person?
Well, think about what God did to demonstrate His love for us.
- Read Romans 5:6-8
\’In 1861, a wild gambler and drinker named Harry Moorhouse rushed into a revival meeting in Manchester, England, looking for a fight. But instead he got saved. Six years later, the famous evangelist, D. L. Moody, was preaching in Dublin when Moorhouse came up and told Moody he would like to come to America and preach the gospel. Moody guessed Moorhouse to be about 17 (although he was older). He didn’t know if Moorhouse could preach, so he brushed him off.
But after Moody got back to Chicago, he got a letter from Moorhouse saying that he had landed in New York and he would come and preach. Moody wrote a cold reply, saying that if he came west to call on him. A few days later, Moody got a letter saying that Moorhouse would be in Chicago the next Thursday. Moody didn’t know what to do with him, so he told his deacons, “There is a man coming from England who wants to preach. I’m going to be gone Thursday and Friday. If you let him preach those days, I’ll be back Saturday and take him off your hands.”
On Saturday Moody returned and asked his wife how the young Englishman had gotten along. Did the people like him? She said they liked him very much. “Did you like him?” “Yes,” she said, “very much. He preached two sermons from John 3:16. I think you’ll like him, but he preaches a little different than you do.”
“How is that?” Moody asked.
“Well, he tells sinners that God loves them,” she replied.
“Well,” Moody said, “he’s wrong.”
Moody went to hear him that night, determined that he would not like him. But that first night as Moorhouse preached again from John 3:16 on God’s great love for sinners, Moody’s heart began to thaw out and he could not hold back the tears. For seven nights, Moorhouse preached to a crowded church on John 3:16.
The final night Moorhouse concluded his sermon by saying, “My friends, for a whole week I have been trying to tell you how much God loves you, but I cannot do it with this poor stammering tongue. If I could borrow Jacob’s ladder, and climb up into Heaven, and ask Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, if he could tell me how much love the Father has for the world, all he could say would be, ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.’”
Those sermons changed D. L. Moody’s life. He said, “I have never forgotten those nights. I have preached a different gospel since, and I have had more power with God and man since then.”
{(I collated this story from A. P. Fitt, The Life of D. L. Moody [Moody Press], pp. 53-56, and Roger Steer, George Muller: Delighted in God [Harold Shaw], pp. 260-262.) - From Steven J. Cole, online, Bible.org, Lesson 27: God’s Amazing Love, 2011}
Romans 5:8 is the apostle Paul’s version of John 3:16: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” ‘/
My friends, I do not know any better way to tell you how much God loves you. And notice if you will, when God loved us.
II. THE TIMING OF GOD’S LOVE
- Read Romans 5:6-8
1. We were helpless - v6
Verse 6 says that we were helpless. If there was ever an understatement, that’s it. We were helpless.
> Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
When I was a kid, there was a lady who attended our church who used to fix the make up and hair for folks at the local funeral home. They are unable even to do that for themselves anymore.
The Bible tells us that because of our sin, we were dead. What can a dead person do? Once the soul and spirit has left the tents we live in, what can those tents do? Nothing. Can they get up and walk around? No. They are totally helpless.
And we too, were helpless to save ourselves. Jesus says No one can come unto Him except the Father draw him.
It is God’s love which draws us unto salvation. It is the love of God that opens our eyes and allows us to see our helpless and hopeless condition.
It is God’s love that compels a lost and hurting heart to cry out to God for peace and healing.
We do not deserve salvation. We do not deserve God’s grace, but a loving Heavenly Father provided it, made it available to us, when we could do nothing for ourselves.
The timing of God’s love. He made salvation available when we were helpless and He made salvation available when we were still in our sins.
2. We were sinners
When did God love us? When we were still sinners.
I know this may shock some of you, if not, please at least pretend to be surprised, but I have not always been the refined, suave, and debonair specimen you see standing before you today.
Last week, I introduced my second grade Sunday School teacher, Mrs Crippen, who was visiting.
Do you know what her husband told me about 20 years ago? He told me that the speed bumps they have in the parking lot at First Baptist Orange City, he put there because he couldn’t get my brother and I to slow down when we were going through the church parking lot. I think he put them there because of our friend John Sever, but no, he said he put them there because of Dusty and I.
Can you believe that? I still have issues, but I had a few more of them back then. If Gladys had known me then, she wouldn’t have even spoken to me, much less have agreed to marry me. She wouldn’t have gone to that corner of the parking lot, under the trees, where my friends and I hung out between Sunday School and church.
When she met me, I was in school studying to be a preacher. The Lord had cleaned me up a little bit. It wasn’t until after that cleaning, that she would have had anything to do with me.
But God, loved us when we were at our worst. When we were still sinners, when we were at our very worst, God sent His Son to die for us.
Is there a place for the wrath of God? Yes. Justice demands punishment, but what drives our Heavenly Father is His love. The Bible says, “God is love.”
I look at folks leading our youth and children astray and I am reminded of Jesus’ teaching that it would be better for a person to have a mill stone tied around his neck and that he be thrown into the sea, than for him to lead a child astray.
Judgement is coming and the wrath of God will be poured out on all who have rejected the Savior. That’s what the justice and holiness of God demands.
But at the same time, I picture Jesus looking at the crowds when He was in Jerusalem, crying and and saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets, How I have longed to gather you to me, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not.”
I see Jesus, hanging on the cross, in excruciating pain, looking down at those who put Him there, and He praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Oh I was sinking, deep in sin. Far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the Master of the Sea, heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me now safe am I.
Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help, love lifted me. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help. Love, lifted me. (Love Lifted Me, by James Rowe, 1912)
God proved His love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Together we have seen God’s love. We have seen the timing of God’s love and the timing of God’s work. Let’s think for just a minute about the result of God’s love. Look there again with me please at verse 1.
III. THE RESULT OF GOD’S WORK
1. We can have peace with God.
When you and I are justified, when we are saved, we have peace with God.
A number of years ago, we had a couple of retired New Tribes missionaries who attended here. Mr. & Mrs. Goddard. Loved those people to death. They were a godly, loving couple. When he was growing up, Mr. Goddard attended a very legalistic church, so much so, that he told me he really didn’t know from one week to the next if he was still saved, until he got a hold of the grace of God.
So he was always on the lookout for legalism or salvation by works. A time or 2, after church, when I would be preaching about how our actions or lives should be changed if we were Christians, and how if you were still living a disobedient life you might not be saved, he kinda whispered to me, “You got kinda close to legalism this morning.”
My friends, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, there is supposed to be a change in your life. The Bible says,
> 2 Corinthians 5:17 If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.”
There is supposed to be a change in your life if you are follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. The works are evidence of our salvation, not the cause of it.
As a result I don’t have to worry from one week to the next if I am still saved. I can have peace with God.
- Read Romans 8:31-39
Oh my friend, once you become a follower of Jesus Christ, you can have peace with God, knowing that His rules for salvation does not change. And His love for you never stops. We have peace with God.
We can also have peace in God.
2. We can have peace in God
- Read Romans 5:3-4
We boast in our afflictions.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to boast in my afflictions. I don’t like afflictions at all. I want easy sailing. I want a weed-free garden, Christmas in the Country that decorates itself, self-patching driveways, and people who always agree with me. I don’t want afflictions. I don’t want struggles and trials. I don’t want heartache and disappointments, hurt and tears. I don’t want any of that. But, Paul says we can boast in this things. Why? Because God’s timing is always perfect, and He knows how to use those things in our lives for our good and His glory. Look there with me please at verse 6.
- Read Romans 5:6
Verse 6 says, “At the right time” Christ died.
What does that mean, “at the right time”?
1. The Greek language was common - Years ago I was teasing Tom’s wife Alix, who is from Puerto Rico, about her Spanish and about her accent. She said, “Well at least I don’t have to use the same word when I say I love my husband, as I do when when I say I love my dog. In Spanish we have different words for those.
At the time Jesus came, Greek was commonly used all over the Roman empire. It, along with the Latin the Romans used, was so much more expressive than the Hebrew language the Jewish folks had used forever.
So when God sent His Son, and the gospel was presented, there was a very expressive language, common throughout much of the world, that the Gospel could be shared through.
It was the right time, for Jesus to come, so the Gospel could be shared through a common language.
2. There was peace in the Roman empire.
Second, it was the right time because there was peace in the Roman empire.
When we think of Rome, we think of conquering armies, and massive groups of soldiers. From about 27 BC until 200 AD, there was a period called the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace. It was a time of relative peace and stability in the Roman Empire. Each province in Rome was given a great deal of leeway in making their own laws and governing their own territories.
There were Roman garrisons in most major towns, so roving bands of thieves and murderers were kept to a minimum. It was often safer to travel than it had been in centuries.
3. There were the Roman Roads
Beginning in 312 BC, the Romans began building a massive road system, primarily for their military. It was the most outstanding transportation system in the Mediterranean world. The road system stretched from Britain, to the Tigris-Euphrates river system, and from the Danube River in Spain to North Africa. In all the stone-paved road system covered more than 50,000 miles.
So, God sent His Son, at a time when there were 2 very expressive, languages common to much of the world. He sent His Son, when there was a period of relative peace, and when there was a 50,000 mile road system for missionaries like Paul and Peter to travel on, so Christianity could spread throughout the world.
God loved us so much that He sent His Son, when we needed Him, but also at a time when the Good news could be carried throughout the world.
My friend, you can trust God’s timing. You may not understand why God does what He does when He does it, and you may wonder why God is making you wait, but you can trust God’s timing. God is never late. He is never early.
At the right time, God sent His Son.
My friend, you can have peace with God, and you can have peace from God. Notice how we find this.
IV. THE KEY TO GOD’S WORK
- Read Romans 5:2
How do we get access to this peace? We get it by faith. It’s not by works, it’s not by stuff we do. It is by faith. We put all of our faith, and all of our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
By faith, we trust God to save us. By faith, we trust God’s timing.
Lord, I don’t know why you would save me. But I thank you and trust in the completed work of your Son Jesus Christ.
Lord, I don’t know why this trial has come into my life, but by faith, I trust You to use it for my good.
Russ was telling me yesterday, about a colt, a young horse that was unable to keep its balance and stand up. The horse would stand up and then it would fall over . . . they tired many things to try and help it, but nothing seemed to work.
Called a vet. Didn’t struggle enough during birth. Wrapped it up with straps and such. After a while they took them off and the horse was able to get up and run around.
My friend, you can have peace with God, because God proved His love for you because when you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.
You can have the peace of God in the midst of your trials, because God’s timing is always right and you can can trust His love for you, because when you were at your worse, Jesus died for you.
Have you put your faith and trust in Him?
