ROMANS 5:3-5
QUOTE BY EUGENE PETERSON: ‘A Long Obedience in the Same Direction’. ‘It is not difficult to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest.
Millions of people in our culture make decision for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate.
Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim.
In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses it’s novelty, it goes on the garbage heap.
There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue. Little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier Christians called holiness.
PAUL has challenged us in the book of Romans to declare our true spiritual condition:
1) Am I really Lost?
2) Am I really saved? Only thru Faith
3) What difference does it make?
• This morning we looked at the term Justified by faith. What difference does it make to be justified by faith.
1) To have right standing in God’s sight
2) Only attainable thru the avenue of faith: Absolute trust and surrender to God’s will and plan for our life.
• Difference regarding our PAST(No longer an enemy before God)
Difference in the PRESENT: We have PEACE – An introduction and continual access to GRACE
TONIGHT: HOPE
3. WE CAN REST UPON OUR HOPE IN GOD …and we exult in hope of the glory of God.
a. This glory that we continually fell short of we can now exult in.
A man was sentenced to death by a king. He received a reprieve by assuring the King he would teach his majesty’s horse to fly within a year. If he didn’t succeed then he would be put to death.
A friend asked why he did this crazy thing, ‘Within a year the king may die, or I may die, or the horse may die. In a year, who knows maybe the horse will learn to fly’.
Not such hope as the Bible speaks of: Anticipation connected to the absolute assurance of a promised fact .
b. Not wishful thinking as in the English. ‘I hope the _____ win the Superbowl’. _____ win the national champion ______gets the million dollars as the winner of survivor please don’t say ______ hope so and so gets the bachelor. Gag me with a fork
Hope is having a fact so established that it gives direction for your life now even though you have not received it’.
1) Yet to receive the fullness of my salvation……I know God will be faithful to His promises…one day I will be set free from the presence of sin…..one day I will be in God ‘s presence for eternity.
c. Hope is a powerful thing. It can carry your through many difficult things that this life might toss in your direction. When you sense you want to give up you can place you thoughts on what is true but yet to be revealed.
Scientists did a study on rats. They put a number of them in a tank of water. The tank had slick metal sides so the rats could not escape but swam as long as the could. The average time a rat survived before drowning was 17 minutes.
They repeated the experiment. This time at the point of drowning they rescued the rats and dried them off and placed them in their cages. They were fed and left alone for a few days. Then they were again put in the water tank. This time their survival rate went from 17 minutes to 36 hours. The difference was the second the rats had hope. The believed they could survive this because of what they knew from the past.
When we by faith plants the seeds of hope in our minds then we can face most anything realizing God has it all in control. He who lived before us and will live beyond us can sustain us today.
The Blessings of the FUTURE: (3) And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; (4) and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; (5) and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
• Paul stresses that all have futures have one common fact that should give us hope: The fact that we are all projects in God’s hand. He is working out His purpose in our lives.
a. The most important thing is not what we do in life but who life makes us to be.
b. Failures, difficulties, tragedies, successes in God’s hand are only as valuable to the degree that make us more like Jesus Christ.
c. Rewards and opportunities in heaven will not be determined by the question, ‘What have you done?’ but ‘Who are you?’ How has life molded you.
• TRIBULATION: We also exult in our tribulations.
a. Tribulum comes from this. Agricultural instrument…long log with spikes that was drug across a field to separate wheat from chaff. Might well describe God’s purpose in allowing difficult things in our lives. Remove things from us that should not be there.
b. Phil 1 It is not only been granted to you to believe in Jesus Christ but also to SUFFER for His sake.(tribulation is a gift from God) HEB 11 Testimonies of those who experienced such things will have a BETTER RESURRECTION. 1 Peter 4:12 Do not be surprised by tribulation, expect it, don’t get caught off guard.
(1) Theology out there that says if you have problems then
something is wrong with you.
MT 5 Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of the gospel. BE HAPPY
If you have been told that the road from where you are to where you are going is a very bumpy road then every bump along the road is a reminder that you are on the right road.
We become convinced that if we fight spiritual battles, deal with Satan’s attacks, if God allows things in our lives that build character that we are off track. RIGHT ROAD
James 1:2 Consider it all joy(unmixed, pure joy) when you experience trials and tribulation. Not mixed with fear, doubt, sadness
1:3 You know that such testing of your faith produces endurance. (4) Endurance until the testing is over. Then you will be mature and completer and you won’t need anything. Difference now and in eternity.
James 1:12 Blessed are those who endure when they are tested. When they pass the test, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.
HEBREWS 12:11 ‘All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been TRAINED by it, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteosness. Gymnasium Exercised work out with Use it to build our faith, our courage, our character. Trust God and get stronger.
• Paul makes the same case in the Romans: knowing that tribulation brings about…… Three things happen when we rightly used tough times
1. PERSEVERANCE tribulation brings about PERSEVERANCE
a. The actual word is Thlipsis: A narrowing….feel like life is pressing you into a corner. Narrowing of a cave, walking, stooping, kneeling, crawling..can’t take much more.
b. Leads to perseverance: One of favorite words in Scripture. Understanding this word has in some ways changed my life. Lit means to ‘abide under the load’ Opposite would be to panic or bail out.
1) More than just being patience until the trial ends. Staying but thinking ‘I will this would just get over’.
2) Knowing this in God’s hand and if for His purpose and will bring about something better in my life because of it.
Lived in a house over on E. 35th Street from the time I was 3 thr age 8. My dad worked for Cyclone Fence and then began selling Real Estate around Mannford, OK.
Sometimes he would get paid in things other than money. Tractor, pig, tools,
One time he was paid with a horse. He brought a Shetland home and we kept it in the couple of acres behind the house. POKEY. Picture with all of us on pokey;s back. Hanging all over neck, use neck for a slide, pulling tail….abiding under the load…..
ANOTHER HORSE my dad was given was a welsh horse: This horse was now in our back pasture also. I was about 7 and thought this horse would be like pokey.
I walked up behind the horse and two hoves struck me in the chest. Not the same kind of horse as pokey.
Most of us are more like the second horse: When God allows something in our life our nostril’s flare, rear our heads, lift our forefeet, begin bucking and calling to God , ‘Get this off my back’.
c. Faith is most visibly seen when God doesn’t seem to be doing as we thought. When He is not making sense, when it is hardest to believe is when we can exercise the greatest faith.
2. PROVEN CHARACTER (4) and perseverance, PROVEN CHARACTER
a. Difficult times say something about us.
Remember those tire commercials when you would see tires on cars going thru rough roads, hitting potholes, and being put through much abuse.
Then a guy would say this tire is tested, tried, proven tire and you can trust it.
When we go through the difficulties of life and abide under God’s purpose then God can point to you and say this person is proven, tested, tried…a demonstation of what I can do in a life.
b. God allows things in our lives to prove our integrity and demonstrate to us what He already knows. God will not allow anything more than we can handle to come upon our lives. (MR STEELE) He will only allow that which you can trust Him with and exercise, be trained by to thus make you stronger.
3. HOPE and proven character, HOPE;
a. This is a different kind of hope than before. It is more than a settle assurance before the fact but is actually a proven assurance after the fact that makes us more ready to trust at an even deeper level than before.
Portrait of an old burned out mountain shack. All that still stands is a chimney in the midst of charred debris. Standing nearby is a grandfatherly looking old man with a crying young boy who is clutching a pair of patched overalls.
Underneath the painting the artist wrote, ‘HUSH CHILD, GOD AIN’T DEAD’
When we learn to trust Him in the midst of difficult times and find Him more than faithful and that even He changes something about us that needed to be different then we have hope for the next time a difficulty might come.
b. God can work things out in ways that are unimaginable: When we trust Him we discover deeper things about Him and about ourselves as well.
2 Cor 1:8-10 For we do not want you to be unaware brethren(Something you need to know about God), of our affiction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; (9) indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves(God’s goal), but in God Who raises the dead;(better and stronger trust) (10) Who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will(HOPE) deliver us. And He will yet deliver us! Paul learned this stuff first hand.
1) Paul had a hope in his heart regarding God that made him ready to face most any difficulty.
CONCLUSION: “Can I trust God too much’
(5) and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who was given to us.
1) Uses opposites (hope/disappoint) to strengthen point. Can’t trust God and lose
2) WHY: BECAUSE His Love poured in us through Holy Spirit
Diamond is just a lump of Coal after the pressure has passed by. God is trying to make a diamond of you and me. It is going to take the pressure to do it.
The secret of going thru difficulties is to understand that difficulties, sufferings, tribulations are not the wrath of God but the Love of God.
1) First mention in all the book of Romans of the Love of God and it is attached to the subject of difficult times.
2) When we are in the midst of difficult times we need to remember the fourth man in the fire. We are not alone but the Holy Spirit is carrying us thru the trial.
Some of the most loving people I have ever met are those who have been touched by great tragedies. God brought them through by His love and left a little more of that love in their lives than there had been before.
Some of the most unloving people are those who have not been touched by much difficulty in their life.
God has not done something terrible to them but had invested in their life to make them an even great tool that He can use.
I walked a mile with pleasure, she chatted all the way but left me none the wiser with all she had to say.
I walked with sorrow, and not a word said she, but oh the things I learned from her when sorrow walked with me.
I am told that when they used to try to remove all the impurities out of a metal that the refiner knew it was now pure when he could look at it and see the reflection of himself.
You will know God is done with you when you look at your life and see the perfect reflection of Jesus Christ.
Until then you are work in progress and by the love of God He will use tribulation, trials and difficulties as refining tools in your life.
