03 Why is God so Difficult to Believe in? (Jeremiah 2:1-13)

Thank you for downloading the Wednesday in the Word podcast. What the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. You're listening to the third talk in our series on the book of Jeremiah. We'll be looking at the passage of Jeremiah chapter 2, verses 1 through 13. If you'd like, you can follow along with the lecture notes, which you can find at wednesdayintheword.com slash Jeremiah 3. Thank you for joining us. In 2009, two researchers asked about 3,000 teenagers whether they believed that God existed or not, and if they did, who they thought God was, and they published their findings in a book they called Soul Searching, The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. And they found that when they put all the answers together, they could summarize the prevailing belief by five basic statements. And they called this set of beliefs moralistic therapeutic deism. So I thought, and here's what the five beliefs were. The first one is that God exists. So the first one is God exists, he created and ordered the world, and he watches over human life. The second one is that people should be good, that God wants people to be good, to be nice, to be fair, as taught by the Bible in most world religions. Number three was happiness is the goal. That the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself. Number four is that God stays out of the way. He doesn't have to be involved in your life. He's there when you need him, but otherwise he just leaves you alone. And then the fifth one is what I call it's all good in the end, and that is everyone who die, when they die, they go to heaven. Good people, some would say good people when they die go to heaven, but it's basically everybody. So does that sound familiar? Doesn't that sound like the popular view of God today? Well, that's a far cry from the gospel, and that's a far cry from the message of Jeremiah, because Jeremiah contends that God is a personal God, that there is a right and wrong, and that ignoring what he says about right and wrong has serious consequences. The God of Scripture is a lot more difficult to believe in than the God of moralistic therapeutic deism. And that's the question we're gonna look at today. Why is God so hard to believe in? Because believing in the God of the Bible isn't always easy. As opposed to something like moralistic therapeutic deism, that's very easy. That's non-threatening, that's not confusing, it's very encouraging. It gives me everything I want to be true and requires nothing from me. I don't have to change my life, I don't have to change my lifestyle, and it assures me of my future happiness without making any demands on me. So that popular view that there is a God who's there when I need him and then stays out of the way, that's easy, that's to believe. But the God of the Bible isn't like that. He has something to say about how I live my life and the choices I make and the values I hold, and he expects a response from me. He requires more than lip service and the occasional appearance in church on Easter and Christmas. He expects that if I believe in him, my life is going to change. So actually, believing in the God of Scripture is sometimes difficult, especially today, because he's not politically correct. He doesn't change his mind or his views or his rules or his what's views on what's right and wrong as our culture changes its point of view. And then he will challenge ideas we want to be true and force us to confront truths that we would rather ignore. So I think for most of us, at some point in our life, we've maybe even now, we've had our doubts. Who is this God? Is he really real? Can I really count on him as this gospel too good to be true? And if he is real and he wants us to know him, then why isn't it just more obvious? Why isn't it that so cut and dried that everyone who hears about the God of the Bible says, oh yeah, that makes sense. No problem. Well, we're gonna try to address that today. We're gonna look at Jeremiah chapter 2, verses 1 through 13. And I think this passage addresses the question of why is God hard to believe in? What, why do his people turn away from him and so easily follow other gods? So before we look at the passage, let me just remind you where we are in history, which is the setting for the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet to the kingdom of Judah. So after the death of David and Solomon, Israel went into a civil war which divided the kingdom. And ten tribes gathered around one of Solomon's sons, and they formed what we call the northern kingdom and made their capital Samaria. The two southern kingdoms of Judah and Benjamin formed around a different one of Solomon's sons, and they formed what we call the southern kingdom or the kingdom of Judah, and they kept their capital in Jerusalem. In 722 BC, the northern tribes were conquered by Assyria and taken into exile, leaving Judah to struggle on alone. And then a few years later, around 627 BC, Jeremiah begins his ministry as the Assyrians went into a civil war themselves. Their king died, and they went into a civil war over who would be the next king. And as they descended into chaos, both Babylon and Egypt tried to step in and occupy that power vacuum and be the next superpower. And Judah is literally geographically caught in the middle of them. So she is right between Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria. And everybody wanted to control her, to control that land bridge to get to their enemies. So it's into this political turmoil, Jeremiah gets his call, and he's told to warn the people of Judah that Babylon is coming, that God is going to use Babylon to judge them for their disobedience to the covenant, and that they too will be taken into exile, like the Northern Kingdom, but eventually God would restore them. So this chapter, we're not going to look at the whole chapter, but if we did, this chapter follows a legal format that was very common in Jeremiah's world. When a lesser king offended their overlord king, the overlord would send them a written document outlining the charges against them. And we have several of such documents that survive today in the ancient world, and they have the same content we see here in Jeremiah 2. We also see this format elsewhere in Scripture, Micah 6, 1 through 8 being one of the clearest examples. And by the way, I'm gonna, you don't, if you don't want to write all this down, you don't have to. I'm gonna put all this information in the lecture notes, which you can find at Wednesdayintheword.com slash Jeremiah 3. So the order of this content may vary, but typically in this legal document, this is what you would find. The first thing is an appeal to the vassal to pay heed with a summons to the earth and sky to act as witnesses. And we find that in verse 12 of our chapter. So this appeal to the to listen up and appeal to the earth and sky to act as witnesses. The second thing is a series of questions which carry an implied accusation, and we see those in verses 5 and 6 and 14. So asking questions where we expect the answer to be an accusation of the wrong that the vassal has done. Then the third thing is a recollection of the past benefits that the overlord bestowed on the vassal, usually accompanied by a statement of how the vassal has broken the covenant between them. And we see this in verses 7 through 11, verse 13, 15 to 25, and 29 through 30. And again, I'll put all this in the lecture notes. And then the, where am I, fourth thing is a reference to the futility of any kind of compensation or other aids. So there's nothing the the um uh vassal king can do to compensate the for the wrongs done, and we find that in verses 26 and 28. And then finally a declaration of guilt with a threat of judgment, and that's in 31 through 37. So just to realize we're looking at a kind of a legal format that got that was very common of the day to say, we had an agreement, you broke the agreement, there's nothing you can do to compensate me for breaking it, and here's your the guilt and the consequences. Okay, but we're only going to look at the first 13 verses. So let's start with one through three. Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the Lord, I remember concerning you the devotion of your youth, the love of your betrothals, your following after me in the wilderness through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first of his harvest, all who ate of it became guilty, evil came upon them, declares the Lord. So the chapter begins by recounting the honeymoon period between Israel and the Lord, and the Lord remembers her early devotion after she was taken out of slavery in Egypt, and she was following him through the wilderness. So their relationship is depicted as the early days of a marriage where the bride is eagerly, devotedly throwing herself into this new life as evidenced by her willingness to follow her husband anywhere. So the Israelites' willingness to follow the Lord through the wilderness is compared to that. The reference to the first fruits comes from Deuteronomy 26, where the Israelites were commanded to give the Lord the first fruits of their harvest and to remember how he brought them out of Egypt. And here, Israel is compared to the first fruits. This first generation that was freed from slavery are the first fruits of this harvest of God's people. So he's setting apart a people for himself, he's making a covenant with them, they're the first generation to experience that, and they're compared to these first fruits of his harvest. And because she was under, uh because she was set apart for the Lord his own portion, she was under his special protection. So that's the idea that disaster would fall on anyone who tried to harm her. That's the idea in verse 3 that he's protecting her. Anyone who tries to harm her in any way, he's gonna going to uh protect her. So the future looks great. The people are devoted to God, they're willing to follow him anywhere, God is protecting them, and then the situation changes. Look at four through eight. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, what injustice did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and walked after emptiness and became empty? They did not say, Where is the Lord who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of desert and of pits, through a land of drought and deep darkness, through a land that no one crossed and where no man dwelt? I brought you into a fruitful land to eat its fruit and its good things, but you came and defiled my land, and my inheritance you made an abomination. The priests did not say, Where is the Lord? And those who handled the law did not know me. The rulers also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and walked after things that did not profit. So in this section, the Lord is proclaiming his faithfulness to the covenant while recounting how Israel was not faithful. So those questions in 2, 5, that, and 6, they they call for a negative answer. He says, What injustice or what wrong did your father find in me? The expected answer is none. They found no wrong in me. They couldn't say, Where is the Lord who brought us up out of the land of Egypt? Because I've been right here, I've been faithful to the covenant. So he did nothing that would cause Israel to leave him, nothing that would cause them to break their trust or to give them any cause to leave him. And yet they went after an empty phantom. That went after in, or went, I think they translated it went far in verse 5 is a legal term. It means to serve as a vassal. So it's the language that would be used of say a knight serving his king, he would go after his king, or a squire serving a knight would go after his knife. So it's they went after in the servant's sense. And then it says worthlessness became worthless. One translator described it as following Lord delusion, they became delusion. That's that walked after emptiness and became empty. Pursuing empty phantoms, they became empty. The idea is they traded this really wonderful, good, valuable thing for something that was an empty lie. So they had the God of Israel and they went after an empty idol, a worthless idol. They had this wonderful, truly valuable relationship with the creator of the universe, and they threw all that away to go after something false and empty and worthless. And as a result, in 6 and 7, they forgot who the Lord that delivered them out of slavery. By contrast, the Lord is depicted as true to his word. He cared for them in the desert. He brought them to the promised land. He gave them a fruitful land and not a desert. He gave them a place where they could thrive and prosper. He didn't lead them through drought and darkness and so on. And then in eight, the leaders are all charged with keeping the law. There are four classes of leaders here. They're all charged with keeping the law, and none of them do. So in one way or another, they're to teach the law to the people, enforce the law, mediate the law, and yet none of them do it. They forget the Lord and they go after other gods. So in verse 9, then we get his conclusion. He says, Therefore, I will contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your son's sons I will contend. And that word contend is a legal term indicating, here come the formal charges. I'm going to now charge you in court. That's the language. I'm bringing my charges against you. That's the idea behind contend. And basically what he says is, I was faithful to the covenant, you were not faithful to the covenant. Now I'm going to I'm stating my case against you. I'm bringing you into court. And as this passage progresses, it becomes more clearly a courtroom scene. And it's a picture of God charging his people and accusing them, but not just of a crime. This is a divorce court. The language here is not criminal activity so much as language of betrayal and a broken relationship. So the issue is not that they violated some legal rule or ran afoul of some regulation. This is a marriage and this is a divorce. So we have this picture in one through eight of this early love of a bride who's devoted to her husband, but as the passage progresses, we see that the bride has now forgotten her husband and chased after other men. So they didn't lose their religion so much as they lost their God. They deserted their God. They abandoned their divine husband, if you will, and cheated on their divine marriage. So first the witnesses are called in 10 and 11. For cross to the coastlands of Kidam and see and send to Kadar and observe closely and see if there has been such a thing as this. Has a nation changed gods when they were not God? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. So the first event in the trial is we call the witnesses, and God says basically, go out and see if you can find anyone anywhere who has ever seen such a thing as this. So Kidim are the Greek islands that are to the west of Israel, and Kadar refers to the region of Arabia that is to the east of Israel. So the idea is go west and go east, go in every direction, is the idea. It's a common biblical way of saying look everywhere. So go east, go west, and everywhere in between, and see if you could find anyone anywhere who has seen this happen before. And what are they looking for? They're looking for a nation that has changed its gods. And the implication is you can't. You won't find this. You won't be able to find such a witness. It's just impossible because no one's done this before. So what Israel did of abandoning their God, that's unheard of. They've abandoned the one true God and instead are worshiping empty fictional gods that they made up. And the implication is that the nations around them, they made up their gods, but they stayed true to them, even though they were idols and creations of their own hands. So the nations around Israel were more faithful to things that weren't even God at all than Israel was to the one true God who created and sustained them. So that got me thinking, what about us? Are we like that? If you look at our culture, I think we follow the gods of money, success, education, fame, fortune, pleasure, and we are incredibly faithful to those. We stick with those idols, those gods through thick and thin, even when they fail and disappoint us. So take money, for example. Our lives are pretty much centered around money. We work to make money, we pursue an education to get a good job so that we can earn money. We work hard so we can have fun spending money, and all our lives are kind of built around the earning and acquiring and spending of money. And if you catch people in a philosophical moment and say, Oh, do you really think money will make you happy? Most people say, Oh, no, no, no, friends and family are way more important. But then you look at how we live our lives, and we live our lives as if money is the most important thing. Even though we don't think it'll bring us happiness. And then financial disaster strikes, or we run into a problem that money can't solve, and instead of thinking, oh, maybe I shouldn't trust in money, we just find a way to get more. So, why are the people why are we so loyal to money and our false gods like the ancient Israelites were? Here's the answer, and I think it's the first reason that God is difficult to believe in. So we said we're going to address the question, why is God difficult to believe in? And I think here's the first one. We want control. Because worshiping money is not crazy. It's not the do anything for money greediness we see characterized in movies and TV. Money gives us control. There are a lot of problems that money can solve. As Sophie Tucker said, I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better. Because money gives us that measure of control. So to worship something means looking for that thing to bring me life. And most people want to live their life a certain way, with a certain level of comfort, a certain level of, you know, eating well, staying healthy, having time for recreation and entertainment. And those desires aren't wrong. It's natural to want a full life. But what do we expect to get us there? What how how do you get those things? And for most of us, for most of our society anyway, that's money. And that gets us control. And I think that's the reason the nations were loyal to their gods, because their idols promised them control over what they wanted out of life. Idols were structured such that I go through the motions, I make the prescribed offerings, I do the prescribed rituals, and then the idol gives me what I want. So even when our idols failed to deliver, we stick with them because we want that promise of control. That can be more appealing than handing over control to God and trusting Him to provide. So the promise and the comfort of financial wealth, that keeps us focused on wealth as a goal. That keeps us loyal to it as an idol. And it holds out the promise of one day I won't have to worry about money and I can do whatever I want. And that's because I want control. But God doesn't give us control. Instead, he offers us his presence and his promises. Now we talked a lot about this last week. When we saw God assure Jeremiah that he would be with him in response to Jeremiah's fear, God offered his presence. So I'm not going to go into it too much, but just to remind you, God's presence is a powerful thing. And it's the same reason we want someone with us when we're scared. That's why we go sit with each other in the hospital or we go help each other out and sit in their living rooms when you're waiting for the phone to ring. And when something happens, our first instinct is to call out to our church family and say, pray with me, sit with me, be with me in this, because presence takes away some of that fear. So when Jeremiah was afraid last week, we saw God promise, I am with you. I will be with you every step of the way. You don't have to be alone. So we want control. God says, control is my hand in my hands, but I will offer you my presence and my promises. All right, so after the witnesses are called, charges are leveled against Israel, and this is what we see in 11 and 12. Has a nation changed gods when they were not gods, but my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit? Be appalled, O heavens, shudder and be very desolate, declares the Lord. So the charge against them is that they have exchanged glory for these worthless idols. In other words, they've left their God, they've cheated on their divine husband, and not just any husband, but a glorious, devoted husband who treated them well and cared for their needs. That phrase exchange their glory in verse 11 is an interesting one. It shows up elsewhere in Scripture. One example is Psalm 106 20, and in that Psalm, The psalmist is talking about the people as they made the golden calf after God took them out of slavery in Egypt. And he says they exchanged their glory for an image of a bull which eats grass. It's that same idea. They had this glorious, this thing that would have brought glory that is awesome, that is wonderful, that is truly worthwhile, and they exchanged it for something worthless. I don't know about you, but I read the story of the golden calf, and I'm sometimes I'm amazed because you think about what this group of people went through. They saw God send the plagues on the king of Egypt, including the final one that left the firstborn sons of the Egyptians dead, but their own sons untouched. They saw the sea open before them, they walked over on dry land, and then they saw their enemies drowned as the sea collapsed on them. They were led by a pillar of fire and a cloud through the desert, and then they go to the base of the mountain where they hear God's thundering voice, and they had all this miraculous first-hand knowledge of God. And then God takes longer than they exp they expect giving Moses the uh instructions and the covenant, and what do they do? They lose faith and they create an idol. And they create this golden calf and say, Oh, this is the one that led us out of Egypt. And I read that and I go, Really? How could their faith go away so quickly? And I think to myself, you know, if I'd been there and I'd seen everything they'd seen, I would be convinced, you know, I would never turn away. And then I have to stop and go, really? Am I really that different? Because think about, and then I think about all the things is probably true of you too. The ways you've seen God work in your life. You know, my whole personality changed after coming to faith. I've seen him answer my prayers, I've seen him take me through many things, and yet I explain it away. And I think, oh, well, you know, I've I've just grown up, or I've just learned a thing or two, or it was coincidence, or I I did that because I worked so hard. And I have all these explanations for why the things God did were not really God doing them. And I think the ancient Israelites had the same kinds of explanations. Maybe the magicians of Egypt, they could have done the same things that God did. And the water splitting in two, that could have had any number of explanations. They might not have had scientific ones like we would, but they could have said, oh, Baal could have done that, or Moloch could have done that, or maybe Moses was a magician, or maybe they wouldn't leave, need an explanation at all. So this is our second reason. Why is God so hard to believe him, uh, to believe in? The first one was we want control. The second one is we explain him away. When God acts, we come up with any number of reasons why it wasn't God's doing at all. And we explain his presence in our lives and his promises fulfilled to something else, just like the Israelites who made the golden calf. All that stuff we saw and went through, oh no, it wasn't really the hand of the Lord. It was it was this calf, or maybe it was my quick thinking or my words or my good fortune or coincidence, or I'm just such a lucky person or something, and we take the things that God has done in our lives and we put it down to coincidence, or we just forget. You know, as culture changes, we may come up with different explanations, but I think we all have these ways to rationalize and explain why God wasn't really involved. And so the people living in Jerusalem near the the end of the 7th century in Jeremiah's time, they did the same thing. They exchanged this wonderful relationship with God for worthless idols because there were so many other plausible explanations. It's nothing new. So we've seen the courtroom scene set up, the witnesses called, the charges are leveled, and now in 13, I think this is the climax of the passage as the verdict is pronounced. 2.13, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cistern, broken cisterns that can hold no water. So here's the verdict. The people are guilty and they're guilty of two sins. They have forsaken their God and they've taken up with another one. So they've abandoned their husband and they've hooked up with someone else. So the one is just abandonment, the other is actually replacing him with someone else. Now the image of living water is common throughout scripture. What it literally refers to is running water. Water that's moving, water that's not stagnant. So if you've ever been outside, you know, backpacking or hiking and you need to find water, you know you're supposed to look for water that's moving because there's less opportunity for bacteria or other harmful things to grow in it. So if when you're backpacking, you collect water from rivers or streams, and you have to be careful because there's all sorts of problems you can get from drinking bad water. And as an agrarian culture, the Israelites would know running water is the safest bet. But instead, they dug cisterns. Now, a cistern is basically a huge hole in the ground that's meant to collect rainwater. So they would dig a big hole and line it with something like rocks or limestone or tar or something like that to try to make it watertight, and then when it rained, it would fill up with water, and it was and that would be their source of water. It could also sometimes be a storage tank like a large clay plot or something that was above ground, but the idea is this something that would fill up with water when it rains and then be there when you need it. And you can imagine that's probably not the best way to get good usable water because after it rains, it can sit there for a long time and get, you know, bugs in it and all kinds of disgusting things. So the metaphor he's painting is they had this fountain of fresh, clean, running water, and instead of drinking from that, they exchanged it for this dirty, stagnant, broken cistern. And the cisterns weren't even that good at holding water. They're broken, they're leaking it all out, so they weren't even that reliable. So you have this vivid contrast between God is this living source of fresh water able to sustain his people and these broken cisterns that would were leaking out dirty, stagnant water, and that's what the people wanted instead. And so you have to ask the question, why? Why would you make that trade? Why would anyone trade a spring of living water for a broken cistern? And I can think of at least one reason. The cistern is a known quantity. It's great to have a spring of water, but springs can be unpredictable. They dry up, sometimes they're they're overflowing, sometimes they're barely flowing, sometimes you can find them, sometimes you can't. You might have to look for a long time before you can find them. But you can dig a cistern anywhere. It's under your control. If it's broken, you fix it. You can't fix a broken stream, and you can find it again. It's always where you left it left. So I think part of what God's saying here is people would prefer a cistern that's broken over a stream that works because they can understand it, they can manage it, they can manipulate it and control us. And that's our third reason why God is difficult to believe in. We want a God who makes sense. We want a God who's predictable, who gives us predictable answers, who doesn't surprise us. When I ask for something, he gives me the answer I want in the way I want it, on my timeline, you know, just as I asked, because I want predictable answers. I want that kind of control. So for the Israelites, worshiping Baal made sense. It answered all their questions. Baal promised to give them what they wanted when they wanted in the manner they asked for it. So Baal was like our moralistic therapeutic deism. He's there when I need him to make things go my way, and otherwise he stays out of my way, he doesn't interfere. But God is less predictable. He may provide for all their needs, or he may let some needs go unmet. He doesn't always give us what we ask for. He doesn't always give it to us in the way we want it or in the timeline we want it. Baal's more like a business partner. You worship him in a certain way, you get what you want. So Baal's predictable, the Lord is not predictable. He doesn't act in the way I want by the deadlines I set. And he may listen to my prayers and then do something completely different. And with God, we have questions that aren't answered. Sometimes things happen or needs go unmet or our path is filled with obstacles or seeming detours and failures, and we don't understand why. We look at it and we go, why did this happen? Why did my life turn out this way? Where is God in all this? And he doesn't always answer now. He says, wait, it will become clear in the end. So part of the reason I think moralistic therapeutic deism is so popular is it's completely predictable. We have a God there who's there when I need him, leaves me alone when I don't want him there. He gets me out of a jam if I'm in a jam, he provides the answers I want in the way I want them, in the timeline I want them, and otherwise doesn't interfere. And the God of the Bible is not like that. He requires trust and devotion and trust, even when the answer is not the answer we want or expect. So that I think gives us the fourth reason why God is hard to believe in, and that is he's complicated. He is not explainable at times. He doesn't always make sense. We can't always guess what he's up to or what he's going to do or why he acted the way he acted. And believing in him is going to leave us with unanswered questions. Questions we may have to wait till heaven to see the answer to. And he doesn't always give us what he wants. Like any good parent, when we ask for things, he gives us what's best, which is not always what we want. So he asked the Israelites to wait for him 40 days at the base of the mountain, and they gave up and turned away. He asks us to wait until Jesus comes back again, and sometimes we give up and turn away too. Because we want those predictable answers. But God, as we said earlier, he offers his presence and his promises. He doesn't always tell us why things happen the way they happen, but he promises there is a good reason. This is for the best, in the very best sense of that word, and he offers to be with us every day and to equip us, and that becomes our answer. So we choose broken cisterns because we want answers. We can understand them, they're predictable. But why are we afraid of living water? That's the other question that comes out of this. Why would we reject something that our heart truly desires? And I think it's because living water sounds too good to be true. And I think this is the last reason we're going to look at is why is God hard to believe in? Because we're afraid to hope. We'd rather content ourselves with dirty water from a broken cistern because it's a sure thing. And living water, that sounds too good to be true. Sometimes the promises of the gospel sound like, you know, I'm just afraid to hope they could be true. Can it really be that good? Broken cisterns don't offer as much hope as living water, but at least there's not as much chance of being disappointed by them. And I think, I'm convinced that when we're honest, we all struggle with that. What if God lets me down? What if this is I'm fooling myself in all of this? Even Jeremiah, after writing all these words that God is the spring of living water, later in his life he writes that he's worried God's going to disappoint him and that God will be a spring that fails. Listen to Jeremiah 15, 18. Why has my pain been perpetual and my wounds incurable, refusing to be healed? So it's that same issue of God, why are you letting my life go this way? And he says, Will you indeed be to me like a deceptive stream with water that is unreliable? It's those doubts of, is are you too good to be true? With all these things I'm counting on, are you really going to deliver? And I think the truth is it's hard to hope because we're afraid to be disappointed and we're afraid that somehow the gospel's too good to be true. Well, Paul addresses this question in Romans 5.1 through 11. And I want to just summarize his argument for you, because, as you might expect, it's the best offer to hope that I have seen. The best offer to the question of is hope too good to be true? So, real quickly, Romans 5, 1 through 5, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So in chapters 1 through 4, he's laid out his case for what the gospel is and isn't. And he's basically argued we are justified by faith and faith alone. And in 5 1 he says, so what? So what difference does that make? And his answer is we can have absolute assurance that our hope does not disappoint. So listen to this, he says in 5.1, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we exalt in the hope of the glory of God, and not only this, but we exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance proven character, and proven character hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. So basically what he's saying there, if my faith has been tested, that's this what tribulations leading to perseverance, leading to proven character, proven character to hope. So if my faith has been tested, shown through the test to be the real deal, real saving faith, then that proves the character of my faith and that gives me hope. So the testing of my faith brings about hope, not just in a theological sense, but my personal hope, because I can look and say, I went through that, I'm still here, I still counting on God. That's real evidence that I am in fact a believer and I'm not fooling myself. And then he goes on to say, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. So he's saying, that thing you're hoping for, the promises of the gospel, that will not disappoint you. It will inevitably come to pass. Why? Because God loves you. Now that sounds trite, but what he's saying is, we're not going to go on, but if you go on through 5 through 11, what he's he goes on to ask the question, if God loved us enough to die for us while we were his enemies, now that we're his children, do you think he loves us enough to get you the rest of the way? So his argument is if it takes this much, X huge amount of love to love your enemy, whom you hate and do them a kindness, then how much love does it take to do something for your friend? So which is the greater demonstration of love? Loving your enemy or loving your child? And he argues, we've already seen him love us when we were his enemies. He demonstrated that huge great amount of love by sending his son to die for us while we were his enemies, while we were mocking and scoffing at him. So we've seen at the cross that God loves us enough to do this for us when we're his enemies, now that you're his child. And he loves you. Don't you think he loves you enough to fulfill the rest of his promises? So let me put it to you another way. How many of you would hesitate to run out into the front of a car if your toddler was about to be run over for it? I mean, even if the odds were a thousand to one, and you thought I just got that one chance, in a split second, you would throw yourself in front of that car if there was any chance at all you could save your child. Because that's your child, whom you love, you'd lay your life down for them. But what if the person in the front of the car was your neighbor who drives you crazy? You know, or maybe it's the person who makes your life miserable. Or what if it was Hitler or an Islamic terrorist threatening to blow up the city? I mean, would you would you run out in front of the car for them? It's like, I'd read for the car, you know, if I'm honest. And that's Paul's argument. He says, what's the greater demonstration of love? To die for your enemy or to die for your child? Obviously, it takes a greater amount of love to die for your enemy. That's what Jesus did for us, because we were the terrorists in front of the car. We were the enemies. We were under God's wrath. We were the ones that abandoned him. He says in verse 6, for while we were still helpless at the right time Christ died for us, right at the point we were helpless, right at the point we were his enemies, estranged from God, mocking him, laughing him, he died for us. And if he's already done that, now that you're a child, his child, adopted into his family, now you're the toddler in front of the car. Do you think he's gonna hesitate to run out and scoop you up and get you through? Of course he's gonna finish the job. And that's why he says our hope will not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out. That cross is tangible evidence that our hope will not fail. So the truth is, God's really not that hard to believe in. The problem is our hearts are fickle. It's us who have a hard time believing in God because we're the ones that want control. We rationalize and explain away his gifts. We want easy, predictable answers from an easy-to-understand God, and we're afraid to hope. But the good news of the gospel is that our hope is not going to fail us. If God loved us enough to die for us while we were his enemies, we can be absolutely certain that now that we're his children, adopted into his family, he will love us enough to get us the rest of the way home. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you reached out and did for us what we could never do for ourselves. That you did love us enough to die for us, to send your son to take our place on the cross, to take the punishment we deserved, to buy us out of our slavery to sin, and to reconcile us to you. And we pray that we would understand those truths deeply in our heart, not as a theological fact or a the answer we might give to a quiz, but that we would understand that this is the uh the truth of the universe, that this is something that can change our lives and get us through the darkest hour and encourage us through each and every day. We just pray that you would make it real, that you would write us on our hearts and teach us to follow you more and to love you more and to share that love with others. In Jesus' name. Amen.