06 The Hope of the Gospel (Romans 5:1-11)

SPEAKER_00: I'll just give you the essential piece. She was a singer in the early 1900s, and her one of her famous quotes, actually she has another famous quote. I should tell you it was I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better. But the one quote that I pulled out for today is From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35, she needs good looks. And from 35 to 55, she needs a good personality. And from 55 on, she needs good cash. I'm in the good personality stage. I think I'm in trouble. Anyway, her remark I think is particularly funny because this is how we measure our worth in our society. We measure ourselves by how physically beautiful we are, by our intelligence, and by our athletic ability. And we learn, you know, even kids know where they fall on the scale. And you know, in preschool they can they can have assessed where they fit on the popularity scale, and it's often based on these things. And so from as we age and our looks fade and our mind gets confused and our bodies fall apart, we have to have good cast to see us through. You can turn Sophie off now. Okay. I suspect that if I asked you how many people in this room feel, and I'm not going to ask, so you don't have to raise your hands, but if I asked how many feel like you're good enough, no one would raise your hand. Because we have all been measured and found wanting. You know, you grow up and you think, well, I'm not as pretty as my sister, or I I'm not as smart as my brother, or not as athletic as maybe my father was, or not the wife and mother that my mother was. Somehow we look around and we measure ourselves against other people and we say, I'm not the person I should be. And now I spent the first four chapters of Romans telling you, yep, you'll never measure up. You can't keep the law, you're a wretch, and there's nothing you can do about it. So you should be feeling pretty good at this point. So today in Romans 5, we are going to switch gears a little. I'm going to give you, or Paul's going to give us actually, a reason to rejoice. And the word rejoice is not just be happy, but be ecstatically exuberant, thrilled beyond belief, from your head to your toes. And the point of his passage today is you will be good enough. In fact, you're going to be better than good enough. You're going to be perfect, and it's guaranteed. It's a hope that will not disappoint you. There's nothing you can do to stop it. You can't measure, you can't uh mess it up, and it's beyond your wildest imaginings. So we're in Romans chapter 5. We'll do verses 1 through 11. We're finally going to slow down now and spend from now till Christmas on 5 through 8. So today we're in Romans 5. I'll just go ahead and read 1 through 11, and we are in this, I'm reading the uh English Standard Version. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. Bless you, these little sneezes. Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, I'd translate that helpless, while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God says his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. So what he's given us here is this is a wrap-up of the first four chapters. When he says, Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, the therefore refers back to everything he said up till this point. And he's about to end the first major section of the book, and this is his summary of it. So he started out in chapter one to argue that we were not, um we cannot be justified by the law or saved by the law, and he argued that no one can keep it, not the pagan, the moralist, or the religious person. And uh the law requires us to keep it with our whole heart, mind, soul, body, inside, outside, and there's no way we can do that. And then in the end of chapter 3, he says there is a way to be justified, and that's through faith in Jesus. Jesus paid our debt to justice, and that satisfied God's wrath, so that God could forgive us. And so justification is granted to those who have saving faith, and saving faith involves four things: a genuine desire for holiness, a genuine recognition that God owes me nothing, a genuine recognition that I can not make myself holy, and then finally a firm trust that God both intends to and will in fact make me holy because of what Jesus did on the cross. So that's all review. It should be all review at this point. And now Paul has spent all this time telling us that our justification or our legal status before God has changed, we're no longer under wrath. And now he's gonna answer the question, so what? Is this just theology? Is this just you know how we would vote on a doctrinal quiz, or does it make any difference? And that's what he's gonna pick up today. He's gonna answer, so what? So if you've been justified by faith, what should that mean to you and how you see yourself and how you live your life day to day? Is this just an argument for theology, or is there any practical significance? And he's gonna argue there's great practical significance. It gives you three reasons to rejoice. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, we rejoice in our sufferings, and we rejoice in our reconciliation. And I'm gonna explain that. But let me give you um let me give you some background on this idea of rejoice. It's the same word used three times in here. I think uh the New American Standard uses exalt, uh, the King James used glory, I think the NIV also uses rejoice, but it has more the the word has more than the idea of just being happy. It does mean that. It does have the emotional aspect, but it's got more to it than that. When it's in a negative context, it's usually translated boast. So it has, and you know, boast has that connotation of you think too highly of yourself, or it's the way you think about yourself, and it's an exaggerated kind of over-the-top claim. In Romans 5, we don't have any of that negative connotation, but the aspect of how you think about yourself is still there. So it's a but it's a positive connotation. So it's this enjoying the fact that you have worth or enjoying the fact of who you are, and it's it's both the emotional side and the realization that you have worth. So let me give you an example, see if I can flesh out more, give you a picture of what this word, if you could paint this word in a picture. My um my daughter's soccer team is ranked third in the state, and they're really good in their age group, and this is the fourth year most of them have played together, and they um they have a new coach, so it's been kind of rocky, everybody's been making adjustments. And two Saturdays ago we were competing in the State Cup, and we were trying to get to the round of eight or the quarterfinals, and it's you know, you lose, you're out. So we were playing a team from Richmond, and they were a very good team, and we were very evenly matched, and the game was going back and forth, and no one had the advantage, and no one was was clearly dominating the game. So we ended the game tied 0-0. So the referee says, okay, we're gonna go into sudden death overtime. First goal wins. So you play 15 minutes, if there's no goal, you play 15 more. If there's no goal, then you then we go to penalty kicks. So we've already played 90 minutes of soccer, and it's like, okay, we can do this 15 more minutes. And about five minutes in, our team got the ball to Kelly, who's a great player on our team, and she got a fast break on the goal. Now, Kelly is a really great player, but she has spent most of the year hitting the crossbar or the goal post. I mean, just or nicking the side of the net. And it's really frustrating for her because she knows she can do it, but she's for some reason this year, she just keeps bouncing it off the bars. So there she was in front of the goal, the State Cup's writing on it. We got her the ball, and she puts it in. And you should have seen her body language. That wow, leap in the air, the yell, the embrace all your friends, they'll run around this the field. That's the word. That rejoicing, that absolute rush of excitement. She did great, she came through, she knew it, she loved it. That's what this word is talking about. That rust of adrenaline when you realize this is good. I did this, this is right, this is great. Now, we adults are often too cool, you know, we don't show that uh when something happens that's really good, but we we feel it, and you've probably seen it, you know, in your younger child, maybe if they're learning to read or they're learning to tie their shoes, and the first time they do it, it's like, look, look what happened, I can do it. That feeling is what this word this Greek word is trying to capture. Um, so but it's more than just the feeling, it's the feeling that we have worth, that we know we're important. Now, you're gonna object to me and you're saying, okay, but we've talked about how Christianity involves a fair amount of humility, and how can you say I can I can boast or rejoice in the fact that I have worth, that's that's kind of an you know, isn't that conceited or arrogant, and isn't that contrary to the Christian life? Um the word has no connotations of an exaggeration, it's a rejoicing based on fact, it's reasonable and accurate. So just to continue my analogy, if I go back to Kelly, you'd say, well, you know, yes, but she was backed by a great team. Um, they worked hard for 90 minutes, they created the chances to get her the ball, to put it at her feet in front of the goal. They, you know, it was a team effort. What does she have to be so happy about? Um, because really, you know, it was everybody worked for that moment when the ball went in the net. So why should she feel so special or why should she rejoice? And that's true, and my example, it was a team effort, but she was part of the team, and when we needed her, she came through. And what I'm trying to point out is the Greek word doesn't have that native negative connotation of it's an exaggeration or it's a claim without basis in fact. It is a reasonable, accurate claim. I feel significant because I am significant. There's no exaggeration. Now you're gonna object again, you're gonna say, well, okay, but we've all been taught not to blow our own horns. I mean, isn't that conceited to say, oh, look what I did, or look how I came through. It's not nice to boast about your accomplishments, or you know, for Kelly to say, Oh, I finally scored. Well, that would be conceited. And again, I think those connotations come from our culture, not from the passage. In this context, the thing that we're rejoicing about, the thing that we're boasting about, if you want to use that word, we had nothing to do with. Paul's gonna go on to argue it was a gift that was given to us, and it's not at all something that we accomplished on our own. So just to continue my analogy, you should have seen the parents when Kelly scored. I mean, the whole you could I bet you heard us all over Charlottesville. I mean, everyone was on their feet, jumping, la you know, we were um slapping each other, yelling, screaming, cheering for at least two minutes, you know. And uh, what did we do? You know, I I contributed a lot. I was sitting in my lawn chair drinking a coke, you know. So I did a lot for that victory, you know. What did I do to feel that rush and that joy? And yet I felt it too. Um and that's similar to what's going on here. I didn't do anything. I didn't actually bring about the goal. I wasn't out on the field, but I shared the joy, I shared that excitement. And Paul's gonna say, we have that joy, and it's real, it's accurate, it's reasonable, it's not exaggerated, and it's not based on anything we ourselves did. So rejoice includes that emotional rush, that that feeling of exuberance or exaltation, it's based on a fully accurate fact, and it doesn't imply our own accomplishment. Um, why do we have reason to feel this way? Let's go on to that. Now, I just to finish my story. After we were all celebrating and walking off the field, the referee goes, wait, wait, I think I got the rules wrong. It's not sudden death, you have to keep playing. So we had to play not one but two more 15-minute periods before he said we won the game. But anyway, so that was kind of anticlimactic after that point. I mean, everybody was leaving. He says, No, come back. We had to pay 25 more minutes of soccer. But they won, and they play this Saturday in the round of eight. Anyway. So, just to put in a little plug there, not that I'm boasting or anything, but and it's not my accomplishment either. So, anyway, okay, so what do we have to rejoice about? He gives us three things. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, we rejoice in our sufferings, and we rejoice in our reconciliation. So let's talk about the first one. Hope. Um hope is a confident, eager expectation that something's going to happen. We tend to use hope as wistful thinking, you know, oh, I hope it doesn't rain anymore, I hope it doesn't snow, or uh, I hope I finally lose those ten pounds. So it's maybe a completely unrealistic expectation on my part. But the Greek word does not have that connotation. It is something that I am fully confident will happen. So I expect it, I'm convinced of it, and I'm waiting for it. So in that sense, the word hope and the word faith are very are related in that they both point to the confidence with which you're looking forward to something. Hope has the additional eagerness with which we look forward to it. So if I promise my kids we're going to Disneyland, they hope for it because I promised it, it's going to happen, they're looking forward to it. If I tell them we're going to have broccoli for dinner, they have faith that we're going to have broccoli for dinner. I promised it, we're going to have it, but they don't really look forward to it. So you may have the same confidence, but one expresses the eagerness or the joy or the anticipation. So they would hope for Christmas, but they would expect the first day of school to come. So that's what hope, it's not wistful thinking, it's a confident, eager expectation that I have. Now we're hoping for the glory of God. That's a hard thing to describe, or a hard thing to pin down. The word glory literally means a bright shining light. So you can see that, for instance, in the Christmas story when the shepherds see the angels and they're announcing the birth of Jesus, and it says the glory of the Lord shown about them. It's literally a bright shining light shown about them. And glory is the most common description of our inheritance as believers. And I think it's the idea is it's something that demands your attention, that demands your awe and admiration and wonder. The way a bright shining light draws your eyes to it. So we're hoping for the glory of God. What about the glory of God are we going to have? I think in this context, Paul's talking about his holiness. Now, he's going to make that more clear in chapter 8. So I'm actually reading in what he's going to say in chapter 8 back into 5, because there's a lot of ways God is glorious. You know, he's omnipotent, he's transcendent, he's uh all-loving and compassionate and merciful. Um, and we're not necessarily going to have all of that. We will not be glorious in the way he is, and that we will never be the creator, we will never be transcendent. But one thing he has promised to give us, one aspect of that makes him glorious, and that is his moral beauty, his holiness, his integrity, if you will. And that's what he's promised us. We will be glorious in the way he is, in that we will have that complete moral beauty. We don't even have a word to describe it. So a truly glorious person, we would look at him if one walked in, we would look at him with awe and wonder because it's just so valuable and so wonderful. And objectively, um, there's nothing more valuable than that. So now that you're justified, now that you've been saved from God's wrath, you have a reason to rejoice because you have been singled out by God to be made holy. And that sets you apart, that makes you important, that gives you significance because ultimately there's nothing more valuable than holiness. Now, we tend to holiness has gotten kind of a short shrift in our culture. It's uh you know, it's seen as boring, or you know, only the boring uh people who all dress in black and never smile, they're the ones that might have it. Um, but that's not the biblical view. Holiness is the the pearl of great price in that parable that Jesus told, that's what he's talking about. Righteousness. It is so wonderful that we should be willing to sacrifice everything to gain it. And if we got just a glimpse of what it would be like now, we would gladly sell everything we have to gain it. So it's remember back in chapter one when we talked about life and death, and it is life with a capital L, it is being the kind of person who fulfills the law in all aspects, naturally, inevitably, you don't even have to work at it. Um it is it is everything, essentially putting everything right that is wrong about us, removing all the effects of sin and death, and give making us truly glorious, wonderful, beautiful people. And Paul's saying you have a confident, eager expectation that that's going to happen. Guaranteed. Now, we don't have it yet, and he's gonna make that really clear in chapter eight, but we can we expect that it happens. We are confident that it happens. So remember at the end of chapter one when we how uh depressed we were at seeing the depth of our sin and how bad our situation was. This should be the polar opposite of now, see what our destiny is, how incredibly wonderful, miraculous it is. We don't even have the words to describe it. So all the effects of sin will be completely reversed and be completely turned around so that if I could see you now in your glorious state, I'd be tempted to fall down and worship you because it's just that wonderful, it's just that awe-inspiring. Um that's what we're hoping for, and that's what we rejoice about. So that raises the question then, well, great, that would be my hope if I were sure I was a believer, but how do I know that I am in fact a believer? I mean, if that's true of a believer, what if I'm fooling myself? And what if in five years I I turn away from all this and I walk away? How do I know that I in fact can hope for that? And that's really what Paul's going to answer with three through ten. He says, You can know you're a believer if your faith has been tested and shown through the test to be the real thing. And that's really what the extended discussion of three through ten is. Um so more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. Sufferings, I think, are just hard circumstances. It's also translated tribulations, it's just the crises, the traumatic events, the emotionally difficult things that come along that put pressure on us and make us wonder why would God make me walk through this, or how can life get any harder than this? Uh at one point Jesus turns to Peter and he says, Satan is going to sift you like wheat. And I that that's tribulation, that's suffering. That, you know, when life comes along and just puts you through the grinder. And he's saying, you rejoice in those because it produ brings about endurance or perseverance, which is simply what you'd expect, what the reformers meant by perseverance of the saints, the reality of being tested and making it through the test, just getting through day by day. So Paul's saying, you can rejoice in your sufferings because you get through, and that produces character, and character produces hope. Now, character is kind of a hard word to translate. In fact, some translates will have proven character and not just character by itself. And I actually think that's a better translation because it's the idea of having been tested and shown by the test to be worthy. So endurance produces this quality of having been tested and shown by the test to be the real thing. So how do I know if I'm a believer, if I really have faith, if I've gone through that suffering and I've come out the other end with my faith intact, then I know I'm a believer. Because pseudo-faith falls away. People who who haven't are just pretending to be Christians or haven't really given their life to God, when they get those hard patches, they say, Whoa, if following God means giving up my boyfriend or doing this or not doing that, I'm out of here. And you've probably met people who said, you know, I tried that Christian stuff and it didn't work for me. I would say they they probably didn't have genuine saving faith. So you can look at your life and look through the hard times where God has maybe shifted you like wheat and say, I'm still here. And if I'm still here, then my faith is real. And if my faith is real, then the hope of the believer is mine. I can know for sure that that I am that I'm saved. My hope is certain. Now we get to the best part. I think of this passage where he says, Hope does not put us to shame because God loves you, basically, is his answer. And he's saying and he's answering the question, okay, I'm hoping for the glory of God. How do I know I'm gonna get there? How do I know I'm not gonna fall away? Okay, I made it through one test. Will I make it through the next one? Or the one after that, or the one after that? And Paul is saying, You will make it because God loves you. Now, let's talk about that. He's basically saying, it's not up to you to make sure you cross the finish line, it's up to God. God is going to get you there. And you know he'll get you there because he loves you. So you don't have God's not looking at my moral character and expecting me to improve it somehow. He's going to give it to me. He's going to make me that kind of person. And his argument is basically this look, if God loved us enough to die for us while we were enemies, now that we're his children, don't you think he loves us enough to finish the job? That's really what he's saying. So look at six. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. I would translate that right at the point when we were helpless, right when we were under God's wrath and we could do nothing about it, Christ died for the un for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, and it says, okay, granted, I'll give you maybe there's a good person out there that someone would dare to die for, but God shows his love for us, and that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. So here's the argument he's making. If it takes this amount of love to love your enemy, this great big huge amount of love, and to hate the someone you hate, how much love does it take for a friend or a child? It's less. Well, God's done this. He's shown us the love while we were enemies, so now that we're his child, don't you think he loves us enough to get us the rest of the way? So I imagine if any of you in here, there's a lot of moms in here with young kids, if your toddler walked out in the street and there was a car coming, I have no doubt that even if your chances of getting there on time were 10,000 to one, not one of you in this room would hesitate to leap off the curve or off the sidewalk or wherever, race toward that child and try to scoop them in your arms, you wouldn't even stop to think. You would run and do it because that's your child whom you love. So now the question is what if one of the 9-11 terrorists was standing in front of the car? Or maybe Saddam Hussein or Hitler or the Charlottesville rapist or someone, or maybe, you know, just a crazy neighbor who's driven you uh bonkers. Are you gonna hesitate? Are you gonna run? I wouldn't. You know, I mean, I might root for the car, you know. I mean, so Paul says, which is the greater act of love? And what he's saying is, we're the terrorists. We were the enemies. We were the terrorists standing in front of the car who hated God and was mocking God and had turned our backs on God. And he ran and saved us. Now that we're his child, now that we've been adopted into his family, don't you think he loves you enough to finish the job? So if it takes a greater love to die for your enemy, we've seen that. Jesus died on the cross with people standing at his feet mocking and ridiculing and saying your sacrifice is worthless, and why don't you say why don't you, you know, come down and save for yourself? And if we'd been there, we probably would have done the same thing, been standing at the at the foot, laughing and jeering. And that's what God did for us. So Paul says, um, he already died for you while you were his enemy. Now that you're adopted into his family, he's given you his name, he's made you his child. Don't you think he loves you enough to get you the rest of the way? So your hope will not disappoint you because God loves you, because his love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. Now, one more thing I want to point out here. Um, well, let me just finish reading that. God chose his love for us and that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Since we've been justified by his blood, and our much more, I would add, certainly, much more certainly shall we be saved from the wrath of God. So having loved us enough to justify us while we were enemies, don't you think he's going to go ahead and save us or sanctify us, get us to our inheritance? For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more certainly, now that we are reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. I think he's got in view our sanctification and eventual glorification. So his basic argument is you will be glorified. You will be sanctified, you will receive your inheritance because God loves you. And that's important because we tend to think, okay, God loved me, he justified me, he forgave me, and now it's up to me to show him how worthy I am of that gift and to do everything right, and um uh I want to be sanctified, and so I should, you know, really work hard and show God how grateful I am. If it's up to me, I'm not gonna get there. And I think there there is there are um denominations and beliefs in Christianity that says we cooperate in our sanctification, and that now we have a hand in it, and we can either hinder it or we can speed it up or we can make it better or worse. I think this passage is a knockdown, drag out our argument against that view, because Paul's whole point is you will get there because God loves you. Well, if it's up to me, it doesn't matter how much God loves me. If I have a hand in it, then the question is how much do I love God? Because do I love him enough to keep working and cooperating and helping him along? But Paul's not arguing that way. Paul's saying, you will get there because God loves you, and he must believe that it is therefore up to God. That sanctification is not something I bear as a burden, it's something God intends to do for me, in spite of myself, maybe. Um so I think this is one passage you can point to to say sanctification is not cooperative, because if it was, there would be room for me to fail. Um, and we couldn't claim that our hope would not disappoint us. So the really good news is you will get there, guaranteed, God will get you there. He's promised, he loves you enough, he's shown you he loves you enough, he's already gone to incredible depths to save you. So now, of course, he's gonna do the easy part and bring you to into your inheritance. So, you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, I've got to study more and I've got to uh pray more and maybe tithe more, or we fill in the blank with all the things we have to do to bring about our justification. Now, those are good things, but I would argue we do them because God has been at work in our life. So that when we seek to pray or study or show mercy or compassion, that is evidence that God is changing me and making me the kind of person that wants to do that. So it's a r and I can rejoice in that because it's evidence that God loves me and he's bringing about my sanctification, but it's not something I do to twist his arm to make him bless me. So it's not as if God's up there saying, Oh, you know, I really want to save Krissan from the sin, but I just can't until she prays about it. If only she'd pray, then I could save her. It's not what's going on. He is completely in control and he can save me even if I fail to pray, and he will make me the kind of person who next time maybe will pray. So I think we can argue that we cannot hinder our sanctification because Paul's claiming that it's on God's shoulders. He let our hope will not disappoint us because he loved us. It's guaranteed. So I can have absolute, total, complete, utter confidence that the hope of that kind of glory that we talked about is mine. Okay, more than that, he has one more point to make. We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. So we rejoice because our relationship to God has been restored. And that's remember back to the first day, my hand analogy, that we were here, and this is God, and we're we start out, or before Adam, we start out face to face in fellowship with him. We turn our backs on God and sin, and now we're prisoners of sin and death. Well, when God turns his back on us in his wrath, now we're prisoners of sin and death. Jesus' death satisfies his wrath so that he can then turn back and then he draws us back to him. And this is reconciliation. It's this now we're back in relationship with him. And that is something completely new in Christianity. Reconciliation was not a religious term in the in the days when Paul was writing this, because the Greeks did not think you can be reconciled to your gods. You could appease them, you could mollify them, you could try to placate them, you could try to, you know, uh hide from them or somehow mollify their wrath, but you didn't have a relationship. That just wasn't in the cards. So for Paul to come along and say you're reconciled, you have this relationship with God, that's a new thing. That's uh that was inconceivable. And yet Paul's saying you can you can rejoice because now the author and the creator of the universe, the God who justifies the ungodly, the God who brings into existence things which did not exist, is on your side. He's your father, he's adopted you. You are back in the family, and that's exciting. So um it's it's the feeling of he didn't have to pick me, he didn't have to save me, he doesn't owe me anything, and yet he's promised to give me this incredible, wonderful gift. And what difference does it make in my life today? It ought to make me confident that that peace of God we talk about, it ought to make me realize that no matter what happens, I can face it because God is in control. He's already shown the depth of his love by dying for me while he was an enemy. Now that I'm his child, how much more can I trust him to do what's right, to do what's best, to get me to the to the finish line. So my rejoicing, my boasting, if you will, it doesn't make me better, it doesn't make me uh give me any reason for pride, it's not based on my achievement. It's I'm not boasting or rejoicing about something I've accomplished, but I'm boasting about a gift I have been given. Um it makes me really blessed or lucky or fortunate. So your hope is you will be good enough. You will be perfect, you will be better than perfect. Or to go back to Sophie Tecker, you won't need the the good looks, the good personality, and the good cash because you have something better. You have a beauty that you couldn't even begin to imagine now. It's uh it you can't lose it, it doesn't require any jars or bottles or you know, secret ingredients. You don't have to work at it. It's guaranteed it's coming, God is going to get you there. Now, we don't have it yet. He's gonna argue that really clearly in chapter 8. It's a hope that's coming, but we've been given a taste of it now. So we've been given a glimpse of it, and there are moments when we can see what that will be like as God transforms us and makes us more into the people he wants us to be. So let me give you just an example, one more example, and then I'll give you time for questions and responses. We talked about going through the test, and how do you how do you know if if this hope is is my hope? Am I really a believer? And I would encourage you, if you don't keep a journal, um, you don't have to keep a journal, but keep kind of a history of what God has done in your life. Are there times when your faith was tested? Um, are there times when you realize, oh my goodness, what kind of a God would ask me to go through this? And write down your thoughts, your feelings, and how you came out of it. Because then when the next test comes along, you have that to go back through and say, I made it through that dark night of the soul. I can trust him to get me through this one. And and they seem to come along kind of repeatedly. One of the first ones I had was I was in college and I didn't realize it at the time, but I had made grades and intelligence my idol, you know, and that was kind of who I was, and I was all wrapped up, and of course I got straight A's, and that was, you know, just kind of expected. And there was a a guy that I knew h in college with me who was Jewish, and he was always coming over and wanting to talk and asking me about Jesus. So I had this huge midterm the next day, and he shows up at my door and says, So tell me, about I forgot what the specific question was, some great theological question, and I thought, I can't do this, I've got to study. And I thought, well, what's the right thing to do here? So I spent hours and hours debating this with him and showing him verses from the Bible and everything. And he left, he didn't convert, and my wonderful efforts, and so I go to my midterm the next day, fully expecting that I'm going to do well because after all I did the right thing, and I blew it. I mean, it was like my mind went blank, I turned in a completely blank blue book. I mean, I was just it was you know, there there was no hope. Now, I was only what like 19 at the time, and it was pretty immature, but for me, I felt like, okay, God, I did my part. Why didn't you do yours? You know, why I did the right thing, so you should have come through and given me the answers to the test. And I was I was so angry at him, I thought, what kind of a God would do this? And after all, being smart was my idol, and Harry was smashing it in my feet to show me that you know there were that there were people smarter than me, and that I didn't have all the answers. And that was, I'd only been a Christian about maybe a year and a half at that point, and that was one of the first times where I had to come face to face with God is not a tame lion, God is not someone who will always do what you expect. And for me, it was a very emotional well, am I going to get through this? Am I gonna follow God? And I had to come to the point where, yes, I will trust God even if he takes away all my my idols. And that um that Jewish boy never did convert. I don't think he has to this day. And I realized later the only reason he was coming to talk to me was because he had a crush on me and he was just trying to establish a relationship. So by the end of the year I learned to say, you know, if you have questions, go talk to Randy, who's another Christian that we knew, said he can help you, um, because he had ulterior motives. But that was kind of the first crisis, and that may seem you know, that may seem silly, but we never know what will be the test of faith for someone. My daughter attributes her becoming a Christian to the fact that when she was in fifth grade our cat ran away and she didn't know if she could trust God, if he was really gonna take her cat away. And that was her, oh no, is this something I believe or my my parents believe? Is this true or not true moment and she uh it came through that, it was about two weeks of struggling and crying, where was our cat? And it ended that as a Christian, and then our cat came back, or just locked up to the front door one day. Don't know where she was. So you never know what God is gonna use. We think, oh, it must be, you know, say great financial crisis or health crisis or deaths or tragedies, but it could be failing a test, it could be um something simple or some frustration that God can use to say, are you gonna let me be God or are you gonna be God? And if you remember those and you write those down and you keep track, you know, this is what I struggled with and I came through, then when the next big test comes along, you can say, I made it through that. And now I know that the believer's hope is my hope and it's coming. God has already shown this much love to me, so now that I'm his child adopted into his family, I can trust that he will get me through tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, or whatever it is, whether it's, you know, if you're a lot of people I know that are not married and want to be married, or they're married and they think they married the wrong person, or they want kids, or they don't want kids, or they don't like the kids they have, or they're you know, there's always something of how can God make me do that? Um trust him, he's he loves you enough to get you to the finish line, to get you to your inheritance. So let me pray and then give you some time for questions. Father, we just thank you that you are a God who loves us, and that right at the point we were sinners, ungodly, helpless, trapped in our sins, that you stepped down off the throne of heaven to die a painful death on our behalf. We pray that you would write that into our hearts to make us people who trust you, who look to you for faith and righteousness, and can rejoice with a joy we can't even begin to explain, knowing how much you loved us and where you're taking us and what an inheritance you have in store for us. We pray that as we go through our days, that would be a uh not just a theological truth we hold, but the very fabric of our being that gets us through each step and each each uh boring day or each tragic day, and that we could share that love with others and they would see it and be drawn to in Jesus' name. Amen.