Romans chapter 5 first five verses from New King James it says therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in Hope of the glory of God and not only that but we also glory in Tribulation knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us let's
pause there and pray father God it is good to be in your house today to give thanks for who you are and for your word now as we study this passage together we pray God you'd speak to our hearts especially those who just need an extra measure of your hope today we thank you for these verses that remind us of Our Hope in you and so we commit our Bible study to you Lord do your good work in all of our hearts now we we pray these things in Jesus name and everybody said amen Paul
starts out here in this passage of Romans chapter 5 talking about having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ everybody wants peace you know I I've never met a person that really would rather have the opposite you know give me some anxiety give me some fear that's what I would prefer no all of us want peace and the fact is there are a lot of people who live without it there are a lot of people who struggle with anxiety who struggle with fear and um and you know I understand sometimes in the short term
medication might even be helpful with with some of that but in the long term in the long term the only way that you are really going to have abiding peace in your life is if you are at peace with God and when you are at peace with God then you have peace peace with yourself and peace with others but it will not happen until and unless you have peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ and the first thing that Paul writes about here in verse one is to tell us that we have that peace
because we've been justified by faith notice that word Justified now we've been talking about how the book of Romans sometimes reads like a law book and there's some big terms and last week we defined the word justification but I'm going to throw it up on the screens again just so we can know what this means to say that we're justified by faith justification is a formal acquittal by God whereby he pronounces a sinner to be righteous because of that Sinner's faith in Christ and and and an easy way to remember the word Justified is if
you break down the word very simple way to remember what does this mean because uh 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this that God made him who knew no sin meaning Jesus to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ now what does that mean it means that God because of his love for us sent his son Jesus when we put our faith and trust in him our sins and the punishment that we deserve are transferred to Jesus on the cross and the righteousness of Jesus is imputed to us so
that when God looks at us because of our faith in Jesus he sees us in the righteousness of his son and it's here it comes it's just as ified never sinned Justified that's an easy way to remember the word because in Christ his righteousness has been imputed to me so when God looks at me it's in that sense just as if I'd never sinned he sees us in the righteousness of his son that's justification and Paul says here that justified in by faith in Christ is what brings us peace with God but this is important
and for you notet takers you can jot this down but being at peace with God does not imply the absence of suffering because that's the rest of what he's going to talk about here so I'll say it again being at peace with God does not imply the absence of suffering the presence of Peace does not mean the absence of suffering and this is what Paul means in verse three when he starts talking here about tribulations tribulations is the word used there in verse three now again I'm reading new King James if you have an ESV
or an NIV it translates it uh even even more strongly and uses the word sufferings that's what he's talking about he's talking about the sufferings that we will sometimes experience in this world because we live in the world listen to me this a sin-free life does not mean a Carefree life and by sin-free I I'm not implying that Christians no longer sin you know when we're redeemed because of our faith in Jesus we are forgiven but we will still be tempted and we will still at times sin thank God we can go to him because
we have an advocate who freely forgives us of our sins but when I say sin free it just means look Christians are not sinless but Christians because you want to honor God and show your love for Jesus should sin less everybody understand that and that's the big distinction here Jesus even said in John 14:15 if you love me you will obey my Commandments the way we show our love for Christ is because we sin less but it doesn't mean we're sinless so when I say a sin-free life doesn't mean a Carefree life that's what I'm
talking about we sin less because we love God and we want to honor him but it does not mean that now all of a sudden we have no struggles and we just live a Carefree life in fact Jesus even links the the two together his peace and the world's tribulation and says guess what we're going to get both in John 16:33 Jesus says these things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace in the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world so he
says in me you will have peace but he says in the world you're going to have tribulation and guess what because we're in Christ Living in the world means we have both his peace and the world's tribulation at the same time and that word tribulation that that Jesus uses there in John 16:33 is the Greek word in the original language the lepsis which is the same word in Romans chapter 5 when Paul talks here in verse three about tribulation he says we're going to have sufferings the peace of God is important we got to get
that first but just because you have the peace of God doesn't mean that it will be absent the sufferings of the world the good news however is that in Christ a relationship with Christ we have been given something we have an advantage that the rest of the world doesn't have and the advantage that we have in Christ is that he has given us something to better manage the pain and the sufferings of this world and it is in a word what Paul uses here also hope we have a hope that the world does not have
and cannot offer us that we can gain in Christ and in those verses I read at the top of our study verses 1-5 the word hope is found three times you can look at it there in your Bibles just circle the first five verses just find it Circle the words hope the three times that appears in the first five uh verses of Romans chapter 5 by the way the word hope appears more in the Book of Romans than any other New Testament book and in fact when you look at proportionally the only book that mentions
hope more than the The Book of Romans is the Book of Psalms well the book of Psalms is 150 chapters so proportionately Romans even has hope mentioned more than any other book in the entire Bible when you look at it proportionally so this is a great word that God wants us to see and understand and Paul writes about here notice in your Bibles there verses 1 and two therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ Christ okay got that through whom also we have access by faith into
this grace in which we stand and rejoice in Hope of the glory of God so there's the first time the word used here in chapter 5 hope that's the hope we're talking about now if you're old enough to remember remember when Obama was running for president and his theme was keep hope alive you know keep hope alive okay the question becomes where does Hope come from from because if I can keep hope alive that implies I can kill hope because you see the world's idea of Hope is it's up to you it's up to you
to get it it's up to you to maintain it it's up to you to keep it and so the burden that the world places on people is that if you want to be hopeful that has to come from within that's on you that's a mental disposition that's a positive attitude that's the thing you got to conjure up somewhere deep within you and that's the best the world has to offer that hope is basically a positive mental attitude but can I tell you that when you're looking here with me at this Bible study together in Romans
when Paul speaks here of Hope whenever you read in the Bible about hope it is not some mental attitude it is a spiritual reality amen and that spiritual reality of hope that we can can gain is through Christ it's knowing the lord it's what he gives us hope is basically a firm Reliance on God it is a firm Reliance on God JB Phillips said it this way he said hope is a happy certainty a happy certainty you know that old Hymn of our faith that many of us have sung over the years my hope is
built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteous Ness I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on jesus' name on Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is sinking sand right our hope is in the Lord and he gives us a measure of his hope and his presence and his calm Assurance the world can't offer that the world's going to just tell you to you know pull yourself up by the bootstraps and you know bring it up from within and just keep hope alive listen this is a spiritual reality that
is available to all through faith in Christ David would write this in Psalm 31:24 be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart all you who hope in the Lord and so Paul says here in Romans 5 Christian Rejoice because you get hope as part of the deal because of your relationship with Christ among all the wonderful benefits that we have in Christ one of the beautiful benefits is you get hope but please notice as he writes here you got to go through some stuff to get there and so again just another simple point
for you taking notes hope is born out of suffering but it is not a direct path hope is born out of suffering but it is not a direct path look in your Bibles at verses 3 and four again verse three says and not only that but we also glory in tribulations some of your translations say we rejoice in sufferings knowing that tribulation or suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope and notice what he says there he's basically saying you can't have hope until you first have character and you won't have character until you
persevere and you're not going to persevere unless you have tribulations and so it's like a stepping stone to hope so what we're going to talk about today is the stepping stone to Hope because it starts with being at peace with God but he says and then it progresses through this these stages of you got suffering you got perseverance you got character and then we get to hope so hope is born out of suffering but it's not a direct path there are some things along the way that we have to learn and understand in order to
really Embrace and and experience the peace of God so we're going to look at those stepping stones and the first one is suffering suffering in order to get to hope we have to I'm going to use this phrase some of you might think that's a weird phrase but listen we have to learn to Suffer Well now what does that mean to Suffer Well how does a person Suffer Well I think one of the best examples in the Bible of somebody who suffered well apart from our Lord is a guy whose very name means persecuted one
in Hebrew his name is pronounced y we would say job and the whole book of Job is a testimony of a man who was faithful to God despite his many sufferings that he endured now I'm not going to make this a Bible study about job but I do want to just highlight four particular things I think that stand out about how he suffered well number one he did not blame God okay please don't get into the blame game church when things happen to you don't blame God it's really easy to go there it's really easy
to you know get mad at God but this is one thing that job shows us that he did well he didn't blame God number two he did not listen to his lame friends who tried to explain his suffering he had some lame friends we all have some lame friends and they're all going to try to explain things to us you know there's just some things that don't need explanation and and you make matters worse when you try to explain it and don't be that lame friend for somebody else okay don't try you know job had
these friends who came around him and said well you know job you know the reason why you're suff uff is probably there sin in your life and there probably this and that and they're they're all pontificating trying to explain job's suffering they needed to keep their mouth shut is what they needed to do and and God even at the end of the book of of job corrects them and basically says those friends didn't know what they were talking about cuz cuz we don't necessarily have the perspective of course that God has and so we you
know sometimes we make up things and we try to rationalize things and and some stuff just you know don't need to be explained some things don't need to explain and so and and job didn't listen to to his friends who tried to explain his suffering number three job acknowledged that man is limited in his understanding I I again quoting JB Phillips I think he was the one who said if God were big enough for me to understand he wouldn't be uh big enough for me to worship sorry if God weren't weren't uh if God were
small enough for me to understand he wouldn't be big enough for me to worship you know there is at a point we have to realize God is God we're not we have limited understanding there are some things this side of Heaven that will not make sense we have limited understanding there are things right now going on in your life you're like this does not make sense and it's okay to acknowledge it doesn't make sense God his understanding is greater than ours and This Side of Heaven we may never understand certain things that happen and and
job just released that he's like I I have limited understanding God had to kind of discipline him to get him to realize okay I have limited understanding but he came to that place where he realized you're God I'm not and number four job learned that you can't control what is uncontrollable Something's Happened and and it's nobody's fault some of you been blaming yourself for too long for something that you shouldn't be blaming yourself about there are things that are that happen that are beyond our control you you suffer through it nevertheless but there are just
some things that happen that are beyond our control so what did job do he pressed into God he's like Lord you all you're all I have and he made bold declarations to put his faith into practice and in the middle of the Book of Job in job 19: 25- 27 listen to what job says in the midst of his suffering he says this I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the Earth and after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God I myself
will see him with my own eyes I and not another how my heart yearns within me he's like nobody's going to see God on my behalf I and not another means I'm going to see him myself cuz all of all the things that are happening in my life and all these things that are that are miserable and terrible and all the suffering there's one thing I'm holding on to one day I'm going to see the Lord and he's going to stand before me because I know that my redeemer lives and my my hope is in
him and so he presses into the Lord cuz see when when we are suffering if you want to Suffer Well it really depends on your response to the situation how you react to the situation consider this um when you have a a pot of boiling water and you take an egg and a potato and you put both of those into the same pot of boiling water the same circumstances result in two opposite responses the egg gets harder the potato gets softer people are the same I've seen people who are suffering the exact same thing they
are subject to the exact same environment situation and some people get hardened like an egg they get angry at God they get callous and other people same situation become very tender they become humble they become broken why is that it's because of how you respond to them it's how you react to it and Spurgeon said it this way he said the same Sun that melts the wax hardens the clay the same Sun but two responses the wax melts the clay gets harder and so the response is up to us our response is our responsibility and
when faced with suffering and look in saying this I'm I'm not not saying it's easy I'm not I'm not you know shaming anybody that's been through difficulties I'm just saying this on behalf of all of us when faced with suffering we have a choice we can either allow the suffering to Humble us and to tenderize us or we can get angry with God and become hard-hearted and that's that's up to us if we are to Suffer Well you see it leads to the the next thing suffering produces perseverance suffering produces perseverance and if number two
on the list if if suffering is about pressing into to the Lord then perseverance is about pressing on with the Lord perseverance is the decision every day you get up and and you're going to say not today Satan it's getting up every day and still still going on it's still trusting it's still praying it's still leaning on Jesus no matter what things might look like it's like Lord in the morning so hard to just when you're facing something difficult to just press on but it's a decision I'm just going to keep going I'm going to
keep trusting I'm going to keep praying I'm going to keep leaning on Jesus no matter what things look like listen to what James said in his epistle James 1 2:4 he said consider it pure joy my brothers whenever you face Trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance this is what comes out of Trials perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete not lacking anything now now James starts what I just read There by saying consider it pure joy whenever you face Trials of
many kinds what what do you mean consider pure joy I mean are you supposed to dance you supposed to throw a party when you're going through some kind of suffering no listen Albert Barn said it this way he said consider it pure joy means we are not to consider it as a punishment a curse or a Calamity there are a lot of people who don't persevere because they think that what they're going through is God's punishment and Satan wants you to believe that because if Satan can derail you and cause you to give up then
you'll never really experience the hope that God has for you so he wants you to just always be under shame always under a cloud of guilt this is probably my fault and God's probably punishing me and and and God took my child because of that one mistake I made years ago I mean all these kind of things that start to impact our hearts and we have to stop that because the enemy loves to play games with their head and make us think that you don't need to persevere because this is all your fault anyway perseverance
is recognizing and considering it pure joy means this is not the result of a bad God this is the result of a fallen world and in fact God is good and he's going to see me through this that's considering it pure joy and persevering and pressing on because God will never leave me nor forsake me that's where the joy comes in and James will later add further in James 1:12 he says bless is the man who perseveres under trial because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has
promised to those who love him so sometimes God has to take us through the desert to strengthen our faith perseverance then produces number three character on our way to Hope is character the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden probably said it best when he said this quote worry more about your character than your reputation character is who you are reputation is merely who others think you are end quote in other words who you are when no one else is looking that's character they're actually very few times in the Bible when the word character is used
and that's because the Bible focuses more on the qualities of character instead of the word character itself qualities like humility qualities like honesty Integrity sincerity those are the qualities the Bible challenges us about and they result in us having character but it's those qualities we need to grow in perseverance produces character because we gain those qualities as stuff is purged out of our Lives that's how character is built suffering has a natural tendency to expose stuff in our hearts that either we didn't know was there or didn't want to acknowledge was there anybody relate to
what I'm saying when you go through something difficult it it exposes stuff I know that's true in my life suffering or difficulties or something that you go through ends up exposing stuff that you're like I didn't even know this was here or you knew it was there but you didn't want to acknowledge it but the suffering part and persevering through it forces you to have to deal with it now in fact the word tribulation in our English language comes from a Latin word tribulum tribulum was a flat board in the Roman Empire that had spikes
on it and they would attach the flat board that had spikes underneath they'd attach it to an animal like an ox or a horse and they would drag it across a field to separate the wheat from the chaff if you've ever been to a a professional baseball game and they and they often have those I don't even know what they're called but it but you see the field workers out before the game and they they're dragging this kind of a mesh screen like thing that's probably I don't know 6 ft wide or whatever and they
drag it through the infield uh the dirt over the infield and it separates like the little Pebbles and makes the dirt smooth and looks really nice and then they hose it down and everything well a tribulum is kind of like that mesh that they drag across the dirt of the infield the tribulum though has the spikes but dragging it across the grain separates the wheat from the chaff that's what tribulation does it starts to separate the junk the chaff of our lives and exposes stuff and separates it from what is right from the things that
are wrong in our hearts the things that are good from the things that are bad and then when we persevere and we deal with those things it's like a refining work and character is developed through suffering you look in the Bible you look at different people who experience suffering you can see their character can't you I mean was a man of character because of his suffering Ruth in fact in the NIV it says Ruth was a woman of noble character because she suffered much and yet she persevered Paul was a man of character who suffered
much Jesus of course suffered much and showed Great Character why because all of them persevered they persevered they kept going and finally it produces hope hope is one of the most critical things in life there are a lot of people in our world without it people in despair people feeling lost suicidal people dealing with grief or a broken heart or physical pain I mean you name it there are a lot of people in this world who suffer in silence you can't always spot them they often look just like you and me they don't they don't
always let on about just how deep beneath the surface things are brewing and they have no hope what makes God's hope so special and unique is that it comes out of his love for us and that's the last verse in our text verse 5 notice in your Bibles verse 5 now hope does not disappoint why because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us God's love poured out into our hearts the reason we have hope is is because God so loves us and he
has poured out his love into our hearts there there are a couple times in the book of Ephesians that Paul breaks out into a prayer and one of those prayers is in Ephesians chapter 3 and he says I pray that you would know how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of God and to know this love that surpasses knowledge now that seems like a contradiction how can you know something that surpasses knowledge in other words that it would be so experential that you wouldn't even be able to rationally
explain it but yet you know it and experience it because the love of God and the depth of his love that you would know this love that surpasses knowledge that you might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God that's God's love do you know how much he loves you because he has poured out his love and that love is what gives us such great hope there's a confident expectation that God's got this because God's Got Me God's got you the reason you can be at Hope is because you know the Lord
and because you can remind yourself God's got this cuz he's got me and near the end of this book of Romans if you glance ahead to chapter 15 I want to close with this verse as our prayer and then we're actually going to sing today but Romans 15: 13 I want you to see this prayer with me Romans 15:13 says now may the god of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in Hope by the power of the holy spirit it's Romans 15:13 now I want to encourage you
like underline that verse go home during the week pray over that verse meditate on it and ask the Lord to allow his hope to abound in your life because of what Jesus has done now late last night I texted Pastor Ben I said Ben I said um the worship team's going to come right now I I said uh I got this song I think we need to sing and uh so they rapidly put it together this morning it's a song we've sung often hope has a name and I just felt the Lord was saying to
me last night you know normally I close every service with prayer and on a on a teaching like this I would probably specifically want to pray for those who just need an extra measure of Hope but late last night I just felt the Lord speak to my heart saying I want everybody to declare My Hope in the house of the Lord and for you to sing it out and in that way God will minister is hope to you and so I'm going to ask all of us to stand let's all stand and we're going to
sing this song together hope has a name and I just want to encourage you if you're feeling low on hope today sing even louder no seriously sing even louder and if you feel the Liberty Lift Your Hands as we're singing a song cuz I want us in the house of the Lord to declare that hope does have a name his name is Jesus and may his hope invade us may it ound over us because that's what his word tells us may we receive it today as we worship him as we give praise to him so
come on Church Steph's going to lead us let's just [Music] worship there is a song I know it well a Melo that's never failed on mountains high in valleys low my soul will rest my confidence in you alone CU hope has a name his name is Jesus my savior's cross has set the sin free hope has a name his name is Jesus Oh Christ be praised I have [Music] viory come on church sing this Christ undefeated trembl the grave see now the cross we lifted High the light has come the light has one behold the
Christ his hope has a name his name is Jesus my savior's cross has set the S free oh as the name his name is Jesus Oh Christ be praised I have Victory sing it again hope has a his name is Jesus my savior's choss I set the has his name is Jesus Oh Christ be praised I have Theory there'll be a day My Hope complete now home in glory your face I'll seeing my pain no more my fear will cease I bow my life I fix my eyes on Christ my king I bow my life
I fix my eyes oh Christ my king help me fix my eyes on you Lord hope has a name his name is Jesus my savior's cross has set the s has a name his name is Jesus Oh Christ be praised I have victory has the name his name is Jesus the savior Christ I set the S free oh pass name his name is Jesus Oh CH be prised I have Victory chist be prised I have [Music] to [Music] Lord this is our declaration in your house that you are the God of all hope who pours
out your hope abundantly because of Christ who has set us free Lord for those who especially need an extra measure of your hope as we have sung that song in your house I know that you have poured out your hope into our Hearts today so that we can be sent home on our way filled up with the measure of the fullness of God thank you Lord that you give us what the world offers us but cannot deliver you give us your hope in Christ help us to Suffer Well to persevere to be men and women
of character that we might know your hope and his name is Jesus we pray all these things in jesus' name and everybody said amen and amen God bless you all God bless
