Peace and Hope

We're going to be reading from Romans 5, verse 1 to 5.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, character, and character hope.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

At around 11am in May, May 19th 2018, a friend of mine named Christian was over in Western Australia, and he was doing a swim in one of those beautiful gorges, quite a bit inland from Perth.

Anyway, he's walking out of the gorge, and he noticed a brown snake go past him, and it actually had a go at him.

It was quite aggressive.

And he just thought, well, it's obviously missed him.

But this juvenile snake did get Christian on the leg.

And because apparently these small juvenile snakes can't regulate their venom, the snake dumped a full load into him.

And this is what he wrote in his Facebook post.

I looked it up again.

This is Christian writing.

I saw him, the snake, take off again, but didn't think I had been bitten.

Just an amiss.

I kept walking.

Ten minutes later, I got frontal headache.

He's a nurse.

He's a midwife.

He knows what he's talking about.

And he said, I assumed my probes needed more water.

Five minutes later, my chest screwed into a ball.

And I knew at that moment what was happening.

I rushed over to a rock ledge and then lost my vision.

I called out to Chia, his friend, and told him I was going to faint.

And with the last second of cognizance and all the strength I had left, for some reason, I promptly pulled my pants off, then blacked out.

I don't know what happened.

Chia caught me and lowered me down.

Chia called for help while I'm convulsing and vomiting and being of no use.

And then a pair of tourists in inverted commons, he says, just happened to walk past because he was, I guess, pointing people to God for God's sovereignty to protect his life from his Facebook post.

They just happened to walk past and they just happened to have a newly hired sat phone.

I had a moment of clarity, he's coming in and out of consciousness, a moment of clarity and mumbled instructions for the onlookers to pressure bandage my leg, and then apparently passed out again while sweating heavily.

Ambos and rangers came and stayed with me until SES coordinated enough people to carry me out on a stretcher.

There were 60, 60 people involved in carrying him out of the gorge.

His life was saved and this is the guy if you knew that he got married a few years ago and then had a terrible accident, we were praying for him, same guy, he's got an interesting life.

His life was saved because of brown snake antivenin.

As we think of the meaning of life and the jigsaw pieces of truth coming together in the book of Romans, I'm reminded of Genesis 3, where scripture says the seed of the woman, and that's Jesus, the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head, and yet the snake will strike, the seeds heal.

The problem of sin began with the image of the serpent, who is Satan, deceiving humanity.

The serpent's strike is really on every human.

And it's really what we need to overcome, wouldn't you agree?

This idea, metaphorically speaking, that the serpent, Satan, has struck the human heel.

We need an antidote for sin and the deception of the evil one.

And this is what Paul has been unpacking through the first four chapters of Romans.

Sin is a profound problem.

It began with the snake.

But it has spread throughout all of humanity.

And sin, which requires judgment, is the problem which faces us all.

It really is.

Christ has paid for our sin on the cross, through His blood shed once and for all.

And faith, as we've heard already today, faith in His finished work, which involves repentance, is what is required to receive forgiveness and salvation.

And if you've been reading Romans, this is something we have been hearing again and again.

We're saved by grace through faith.

Amen.

That's the gospel.

Saved by grace through faith.

This is chapters 1 to 4 of Romans.

And then we come to chapter 5 and Paul writes what we see him writing every now and then.

Therefore, and we always know what you say when there's a therefore.

Why is the therefor therefor?

It's there to link the four chapters, the first four chapters with the beginning of chapter 5.

Since faith in Christ has saved us, what does this achieve?

Since therefore, since the first four chapters are true, and we looked last week at saved by faith alone, really, faith alone, not with any added extras, any spiritual action, any religious works, faith alone.

Well, what does that achieve?

I think this is what Paul is unpacking.

What does faith in Christ do for us?

Like the antivenin.

Is faith an antidote for anything harmful that we may experience as human beings?

Isn't the answer?

Yes, absolutely.

And let me work through some of these in these five verses.

By faith, firstly, we receive justification, which is an antidote for guilt.

Through faith, we receive justification, the antidote to guilt.

And the scripture says, therefore, since we have been justified through faith, do you remember what justification is?

It is that judicial gavel, the hammer coming down saying, not guilty.

When we put our faith in Christ, though we are guilty, we have all sinned.

By faith in Christ, we are told the gospel tells us that the Father sees that faith, sees what Christ has done on our behalf, and he says, not guilty, you are justified.

And whenever I look at the word justification, I think of, I've only been to court a couple of times with people as a pastor.

One time was many years ago, when I was in my 20s and I went as a young pastor, with a guy who had been a troublesome young man, and he had assaulted a police officer again, and we were driving in to, in town, into court.

And I remember saying to him, what's going to happen if you're found guilty?

And he said, I go to jail, which was quite confronting for me as a young man.

I thought, really?

And he said, yep, don't pass go.

I remember he said that.

Don't pass go straight to jail.

And so we were there in the court, and there was some discussion and words from the judge.

And then sort of out of the blue, he said, Mr.

So-and-so, I sentence you to the rising of the court.

And as I looked that up again, that doesn't seem like a very common thing a judge says.

But in essence, it's basically not guilty.

Not quite, but it's pretty much not guilty.

Because the man I was with said, what does that mean?

And he said, you may leave, but do not squander this mercy.

You may leave.

This is what has happened, when you think of last week, when we are fully persuaded as Abraham was.

When we are fully persuaded that Christ has died for our sins, Scripture says, we have been justified through faith.

Justified means just as if I have never sinned and declared not guilty.

Of course, justification, it doesn't mean that much for any of us.

If we don't think we're guilty, would you agree?

If there's no sense of guilt, it's like, oh, well, that's nice, but whatever.

And that makes me think of an appropriate response to Jesus.

And we find that in Luke 19 with Zacchaeus.

Do you remember Zacchaeus, the tax collector?

He was a chief tax collector.

They used to have tax collectors that would be on the entry points to cities and towns in the first century, and they were collecting taxes for Rome.

But the chief tax collectors would take a commission from the various franchise outlets.

So, the chief tax collectors were known for fairly unscrupulous practices.

And Zacchaeus, a somewhat hated individual, he puts his faith in Christ, but he is aware that he is a guilty man.

And in Luke 19 verse 8, Zacchaeus says, Lord, here and now, I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount through faith.

We receive justification.

The guilt is paid for.

What then happens from us should normally be the natural response of gratitude and generosity.

And that's what Zacchaeus did.

It's the antidote to guilt, justification through faith.

Therefore, since we've been justified, Paul writes, through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul has clearly communicated to the church in Rome that without Christ, God the Father is not at all pleased with us.

That's hard for us to really take on board.

I think we all want to say God loves everybody.

And that's actually the truth, isn't it?

John 3.16 says he loved the world so much that he sent his son to die for the world.

And yet we're holding this intention, as we always are doing in the Book of Romans, with Romans 1.18, which tells us the wrath of God is being revealed against all the ungodliness because God's not happy with it.

God's not happy with sin.

Without grace through faith, there is enmity.

We are enemies of God.

I remember my old youth pastor way back in the 90s or the late 80s.

He used to say, we are enemies of God without Christ.

And he used to describe it as the old Western, where anyone remember the Westerns with the double ammo and the two guns, the gunslinger?

He used to talk, that's what we're like.

We come to God like that.

That's not a good thing to do to the Lord.

But we are enemies in our hearts.

There is enmity between the Father and us.

But through faith in Christ, we are given access, hope and forgiveness to the Father.

And that means we are at peace.

That's what faith does.

I don't know if many of us have actually been to war in this room.

I can't remember if I've spoken to anyone who was a veteran.

I'm sorry if I can't remember, but I haven't.

I haven't been at war as a soldier.

But we can only imagine the relief, can't we, to know peace has been declared.

Lay down our guns.

It's over.

We are at peace.

When we put our faith in Christ, we take off the ammo.

We're not enemies of God.

We don't have to be afraid of Him.

Peace is the antidote to enmity.

Paul says, through faith, it's not without effect, this faith.

We receive justification, the antidote to guilt.

We access peace, the antidote to enmity, and we stand in grace, the antidote to shame.

We have peace with God, Paul writes, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

I found it interesting looking up the Greek for the word into.

I thought, what does that mean?

And it just means into.

It's like, we go in.

Inveloped, enveloped, covered over.

And that immediately, when I thought, so we stand in grace, have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

Think about that.

It's a beautiful phrase.

I thought of Leanne and I a few years ago being in London for the first time walking in St.

Paul's Cathedral and walking down the aisle into the Grand Dome.

Who's been there?

The Grand Dome.

And I just remember, it was our first thing we did when we went on this trip to Europe.

The first day we went for a walk up the river and went to St.

Paul's.

And I remember doing this.

I was so in awe of that dome.

It was just glorious.

It was majestic.

And I think of that when I think of stand in grace, because that's what we're doing.

The grace of God is so majestic.

But it's weird because we're standing and it feels that we should be kneeling in the grace of God.

But Paul says we stand.

And I think we stand because we're clothed in whose righteousness?

Christ, the Son of God, who's perfect.

And we stand there as oddly as it sounds in the presence of God with our chin up and our shoulders back.

We stand in the grace of God.

What a wonderful picture.

It's the antidote to shame because we should feel shame.

But there is no shame for us in Christ.

Hallelujah.

The shame is gone.

So don't let that shame be there.

What does faith produce?

It removes our shame by the grace of God.

We are enveloped in it.

We receive justification.

This is what faith does for us.

The antidote to guilt, peace, the antidote to enmity, grace, the antidote to shame, and we boast in glory.

The antidote to pride.

We boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Does anyone remember Louis Giglio?

It's not as though he's left us.

He's still around.

But when he came to a prominence in the world as a Christian leader, it was probably 20 something years ago, and he was running a record label.

It was very successful.

So he was a record producer and a musician.

But what made his name known, I guess, around the world, is he felt led with a group of people like Matt Redman and Chris Tomlin, some of the singers that have written songs we sing, to go around in a year, all the states of America and ask college students to gather for what they called one day.

One day was a gathering for revival.

One day was this gathering of repentance before the Lord to seek His face.

And it happened.

They gathered on this one day.

And there was one scripture that they gathered around, and it was Isaiah 26 verse 8, We wait for you, your name and your renown are the desire of our hearts.

God's name and renown was the desire of their hearts.

This is the essence of what Paul is saying here in Romans 5.

We boast in the hope of the glory of God.

We boast in our God.

Because there's no one else we could boast in that would be more deserving of glory than the God who has created us and saved us in Jesus.

So intrinsic to Christianity, so central to following Jesus, so essential to discipleship, so significant to freeing us from the talons of pride is simply a passion for the glory of God.

Amen.

Paul boasts in it.

He boasts in what God has done in and through Jesus.

He revels in telling anyone how amazing his God is, what his God is like, what his God will do in the future.

What does faith in Christ do to you?

It turns you into a person who lives for the glory and acclaim of your Father in heaven.

When a person receives by grace the antidote for guilt, the antidote for enmity, the antidote for shame, such a person lives for the renown of the name of the one who did it all for them.

When we live for God, it's much harder to live for ourselves.

Would you agree?

When it's like, I'm here for you God.

May this be about you.

Like John the Baptist said, may I become less that he might become greater.

When we have that attitude, we are in the best place we can possibly be to deal with pride.

Guilt, enmity, shame, pride.

Paul says, we boast same word.

It's often translated a different word, but we boast in the hope of the glory of God, and we boast in suffering.

We boast in transformation, I want to suggest, the antidote to suffering.

Because suffering is not an end in itself, it's a means to an end.

Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.

God uses suffering to transform his people into the likeness of Jesus, doesn't he?

Paul explains to the Romans, life following Jesus will involve suffering.

And as you keep trusting, and keep serving, and keep believing that God is good, God will grant you the ability to persevere under suffering by his grace.

Suffering which leads to perseverance produces in a person something very special, character.

Do you remember what character is?

Proof.

That's what it means.

Suffering, perseverance produces the proof of character that you are legitimate, that you belong to God, you belong to Jesus.

It's what's always to be expected that followers of Jesus will suffer.

And in this place of finding character, we ultimately become stronger, and we find an unanxious presence in the Lord, grounded in humility, and we find a confident hope.

Paul says, suffering produces perseverance, which produces proof of character, which produces a rock-solid hope.

All of this is transformative in a person's life.

You become a different person.

That's what happens.

That's what faith does.

It's the fruit of Christian belief.

It's the antidote to the problem of suffering, that we're being changed through it.

And finally, Paul says, we bask in God's glory, which I think is the antidote to insecurity.

Hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

New life in Christ is a new identity.

So much of our lives is spent, wouldn't you agree, fashioning the facade, managing the mask, shaping our presentation to the world, so that people will perceive us the right way.

Paul is saying, the changes that happen in a person through faith, through knowing Christ, they make us secure, as we bask in being bathed in the love of God.

The other versions say, God's love is shed abroad in our hearts through faith.

I think of God's love in this last part of the verse, like that hot blanket.

Anyone enjoy?

It's not nice to be in hospital, but when you're in hospital and you say, could I have a hot blanket?

And they give you that hot blanket.

That's basking in the love of God, I think.

It's going to be okay.

We've come through.

We're basking in His love.

It's the antidote to insecurity.

Jesus taught so much, didn't He, when He walked the earth, but one of His parables, an insight into one of the mysteries we deal with, is found in Luke 15, and many of us remember it, don't we?

The insight that we were given from the parable of the lost son.

The son takes his inheritance early and acts in ways that fill him with guilt.

He feels far from his father and he feels the enmity with his father because of his shame.

He took the inheritance early out of pride and arrogance, and then he found himself in great suffering and completely insecure.

And out of that place of immense vulnerability, the lost son came home and reached out to his father for mercy.

And the text says, while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him, and he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and against you, and I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Bring the fattened calf and kill it.

Let's have a feast and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

That's love.

That's the love the father has available for us today.

Absolutely, a love that envelops us and that we can bask in, in gratitude.

Do you know the father's love?

Online, do you know the father's love?

It is the antidote to insecurity, because deep down we wonder, am I loved?

Can I be loved?

And I want to say, yes, in the name of Jesus, you are loved.

And so am I.

And it's been demonstrated through what Jesus has done for us on the cross and in rising again from the dead.

Nothing greater could ever be done than this.

And he has done it.

Through faith, we receive justification, the antidote to guilt.

We access peace, the antidote to enmity.

We stand in grace, the antidote to shame.

We boast in glory, the antidote to pride.

We boast in transformation, the antidote to suffering.

We bask in God's love, the antidote to insecurity, guilt, enmity, shame, pride, suffering and insecurity.

They're all part of the fall of humanity, aren't they?

It's all part of what the sin of disobedience accomplished in the garden.

It's all part of the effect of that snake bite on the heel.

But one has come who has crushed the serpent's head.

Hallelujah.

And his name is Jesus.

And Jesus is the antidote to guilt, enmity, shame, pride, suffering and insecurity.

So may you, by faith, live freely and joyfully in the knowledge that you are justified, declared not guilty.

You are at peace with God today if you have faith in Christ.

And you and I, we stand in His grace, and we boast in His glory and the transforming work He is doing in our lives.

May we bask in His love, in Jesus' name, all the people said, amen.

Thanks so much to the band.

They're going to come and lead us in a couple of songs.

As they do, let me pray.

Lord Jesus, would you seek and save those who need to come to know you today?

Those who need to take off the ammo, drop the gun, and fall to their knees, and repent.

Would you seek and save?

For your glory.

Would you know which ones of us have been struggling with guilt and shame and pride?

And a sense of enmity with you.

Lord Holy Spirit, would you guide us back into grace today?

We rejoice, Lord God, in the truth of what our response of faith does for us.

We know it's all by grace, but we just want to celebrate.

Thank you that it's so extraordinarily impacting on our lives to put faith in Christ.

May we continue to boast in the hope of the glory of God, in Jesus' name, amen.

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