Our scripture reading for this morning will come from Romans chapter 5, verses 1-5.
! If you don't have a Bible, it will be up on the screens.
There are also some Bibles in the back if you want to grab a hard copy.
I didn't write down what page it's on, but Romans chapter 5, verses 1-5.
Romans chapter 5, verses 1-5.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through Him we also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but 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,
because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us.
This is the reading of God's Word.
We are talking today about hope.
And I just think that song captures so much.
The psalmist that wrote that was capturing so much of our condition of so many times a situation feels like,
God is not even there.
Has He hidden His face from me?
And we just recall to mind who God is and what He's done for us.
And that gives us hope.
Today we're talking about hope.
So we're taking a break again from Ephesians.
Next week, Corey will be back, and we'll be picking back up in chapter 5.
But today we'll be discussing, really, this passage.
As I was trying to think about what to preach on,
I've been reading a book called The Hiding Place,
which is the biography of Corrie Ten Boom, if any of you familiar with that.
And just the hope in the midst of suffering in that book,
along with just some other things.
So I work with uni students,
and you may have heard some statistics about how mental health in uni students,
where they are today.
And there's a statistic that would say that over 40% of Gen Z battle with depression
and feelings of hopelessness.
Over 40%.
And so these things are just on my mind a lot.
And this passage in Romans chapter 5 has actually just been a big personal help to me
in times when I feel like I need hope.
There is actually a global foundation that has been tracking hope,
what they would call the Hope Index.
Since 2014, it was a global project, and then it included studies here in the UK.
It assessed various dimensions of hope, like expectations for a better future,
one's ability to, or perceived ability to achieve that future,
and the motivation to overcome challenges.
Then COVID happened, and newer studies started happening based in the UK.
There's a company called 5654 and Company
that started publishing statistics in 2022 on the Hope Index.
And again, it started really with COVID as they were trying to measure where people are.
And all this is found in the Office for National Statistics here in the UK.
These newer studies that began in the UK,
they suggested that fluctuations in hopelessness were influenced by factors like economic conditions,
political developments, and societal changes.
So coming out of COVID, the numbers were like below 40% of people felt hopeful for the future.
And today that number is closer to 66%.
It's a massive jump in just a few years.
And one of the things I think this tells us is just as human beings,
we view hope in light of our circumstances.
If things are going well, we're more hopeful.
If things are going bad, we feel less hope.
But that's not the biblical view of hope and what Jesus has for us.
So we come to this passage in Romans chapter 5,
where we're talking about, Paul is talking about sufferings.
And look what he says in verse 3.
He says,
But we rejoice in our sufferings.
Rejoice in our sufferings.
This is one of those times where you're like,
Paul, have you lost your mind?
What do you mean rejoice in your sufferings?
Now, my wife and daughter will tell you that I'm prone to hyperbole.
Okay?
And a lot of ministers, we'll just call it out,
we can be prone to hyperbole.
Dramatic effect sometimes.
Sometimes it's just, that's what we're feeling and thinking,
is this what Paul's doing?
Saying, like, he's just being super spiritual and saying,
we rejoice in our sufferings?
To be quite honest, this sounds like something someone would say who hasn't suffered.
You know what I'm saying?
Are you out of your mind?
But we know Paul is one of those people that suffered a ton.
I mean, in fact, he has different places in Scripture
where he talks about some of the suffering he's gone through.
And one time he casually just throws in there being shipwrecked.
Doesn't say much about it, but just shipwrecked.
And I was thinking about that.
Do you know how scary that would be to be shipwrecked?
Shipwrecked?
Back in those days, there's no Coast Guard.
There's no radar.
People aren't coming to help you.
Shipwrecked.
I mean, he faced anything from physical suffering
to emotional suffering with planting the churches
and trying to be a minister.
This is a man who knew suffering extremely well.
And he's saying that we rejoice in suffering.
That word rejoice,
some of you may have translations of your Bible
that actually translates the word to boast.
We boast in our sufferings.
Now, that seems like a weird word.
It kind of has a negative connotation.
And our vocabulary to boast is like to highlight one's successes.
Right?
But in a sense, what Paul is saying
is that suffering can highlight what God is doing in our lives.
It puts a spotlight on different things
where God is going to say,
I am there, I am with you, and I am working.
For those who are in Christ,
it is not to our shame that we're suffering.
But instead, it is a place that God walks with us
through these things.
So he says,
We rejoice in sufferings.
When we suffer, we know that God is up to something
and that we are assured it is for our good.
And then he goes on to explain what he means.
But we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance.
Okay.
Suffering produces endurance.
All right.
Endurance.
It means a patient steadfastness.
We might even describe it as someone that's solid.
He's really solid.
Or she's really solid.
Meaning they're not just blown and tossed by the wind.
It's a steady ability to persevere through the storms.
A few Sunday nights ago,
we talked about give us this day our daily bread
and how that can even be a little bit of like coming to God
and just saying,
Give me exactly what I need to make it through today.
That's when we do that day after day after day
through suffering,
it produces this perseverance and endurance
that provides a steadfastness to our lives.
I mean, even the world would say something like,
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Right?
I mean, so even some general wisdom,
kind of,
we can see this a little bit,
that through suffering,
I learn to endure.
I learn to persevere.
It's like, okay,
I've seen that to be true.
I'm listening, Paul.
Maybe you're not crazy.
Suffering produces endurance.
And then he goes on to say,
And endurance produces character.
This word character is a really interested word
that it basically means that you've been tested
and approved to be true.
It's this idea,
the same concept of the refiner's fire
where metal is heated up
and the impurities are taken away
so that what's left is more pure.
That's the same idea here.
Something that is tested and approved.
So he says,
As we endure,
character is built.
As I endure,
I become a deeper,
weightier person.
As I endure,
there's more substance to me.
A person of character.
It's like, okay,
this is making a little sense.
As we endure,
it produces a maturity.
A person of substance and weightiness.
And then he says,
And character produces hope.
As I grow and mature,
I learn to hope.
Now this word hope has the idea
of a confident expectation.
It's not like wishful thinking,
but this is a confident expectation.
Now one of the things that we can be tempted to do
is we can be tempted to look at our lives
and say,
All right,
suffering is not going away.
This problem hasn't necessarily gone away.
I'm not promised that it will go away.
So how can I have a confident expectation
if I can't be assured that the problem will go away?
Well, hope says that we know there is a future
that God is working for our good.
A confident expectation,
not a wishful thinking.
And one of the things that we also,
like as I was studying this passage,
every commentator that I read,
every sermon that I listened to,
everyone agreed that Paul is not talking about
the hope of heaven
or the hope of when Jesus comes back.
That is certainly true.
But he's talking about hope now.
He's talking about that now in Christ,
having been declared righteous,
it says in verse 1,
justified by faith,
we have peace with God
and access into this grace in which we stand.
It's talking about now.
We have hope now.
No matter how hard life is,
no matter how great the suffering is,
we have hope now.
All right.
Many of you have faced suffering before
and you're like,
all right, time out.
Stop right there.
I have learned that the more I hope,
the more disappointed I'm going to be.
So I've learned,
this is the quote we say,
I'm not going to get my hopes up.
Right?
I'm not going to get my hopes up.
We put this self-protection on
where it's like,
yeah, if I just,
if I'm hope,
hoping is kind of like for those people
that want to bury their head in the sand
and avoid reality.
And we start letting that dictate the way
that we view truth.
But look at the next verse.
It says,
a character produces hope.
And then Paul says,
and hope does not put us to shame.
One translation says it does not disappoint.
You could also translate it as,
hoping does not dishonor us
or disgrace us.
In other words,
we're not going to look like a fool by hoping.
That's a promise that Paul is giving us here.
We don't have to be afraid to hope.
We don't have to worry about getting our hopes up
because they're just going to be dashed.
Nothing's ever going to happen the way
I think it should happen.
We start letting our experiences dictate
what we believe is true and not.
But this passage tells us
that we don't have to be afraid to hope.
We don't have to hedge our bets.
We don't have to try to minimize losses
and disappointments by self-protection.
That is not what God teaches us.
How?
How does hope not put us to shame?
How do we,
how is like hoping,
really hoping,
deep down hoping,
not going to make me look a fool,
not feel like an idiot?
Why was I believing that would happen?
How can we believe this?
Look at verse 5.
And hope does not put us to shame
because God's love
has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit
who has been given to us.
Because God has poured His love
into our hearts
by, through the Holy Spirit,
we don't have to be afraid to hope.
When it talks about God's love here,
it's talking about
the knowledge of God's love for us.
We know God loves us,
therefore we can have hope.
This word poured out,
the good old King James version
says shed abroad.
It's this idea of love being gushed out,
poured out liberally.
It's one of the things that
a lot of commentators
really put their finger on
and says,
this is not just little sprinkles of love here,
but this is an inundation
of God's love for us.
God has poured out His love
into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit.
This word here
about God's love being poured out
through the Holy Spirit
is the same word used
in Acts chapter 2
when it talks about
the Holy Spirit
being poured out on the church.
This incredible pouring out
and gushing out
inundation of God's love for us.
That is what we can experience
in our hearts
when we recognize
who God is
and what He has done for us.
The Holy Spirit
helps us to experience
God's love for us.
That everything the Bible says
about God's love toward us
is true.
So if we're walking
with the Lord
and walking in the Spirit,
God's love for us,
that knowledge,
will just be poured out
into our hearts
and we will understand
experientially
how much God loves us.
Now, many of you may be like me.
I had a friend one time
that said this
that I thought was very insightful.
He said,
because of how my parents loved me,
I don't really have a hard time
understanding that God loves me,
but I do have a hard time
believing He likes me.
I do have a hard time
believing that I don't just
disappoint Him all the time.
Paul is telling us
that the Holy Spirit
has been given
to each one of us
to help us know
that God loves you,
He likes you,
He wants you in His family.
He's not looking for an excuse
to kick you out.
And because of this,
we can have hope.
As we meditate on God's love for us,
what He did for us in Jesus,
what He does for us
on a daily basis
because of His character.
I mean, just even as we were
praying earlier,
it was just praying
like the very air we breathe
is because God loves us.
The rain we'll experience
later this week
is because God loves us.
Our atoms don't rip apart
within us
because God is holding them together
because He loves us.
Are we convinced of that?
And if so,
you don't have to be afraid to hope.
You don't have to self-protect
and hedge your bets.
I can believe that God loves me so much
that whatever I'm going through,
He is working on my behalf
right now.
A lot of times,
suffering can feel like
He's abandoned me.
Even the psalmist said that.
Has God hidden His face?
Has He withdrawn His compassion?
That's what the psalmist
in Psalm 77,
that's what He was facing.
I feel like you're not here, God.
But then,
I will recall
the Lord's great love.
I will recall
what He has done for us.
I will recall
His mighty hand
and outstretched arm.
I will recall
who He is
and what He has done.
How do I know
that He loves me?
How do I know
that I can have hope?
Because He didn't spare
His own son,
but gave Him up
for us all.
And because of that,
we can have confidence
that He's not going to withhold
any good thing.
If He gave us Jesus
to come live the life
that we couldn't live
and die the death
that we deserve to die,
if He did that for us,
what in the world
would He withhold from us?
We can have hope
because God loves us
and He doesn't withhold
from His children.
J.I. Packer
in his great book
Knowing God
says this,
every single thing
that happens
to the believer
expresses God's love to him.
Every single thing
expresses God's love
and comes to him
for the furthering
of God's purpose for him.
Over and over
we see in Scripture
the things that
what Satan intended for evil,
God used for good.
He is working on our behalf
to make things good.
So we have the promises
of Romans 8.28
that says,
and we know that
for those who love God,
all things work together
for good
for those who are called
according to His purpose.
I can hope
because God loves me.
He really, really loves us.
He loves you
more than you love yourself.
And all these things
in your life
that would cause us
that stress
of maybe even hopelessness,
maybe it's a broken relationship,
maybe it's financial difficulties,
maybe it's problems at work
or uncertainty
about your future,
maybe things just look grim
and you just can't see
very far out
to see clearly
of the direction
that you're going.
God cares more
about those things
than you do.
Do you believe that?
It says He knows
the numbers of the hairs
that are on our head.
Now I don't have
many of those left,
but He knows
which ones are still there.
He takes care
of the little birds,
the sparrows,
the most inconsequential beings.
He takes care
of all of them,
clothes of the grass
and the grass of the field.
Will He not take care of us?
Now we might think,
how can I hope
when I can't have confidence
that such and such will happen?
I can't have confidence
that He's going to
just fix everything
in my life right now
like I want it to,
like I want Him to.
That could point to the fact
that we're hoping
in the wrong thing.
We're not hoping
in the thing
that can really bring us
soul satisfaction.
I mean,
I was just reminded
of the story
in the Old Testament
of Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego.
You know that?
And the fiery furnace.
I always heard that
as a little kid.
They say this.
They're telling the king
who's threatening
to throw them
into the fiery furnace
for not bowing down
to the idol
that was made.
And they said,
our God,
whom we serve,
is able to deliver us.
But if He doesn't,
we still will not
serve your gods.
And it's this idea
that God may not
come through
in this situation
exactly like I would
want Him to,
but He's got a better plan.
And then we go on
to see that
the king
talks about
they threw them
into the fiery furnace
and he says,
did we not bind
three men
into the fire?
but I see four
unbound men
walking around
and one is like
the son of the gods.
There's four in the fire.
And even though God
may not save them,
He does,
but even if He doesn't
save them for the fire,
He is with them in it.
And that is our greatest good.
Even if He doesn't deliver us
from this specific trouble,
I can still hope in Him.
He is going to work
for my good
and He is present
with us
in the fire.
If eternal life
is having a relationship
with God,
like Jesus said
in John 17 verse 3,
then the greatest thing
that we can ever experience
is God's presence.
And so sometimes
our greatest
and deepest joys
will be found
in suffering.
I said this,
I think I,
yeah,
I'm pretty sure
I said this
a few weeks ago
when we were
in the Sermon on the Mount
talking about daily bread.
I had a friend
who told me one time,
Kelly and I
were going through
a pretty hard season,
some suffering
that was pretty great,
and one of the things
that he was asking me
some questions,
and I was giving
some answers
that maybe
were a little bit like,
I'm kind of trying
to avoid all the heartache
that I probably feel.
I'm trying to skirt
around it a little bit.
And my friend said to me,
trying to avoid suffering
is a great way
to avoid Jesus
because sometimes
the greatest ways
we experience Jesus
is in the middle
of our suffering.
everything that we've
been talking about,
about the ability
to have hope,
is true for all of those
who are in Jesus Christ.
This passage starts out,
therefore,
since we've been justified
by faith,
we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And if all that's true,
that we have peace with God
and access.
That word access
in verse 2
is like the idea
of someone being
introduced to royalty.
Someone has come
on your behalf,
introduced you to royalty,
and therefore,
you now have access
to royalty.
That's the word picture
that is given there
for access.
Through Jesus,
we have peace with God
and access to the creator
and sustainer
of the universe.
And if all that's true,
how will not all these
other things be true
for us?
That we don't have
to be afraid to hope.
As you look throughout
the Bible,
it talks so much about hope.
In the Old Testament,
this same concept of hope,
this same word in the Greek
for hope,
is used to refer to hope,
trust, and refuge.
Us going to God
as our refuge,
to hide in Him.
That is a great word picture
for hope.
That we're going to Him
to be under the shadow
of His wings.
It's not a passive thing.
We're just sitting around,
twiddling our thumbs,
hoping that, you know,
God does something
in the situation.
It's an active hope
where I'm saying,
God, I'm running to you.
I'm trusting you.
And it could be
just one of those things
that you have learned
to take one,
put one foot
in front of the other
and just pray,
God, I need you.
And when you see Him
answer those prayers
and come through for you
in ways you couldn't
have even anticipated,
it builds our faith.
It's an active hope,
awaiting,
a trusting in the refuge
that He provides.
Sometimes we feel like
the Lord has forgotten us
like we just sing about
in Psalm 77.
But for the Christian,
if your story
is looking like a tragedy,
that just means you're not
at the end of the story yet.
There is more to be told.
There is more that God
is writing in your story
because He's going to
make all things new.
He's going to make
all things right.
And in the meantime,
He's going to walk with us
and give us His presence.
I feel like this is
one of those times
that you need to quote
the Jesus Storybook Bible.
Is anybody?
Are you all familiar
with the Jesus Storybook Bible?
Any of you?
where it talks about
how God loves us
with a never stopping,
never giving up,
unbreaking,
always and forever love.
Because of that love
that has been poured
into our hearts,
we don't have to be afraid
to hope
because God is working
on our behalf.
Even right now.
Let's pray.
God, we thank you
that you care about
all the things in our life
more than we do.
We come to you
with our requests
and many times
we don't even know
what to ask,
but you've given us
your spirit
that translates those things
to ask for the things
that we should have asked for.
So many times
we're focused
on our circumstances
and we can be like
the rest of the world
that our hope fluctuates
with if things are going good,
our hopes are up,
things are bad,
our hopes are down,
I mean,
just even the sun
not being present
for a few days,
that mood can change
the way we hope.
We're just,
we're prone to let
our emotions
and our feelings
and even untruths,
falsehoods,
dictate the way we hope.
And I pray, Father,
that you would help us
to understand
the way that you love us
and as much as you love us,
it guarantees
that you're working
on our behalf
because you said you are.
We're just taking you
at your word.
We're not making this up.
But help us
to experience that love
that many of us,
we have in our heads
and we need it pushed down
into our hearts
and we ask you
to help us
to experience
that love
that you have for us
in Jesus Christ.
Lord Jesus,
we thank you.
Without you,
we have no hope,
but we have you,
therefore we have hope.
Help us to not be afraid
to hope,
Lord God,
because hope
does not disappoint
because your love
has been poured out
into our lives.
And we pray these things
in Jesus' name.
Amen.