SPEAKER_01: You may recall the account in New Testament scriptures, the book of Jesus goes, he gathers together in an upper room where they eat together the first beginning, the institution of the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_02: Just like we did a moment ago, actually.
SPEAKER_02: These emblems represent some pretty special things to us because that sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: They had seen Jesus as he taught a message of peace.
SPEAKER_00: They had as he was threatened by the message that he brought.
SPEAKER_02: Now we may read and think very little of it, but I'm suggesting to you this morning it was the best that he could have ever left them, knowing what their future would be.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the best that would be in this world.
SPEAKER_00: In our text today, I'm going to say in chapter 1 that we have been justified by we have with God Christ.
SPEAKER_02: What our spirit has received and possessed, we're still promised and we're still given today.
SPEAKER_02: It is peace with God which settles our spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Peace is something that Jesus thought important he would be leaving.
SPEAKER_00: That he would give it not a place of peace, but it is his peace, he says.
SPEAKER_02: A peace that comes from him and is.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the word rejoice.
SPEAKER_02: There is also these are all things to reconciliation that is also in this text.
SPEAKER_00: So the good as we enter into the study together.
SPEAKER_02: And how it is climb, and what we get to the top, we turn around and we look and we see where we came from, we go, wow, that was really taking if it's a nice nice trick anyway.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we leads us in essence.
SPEAKER_00: Turn and take a look, turn around.
SPEAKER_00: And when we do existence, and where are we headed from this point on?
SPEAKER_02: What do you see?
SPEAKER_02: If you've been able to be involved in the studies that we've been doing through the book of Romans together, think what is it you have seen in your trek up to this point of the text.
SPEAKER_00: Not because simply it's exactly the wheel.
SPEAKER_00: Even in the morning, set out, even pre-mort created humanity to be.
SPEAKER_00: We've done we've we're then chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're this morning at least even if condemned Isles, you yourself the same sins.
SPEAKER_02: Even though you had a special relationship with God with sin.
SPEAKER_02: Then we come to chapter three, and it and it reaches a pinnacle point of uh of greatness in helping it's Jew and Gentile, it is every person who is come to a that bears the burden of sin.
SPEAKER_02: You might come from a certain background, you might make a certain wage, you might have a certain amount of children, you might be a certain race.
SPEAKER_02: But I'll tell you something we all have in common, every single one of us who are of an accountable agency here, it's called sin.
SPEAKER_02: We all and Paul a pointed job of getting that across.
SPEAKER_02: If you haven't got it's either one, you hadn't been involved in the study of Romans yet, you're just getting there, or two, you haven't been thinking and you go back to read it.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you have this point, you've missed the Romans that we're only chance.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone kills chapter four, we learned uh uh failed with God and his glory.
SPEAKER_02: And there's nothing you can do to get out of that.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you think you can.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're one who thinks that God has some cosmic scale, like we've talked about before, where he weighs your good.
SPEAKER_02: You happen to be, you got in, you're saved.
SPEAKER_02: But that hasn't what Paul has been teaching.
SPEAKER_02: We currently live in, we can't say the honest truth of this.
SPEAKER_02: We have and there's nothing that you and I could do to get out of good our problems, our backgrounds, whether almost good in our own sight or entirely sinful, whether Jew or Gentile, does not distinguish us in our standing before God, all stand in desperate need of God's favor, grace.
SPEAKER_02: The first four chapters feel like that we, if you think about it from the way that I've just described it, it feels to me at least, maybe you would agree, that we've come through a very dark section of God's writings.
SPEAKER_02: It's not encouraging, it's depressing, overwhelming, I would say.
SPEAKER_02: I would say.
SPEAKER_02: Paul has approved and provided one argument after another of how ourselves in our current state.
SPEAKER_02: We need, and that word is the word need.
SPEAKER_02: We absolutely need God, our faith, or it's over.
SPEAKER_02: Then we emerge as we come toward chapter five into this nice open meadow area, a place where we can begin to feel like I can breathe.
SPEAKER_02: There's no longer this greatest of burdens upon me, and there's no longer this disconnect with the God who created me.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, I'm no longer depressed over the state that I'm in because that should be where we are led to before we get to chapter 5, utter and complete hopelessness and depression.
SPEAKER_02: But right here, a place of peace, a place, and it's right here at this point, from this vantage that we have reached as we came to the trek and up and we look that Paul tells us, do you see where you are?
SPEAKER_02: Where are you, brother or sister?
SPEAKER_02: Where are you as you look back from where you came?
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 5, verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: We have and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: I want to pause there, and I want you to just consider what he has just said.
SPEAKER_02: It is unlike everything else we've read up to this point in this book.
SPEAKER_02: Think for a moment.
SPEAKER_02: And I hope what you're doing is you're looking at your text and you're reading it again in order to get the emphasis of that.
SPEAKER_02: If you use your Bible as a tool the way it was meant to be, then you need to put a star by that.
SPEAKER_00: You need to underline it, you need to hide like you need to do everything you can so that when you read that you stop and thank God for where you are.
SPEAKER_02: Look at where we are, but don't.
SPEAKER_02: But look at where we are.
SPEAKER_02: I may be overstating it.
SPEAKER_02: I don't believe that I am when I tell you these are the best words that you can read in the entire book of God.
SPEAKER_02: What surpasses them exactly?
SPEAKER_00: Name one thing says we live peace with God.
SPEAKER_02: If these aren't the best words you've ever read, then I suggest that you that you've not really emphasized it in your life the way you need to.
SPEAKER_02: It should mean everything.
SPEAKER_02: It seems the more we realize the dark doom and despair of our deserved future, the more one can thank and praise God for the incredible peace that he gives us in exchange.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I think we have a biblical principle, an example that we can go to for that in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_02: And I'd like for you to do that with me.
SPEAKER_02: Even if you feel like you know the section of text by heart, I want you to notice it with me again.
SPEAKER_02: Luke chapter 7 and verse 37.
SPEAKER_02: Turn over there in your Bible and let's notice this uh this story, this account together that uh involves Jesus and a woman who is of the city that is a sinner.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 7, verse 37 of your text is where we will begin.
SPEAKER_02: And let's read it with thought together.
SPEAKER_02: Behold of the city who was a sinner, when she learned was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment.
SPEAKER_02: And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hair of her head, and kiss his feet, and anoint them with ointment.
SPEAKER_02: Now, brothers and sisters, when you consider your when I consider my sin likewise, to what extreme would we not go to show and our sorrow if Jesus were in the physical flesh and we had access to him?
SPEAKER_02: I suppose the answer depends upon how vile and how hopeless we know we are in our sin without him.
SPEAKER_02: How and dark we have become.
SPEAKER_02: She is a sinner.
SPEAKER_02: Who is the Pharisee?
SPEAKER_02: Well, he's religious.
SPEAKER_02: Was he not a sinner?
SPEAKER_02: Are you and I?
SPEAKER_02: So lovable in our present state without Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus, verse 4, I have something to say to you.
SPEAKER_02: Respectfully, the Pharisee says, say it, teacher.
SPEAKER_02: Now, herefore we have to really listen.
SPEAKER_02: A certain money lender had two debt.
SPEAKER_02: One owed 500 denarii, 500 days' wages, and the other.
SPEAKER_02: And when he canceled the debt of both.
SPEAKER_02: Now, which of them will love him more?
SPEAKER_02: And Simon answered, the one for whom he canceled, the larger debt.
SPEAKER_02: And he said to him, You have judged rightly.
SPEAKER_02: Then turn and he said Simon, picture that in your mind.
SPEAKER_02: Notice what he says.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see this woman?
SPEAKER_02: I would submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that this religious man, like many religious people today, do not see individuals, they only see sin.
SPEAKER_02: There's credit to that, but it doesn't fix anything.
SPEAKER_02: The only thing that will fix someone is seeing a person who needs Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We can condemn sin as if we law fix us and it won't fix anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: The people is connecting through Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see this woman?
SPEAKER_02: He says, He'd already seen her sin, but he needed to see her.
SPEAKER_02: He says, I entered your house.
SPEAKER_02: She uh has wet my feet with her tears and uh wiped them with her hair.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 45, you came from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet, and you did not anoint my head with ointment, my feet with ointment.
SPEAKER_02: There, what's Jesus doing?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is saying to those of us who are reading from the perspective we're reading from now, look at where you are.
SPEAKER_02: This is where you came from.
SPEAKER_02: Look at where you are.
SPEAKER_02: Look at what he says there.
SPEAKER_02: I tell you, her sins with which are many are forgiven.
SPEAKER_02: For she loved much.
SPEAKER_02: But he who is forgiven little, can I just paraphrase there as I did on the board?
SPEAKER_02: He who thinks he has been forgiven little loves little.
SPEAKER_02: Listen, brothers and sisters, there should be a direct link between our humble recognition of where we come from.
SPEAKER_02: If we see our sin for what it really is, even the least of our sins, if I could just use it in that sense, that phrase, that phraseology, even the least is worthy of the worst death under the law of God.
SPEAKER_02: Chapters one through three.
SPEAKER_02: If we didn't get that again, we've missed the whole point because that is the point.
SPEAKER_02: We're deserving of death.
SPEAKER_02: There should be a direct link between thankful appreciation and God's grace.
SPEAKER_02: It's called faith, resulting in trust, belief, and love.
SPEAKER_02: The one who sees sin for the vile thing that it actually is.
SPEAKER_02: And what it took for God to say, you have been justified by faith.
SPEAKER_02: You have peace with God, is the one most like this forgiven woman in Luke chapter 7.
SPEAKER_02: What does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_02: Your faith has saved you.
SPEAKER_02: Go in peace.
SPEAKER_02: And this is where we currently are as well.
SPEAKER_02: I hope that that impresses you.
SPEAKER_02: It is an awesome place to live.
SPEAKER_02: Having been forgiven of so much.
SPEAKER_02: Even if, like me, you are one who's grown up among God's family.
SPEAKER_02: To remember what we have been forgiven of.
SPEAKER_02: It's important to understand the purpose of Paul up to this point in the book.
SPEAKER_02: Not only that, the text says, but Paul goes on to say in chapter 5, verse 2 through Jesus, you have been, you have also obtained access by faith into this grace, God's undue favor, in which you Stand.
SPEAKER_02: The term stand implies the establishment of something enduring, something perpetual, non-ending.
SPEAKER_02: God's grace, coupled with our faith, results in absolute security.
SPEAKER_02: And we rejoice, he says, in the hope of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: Hope.
SPEAKER_02: El peace is the Greek word.
SPEAKER_02: It simply means confident assurance of something.
SPEAKER_02: Every time you read the word hope, I can't say it every time, almost every time in the New Testament, you should be thinking of the word confident or words, confident assurance.
SPEAKER_02: He's not talking about some pie in the sky.
SPEAKER_02: He's talking about faith that we have in God and what God says, belief in God.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, what God says or gives us a promise, like that of Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: The word glory, exaltation, highness, victory of God.
SPEAKER_02: We rejoice in confident assurance of the victory of God.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: We've already seen because we have been justified by faith in verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: We have peace with God, the last of verse 1, compared to his deserved wrath.
SPEAKER_02: But we have been given access to grace, undue favor in verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: We stand in that, he says.
SPEAKER_02: We are planted securely in it by our faith.
SPEAKER_02: All reasons to rejoice and give glory to God, aren't they?
SPEAKER_02: You might think Paul's done.
SPEAKER_02: He's not.
SPEAKER_02: He actually has several more things that he's going to describe that we can hit in brief here this morning that will help us to come to a greater understanding of why it is we rejoice.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says, more than this, the grace that we're standing in is so strong in our hearts, verses 3 through 5, that we even rejoice in suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Does that sound crazy?
SPEAKER_02: Or what?
SPEAKER_02: We rejoice in our sufferings, Paul?
SPEAKER_02: Why would we do that?
SPEAKER_02: Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces, here it is again, hope.
SPEAKER_02: No peace.
SPEAKER_02: Confident assurance.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: The sufferings.
SPEAKER_02: The word suffering means pressure.
SPEAKER_02: Literally.
SPEAKER_02: Step-by-step transformation.
SPEAKER_02: In those tough times, those times of pressure, Paul said.
SPEAKER_02: Those things we all hate actually teach us something.
SPEAKER_02: You know what they teach us?
SPEAKER_02: They teach us where our health comes from.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're thinking of some of the psalms.
SPEAKER_02: David believed in it that way.
SPEAKER_02: Even in the middle of suffering, the middle of pressure, we remain undefeated, Paul says.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing robs us of our conquering, unyielding, undying spirit in Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Paul says, because no matter what's happening in your life, you've got the peace of God, you've got love of God, which has been poured out into your hearts through the Holy Spirit that God has given.
SPEAKER_02: In addition to peace, God living in us, what other ways might we know that we've got God's love?
SPEAKER_02: Paul says, don't forget.
SPEAKER_02: God manifests his love in the verse 6 while we were still sinners.
SPEAKER_02: While we were still weak.
SPEAKER_02: At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_02: That's you.
SPEAKER_02: That's me.
SPEAKER_02: For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would even dare to die.
SPEAKER_02: But God, now notice those two words.
SPEAKER_02: Those are underlinable words.
SPEAKER_02: But God, He changed something.
SPEAKER_02: If it were not for Him, we would still be where we used to be.
SPEAKER_02: But God shows His love in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_02: I would suggest to you, brothers and sisters, though we may often not think of it this way, it's true, God's love does not stop on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: It only gets better.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse 9.
SPEAKER_02: Since therefore we have now been justified, since we now have been made right before God by his blood, much more we shall be saved by him from the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_02: That takes us from the cross all the way to our acquittal in the final judgment.
SPEAKER_02: How different is the love of God from any other love that we've ever known?
SPEAKER_02: How different is it?
SPEAKER_02: Notice he loves us when we were ungodly, when we were unworthy, when we were wicked.
SPEAKER_02: And he promises you'll never have to be in that place again.
SPEAKER_02: How different is his love from any other love we have ever known?
SPEAKER_02: If he loved us while we were in sin, Paul says, just think of the strong relationship we get to have with him now.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that the point of verse 9?
SPEAKER_02: Much more.
SPEAKER_02: Shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how you look at the judgment scene in your mind when you read from scripture.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not just pulling things hypothetically out of the air here to describe this.
SPEAKER_02: I do believe that if we accumulate the things God tells us about the judgment scene, we come up with a court scene, though it's in a spiritual realm.
SPEAKER_02: And we don't understand all the details.
SPEAKER_02: I get that.
SPEAKER_02: But I can tell you this we're gonna have an accuser, we're gonna have a prosecutor against us.
SPEAKER_02: And do you know that that prosecutor, when he says to you, this is what you're guilty of?
SPEAKER_02: That he won't stop with one thing, that he's gonna keep going one thing after another thing after another thing, and he's right in what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: He's not lying about who we were, how we've lived, what we've done, what we should have done, that we didn't do.
SPEAKER_02: He will continue to pour prosecution against us.
SPEAKER_02: And I believe God will look at us.
SPEAKER_02: We'll be beaten and we'll be bloody from living the life that we've lived so imperfectly beaten down, knowing who we should be, but who we did not succeed in being on our own at the same time, we'll be as clean as snow.
SPEAKER_02: We will have trusted, you see, truly believed in faith, in the promises of God's defense on our behalf, more directly, the sacrifice part of God, the king, saved by grace, through faith, from wrath, will be the perfect, perfect in God's sight, though imperfect on our own, through the blood of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: I don't have words to describe what that's gonna be like, and I don't think you do either, if you really consider it.
SPEAKER_02: While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by death of his son.
SPEAKER_02: That word reconcile means reunited, resolved, brought to peace with him, even in the things that beat us down, even in the things that bloody us because of the pressures of this world against our righteous sense of wanting to be who God wants, even in that state, God will say, forgive that's not something you and I deserve.
SPEAKER_02: That is something He gives by grace through faith.
SPEAKER_02: We don't put our trust in a dead Savior, but a resurrected, power-filled, living Savior.
SPEAKER_02: And that power goes beyond anything in this world.
SPEAKER_02: He has saved us from the wrath to come.
SPEAKER_02: Well, before we finish this out, you notice Paul says there's one more thing.
SPEAKER_02: Down in verse 11.
SPEAKER_02: We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
SPEAKER_02: Not only will we be saved, Paul says, that's true.
SPEAKER_02: We've just described it, we've just looked at it from what he said previously.
SPEAKER_02: But he also says we now have received reconciliation.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's point is we are reconciled, reunited from God with God now, but also in the future.
SPEAKER_02: We don't just look forward to being united with God after everything gets worked out.
SPEAKER_02: But we get to walk with him right now.
SPEAKER_02: In this life, in the present.
SPEAKER_02: There's no better peace than to be reconciled, to be forgiven, and to be in peace with God now and in the life that is still to come.
SPEAKER_02: I say to you, my friend, when you have every reason to feel fear, sorrow, discouragement, the best thing you can do for yourself in your spiritual life is to stop and ask yourself, why am I choosing to live like this?
SPEAKER_02: I do not have to.
SPEAKER_02: That is a choice that is made.
SPEAKER_02: Living under the circumstances of life or living in the blessings of Jesus Christ, justified by faith, access to grace which surrounds my entire being, our entire existence.
SPEAKER_02: We don't just get some grace, we stand in the grace of God, Paul says.
SPEAKER_02: And security comes from that.
SPEAKER_02: Peace with God comes from that.
SPEAKER_02: Peace, even in the pressure of life, comes from that.
SPEAKER_02: I say to you, before you leave this place today, you can be justified by faith and you can have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and you do not have to face the wrath of God on your sin.
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to live that way.
SPEAKER_02: And that does not have to be your future.
SPEAKER_02: God provides something so much greater, so much better.
SPEAKER_02: And if you've made this trek up this mountain with Paul, and you've not yet stopped, and you've not yet turned around and looked at where you came from, and then looked at where you're going and looked at what you're standing in right now, you're missing it.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing better than being right with the God who created you.
SPEAKER_02: And He's made that available to you even this morning.
SPEAKER_02: If you need to respond to that call this morning, why don't you do that right now?
SPEAKER_02: You can do that.
SPEAKER_02: And you don't have to leave this place without her.
SPEAKER_02: Whatever your need may be, if you have a need to respond to God's call, we provide this time right now, while together we stand and as we stand.