Hope; Spiritual Service
Romans 15:13-16
I was surfing
the Internet the other day and ran across something that I have not heard in a
long time. I heard this the first time from a pastor in the pulpit. He could
hardly read this thing without, well, he just lost it, uncontrollably laughing
several times. I think I'll get past it. It's humorous and I thought I would
read this to you to share a little humor with you before I get into the lesson
tonight. This is an accident report. It was allegedly submitted and reported at
the Oxford Union in 1958. This bricklayer had an accident. This is his report:
"Dear Sir,
I'm writing in response to your request for additional information in block 3
in the reporting form. I put "poor planning" as the cause of my accident.
You asked for a fuller explanation. I trust the following details will be
sufficient. I'm a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident I was working
alone on the roof of a new 6-story building. When I completed my work I found I
had some bricks left over which when weighed later were found to weigh 240 lbs.
Rather than carry the bricks down by hand I decided to lower them in a barrel
by using a pulley which was attached to the side of the building on the sixth
floor. Securing the rope at ground level I went up to the roof, swung the
barrel out, and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the
rope, holding it tightly to assure a slow descent of the 240 lbs. of bricks.
"You will
note on the accident form that my weight is 135 lbs. Due to my surprise of
being jerked off the ground so suddenly I lost my presence of mind and forgot
to let go of the rope. Needless to say I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side
of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor I met the barrel, which was
now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the
fractured skull, minor abrasions and broken collarbone as listed in section 3
of the accident reporting form.
"Slowed
only slightly I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my
right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley which I mentioned in
paragraph 2 of this form. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence
of mind and was able to hold the rope in spite of the excruciating pain I was
now beginning to experience. At approximately the same time, however, the
barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. It was
now devoid of the weight of the bricks the barrel weighed approximately 50
pounds. I refer you again to my weight.
As you might
imagine I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. In the vicinity
of the third floor I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two
fractured ankles, broken tooth, and severe lacerations on my legs and lower
body. Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel
seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of
bricks and fortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked. I'm sorry to report,
however, that as I lay there on the pile of bricks in pain, unable to move, and
watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my composure and
presence of mind and let go of the rope."
Oh well, that
gave everyone a good chuckle. Let's open our Bibles now to Romans 15. Last time
we wrapped up this paragraph dealing with all these various quotes from the Old
Testament related to God's inclusion of Gentiles in His plan of salvation.
They'd always been in God's plan of salvation. The point from these quotes was
to demonstrate that the inclusion of Gentiles in the body of Christ was not
unforeseen. Although the concept of the Church and the body of Christ was not
predicted in the Old Testament, the salvation of the Gentiles was not
unforeseen.
In looking at
this last part of Romans 15:12, there is a quote from Isaiah 11:1 and 11:10.
The concept of hope is mentioned. In Isaiah 11:10, "There shall be a root
of Jesse and He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles. In Him, the Gentiles
will have hope." That word takes us into the key thought that sets up the
final benediction in Romans 15:13 as Paul ends the main body of the epistle
before he gets into the conclusion. He writes in Romans 15:13, "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."
A couple of
things we ought to note here as we look at this verse. The first thing we ought
to note is that God is referred to as the God of hope. The topic of the verse
is on the doctrine of hope. Now we've studied hope many times. Hope means a
confident expectation. For the believer, for the use of hope in the Bible, hope
is a certainty based upon faith. Faith in the Scripture is a way of knowing
truth. It is not, as it's used so often in modern language, faith that is apart
from evidence. Or you believe in spite in evidence. Or you believe just because
you wish it to be true. Faith in the Bible is something that is based upon
knowledge, something that is certain, something where you have assurance of its
veracity. Hope is built on that faith. The faith points us to a certain
direction. Hope, in turn, takes that direction and fixes its attention and just
locks on that in the future. It's a certain expectation that no matter what
else happens we have absolute, unbending confidence that this is what's going
to take place in the future. Now that hope that we're talking about, Biblical
hope, is a hope that derives from God. The "of hope" there represents
a genitive of source in the Greek; it means the God who gives hope or the hope
that comes from God fills us with something.
So what comes
first? The hope or what it fills with? The hope, of course. What's the hope
based on? Faith. So we see that hope builds on faith and then hope produces joy
and peace. Then we have the phrase "in believing", which is by
believing, so the means by which we have this hope is on believing. /We start
with faith, then we build hope on that and joy and peace eventually result from
that. So Paul is saying, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and
peace."
The word for
"fill" is the same word we have in Ephesians 5:18, "Be filled by
means of the Spirit." I've taught this many times but in the Greek
language if you have a coffee cup, I don't have one up here so I'll just use
this water bottle, and you're going to fill it up with something, you're
talking about content. You're talking about what you're going to put into the
cup or into the bottle. You would use a genitive construction. If you're
talking about what you're filling it with, such as the content of that bottle
or from that pitcher or from that carafe, the instrument that you're using to
fill it is going to be stated with a dative case grammatically. Now when we
come to Ephesians 5:18 and people read that as being filled with the Spirit,
they think that what they're being filled with in terms of content is more of
the Spirit. That's not what it means because it's not a genitive construction.
It's a dative construction. It's that the Spirit is going to be filling us with
something.
We're filled by
means of the Spirit. The Spirit is the One who already indwells us. We can't
get any more of the Spirit. But the Spirit is going to fill us with something.
There's a parallel passage in Colossians 3:16 where Paul says, "Let the
Word of Christ richly dwell within you." So what's the content according
to that verse? It's the Word of Christ. It's Bible doctrine. It's the Word of
God. It's the instruction from Scripture. So it's the Holy Spirit in Ephesians
5:18 who fills us with the Word.
The by-product
of being filled with the Word when we are obeying the Lord and walking by the
Spirit is that the Spirit produces in us joy and peace. Both of these are
stated as fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. So we have, "May the God
of hope fill you with all joy and peace." He does this through God the
Holy Spirit which is what's clarified in this last clause. "That you may
abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
God gives us
this hope so that we can abound in hope by the power of God the Holy Spirit. I
want to look at both the concept of hope and the phrase here, "joy and
peace". This is where believers have stability. This is what gives us joy
in the midst of trauma, in the midst of crisis, and in the midst of chaos. Now
that doesn't mean that we become emotionally disengaged from what's going on
around us. Our emotions aren't controlling us. Our emotions aren't dominating
us. We remain in control rather than becoming emotional. We don't panic. We
don't give in to fear and worry and anxiety and excitement and all of these
other things. We have a calm and a tranquility even in the midst of crisis
because our focus is on the Lord and He's the One who sustains us.
In the past
I've talked about this in terms of different spiritual skills. These spiritual
skills are how we stay in fellowship because every crisis, every external
adversity, every difficulty, whether it's because we're dealing with someone
who's just decimal points away from being an imbecile or we're dealing with
someone who's just too, too caught up in legalism or we're dealing with the
wonderful flexibility of the government or some bureaucracy or the structures
of our employer or whatever they may be or we're dealing with other crises that
come along. Maybe all of a sudden we have health problems. We have financial
problems or all of a sudden a hurricane starts barreling up the Gulf to hit the
upper Texas coast and we have to figure out how we're going to solve whatever
happens as a result. Our lives turn into turmoil. What should we do?
The first thing
we have to do is we have to make sure we're in fellowship. We have to confess
our sins which simply means to admit or acknowledge our sins. That makes it
sure we're back in fellowship. We're enjoying our relationship with God. We're
abiding in Christ and we're walking by means of the Spirit. That's the second
area. We have to maintain that walk by the Spirit. That's another term for
walking in the light and abiding in Christ. It really describes the core dynamic
of fellowship. It is enjoying that on-going relationship with God. This is
talked about in passages like Ephesians 5:18 and Galatians 5:16.
Three things
that we do help keep us enjoying that fellowship. We trust in God, which is the
Faith-rest drill stated in 2 Peter 1:3-4. God has given us these rich and
magnificent promises and we claim those promises. We're oriented to God's
grace. We grow by the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ which is 2
Peter 3:18. That's also doctrinal orientation. These are the three basic skills
we have to implement day in and day out as we face these challenges.
Then as we
mature we begin to understand that we're not just living for today. We're living
for eternity. I think one of the hardest things I see people dealing with is
that this life is preparing us for eternity. We know it in an academic sense
but it needs to become a normative part of our soul and that's so challenging.
We have to accept that whatever happens in life is simply preparing us for
eternity. We need to think in terms of the end game and not just what's going
on right now.
We all have our
plans, our hopes and our dreams for the next week, the next year, the next
decade, or whatever it might be. These things hit our lives and all of a sudden
those hopes and dreams and plans just disappear. We get so caught up in grief
and introspection and self-absorption that we overlook that this was under
God's control and God put it there for a reason. It's to get our attention to
focus on His plan and not our plan.
The end game is
that it's not about what we want. It's not about the direction we have planned
out for our lives. It's all about serving Him and focusing on Him in terms of
those priorities. So we have to develop that personal sense of destiny, not in
light of our retirement, not in light of what we're going to do when the kids
finally grow up and they leave the house, not in light of what we finally do
when we get out of school and get a job. Instead, we're living today in light
of what is going to count for eternity and what's going to be there at the
judgment seat of Christ. We need to pass this stage which is like adolescence.
If you watch
young people when they grow up they move from a time when they're about nine
years old and they're really self-absorbed until they're fifteen or sixteen
when they're absolutely and totally self-absorbed until they're about
twenty-three or twenty-four, maybe even older now such as twenty-eight or
twenty-nine, and they begin to realize that there are other people in the world
who may know a little bit more than they do. They begin to focus on something
outside themselves. That's what happens spiritually with a personal sense of
our eternal destiny.
At that point
we really begin to mature in love. It's not that it's not there before but now
it begins to become mature. It begins to mature and really take root. So there
again, just like in the infancy stage with its three key skills, faith-rest
drill, grace orientation, and doctrinal orientation, in the adult or mature
stage you have three skills that go together: a personal love for God,
impersonal love for all mankind, and occupation with Christ.
A lot of people
have problems with that term, impersonal love for all mankind, because they
think it makes it robotic; it's not personal. What we mean by personal is that
you have a personal knowledge or personal relationship with the person you are
loving. A lot of time we don't have any kind of personal relationship with the
people around us. The checkers at the grocery store, the customer service
people on the telephone, other drivers on the highway, and all kinds of people
around us that we have little or no personal relationship with. We need to love
them just as much as someone we know and care about, that's intimately involved
in our lives. That's why we call it impersonal love.
Another good
term for it is unconditional love. It's not based on that person's behavior.
It's not based on that person's personality. It's based upon God's character
and the character of Christ. So that's our impersonal love or unconditional
love for all mankind. We're to love one another. Galatians 5:14, "We're to
love our neighbor as our self."
Then there's
occupation with Christ. We focus on Christ. We keep our eyes focused on Him. We
are to live like Christ. As trivial a cliché as it became with the little
saying WWJD, "What would Jesus do", it encapsulates an important
principle. That we should be thinking, what would Jesus do in this situation?
What is the Christ-like response?
The last thing
that closes out the circle is inner peace, inner joy, inner happiness, and this
happiness that comes from God and is a fruit of the Spirit. It enables us to
stay strong in the midst of crisis. That describes a circle. We've built a
wall. That wall surrounds our soul. As long as we're walking by the Spirit, as
long as we're enjoying that fellowship with God, we stay inside that circle and
we're growing and maturing and we're operating on the power of the Spirit and
the Word of God.
The Bible uses
different terms to describe this. One is the term "abiding in Christ"
coming out of John 15:1-7. Other terms that are used are "walking in the
light" and "walking by means of the Spirit." Walking is a
picturesque term used in the Bible that always refers to your lifestyle. Are
you carrying out your lifestyle in the light of God's Word and in the light of
God's righteousness or are you walking in darkness? Are you abiding in Christ or
are you staying in the world? The issue is always our volition. At any given
moment we can decide, "Okay, I'm going to take this back. I'm going to
handle the problem my way. I'm going to use anger or intimidation or worry or
anxiety or panic or anything else that comes along to solve my problem."
Then instantly we're outside of this circle and we're vulnerable spiritually to
failure and self-destruction. The only way to get back in is to enter through
confession or naming of our sins.
Several years
ago we had our first attempt at drawing this and it came out more of a castle
than a fortification. We have a gateway as a drawbridge. The entry is 1 John
1:9. This was an attempt to express this in a dynamic way. We don't build this
fortification and put up these bricks in a static fashion. One day we're in
Bible class and we're learning about the faith-rest drill. The next day we're
learning about unconditional love for all mankind. A couple of years later
we're learning other things related to doctrinal orientation and we grow in
terms of whatever we're studying and whatever it is we're being taught. It
doesn't always just grow one level at a time.
The reason I
emphasize that is that a lot of people got the idea that first of all they had
to get the faith-rest drill down. Once they got that down, they thought they
could move on to grace orientation. After they accomplished that, they thought
they could move on to doctrinal orientation. That's not how that works. That's
just a graphic demonstration demonstrating the logical relationship between
these various spiritual skills.
Another attempt
was made which I thought was much more illustrious and graphic. This is
actually a painting that is outside in the entry hall of the church. (Shows
picture of castle.) This represents the fortification in the midst of the
storms of life. Each brick in this painting is labeled with one of the
different spiritual skills, demonstrating that the only way to survive the
storm is to be inside the fortification and utilizing these spiritual skills.
Here's the
logical progression. We start off in spiritual childhood. As long as we're
mastering these skills we're growing and we're maturing. At some stage we begin
to get a glimmer of our personal sense of eternal destiny. All of those first
five spiritual skills are exemplified by the concept of faith. We're learning
to trust God. Even when we're confessing sin, we're claiming the promise of 1
John 1:9 which gives a condition, "If we do X…" Then the promise
comes, "Then God will do Y…" "If we confess our sin, God will
forgive us and cleanse us." The implication is that if we don't confess
our sins then we're in a state of unforgiveness and we're not walking by the
light or walking by the Holy Spirit. So this is building our faith, which is
the application of what we believe in our life.
As we go
through the next level, spiritual adolescence begins to develop with our
personal sense of destiny and then we come to the upper level of spiritual
adulthood. Now the adolescent level is hope. So we have to learn to really
trust God. As we grow in our faith, what develops is that certain expectation
of the future which is our hope. As that is secured then we can begin to love.
It's interesting an observation from numerous psychologists, not that I'm
looking there for validation, but it's interesting that a stopped watch is
right twice a day. And even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. So
psychologists recognize that people can't love if they're not secure. 1 John 4
says that "perfect love casts out fear."
The basic
problem that people have is fear and anxiety and worry. That was the first
emotion stated in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, then God came
looking for them in the Garden. Adam said, "Well we heard the sound of
your voice in the Garden and we were naked and afraid." That's the first
emotion related to sin. You can't love if you're afraid. Hope gives us that
confident expectation and security so that we can fully develop in the area of love:
personal love for God, personal love for all mankind, and occupation with
Christ. The result of this is joy and peace as we experience the perfect
happiness of God. That's almost a consequence of doing the other things.
The reason I'm
giving this to you and reminding you of these things is that when we get into
Romans 15:13 it's helpful to think through what Paul is saying, "Now may
the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace…" The word here for being
filled is that same word that used for God the Holy Spirit. So as we're filled
up with God's Word the end result is that we have this supernatural joy and
peace in our life that gets us through almost any kind of crisis…not almost any
kind, it's any kind of crisis.
Romans 15:13
goes on to say, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace by
believing…" See that takes us down to the ground floor, these initial
steps of faith. Notice we have faith, hope, and love mentioned in 1 Corinthians
13:13 where faith, hope, and love are what continue in this Church Age.
"…That you may abound in hope…" That's more than you have at first.
It's where your personal sense of eternal destiny is full and dominates your
thinking. That's what's going on here.
This takes us
back to a lot of passages in the Old Testament that are promises that focus on
these aspects of hope, peace, and joy. In Psalm 39:7 we read, "And now,
Lord, what do I wait for?" He's waiting and waiting in Scripture is always
this idea of trusting in God for something that's not coming right away. It has
this idea of resting in God such as the verse that says, "They that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up as eagles, they
shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint." [Isaiah
40:31] So again in Psalm 39:7, "And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope
is in You."
What enables us
to wait and to rest is our hope, our confident expectation that God is in
control and God's going to provide for us. Psalm 42:11 where the psalmist is
obviously struggling with emotional responses to the external adversities of
life. He says, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" He's asking
himself why he's depressed, why he's feeling sad, why he's down, why he's
disappointed. "Why are you disquieted within me?" He's having a
little self-talk here. "Why are you cast down, why are you
disquieted?"
The Psalmist
tells himself to "hope in God." That's what we should tell ourselves.
Don't hope in your circumstances. Don't hope in your plans. Don't hope in what
you can see and touch. We like to know that things are going to turn out a
certain way. We like certainty that our plans will work and yet when we're
walking by faith, we may not see where things are going to go. Trust me. It's
only an illusion that we think we know where things are going to go a certain
way. God has a way of surprising us. The instruction that the psalmist gives
himself is to hope in God and his conclusion is, "For I shall yet praise
Him, the help of my countenance, and my God."
One of the
things that we have to develop is that when we are studying the Word and
claiming promises, we should not only look at the context but think through
what's going on inside that verse. What's the thought process of the writer of
that verse? What's the rationale that's embedded in that verse? We have this
question that's being addressed to the depressed soul. Then we have a command
to hope in God, which is the solution. Then the conclusion that is reached is
because of the hope in God, which is basically an essence of God rationale where
we focus on who God is. Remember that He is worthy of hope. Then there's a
conclusion that comes from focusing on the character of God, "For I shall
yet praise Him, the help of my countenance, and my God." See, all that's
embedded in just one verse.
If you are
prone to depression or worry or anxiety, that's a great verse to memorize. Ask
yourself why you're depressed. Instead, hope in God. Direct your attention away
from the problem and on to the solution. Psalm 62:5 says the same thing,
"My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation [same word in
the Hebrew for hope] is from Him." Are we expecting something else to
provide for us? Something that can come from our job, something that can come
from friends, something that can come from success, something that can come
from money or the things that money can buy? If so, we're putting our hope in
the details of life. Here our expectation, according to the psalmist, is in
God.
Then Psalm
199:166 says, "Lord, I hope [a confident expectation] for Your salvation
and I do Your commandments." The second line flows out of the first.
Because of that hope, I am obedient. Jesus says to His disciples the same thing
that Moses said to the Jews that if you love God you will obey Him. Hope leads
to loving God. The barometer for knowing if we really love God is our obedience
to Him.
Another great
passage is Lamentations 3:21-24, written by Jeremiah after the fall of
Jerusalem in 586. It's a lament. He's expressing his sorrow, his grief, over
the destruction of the First Temple and the destruction of the Southern Kingdom
of Judah. I want you to notice how he starts off. Often we quote verses 22 and
23 but verses 22 and 23 are bracketed by verses 21 and 24. What's the key word
in verse 21? It's hope. What's the key word in verses 24? It's hope. So what
encapsulates this promise is hope, the confident expectation in God.
The writer of
Jeremiah begins, "This I recall to mind; therefore, I have hope."
What he's calling to mind is the doctrinal principles of verses 22 and 23. He's
remembering the essence of God. He's focused on the grace of God and the mercy
of God. That's what we call the Essence of God rationale. Years ago when I was
a young believer I read through the psalms and was impressed that every time
the psalmist starts whining about a problem he's facing, he turns to some
aspect of God's essence and the result of focusing on God's essence is that he
comes out of the mire of depression into the light of hope and confidence in
his future. This is what Jeremiah is reminding us.
You can just
imagine what this must have been like. The people of Judah had just lost
everything they had. They lost their homes, their fortunes, in many cases they
lost their children who were marched off to Babylon. They lost everything. Some
of them left and went into exile down in Egypt. Others tried to stay in the
land. Others were hauled off to Babylon and it looked hopeless. Every day when
they woke up, they were still alive. As long as they were still alive, they knew
God still had a plan for their life. As long as God still had a plan for their
life, they knew they could be confident in Him and God would provide for them.
It wouldn't be
in a day. It wouldn't be in a week. It wouldn't necessarily be in a year or two
but eventually they would re-establish themselves and God would provide for
them. Jeremiah focuses on the key issue, which is the character of God.
"It is through the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed." The dead
people back in Jerusalem were consumed. They were destroyed in the fifth cycle
of discipline but the ones who survived were not consumed. God's grace kept
them alive.
Now they may
say, "Why did God keep me alive? I don't have anything. I lost everything.
I don't know where my next meal is coming from." But it's the mercies of
God that they still had an opportunity to survive and go forward no matter what
has happened. They focused on the fact that "His compassions fail
not." God's character is immutable. It never changes. He will never leave
us or forsake us. He will never disappoint us. He will always sustain us. So
because His compassions fail not, "they are new every morning."
That's new in the sense of fresh. Each day God provides for us and sustains us.
Jeremiah may have
been thinking about God's provision for the Israelites in the wilderness when
God gave them manna from heaven every morning. Manna was a type of bread,
something like that, that appeared every day with the mist on the ground. It
tasted like coriander seed, according to the Scripture. I always thought it
tasted more like a Shipley donut but that's just my preference. Or maybe it was
like Blue Belle, whatever you like. It had all the nutrients in it that you
could ever hope for. And it sustained the Israelites for forty years in the
desert. God's faithfulness never failed. It was new every morning.
Then he breaks
out in a statement of praise saying, "Great is Your faithfulness."
His conclusion that he reaches is that the Lord is his portion. He's his share.
He's his inheritance. Jeremiah is saying that the Lord belongs to him and so
therefore he was okay. "The Lord is my portion says my soul. Therefore I
hope. I have confidence in Him."
Paul talks a
lot about hope in Romans. In Romans 4:18 it's connected to faith. He talks
about Abraham who "in hope" and "against hope". What he
means is that "in hope" is hope in God and against every kind of
human expectation, Abraham believed. It resulted in Abraham becoming the father
of many nations. This is in reference to Abraham's belief that God would give
him a son through Whom the blessing would flow. Abraham saw the promise of God.
He mixed that with faith, trusting in that. That gave him confidence in God
that God would do what He promised at some time in the future and God
eventually fulfilled that.
Again we see
that development of faith first, then hope, and then followed love, and peace
and joy. Romans 5:1-2, "Therefore because we have been justified by faith
[a causal participle] we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ." That is the reality of our fellowship. We have that peace as a
result of justification. "Through Whom also we have access by faith into
this grace in which we stand." That's the position inside the wall. Standing
inside the wall protected by those spiritual skills. We're abiding in Christ.
Walking by the Holy Spirit. The result is that we "rejoice in hope."
We have joy. We have these same ideas of peace and joy all tied together.
In Romans 5:3
Paul says, "Not only that but we also glory in tribulation." We boast
in tribulation. We face adversity and we're not saying to bring it on simply
because we love adversity for the sake of adversity but because we understand
that whatever the adversity we're facing it's going to take us into greater
maturity and give us a greater opportunity to see God fulfill His promises to
us. So we glory in tribulation or adversity because we know that
"tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and
character hope." There's the path. That's the outline. That's the roadmap
to maturity.
You can't get
to hope and maturity unless you go through adversity and you persevere. As you
persevere, it builds character. What comes out of that is that confident
expectation. That's the path through infancy and beyond. That's why a lot of
Christians don't even make it to spiritual adolescence because they cave in to
those adversities in childhood. They just can't trust the Lord. They're
overwhelmed by the circumstances of life. They don't have any doctrine and they
don't know how to trust God.
Then in Romans
5:5 Paul says, "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."
Again this emphasis is that the Holy Spirit is the power source. He's the
dynamic. He is the One who enables us to live the spiritual life. Romans 12:10,
"Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor
giving preference to one another." What's that? That's impersonal love for
all mankind. That is unconditional love giving preference to one another so
this is what we need to master in terms of spiritual maturity.
"Not
lagging in diligence." This means not just doing it now and then when it's
convenient but all the time. "Fervent in spirit" means being passionate
about growing spiritually; "serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient
in tribulation; continuing steadfastly in prayer." So this is how hope
thinks within that same pattern that we saw in Romans 5:5.
Now back to
Romans 15:13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace."
So the God of hope is filling us with joy and peace that we may abound in hope.
So how does He do this? John 15:11, Jesus told his disciples, "These
things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you." This isn't
just normal happiness. Don't mistake this for giddiness. Don't mistake this for
some kind of emotional experience. Don't ever mistake this for someone's
personality trait.
I had a professor
at Dallas Seminary by the name of Ron Blue. If they'd had the category of ADHD when Ron Blue was a kid he would have been classified
as ADHD and he would have probably been overdosed on Ritalin just to keep him
under control. He was just one of those people who is naturally exuberant all
the time. I had him come and speak at my first church at a mission's
conference. We had one guy in the church that really wanted the church to be
charismatic. No matter what he was taught he wouldn't listen and he was
mystical. After hearing Ron he said, "Wasn't that great to see the joy of
the Lord in him?" I said, "That's his personality. That has nothing
to do with God the Holy Spirit." You have to understand that there are a
lot of people who are naturally exuberant and happy. That's their personality.
That is not what the Bible is talking about.
Joy in the
Bible is a production of God the Holy Spirit as a result of your study of the
Word. It may or not be expressed overtly by someone's enthusiasm. It may be that
someone is very quiet and very serious and very sober minded and very focused;
yet in their soul they have great tranquility and joy. To confuse that with
some kind of external expression of personality is going to lead you in the
totally wrong way when you're studying the Word. Just before Jesus went to the
cross in the context of abiding in Christ, Jesus said, "These things I've
spoken to you [abide in Christ] that My joy may abide [remain] in you." He
is connecting joy with abiding and staying in fellowship with God. "And
that your joy may be brought to completion."
In John 16:20
He says, "Most assuredly I say to you that you will weep and lament…"
Before that night was over with Jesus would weep and lament in the Garden of
Gethsemane. He would be under so much pressure that blood would ooze from the
capillaries just under his skin out through His skin so it looked like He was
sweating blood. The terms that are used in the Scripture is that He had great
emotional turmoil. But he didn't let that put Him in a position of sin. Just
because you feel bad, doesn't mean you sin. If you feel bad and you do
something wrong to assuage that bad feeling, that's when you've sinned.
What Jesus is
saying here to His disciples is that a time will come when you will weep and
lament. I talked about this on Tuesday night. Christians know we're going to go
through tribulations and adversity and we may not get out of that adversity
alive. The Lord may not save us through it. He may save us by taking us out of
it in death. And it may be a long, slow, miserable, painful death. Think about
the Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stood up against the Nazis in World
War II. He was put into a concentration camp where he died just weeks before
the war was over. Just because he was a faithful believer didn't mean that he
would die a calm, quiet death but he had peace in his soul from dying grace.
His circumstances were horrendous.
This has
happened to numerous believers down through the ages. Jesus faces the reality
of our living in the devil's world. He says, "You will weep and lament but
the world will rejoice [because of the pain we're going through] and you will
be sorrowful." It's not wrong to be sorrowful. It's the same words used of
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Those emotions are typical. If someone in
your family dies, if you wife dies, if your child dies, if your parent dies,
you are sorrowful. The Bible says we grieve but "not like those who have
no hope." It doesn't say, "No, no, no. You're a believer. You don't
grieve. You never are sad or sorrowful." The Bible recognizes that yes we
will grieve. That's a reality but don't act on that in terms of your sin
nature.
That's a
reality of living in the world where we face death, pain, disappointment, and
sorrow. Jesus says you will be sorrowful but "your sorrow will be turned
into joy." Jesus had perfect happiness. He was immutable. Did Jesus ever
lose His maximum joy? Not at all. Was Jesus sorrowful? Yes. Did He grieve? Yes.
He did both at the same time. We think of these as mutually exclusive. You can
have sorrow and grief but not like those who have no hope. You can have sorrow
but at the same time you can have peace and tranquility and stability because
of your relationship with the Lord. That makes Christians different. It doesn't
mean we deny being sorrowful or grieving.
Jesus says He's
the One who supplies this joy. It's the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23,
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy…" Joy is number two. Love is
mentioned first because the command that got Paul into this section was in
Galatians 5:14 that you are to love your neighbor as yourself. In the fruit of
the Spirit, the first one is love, then joy and then peace. That's what we're
talking about in Romans 5:13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy
and peace by believing."
I Thessalonians
1:6, "You became followers of us and the Lord, having received the Word in
much affliction." There was a lot of opposition from the Jewish community that
was turned into opposition from the civic, Gentile community who were opposed
to them. He continues, "You received the Word with joy from the Holy
Spirit." It only comes from God the Holy Spirit.
James
summarizes everything at the beginning of his book saying "We're to count
it all joy when we encounter various trials." So all of this is what Paul
is bringing together in one very succinct statement, "And now may the God
of hope fill you will all joy and peace by believing, that you may abound in
hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." We can't do this on our own. We
can't gin it up. We can't make ourselves happy. It only comes as a by-product
of being in the Word. If we're not in the Word and growing in the Word, then
that's not going to be the by-product.
When you hit
those adversities and you need it, it's too late to develop it. That's why it
takes mental discipline every day in your Christian life to study the Word, to
read the Word, to be reminded of the promises of God, utilizing those promises every
single day so that as you grow and mature when you face these crises in life,
you can rest and relax in the Word of God in hope.
Now we have a
few minutes left. What I want to do is introduce you to the conclusion to this
epistle. It begins in the next verse, Romans 15:14 and extends down to the end
of the chapter. Just like the opening introduction, it reviews some basic
themes and basic ideas that are stated in the opening introduction. If you turn
back to Romans 1 Paul gives a salutation in verse one and then from Romans
1:2-17 we have the introduction.
There are
several key things that Paul introduces in the introduction that—surprise,
surprise—are restated in the conclusion. That's called good writing and
good literature. He ties it together. So I want to go through six of these.
We'll start tonight and we'll just get into the first one a little bit. This is
application. Like Paul we should have serving the gospel as the central
priority of our life.
Paul says in
these verses that he is here as a minister of the gospel to serve the gospel.
That's why he's on the earth. He's not here for any other reason. He's not here
to become a success at his job, not that there's anything wrong with being a
success and pursuing a great deal of success. But if you pursue success at the
expense of doctrine, for you, for your family, for your spiritual growth, then
that's going to be a sacrifice that will come back and haunt you the rest of
your life. If you pursue any of the details of life, hobbies, your career,
money, the things that money can buy, where the details of life consume you so
that you cannot invest time in your spiritual life and the spiritual life of
your family, then you will regret that day the rest of your life.
Paul says that
our priority is serving the gospel. It's really interesting how he states this.
I want to contrast the beginning of Romans with this. In Romans 1:1 Paul says
that he was called to be an apostle separated to the gospel of God. In Romans
1:9, he says he served the gospel of His Son. In Romans 1:15 he says that he is
ready to preach the gospel. And in Romans 1:16 he says he is not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ.
We ought to ask
ourselves, "How true are these statements of us?" You're thinking,
"Well, that can be true of Paul because he was an apostle." What's
true of Paul here as an apostle should also be true of every single believer.
We are all called to different ministries but we're all called to serving the
gospel. We'll get into this in more detail next time but Paul recognizes that
his focus is to minister the gospel of God. In Romans 15:20 he says, "And
so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel." It uses the Greek word EUAGGELIZO where we get our word evangelism. It means to give
the good news to someone. It's doesn't mean to proclaim it but it's a synonym.
It's emphasizing giving the good news with that particular word.
In Romans 16:15
he says, "Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my
gospel." So in Paul's life the gospel is front and center. That should be
true for every one of us. Like Paul, we should direct our lives toward a
proclamation of the good news of the gospels. That can be done with our actions
as well as our lips. A lot of times we're going to gain a greater hearing with
some people by not running over them with the gospel and by not pulling out our
gospel gun and shooting them. I've had to learn that the hard way just like
everybody else.
There are times
when we just have to keep our mouths shut about the gospel and we have to
develop a relationship with someone. Sometimes it may take five, fifteen,
twenty years. Sometimes we may never get the opportunity to really sit down and
clarify the gospel. A lot of times we may be involved more in what is called
today "pre-evangelism" rather than actually getting to the gospel.
Some people have so suppressed the truth in unrighteousness that they've just
created this whole thick veneer around themselves that you have to pierce
because they don't want you to talk to them about the gospel. That's the last
thing they want to hear. So we have to build that and peel away that veneer
over time before they'll be willing to listen. A lot of that just comes with
time and experience. So we work through that.
The first thing
we learn from this is that we should direct our lives toward the proclamation
of the gospel. The gospel is good news; a good proclamation. That's what it
means. How many of us have forgotten have exciting it was when we realized we
had eternal life and when we died we were going to go to heaven? And the good
news is that God has solved all the problems for us. We want to tell people
that good news.
Most Christians
by the time they've been saved two or three years are a little bit embarrassed.
They don't want to get into an argument. They don't want people to think that
they are somehow backward or some sort of fundamentalist or whatever the word
is. Satan has created the world system to create such negative images of
Christians so we don't want to be associated with that. We want to be popular.
We don't want to be unpopular. What we want to do is we're so busy avoiding
that and being careful that we get to where we're so shy and timid about that
that we don't want to give anyone the gospel.
We should be
positive about giving people the gospel. Paul was very excited. He was not
ashamed of the gospel. Our fear borders on fear of the gospel. In Romans 1:9
Paul says, "For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit for the
gospel." He serves the gospel. This is an interesting set of words. I want
to end with this and let you hear it again the next time. He uses the word LEITOURGOS, which is an interesting word. Service is often DIAKONOS or DIAKONIA or some form of that word. But here it is a word that specifically is
associated with priestly service. It has to do with our relationship to God. We
serve the gospel of God's Son.
This word is
used in Romans 1 to show that everyone gives religious service to someone.
Everybody. Whether they're a Buddhist, an atheist, whether they're a secularist,
a Muslim or whatever they all serve some religion. This is Romans 1:25. The
unbeliever is the one who has "exchanged the truth of God for a lie."
It's talking about the atheist. "And worshipped and served the creature
rather than the Creator who is blessed forever."
In Romans 12:1,
which is the beginning of this last section, Paul says, "I beseech you
therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice." This is a priestly concept. The term sacrifice and offering
are used almost interchangeably. Here it focuses on the idea of a sacrifice
"holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable service." It's
priestly service to God. It's part of your role as a priest in the royal family
of God.
In Romans 15:16
Paul is saying, "That I might be a minister of Jesus Christ." It's
not the word DIAKONOS. It's the word LEITOURGOS where we get our word liturgy. It's a word that focuses on priestly
service. He's casting our service to the gospel in a very strong religious
terminology but it has nothing to do with ritual. It has to do with the gospel,
proclaiming the gospel. So this is his focal point. We see some other passages
like in Hebrews 8:2 where this word LEITOURGOS is applied to Jesus as a minister in the temple and
it's applied to Epaphroditus in his ministry to Paul's need. So in Romans 15:16
it emphasizes this.
Then we get to
the next word "ministering the gospel of God", it's HIEURGOS, which means to serve as a priest. So what's the
"ritual" of the church age? It's serving God day to day. It's Romans
12: 1-2, "I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your
reasonable service." This is focal point of understanding the spiritual
life. We'll start off with that next time to get it back into our heads. It
should revolutionize your understanding of your Christian life.