Romans: Grace and Glory — A Christian Growth Message

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Transcript

Open prayer

So, let’s pray together.

Our gracious God, thank you for giving to us a sure and certain word, we pray that you’d help us this morning as we consider these very precious verses, and we pray that you would plant them in our hearts and help us to bring forth fruit to your praise, we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

Sermon

Well dear friends, we are following the masterpiece of the apostle Paul, the letter of Paul to the Romans in the New Testament, and when you consider all the words that spill out in this world, unhelpful words, angry words, forgettable words, it is a great, great thing that we’ve been given this letter of Paul to the Romans which only takes about 20 minutes to read and has been changing lives for 2000 years.

This letter, however, is not designed to flatter us, it exposes our very real opposition to God, our deep and profound opposition to God, our resistance to God. It tells us in chapter 3 verse 23 that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We will not naturally arrive safely in heaven but we’re also told in chapter 6 that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Now you may feel that these truths in Romans have very little connection to your life and to the path that you’re walking. Uh, these verses of course do deal with a lot of invisible things and a lot of future things and we’re very sensitive in the church aren’t we, to people who accuse us of just teaching pie in the sky.

But these truths can penetrate our minds and our hearts very deeply and they can answer very deep questions that we have, very deep fears, very deep doubts because truth whether it comes from a doctor or a teacher or it comes from a parent can have a very big impact on us and it can be very liberating.

Now the verses that we come to today, Romans chapter 5 that we’ve just had read for us 1 to 5, these tell us the benefits of being a Christian right now, today, in the present, immediately, and I’ve always liked that old hymn that says in one of its verses, pardon for sin, and a peace that endureth, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine, plus 10,000 beside, and there is a writer grasping the very present, benefits of being a believer in Jesus and there is immediate help that comes to us from God. Now of course the future is bigger, and it’s better than the present, but these truths should help us today to realise what we have received today.

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The security that comes from God will help us stop trying to get our security from someone else or from somewhere else which can never really provide it.

Well Paul has been explaining that the human race sits in a pit of its own making, there are no ladders that we can create that will get us out of the pit, but we discover in the gospel, which Paul boasts of in chapter one, that somebody, Jesus Christ has come down into the pit, and is able to lift us out, calling on us to confess our very real sins and to receive his saving help, and the benefits from that decision are immediate and wonderful. So I’m gonna consider our five verses, Romans 5:1-5 under two brief headings this morning. The first is present benefits and then briefly some pastoral application. First of all present benefits, Romans chapter 5 verse 1, therefore, says Paul, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here’s the first present benefit from God, peace with God.

This is what somebody has called the wonder of restored relationship.

Now I don’t think you ever really appreciate this wonder of restored relationship until you realise that we contributed to the ruined relationship with God.

You know what it’s like to have a broken relationship I’m sure, and the sadness that comes with it.

And the grief and the helplessness. And of course the closer the bond, and some of you will know exactly what I’m talking about, the more painful the break.

Now imagine if we are to blame for the breakdown in the relationship and we don’t know what to do.

We’ve got no power whatsoever to fix things up.

How special it is when the other person initiates reconciliation. They come with the olive branch to fix things up. I wonder whether you’ve ever experienced that very great joy.

So no wonder the apostle Paul in these early chapters of Romans helps us to grasp our problem, our depravity that we have been wrong towards God.

Not just neglectful but resistant and hostile, and because we’ve been hostile to God with no good reason, Paul tells us that God has been hostile to us with good reason. He has had cause to be angry, we of course have cause to be ashamed.

And into this mess, Christ came.

And so God, you see, is not just the very fine judge.

Who makes a way for us to be pardoned for our sins, but in some remarkable way he wants to enter into friendship, to have peace, to have a real relationship. Jim Packer used to say that there’s one thing that’s more wonderful than justification, having your sins pardoned or acquitted, and that is suddenly finding yourselves adopted by the Father, the heavenly Father.

And if you think this is impossible for you notice in chapter 5 verse 1 that Paul says that this is we who experience this. He’s writing to Romans, believers, he doesn’t really know them, he’s writing to everybody who will read this letter, which is all believers down through the centuries, and he says we, have this peace with God, God has turned his anger away to his son.

And he’s turned his affection towards all believers.

And we begin with his affection coming down to us steadily and perfectly to have a kind of a new and fumbling affection back for him.

But our security is his love for us, slowly producing a new love for him. Now friends I’m not pretending this is easy to grasp.

The human race of course really wants to be loved.

And it assumes often that love from God is just a pipe dream.

And so we try to get love from people by being more pretty, more popular or more powerful or whatever it is, but God says you need to have peace with him, with your Maker, and it comes by receiving Christ. So the first present benefit is the great reality of peace with God. Now second benefit in verse two is access to God.

The privilege, the ability to approach God, without any fear, without any uncertainty today, in your prayers and on the last day when you meet him and to do that with good reason.

Some years ago when I was preaching in my former church, uh a man collapsed in the pew, we always thought it was a very safe place to collapse in the church because there were so many doctors and nurses who quickly hurried around and this man was uh quickly looked after and an ambulance was called and off he went.

Uh, in the middle of the service, and I remember in the afternoon I went to visit him and I turned up at this hospital that I didn’t really know very well, and as you know a hospital is a very big and complex uh system with doors and lifts and buildings and places all over the place and suddenly a friend walked past.

One of the professors at the hospital, and I said to him, I’m trying to get to this particular point, and he said, I’ll take you, and I walked with him and he had the magic card and all the lifts seemed to open at the right time and all the doors opened at the right time, and he took me right to the point.

And I was able to get from the front door to this very bed within about 60 seconds because my friend had the access. Now Jesus Christ provides the access for the believer to the presence of a holy and a mighty God.

We foolishly of course think that uh we’ve got every right to approach him anytime we like and he’ll be lucky to have us come and speak to him, but read the Old Testament and you’ll discover that there were massive precautions put in place because God was so holy and perfect and the Bible describes him as unapproachable left to ourselves. We could no more walk up to God than we could fly to the sun in a rocket made of tissue paper.

It’s Jesus who came, opened the curtain, you remember as he died and made it possible for us to have access with God.

And therefore God listens to us when we pray.

And therefore God will welcome the believer when he eventually comes face to face. We stand, says Paul in verse 2, in grace, one day in glory. We’re not in guilt, we’re in grace. We’re not in danger, we’re in God’s favour.

You may have seen that old black and white photograph taken many years ago of JFK, the President of the United States, sitting on the telephone leaning back at his desk in the White House and underneath the desk is this little boy, his son, playing peacefully, happily with some toy train or truck or something like this. And so it is, the believer access to the very presence of God because of Christ.

Well this is surprising because we’re told in 323 that we’ve fallen short of the glory, but here we’re told that we are able to stand in his grace and we will arrive in glory, and we do this because Christ died.

Now friends we may forget this, we may lose our sense of privilege, but it remains a very, very valuable and present benefit that God has underwritten our access and our security. Now if this seems a bit of a fairy tale to you, let me remind you that we’re not dealing with uh fiction, we’re dealing with non-fiction. It was Tolkien, JRR Tolkien, the um, great author, Lord of the Rings, who pointed out that fairy tales have a great longing for a happy ending, but he said it’s the gospel which gives the reason for a happy ending, which is the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. So, peace with God in the present, access in the present. Thirdly, verse 3, and this is a strange one.

We boast in our sufferings.

In other words, the apostle Paul says we’ve been given a window into what sufferings are for. Paul says we even boast in our sufferings and the word he uses for suffering is the word for being squeezed. Pressured, like Jesus surrounded by crowds, squeezed.

This idea of boasting in our sufferings needs very careful explanation because it’s not as though we’re boasting in the sufferings, that is we like the sufferings, we’re not meant to be stupid, we’re not masochistic.

The key word is that we know God has let us in to the effect or the outcome.

Just like a coach who’s getting somebody ready for the Olympics or for a football team, the pains are not random, they’re not sadistic, they’re going somewhere.

And Paul tells us in verse 3, these sufferings produce perseverance, they develop spiritual muscle.

And verse 3, this brings character or we might say fitness, like somebody who’s being proven or tested or trustworthy for a particular role. And so verse 3, our hope increases because we learn to look up and we learn to look forward.

I think I’ve found and it’s, surely your experience as well that certain sufferings that come to us, get us out of some dangerous zones to do with sin.

And they focus our minds more sharply on what is important and what is eternal, they chasten us and they clarify, they’re purposeful.

We’re not likely, are we, to be fit ready for great sport or usefulness if everything is soft and easy all the time.

But God measures out some pressure. To make us safe, to make us mature, to make us hopeful.

So we don’t face our sufferings as Christians like a stoic, a very brave person, although that’s very impressive. We don’t face our sufferings just by being angry or sad or complaining, although that comes to us very naturally, but we are told to know that a good, wise and sovereign God is at work.

A German pastor called Helmut Telicker who ministered during World War II under the rule of Adolf Hitler and was a very faithful man.

He wrote these words.

One day perhaps when we look back from God’s throne on the last day.

We shall say with amazement and surprise, if I had ever dreamed when I stood at the grave of my loved ones,

And everything seemed to be ended when I saw the war creeping upon us, when I faced the fate of imprisonment or malignant disease, if I had dreamed that God was only carrying out his design and plan through these woes, and that in the midst of my cares and troubles, his harvest was ripening.

And everything was pressing towards his day.

I would have been more confident, more cheerful, more composed. Paul is not saying that we are superhuman in the face of our sufferings. He’s not saying that our sufferings become easy. He’s simply saying that they do not fall outside the plan of God.

Now the 4th benefit in verse 5, the present benefit is that God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

The love of Christ we read in verse 8 has been proved at the cross but his love is poured. Verse 5, into our hearts, it’s proved by the work of Christ. It’s poured by the work of the spirit.

And this love, is a fixed love. But it’s often felt

It’s a fixed love, it’s steadfast, but it’s often felt.

Where there are 4 very present benefits of being a Christian peace with God, access to God, assurance from God, and the love of God.

Now some pastoral application, my second point, much more briefly this morning, some pastoral application. First of all, on the matter of peace with God, I do want you to remember that this is a fact more than a feeling.

God has written to tell us that things are 100% well between him and us.

You can doubt this if you want to.

You can stay nervous if you want to.

You can try and create peace with God if you want to, but you do not need to.

The person who’s turned to Christ has peace with God.

There is something called the peace of God, but it comes when we enjoy or,

Consider or meditate on what Christ has done for us, the Holy Spirit brings fresh appreciation.

For the peace we have with God by giving us the peace of God.

So the peace of God is a great experience.

But peace with God is a great fact.

Keep preaching this to yourself.

The war is over.

Between God and us, the peace has begun.

On the matter of access to God, there’s only one prayer which God has promised to hear of the unbeliever, and that’s the prayer for mercy. The unbeliever could pray other prayers, could pray for example for health or safety or family or some kind of deliverance and God may be pleased to hear that prayer, but he’s promised to hear the prayer for mercy.

But contrast that with the promise of God to the believer, God has promised to the believer that his ear is always attentive, his door is always open, his children are always welcome.

To be able to approach him with all the barriers swept away, to be able to lift up a sentence to him at any time through the day, to thank him for something, to ask his help for something, to bring a person to him in prayer, we’re standing in grace, we’re ready for glory, this is a gift beyond measure.

Not of course that we pray to dictate things to God, that would be a terrifying prospect if everything we prayed he had to do. No, thankfully he’s a much wiser father than we are his children, but our prayers always reach him and then he knows what to do with them.

On the matter of our sufferings, remember that there are voices which depress us in the face of suffering.

There’ll be the little voice that says why has this happened? This is a punishment. Somebody is out to get me.

The devil of course prowls around and always finds ways to discourage us. Our sins loom large and they kind of claim that we’re disqualified or something like that. People can add to our fears by accusing us or undermining us.

And that’s why we need to see our sufferings as Paul says, through the lens of his love for us and his purposes for us. John Newton wrote to a suffering friend, I hope, he said this is a short season of trouble. Difficulties remember are nothing to God. If he speaks, it is gone.

But having bought us with his blood, he will not lay upon us what he endured for us, and he can make amends and soon all tears will be gone, that’s a great perspective. Sometimes of course God tests us through suffering to remove false faith.

When we find ourselves drifting into empty belief or self-confidence or we become unteachable or dull or foolish, he may bring something to to wake us and bring us back. But just remember that it doesn’t matter how keen and faithful you are, as he raises his children, he’s gonna do that with a great deal of love and some tests and some challenges as well because he loves us.

Finally, the love that has been poured into our hearts.

The Holy Spirit we’re told in the New Testament is God’s present presence. He’s our present presence.

Of God.

The down payment, the Holy Spirit, the moment we believe in Christ, he occupies our heart.

And he begins like a diver taking chlorine into a swamp to stir up in us appreciation for God’s love for us and to stir up in us some love back to God.

And so we become conscious every now and again, not just of what Christ has proved, but this pouring of the Holy Spirit, appreciating more and more the love of God. These are the present benefits.

Now let me just finish by telling you that um my hero of the church is probably a man called Charles Spurgeon, and Spurgeon’s last student probably in about 1890 was a man called Frank Boreham, terrible name for a preacher. Frank Boreham came out to New Zealand to minister and then he came to Hobart and he worked on the bay of the Hobart harbour.

And on one occasion he was standing in the bay and he was looking out into the water and there was a sailor nearby and Boram said to him, are you a Christian?

And the sailor said to Boham, do you see all those boats out there?

Those boats could not carry.

The sins of my life, the sins of my life would swamp the boats that are in this harbour.

And Boram said to him, do you see the ocean that is out there? The ocean is like the mercy of Christ.

And your sins can be drowned and done away with in the mercy and the love of Christ, that’s what the apostle Paul is trying to drive home to us in these very wonderful verses, present blessings to be received, to be believed, to be preached, to be rejoiced in.

Let’s pray.

Closing prayer

Father, we thank you for these precious things. We pray that you would drive away unbelief, and that you would bring home understanding. Conviction, gratitude, faithfulness and joy, we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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