ROMANS: The Power of Glory

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit Grandparkway.org.

Amen.

If you've got a Bible, I'd invite you to take it and open up to Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

If you're a guest, we're going through the book of Romans.

And we'll go for a little bit and we'll try to take a break after Easter and do a topical series.

And then we'll come back into the book of Romans.

Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

I'll start reading in verse 1.

As I said, I want to talk to you about the power of glory.

This is what the Bible says.

Romans 5, verse 1.

Romans 5:1

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

More than that, 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.

For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

One of the things that happens in Romans chapter 5 is that Paul changes the pronoun that he uses.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Up to this point, he's used they and you and I.

And in chapter 5, you should have noticed that about 10 or 15 times he uses we, we, we, and us, and our.

It's a shared experience that we learn from together.

And three times he says this, we rejoice in this.

And even more so, we rejoice in this.

And then finally he says in verse 11, we rejoice in God.

And that word rejoice is the Greek word.

It's kowhawamai.

Kowhawamai.

And you're like, thanks for that.

Oh, okay.

Uh Kowhawama simply means this.

It means glory.

It means the glory that I get excited about.

This is the thing that I most glory in.

This is my highest priority and my deepest affection.

And so I want to call our attention to those three things this morning as I talk about the power of glory.

The first thing he says is in verse 2, he says, We rejoice and hope of the glory of God.

Let's look at it in its context.

Verse 1, he says, Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith in this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice and hope of the glory of God.

Now, what Paul does is in verse 1 when he says, Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, that's a summary of all of chapter 4.

He says, Therefore, in light of what we just we just talked about in this past chapter, since we've been justified by faith, since we're right with God, not because of anything we've done, but because we have faith in what Christ has done.

Now, he says, therefore, since we're justified by faith, three things are true.

He says, number one, we have peace with God.

We have peace with God.

Secondly, he says we're standing in grace.

He said we've been we've been given access by faith into this grace by which we stand.

I don't have time to preach this this morning, but when he says we've been given access, the word picture behind that is that you've been summoned by royalty into the presence of the king.

Pregnant pause.

Three, two, one.

Okay.

One more time.

You've been you've been given access into the presence of royalty by the king.

And you say, well, I don't get that.

Well, we don't live in the we didn't live in the Old Testament.

Remember the name Esther?

Does that ring a bell for anybody?

Remember Esther?

Esther, they came to Esther and they said, Hey, for such a time as this, we think you are where you are.

You need to go to the king and let him know what's going on.

But to go into the king's present presence without the king summoning you, you could be was punishable by death.

And so if you came unannounced and you just said, Hey, I want an audience with the king, the king had a golden scepter, and he could take that scepter and he would wave you towards him.

Or he would look at his servants and they would put you to death.

Much like at my house when I'm watching the golf tournament on Sunday afternoons.

I don't want my wife to come into my presence, so I have a golden scepter, and which no?

Okay.

Anyway, but but Esther, remember, Esther got all dressed up and she came and she was not invited.

She came into the presence of the king, and the king reached over and grabbed his golden scepter, and he welcomed her.

He gave her access into his presence.

It happened for you and I on the cross.

Remember when Jesus died?

And there's this little off-the-cuff reference that says, and the temple veil was torn from top to bottom.

You were given access into the presence of the king.

God said, Hey, and what he picks up, Paul picks up on here in Romans 5, he says, Hey, we have we're standing, he said, we've been given access by by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And then thirdly, he says, we rejoice in hope in the hope of glory.

He said, Why do you tell us that?

Because it covers your past, your present, and your future.

When he says we have peace with God, this is a result of our past forgiveness.

When he says we're standing in grace, this is our present privilege.

And then thirdly, when he says we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, this is our future inheritance.

Wade talked about our inheritance last week.

He says, hey, this is our future inheritance.

We rejoice, we get amped, we get excited about the fact that the hope of the glory of God.

Now we call it hope only because it hadn't happened yet.

But for the believer, for the Christian, this is as certain as the day is long.

Because of justification, because I've been, well, he says in verse 1, he says, Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, because justification has happened, glorification has to happen.

Do you realize that?

Y'all are kind of like, eh, I don't really get to.

Let me bring this down to where you live.

If you've got your Bible and you're in Romans 5, turn about two, what maybe one or two pages over to Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 8, and I'll start reading in verse 28.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

We all got verses that we kind of prefer, like John 3.16.

Romans 8.28 is one of those that we go and read, but you don't keep reading.

But I want to start in verse 28 and keep reading.

And I want to give you something to use in your life today.

Romans 8.28 says this.

He 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, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called.

And those who he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

It's called in theology the golden chain of redemption.

Those that God predestined, he also called, and those that he called, he also justified, and those that he justified, he also glorified.

And so you say, what does that mean?

What does that mean?

Is look at me.

What that means if anybody at any point in their life has ever been justified by God, by faith, by having faith in Christ, whatever phrase you use, they got saved, they became a Christian, they were converted, whatever.

If that's ever been a genuine thing for them, that person is justified, made right by God, just as if they'd never sinned.

The Bible says they are going to be glorified.

You say, Well, I still don't get it.

Let me sharpen the focus a little bit.

He said, Those whom he he foreknew, he called.

Those he called, he justified.

Those he justified, he also glorified.

In other words, God says, I'm going to ensure that this process happens.

And so here's what you need to do today.

You need to hear that.

You need to either apply it to yourself, because let me just tell you, if you're in this church and I'm your pastor, and and and God forbid, it doesn't happen for any of you this week, but let's just say a long time from now, you're on your deathbed and you're 96.

I'm coming to your house or I'm coming to the hospital and I'm going to look you in the eye and I'm going to say, David Ryder, have you made your peace with God?

Are you at peace with God?

And I don't want David Ryder to sit in this church and listen to me preach the Bible and preach the gospel for years and go, Well, I hope so.

I want him to smile back and kind of go, absolutely, loser.

Why do you think I've been coming to church all these years?

Just to hear you talk?

Don't you want to say something like that to a preacher at least once before you die?

But here's what happens.

Nine times out of ten, and it's not with people in this church, but I'll get calls, I'll say, hey, my brother-in-law's down here at Memorial Herman, he doesn't have a church.

You go check on him, he's dying, and I'll walk in and say, Hey, I'm Neil and I'm friends with your cousin or whatever.

Let me just cut to the chase scene because you're gravely ill.

Have you made your peace with God?

And people nine times out of ten say, I hope so.

And I go, I don't say it, but I think, what do you mean you hope so?

That's not the kind of hope the Bible talks about.

The only reason we call it hope is it hadn't happened yet.

But as sure as God is real, it's gonna happen.

Why?

Because those whom He called, He also justified.

And those He justified, He also glorified.

And some of you are like, I don't need that, I'm good, I got that.

Well, some of you need to apply it to your kids.

You know those ungrateful weasels that you raised the right way and they got to be about 16 and got car keys and drove off and went the wrong way?

Or they went off to college, and all of a sudden you're kind of like, Did you see what she put on Facebook?

And your husband's like, What's Facebook?

And you break her off a text and she's like, Mom, mom, I'm 18, I'm grown.

And you're like, if I could come through this phone, I would snatch a knot in you right now.

You would walk with a limp the rest of your life, young lady.

I didn't raise you this way.

And what you can do is you can sit up at night waiting for them to get home because the older they get, your house is no longer a house, it's a gas station.

They fill up with food and money and they take off again.

Yeah, they do.

Some of y'all are like, oh, we're living there.

You say, What's this got to do with the golden chain of redemption?

Because unless you can rest in the fact that, hey, there was a time when my child was justified, and God's word tells me that she is gonna be glorified.

And not by me hounding them.

You've got to just smile at it.

And by the way, she's gonna be glorified either by convictions that you taught her or consequence that God's gonna bring on her.

Uh-oh.

Some of you pulled back from me there.

Do we need to say that again?

Or as my friend at the prison said to me one time, Oh, Reverend, get up and I think there's some old honey in that carcass.

Get up in there and get up all that honey a revelation.

I have no idea what that meant, but it sounded good.

And I looked at him and I said, What do you want me to do?

He goes, say that again.

All right.

Hey, listen to me.

Your children who you raised to do the right thing and be the right kind of person, when they go off and act like goofballs, that doesn't mean now, by the way, some of them will find in that process that they never were justified.

And that'll be a good thing.

Because then they can repent and be saved.

But if you're always rescuing them from the consequences of their nonsense, how are they ever going to know who they really are?

The worst thing.

We'll get to that in just a minute.

Just put that over there.

But here's why you didn't understand the golden chain of redemption.

Not what I said, what the Bible says.

God says, hey, those whom he foreknew, he called.

Those whom he called, he justified.

Those who he justified, he glorified.

So that means that because I'm a Christian right now, that God is committed.

He says that He's predestined me to look like Jesus, which is sanctification.

A lot of people say, well, we're sanctification in that process.

God just assumed that's going to happen.

Because how are you going to go from being a baby Christian to going to heaven when you die?

There's some shaping going to take place.

You're going to do some time in the furnace.

And unless you can say, Oh, there's a day coming when I'm going to stand in glory, you'll spit the bit and quit.

You'll want relief more than you want the truth.

See, Paul says, We rejoice.

See, here's the power of glory because we rejoice, or our literal translation, we glory in hope of the glory of God.

Now you need to apply that to yourself today or to somebody in your family.

But know this if a person's justified, if they've been made, they've been justified with God by faith, they are going to be glorified.

It is just as sure as the day is long.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

And for us, it's a matter of how.

How's God going to do that?

He's going to do it through conviction or through consequence.

Which brings us to the second thing.

We rejoice or we glory in our sufferings.

Look, if you would, I'm back in Romans 5.

Look, he says in verse 2, through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

Grace is not just how we become a Christian, it's how we stand as Christians.

And he says, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Verse 3, more than that.

Now I'm reading from the ESV translation.

And when the ESV says more than that, he's not saying, Oh, he says, because he says more than that.

We rejoice or we glory in our sufferings.

He's not saying this is better than justification.

This is better than being right with God.

What he's saying is, like the late-night TV guy, but wait, there's more.

You know, the guy that's selling you something, it says, but wait, if you order right now, we'll double the order.

You're like, oh, okay, now I'm interested.

You ever notice that thing's like a car wreck on the freeway?

You can't look away.

Because you're waiting for them to get to the part where they say, but wait, there's more.

Like I saw my dad order a Ronco glass cutter when I was nine years old.

Anybody remember the Ronco glass cutter?

You could make all your glasses.

And my dad announced to us, I'm gonna make all our glasses.

Like, hey dad, they sell glasses.

You know, they got a smooth edge on them, not this thing we cut our lips off.

My stepsister looked like a turtle.

She didn't have lips for three years.

Well, having your sister's stepsister, my dad got a rum coat glass cutter for Christmas.

Because what hooked him was, but wait, there's more.

That's what Paul is saying here in Romans 5.

When he says in verse 3, he says, hey, more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings.

Now that sounds crazy.

You say, well, what do you mean?

This is not a flippant indifference to the pain of life.

Oh, because hey, bad things are gonna happen to good people.

It doesn't mean that God's not good or God's not sovereign or all-powerful in control.

This is not flippant indifference.

There's people in our church right now that are battling breast cancer.

I didn't go to their hospital to pray with them before they went to surgery and kind of go.

Rejoice in this, alright?

That's not what the Bible calls us to.

No.

Instead, it's more it's this contextual confession of God's sufficiency.

That sounded big, didn't it?

Y'all are like, say that again.

I want to write that down.

No.

Let me give an example I'm talking about.

I say a contextual confession of God's sufficiency.

I mean in the moment when everything is going wrong around you, that you're testifying to God's goodness and God's sufficiency, regardless of your circumstance.

Don't turn there, but just write down Acts 16, verse 25.

Acts 16:25

The Bible says that Paul and Silas set out for the place of prayer in the chapter in the beginning of Acts chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

And there was a slave girl who was possessed of a demon, and she would predict the future, and people, her owners, her people that owned her would make money.

And she was walking behind Paul and Silas for days, kind of going, These men are servants of the most high God.

It is no consolation to have the wrong people say the right thing about you.

After about two or three days, Paul just turned around and said, In the name of Jesus, come out of her.

And the demon was cast out.

And the guy, the Bible, I love the Bible.

The Bible says, and they saw that their hope of making money was gone.

And so they were mad at Paul and they took him into court and said, Hey, these guys are messing up our gig.

And so they took them, and the Bible says they beat them and they locked them in this in the inner sanctums of the prison and they locked them in stocks.

And then Acts 16, about verse 25, says, about midnight.

The dark night of the soul.

About midnight, Paul and Syus were praying and singing hymns to God.

You ever wonder what they sang?

Because the Bible says, right after that, and the prisoners were listening to them.

Who sings after they've been severely flogged?

That's what the Bible says happened to them.

Did you ever get severely flogged?

I got severely flogged one time.

We had a fire, we had a Hot Wheels Fireball 500 double loop racetrack.

We set it up in our bedroom that I share with four other people, the one room.

So my kids come to me, Dad, my room's too small.

I need a bigger bedroom.

Oh, silly rabbit.

Tricks are for kids.

Can you breathe?

What do you mean?

I would wake up oxygen deprived.

So many people in that room breathing that air.

I had to run outside.

It must be morning.

Thank you, Jesus.

We had a double loop Hot Wheel track, and Hot Wheel track was orange sections about that long and had these purple tongue depression things you stuck them together with.

My dad came back there twice.

They had friends over drinking and playing 42.

That's what Rednecks did for entertainment.

My dad said, You boys knock it off.

It's getting too loud back here.

I'll come back here and get them and whip all y'all.

One of those little visitor kids said, He ain't whipping me.

Oh boy.

Ask the baseball team about that.

And so it wasn't 10 minutes.

Also, I heard him coming down the hall.

We had hardwood football.

Boom, boom.

He just opened that door.

He didn't even break straight.

He just reached down and grabbed a section of track while he was locking on his first target.

He disconnected the Hot Wheels track.

You ever been whip with a Hot Wheels track?

You can hear it coming.

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

You're like, woo, woo! And you're like, my dad just grabbed a kid, wow, boom, boom, threw him on the bed, grabbed another.

One of them was running for the door.

My dad kicked his foot back, shut the door.

Like he's like an octopus.

He got eight arms in here.

All I saw was a hail of orange track, and you could hear, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

And it was over.

There were seven kids laying on the ground like bacon in a pan.

Ah.

Every time I read about Paul and Silas, we're severely flogged.

I think, oh, they got whipped with a Hot Wheels track.

I'm with you, brother.

I feel your pain now.

And here's the best part.

My dad, after it got done, he opened the door, turned around, held that thing.

It was all like a religion's all crooked and everything crazy.

He goes, if I hear anything else, I'm coming back.

Hear no evils, see no evils.

We sat back there doing charades right now.

I didn't well no more that Hot Wheels track.

Paul and Silas didn't all whip with the Hot Wheels track.

They were locked in stocks.

About midnight, they were praying and singing hymns.

See, here's the beauty of I ain't got time to preach this either today, okay?

Y'all gonna get it because I didn't get to preach to you last week, all right?

I got all yoked up in me in here.

I gotta get some of this out.

So in Acts 16, it begins with him saying, they're going to the place of prayer.

By the way, you're gonna get to a place of prayer either by circumstance or choice, but you're gonna pray.

They stayed out for the place of prayer.

Instead, they had to cast out a demon, and then they got the snot beat out of them with a Hot Wheels track, and they got locked in stocks, and the guy said, Hey, whatever you do, don't let these guys get out.

And about midnight, they're praying and singing hymns to God.

And here's the part you need to hear.

And the Bible says, and the prisoners were listening to them.

People you work with that don't know God, the prisoners.

They're the prisoners, they're listening to you.

And so when I went and prayed with my friend who's going through breast cancer, and I just prayed.

See, some of you are kind of like, oh man, don't I get a hall pass while I'm not getting my way while I'm suffering?

Don't I get to just be mad at God?

No, because some of you are gonna be in heaven and a lady's gonna come up to you and say, Hey, by the way, I was your nurse, anesthetist, and you didn't know it, but I was a whiskey drunk, and I was there for your surgery, and you came into this with such peace.

It it made my whiskey taste bad that night.

I would go every night and drown my sorrows in about four glasses of good bourbon and pass out and go to sleep and get up and come to work the next day and help operate on people.

But when they rolled you in, there was something about your countenance.

I gave my life to Christ.

I came to your funeral.

I'd never seen anyone die.

They worshiped at your funeral and it wrecked me.

I wanted to know the God who's more satisfying than dying of cancer.

Because the prisoners are listening.

And unless you understand the power of glory, that you you glory in your sufferings.

You don't glorify, you don't glorify in your sufferings, you glory in the context of suffering.

Why?

Because you know what the Bible says you know.

What does it say?

Look at verse 3.

It says, for more than that, 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.

By the way, when the Bible says that hope does not put us to shame, what that means is there's never gonna be a time you could live for 500 years, but you're not.

You could live for 500 years, and not a day of that.

You there's never gonna be a day where you're gonna look at yourself in the mirror and go, I am so stupid for blessing.

In what the Bible says.

It's never gonna put you to shame.

You're never gonna say, Oh man, think of all the sins I could have been committing.

Are you serious?

I got a brother that's not a Christian.

His biggest concern is, hey man, do you tithe?

Oh, absolutely.

It's just a no-brainer.

Matter of fact, the first thing I do before I even when I get the notice that says, hey, your check's been direct deposited, I go write a check.

I don't wait till Sunday.

If it's Tuesday and I get paid, I come in here and put a check in the box.

You go, why is that?

It's first fruits, man.

I don't want to do my life in my own power.

Well, I mean, you ever think if you ever put a pencil to it and added up all the money you've given to God, what you could do with that?

I could destroy myself like you've destroyed yourself with all your money.

And your three ex-wives.

And that skank you shacked up with right now, whose name I won't go to the trouble to remember because you'll have a different one next year.

Your turn.

See, he can't put me to shame.

My family likes to put me to shame for saying, hey man, you're really smart.

Why do you choose to do this?

You could do so many other things.

I was at a wedding, and a man that owned a big corporation worth billions of dollars said, You're tired of wasting your life?

Hey, you can't roll up on me and jerk my chain because you're gonna get something you don't want.

I don't care who's standing around.

So the brother said that in front of all these people, and I said, That's funny.

I was gonna ask you the same question.

Because they want to put you to shame.

They want to make you feel silly for believing the Bible.

But the Bible says this.

Oh, by the way, hey, we know this.

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.

Why?

Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us.

I don't need this external reminder that this is true.

I have this inward reality testifying to me every day that it's true.

That's why the Bible says his spirit, Holy Spirit, bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

Not only that, he fills my heart to a place of fullness so I can hear my goofy brother say crazy stuff.

And I can hear smart electric businessmen who make a lot of money.

Not wrong to make a lot of money.

If you make a lot of money and you're tired of wasting it, see me after the service.

We need a children's building, dad gummit.

Tired of making do with this hallway over here.

You're never gonna be put to shame.

Ever.

There's never gonna be a day where you're gonna have to say, man, I wish this was true.

No.

So because of that, Paul says, This is what we know.

See, this is this is what I mean when I say this is a contextual confession of God's sufficiency.

Because see, we live in a world full of people that and suffering, by the way, I think is the greatest invitation that's held out to you and I.

Because we live in a world full of people who don't believe in God, and this is how they think.

They say, if God were good, wouldn't he want us to be happy?

And if God were all powerful, wouldn't he want to be able to do whatever he wouldn't he be able to do whatever he wanted?

So the presence of evil and suffering in the world prove that prove that God lacks the absolute goodness or the absolute power or both.

And here's the flaw: God's highest goal is not that you and I be happy.

God's highest goal is that you and I be like Him.

That's why He says, be holy as I'm holy, for without holiness no one's gonna see God.

How happy do you think?

You say, Well, God's always happy.

Ever watch your son get nailed to a stick?

Surrounded by a bunch of religious idiots that you have the power to kill with your spoken word.

Was God unhappy?

I'm not saying that.

What I'm saying is that God understands suffering.

That's why Jesus is referred to as the suffering servant in Isaiah.

So, what Christians know is that suffering produces, suffering has a purpose.

And suffering produces, Paul says here in Romans 5, endurance and endurance produces character.

Look at me, can I say something else to you?

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.

If you want your sons and daughters to be men and women of character, don't rescue them when they suffer.

Uh-oh.

Did you feel that?

Some of y'all are like, you can keep that to yourself.

No vacancy.

I'm good.

Thanks, preacher.

Not just little things.

I mean, not just big things, but little things.

Like my ninth grader right across the street here.

Every weekend forget she has homework until Sunday night about 9.30.

But I tell her on Friday, hey, baby, you got homework.

Yeah, yeah, I don't want to think about it, Dad.

It's Friday.

All right, well, if you just do like an hour today and do an hour, maybe Saturday morning, then maybe an hour or an hour and a half of it on Saturday afternoon, Saturday night.

Sunday night, it's 45 minutes to an hour, and you're done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I say a lot of great things.

I just like pearls of wisdom fall out of my mouth.

And my 15-year-old just rolls around and like, oh, that's my dad talking again.

Until tonight, about 9 o'clock.

And she gets home from babysitting for community girls, hey baby, you got homework?

Oh, yeah, I'm gonna be up until three in the morning.

Guess what?

I'm not.

I ain't colored no map of Africa.

She's like, hey, I got a bunch.

Do you think you could do?

I'll tell you what I can do.

I can get my big old behind in bed in there and go to bed.

Because see, I preached three times today.

I am here to accomplish the impossible with a coalition of the unwilling on behalf of the ungrateful, okay?

I ain't got time to color your map.

I've already done ninth grade twice, okay?

I ain't doing it again.

Oh, Dad, don't you care?

Kids always appeal to your sentiment.

Look at me.

You need to give them your understanding.

You're smarter than them.

Don't miss an opportunity to remind them.

Because they think they're smarter than you.

You're like, oh, you hate kids.

Ask my kids if I hate them.

My kids are like, my dad rocks.

Their mom's going off on some drunken soiree having dinner with some women in the church tonight.

Oh, and she forgot too.

I forgot to tell you, I'm having dinner with some friends tomorrow night.

Can you get supper for the girls?

Is Chick-fil-A open on Sunday?

How about that Whataburger right next door?

I get dinner for them girls.

No, I say to the kids, where do you want to go have dinner?

You can go anywhere you want.

Because I'm your dad and I'm awesome.

Your mom makes you eat green beans.

I take you to Chili's.

What am I saying?

If you want your kids to be men and women of character, that doesn't start when they leave the driveway at 18.

That starts when they're five and they lie and it's cute.

Yeah.

You hear me?

And you wonder why when they're 25, they're liars.

It ain't cute anymore, is it?

What's really ugly is they're not many women of character.

Why?

Because you didn't let them suffer.

They didn't know how to endure.

And that endurance didn't produce character, and character didn't produce hope.

They don't have this steadfast hope, not this wish, but this certain reality that they live with that says, man, as sure as the day is long.

I'm telling you what, I'm more hopeful today.

Matter of fact, I'll tell you something crazy.

Some of the most hopeful Christians you know have suffered well.

Because they've been in the furnace, they've tasted and seen that God is good.

See, the power of glory means that you can be in the context of suffering and you can rejoice greatly.

Thirdly and finally, he says in verse 11, skip down there.

He says in verse 10, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life?

Again, this is a third thing.

I'm preaching two sermons today.

The one I have time to say, and this is the third thing I don't have time to say.

What Paul is saying is, hey, if this is how God relates to us when we're his enemies, how do you think he's going to relate to us now that we're reconciled, that we're his sons and daughters?

Because he's saying, hey, don't dread the end of your life.

Don't get to the end of your life and kind of go, well, I'm not real sure how I am with God.

When the preacher comes in and says, Have you made your peace with God?

Open up your 98-year-old mouth and smile and go, I was reconciled to God years ago, son, okay?

I've been justified by faith.

And because I was justified, I'm going to be glorified.

The issue is not, am I justified or will I be glorified.

The issue is how do I live in the in-between time?

Absolutely, I'm sure of it.

I don't have the peace of God.

I have peace with God.

And watch the preacher kind of go, hey, well, maybe you could talk to me some.

Look at verse 11.

He says, Hey, because God demonstrated his love for you while you were still sinners, he died for you.

Don't doubt the love of God.

Open your eyes.

It's obvious.

Verse 11, more than that, there's that phrase again.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

That means we reserve our highest affection and our greatest priority for God.

It's the first question of the shorter catechism, which asks, What is the chief end of man?

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

This is such an unfamiliar thought to most of us.

We don't have a frame of reference for it.

So I want to leave you today with a frame of reference.

You say, What do you mean, rejoice in God?

If you got your Bible, turn to the left to the 33rd Psalm.

And we I said to you earlier when we started the service that if you're visiting today, just know that this is a church that loves the Bible.

We don't worship the Bible, we worship God, but we preach the Bible, and in just a minute, I'm gonna shut up.

And all God's people said, That hurts my feelings.

I'm gonna shut up and we're gonna let you think about what you've heard, and then you're gonna walk out of here and we're gonna say, Go live what you now know to be the truth.

He said, What do you mean, rejoice in God?

He says, We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

We rejoice that one day we're gonna go to heaven.

We rejoice in our sufferings, but we here's the power of glory.

We glory in God, is what he's saying.

We glory.

Remember the Greek word?

Kahaomai?

We glory.

Our highest priority and our deepest affection is God.

What does that look like?

Look at the 33rd Psalm, verse 1.

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous.

Praise befits the upright.

Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre.

Make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.

Sing to him a new song.

Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.

That means our guitar players should blurt out every once in a while stuff.

Wouldn't that be great?

Wouldn't it be great for Mark Brooker back there?

That dude's in his fifties back there on that lead guitar every once in a while.

How! Or he could be like Dwight Joachim and just be playing and go, oh, sucky.

Clearly, y'all don't understand country music.

Verse 4 for the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness.

He loves righteousness and justice.

The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their hosts.

He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap.

He puts the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord.

Look at this next phrase.

Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

Who else can you say that about?

If you want to see how futile that is, watch the NBA All-Star game tonight.

It's a joke.

I made myself watch the slam dunk contest.

It's like people that are not interesting, you cannot make them interesting.

What was interesting was Charles Barclay ragging on people's outfits.

The slam dunk contest was a joke.

It's just buffoonery.

And I just thought, man, these are some of the greatest quote-unquote athletes in the world.

And this is the best we got.

And yet the Bible says, when you say, what do you mean, glory in God, rejoice in God, and let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him?

For he spoke and it came to be.

He commanded and it stood firm.

Think the Red Sea.

Verse 10 the Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing.

Can we not do away with the UN?

Anyway, he frustrates the plans of the peoples.

The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his inheritance.

The Lord looks down from heaven.

He sees all the children of men.

From where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.

He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.

The king is not saved by his great army.

A warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for the Lord.

He is our help and our shield for our greatness for our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name.

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us even as we hope in you.

If you want to pray something for this church, pray Psalm 33, 20 to 22.

That our soul would wait for the Lord, that he is our help and our shield, for our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name.

And then just say to the Lord, let your steadfast love be upon us even as we hope in you.

It spills over into Psalm 34.

Just a few verses.

Can you take a few more verses?

I don't want to read too much of the Bible to you.

Psalm 34, 1.

I will bless the Lord at all times.

Whether I'm in the furnace or I'm in the penthouse or the outhouse, it doesn't matter.

I'm going to bless the Lord at all times.

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord.

Let the humble hear and be glad.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

That's how I propose to my wife of that verse, by the way.

You say, what?

Yeah.

Psalm 34, 3.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

I didn't want to marry just a beautiful woman.

I wanted to marry a woman that would make God bigger in my life.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

And despite all common sense, she said yes.

I don't question the mystery.

I just I just enjoy it.

He said, Why do you tell us that?

This is what it looks like to rejoice in God, to have your highest priority and your deepest affection be God.

It's why the Bible says, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God.

It's why the Bible says in Matthew 6, about verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things you worry about will be added unto you.

It's why when the disciples asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment?

And he said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Who else can you say that about?

Can you imagine on your first date with the person you're married to right now, if you would have said, Hey, tell me about you, and he would have said, or she would have said, hey, I'll tell you what you need to know about me.

You need to love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Now that's a little creepy.

See, there are things, let me say this and I'm done.

There are things that can only be said of God and to God.

And to rejoice in God, to glory, the power of glory in God means that you only say those to God and about God.

You don't say those about anybody else.

Why?

Because to rejoice in God means that He's my highest priority and my deepest affection.

Hold your hands out, I'm gonna speak a blessing over you.

The Bible says that one day the glory of the Lord is gonna cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

You get to be a part of that.

As you live and demonstrate the power of glory, it's gonna engulf this earth.

Depart now.

And do what God's commissioned and commanded you to do.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You dismiss.