From War to Welcome: The Gospel of Peace

It is certainly is a huge honor, always honor and privilege to be

able to come and share God's Word, to break bread and to let

us have a feast on God's word. And I pray that's what will

happen today. As Danny has already mentioned,

tomorrow is Memorial Day, and there of course, we honor those

that made the ultimate sacrifice, those that died so

that we might have freedom and peace.

But in the book of Romans, particularly the passage that

we're going to look at today, we're going to learn about a

peace that is far greater and far more meaningful and is

eternal, a peace that God provides for us.

And so today's message is called from war to welcome the gospel

of peace. And before we jump into the to

the passage that was read a few moments ago, I want to just kind

of navigate, kind of get some context.

Where are we in the passage as we lead into this passage?

Where are we? Well Paul in in this very

glorious book, Paul has been the 1st 4 chapters.

He has been explaining to us that the gospel, the good news

of Jesus Christ, is the power of God unto salvation to everyone

who believes. Therefore, everyone is

available, or the gospel is available to everyone, but also

everyone needs the gospel because there is no one

righteous. No, not even one.

We may look good, some of you look better than some of the

others, and I won't point out who I'm talking about, but

relatively speaking, we may. We may think pretty highly of

ourselves, but compared to God, no one is righteous, not even 1

and therefore everyone is has a problem.

Everyone is under condemnation. We are fallen and we are we

cannot get ourselves up. We have a problem.

The problem is their sin, the problem is the guilt of sin, and

our relationship to God is broken.

But Jesus, Paul then goes on to tell us, Jesus, the righteous

one, the Son of God, came as a man and came and lived a

sinless, perfect life. He obeyed the law in every way,

in his thoughts, in his deeds, in his actions, in every every

intention of his heart was to obey and to please God.

And therefore, because he was God in the flesh, He then was

able to bear the penalty that we rightly deserve.

So Jesus is our substitute on the cross, substituted for us.

He bears the penalty of our sin. He brings into the 1st 4

chapters of Romans a word called justification.

And it's important that we understand what that word means

because he's going to hit the the ground running in chapter 5

with the So what of justification.

So he says therefore, since we have been justified by faith, So

what does that mean? Well, Paul explains to us in the

1st 4 chapters that justification means at least two

things. One, it's a legal term.

We are guilty before God, but because of what Jesus has done,

we're declared righteous. Fact.

That's what justification literally means.

We are declared righteous before God.

That in and of itself is great news, right?

But there's more, there's even more.

It gets better. Justification also means that

Jesus's righteousness gets credited into our account.

So it's not just forgiveness is not just wiping the slate clean

as great as that would be, but we actually get credited with

the righteousness of Jesus Christ himself.

I I don't know about you, but that's hard to take in.

That is hard to fully grasp. In fact, I think the whole

Christian life is trying to trying to somehow grasp and

fully understand that wonderful truth.

Now, it's interesting because here we have to realize and

reflect on the fact that Paul had never visited the church at

Rome. He'll visit it later, ironically

as a prisoner. He'll get there.

He'll get to meet his Christian brothers and sisters in Rome in

chains. But when he writes this letter,

he hasn't yet been there, and he wants to make sure.

So he's writing to believers. He's not writing to people who

need the gospel, but he's writing it to people who already

have believed the gospel. He wants them to fully

understand all the implications of the gospel in their life.

Now I just want to one other thing that I want to say is that

a lot of scholars, Bible students of the New Testament,

when they, when they look at Romans and they study the way

it's laid out, they compare it to the other books that Paul

wrote. They sometimes they think this

is interesting because really about now, at the end of chapter

4, Paul would normally turn from doctrine over to practical

application. But he doesn't do that here.

Actually, he doesn't do that until chapter 12.

But he does do something interesting here in these 11

verses. It's almost as if he's driving,

taking a journey through the beauty of the gospel, the

message of the gospel. And it's he's, it's almost as if

he pulls off to a rest stop, you know, like one of those scenic,

you know, drives, you know, you're in the National Park and

they have these really nice places you can pull off.

And there's a Vista, beautiful view.

And it's almost as if Paul has pulled off.

He's looking out and he is admiring where he's come from.

He's looking at this beautiful view.

And so I want to take just a few minutes and explore here the

admiration that the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul, is giving

about justification. And he says this.

He says since we have been justified or declared righteous,

since Jesus's righteousness has been credited to our account, we

have peace with God. And I want us to look at 4

aspects of that peace. First of all, the fact that it's

a true peace. The second is it's a grace

creating peace. Thirdly, it's a joy producing

peace. And then fourthly, it's a

personal peace. So first of all, a true peace.

When he says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus

Christ, literally we are having peace.

It is an ongoing reality in the life of a believer.

It is a true people. Why don't I say it's a true

peace or a real peace? Well, there's a lot of times in

the New Testament, many times in the New Testament that it talks

about the experience of peace that a believer has.

That is absolutely, completely true.

The Bible teaches it. The Bible.

A believer does not need to have an anxious heart.

He doesn't need to have a troubled heart.

We do not need to be. We can be content in our

circumstances. We can be content in the Lord.

However, as true as that is, that's not what Paul is talking

about here. He's talking about a different

kind of peace. What he's talking about here is

a literal peace. You are no longer at war with

God, and God is no longer at war with you.

We may feel the struggle. We may say, well, it sure feels

like I'm at war. That war is against your own

flesh. It may be against Satan, it may

be against the world, but God is no longer at war with you if you

are in Christ. If you know Christ, you and he

are no longer on opposite sides. You are now on His side.

You are now a citizen of his Kingdom.

He has accepted you. He may discipline you, you may

grieve him, but you're no longer at war with him.

You are no longer his enemy. I also want you to notice that

this is an abiding peace, meaning again, as I said a

minute ago, this is a a literal translation would be we are

having peace. This is something we

continually. This is not, this is not like

the Palestinians and the Israelis, OK, they can have a

ceasefire. If they announced A ceasefire

today, does any person in this room believe that the war has

really ended? No.

Same thing. Ukraine and Russia.

They might have a ceasefire, but they're the reasons for the

hostility are still there. That is not true with the peace

we have with God through Jesus Christ.

There is no long all the reasons for hostility between US and God

have been taken care of in Jesus Christ.

Now it's not only a real peace, it is a grace creating peace.

He says through him we verse 2. Through him we have also

obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, or

literally in which we are standing.

Last fall I had the wonderful opportunity to go with my son to

Ireland. In fact, he he actually was my

Christmas present from him. It's always great when you have

children that make more money than you do and they treat you

to nice things like that. But we he we went over there and

got a chance to watch Georgia Tech defeat Florida State, which

seemed like a really big deal at the time.

It it turned out to not be, you know, so you know, one of the

easier wins, but it was a great time.

And one of the things that that course the the day of the game,

we're in the middle of Dublin and we go to the ESPN Sports

Center place, you know, where they broadcast the pregame.

If you're not a if you're not a college football fan, just

believe me, it's a big deal, OK? So there's thousands of people

there and they're going to get up and talk about football for

hours, you know, which is great. Sounds great to me.

It may sound awful to you, but anyway, Well, Jacob, my son knew

a friend who knew a friend who could get us on the stage, the

game day stage at ESPN. Pretty cool, right?

I mean, that's not something you get to do every day.

I still have a hat. It's got the ESPN on it.

It's pretty cool. It's got a Irish flag on it.

And so couple hours before they went on the air, we met at a

certain place and this young lady who had full credentials

ushered us into and onto the stage.

And I got to wave to the crowd, pump them up.

It was so cool. Now, do you think if I had just

walked up and said, I'm, I'm a big fan of Sports Center, I'm

going to get on this. Do you think they'd let me on

the stage? No, I it was because of someone

who I knew or who knew me that I was able to have full access to

the ESPN stage. That is really honestly, that's

the concept that Paul is trying to communicate here through him,

that is through Jesus. We have also, not only are we at

peace with him, but he's taken his former enemies and he is now

Jesus Christ because of his credentials, not yours, his.

He is actually ushering you into a new room.

He says we are standing in grace.

What is grace? It is God's unmerited favor.

It is the way that God now treats his children.

It means that there is nothing, nothing you can ever do to be

rejected by God. You will never be kicked out of

the room of grace. Now that sounds kind of

scandalous. We struggle sometimes struggle

with grace. Paul even struggles with it

later in the same book. One of the objections that

people raise is well, wait a minute, if we're under grace and

we don't have to obey the law anymore, then why don't we just

sin all the more so we can get more grace?

God loves to God loves to give grace.

I love to sin man great. It's a great that's a what a

deal Anybody who believes that has not experienced grace.

Imagine go back to the ESPN analogy.

Imagine that I had come up on stage after being ushered onto

the stage, and here I am as as a special guest, honored to be

there. All of a sudden I just spit on

the floor. Do you think I would do that?

It would embarrass my son. It would humiliate him.

If you really understand the grace of God, you're not going

to spit on the floor of the throne room.

That's the last thing in the world.

And when you do, you're going to, you're going to truly have

godly sorrow and repentance when you do.

That is why grace is grace. Understanding and believing

grace makes us holier. It does not give us a license to

sin. Do you understand the

difference? Think so?

OK, now so we're ushered into grace.

It's accessed by faith in Jesus. It's almost we're also

permanently located in grace. The the Greek here could not be

more demonstrative or or more emphatic.

It it uses 2 words that are both in what's called the perfect

tense in the Greek, which is a past action that still has

abiding permanent results. We are accessed.

We we are. We are introduced almost as the

word where we, we, we are at. We have access because Jesus has

introduced us, brought us into the phone room, and now we are

permanently standing in a state of grace.

We cannot lose it. We cannot get out of it.

It is a permanent gift that God has given everyone who has been

declared righteous and and for which for whom the righteousness

of Jesus has been credited to them.

I also want you to notice it gets even better.

It gets even better as He's looking out and admiring the

beauty of justification and the peace that it brings.

It is a joy producing peace. Look at verse 2, the second part

of verse 2, and we rejoice or literally we are rejoicing in

hope of the glory of God. So first of all, we are

rejoicing in hope. Now hope is, is a very critical

New Testament concept. The word hope, our English word

for hope is really not. It just can't nail the the Greek

meaning for hope a a better way. Whenever you see hope in almost

every time in the New Testament, just kind of substitute

confident expectation or eager and confident anticipation.

That's the idea behind hope, and hope is critical to the health

of every believer. God's desire for us as healthy,

mature believers is we should be just longing for heaven,

dreaming about heaven, meditating on heaven.

It should be pulling. I don't care even if you're 15

years old, 20 years old. I wish I had learned this many,

many years ago in my Christian life.

The hope of heaven purifies us and pulls us toward him.

I'm thinking about a few years ago I went to Las Vegas for a

business convention. I did my one time in Vegas.

I'll never go again. I don't advise it's if you

haven't gone, you're not missing anything.

But now that's my little rant on Vegas.

But it is an interesting town. It is a fascinating place.

And it was a museum that we went to, and we went in the daytime.

I think at the night, in the night, it's lit up.

But I went in the daytime and it was an old it's basically a

boneyard for old neon signs that used to decorate Las Vegas.

In fact, one of them is very famous.

It's the Stardust sign, but it wasn't lit up and, and, and the

paint was like peeling off of it and it looked you could get a

sense of the former glory when it was, you know, you could kind

of imagine what it would have looked like.

But now it's just kind of pathetic.

You know, it's kind of sad. Looks kind of like tensely

cheap. When the Bible says that we

rejoice in the hope, the confident expectation, in

confident expectation, that's kind of what what the scholars

tell us is that this is, yes, this is referring to the glory

that we one day believe we will experience, where we will know

God fully and he will be fully revealed to us.

But this is also talking about the glory that we will have as

believers, and we will reflect the glory of God to him as well

when God glorifies us fully. Right now we're like those

burned out old neon lights, but one day we will shine brightly.

That's the hope that we have also.

It's not just hope in the future though.

It's it's that we can rejoice in our suffering.

He does something really interesting here, verse 3.

Not only that there's more, but we rejoice in our suffering,

knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces

character, and character produces what?

Confident expectation, hope. And hope does not put us to

shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Now it's interesting here again, the Bible teaches many places in

the New Testament. It teaches that all suffering

for a believer, all suffering can be redeemed.

But here specifically, the word is really could be translated

probably more accurate to translate it tribulation.

This is referring to the suffering that we have for the

sake of the gospel. Remember, the war's over.

We're at peace, right? So whose side are we on?

We're on God's side, right, If we're in Christ.

But there are still, there are still rebels out there and

they're still fighting against God.

What did Jesus say? He says if they hated me, they

will hate you. A servant's not greater than his

master. This is a reality now.

This is not a license for us to be rude.

It's not a license for us to be self-righteous.

And there has been much harm done in the name of Christ by

people who were not living a life worthy of the gospel.

However, it is inevitable. If we are living and presenting

the gospel, it will rub some people the wrong way.

It is offensive. And why?

Because it insults our pride. What do you mean God has to die

in my place? What do you mean I'm an enemy of

God? What do you mean I'm I'm not

right before God? It can be offensive.

It is offensive. In fact, if the Holy Spirit

didn't illuminate our hearts, it would it it probably for all of

us. It was offensive to us before we

came to know Christ now. So why is he rejoicing then that

he's having tribulations or why the Romans are having the Roman

Christians are having tribulation?

It's because it's not because of the suffering.

We're not happy that people are offended, but it's what the

suffering produces, he says. Knowing this is something you

got to know because if you know, if you don't know it, you're

you're just going to get hurt, upset, frustrated, and you're

going to feel like you're doing something wrong.

He wants you to know something. He wants you to know that your

tribulations are going to produce endurance.

That is our capacity to believe in Jesus is going to just get,

as we trust him more, he's going to get sweeter and he's going to

get more real. And our capacity to trust Jesus

actually grows through experience.

And that endurance then is going to produce proven character.

That's, I think that's basically just talking about the fruit of

the Spirit. God's going to produce that in

our lives as we trust Jesus more and more.

And then that Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness,

all of those fruit of the Spirit as as the Holy Spirit births

those and and grows those in our life, what's going to happen

then is our confident expectation of heaven is going

to get even stronger. Our hope of heaven today should

be stronger than our expectation and anticipation of heaven

yesterday. And every day it should grow

stronger. Now we are in a very unusual

time. Historically, we're probably,

there's probably few generations of people on the planet of the

last 2000 years that have had to suffer less for the gospel than

where we are where we Live Today.

However, I can look across the room.

I know many of you and I know that we, if you have made a

stand for Jesus Christ consistently, most of you, I

suspect, have experienced the pain of someone very close to

you, maybe even in your own family or friends who have

rejected you or cut off all contact with you or have very

little to do with you. And it is only for one reason

and one reason only. It's because you proclaim the

gospel. That's suffering for the gospel.

But God says he will even redeem that.

But if we respond, if we trust Jesus in the midst of that, it's

going to produce even greater expectation and eagerness for

heaven and for glory. But then he goes on and he says,

and we're going to jump down to verse 11 here, and you have to

trust me on this. This is grammatically correct,

to do this, to jump to 11. He's got one more thing to

rejoice in. He says more than that.

We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through

whom we have now received reconciliation.

His last rejoicing is just in God himself, because after all,

that's what it's all about. The gospel is God.

If you get God, you don't need anything else.

What does God desire? He desires your heart more than

anything else. He wants you to desire Him more

than anything else. This person that you were once

his enemy, He has now ushered you into the throne room of

grace. He's given you so many reasons

for rejoicing and more than anything else, He just wants you

to desire Him. I, you know, I think about

heaven sometimes and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to love to see my

mom, to see friends, my, my father-in-law, Ralph Powell, to

see the Mansfields, to see Bruce Thompson.

He's, he hasn't been there that long.

He's pretty new, but I believe if, if we could talk to any of

those people today, they would tell us don't, don't be, don't

be excited to see us when you get there.

It's all about Jesus. That's what's really that.

That's what it's really, that's what it's all about.

It pulls us. It's supposed to pull us now.

It's not only a true peace, it's not only a glory creating or a a

grace creating peace. It's not only a joy producing

peace, it is a personal peace. And here I'm going to switch the

order in your from your bulletin.

We're going to do the second one first in verse 5.

It says, and hope or confident expectation does not put us to

shame or disappoint us because God's love has been poured into

our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given us.

It is a personal peace that is proven by a gift.

We just said a minute ago, the joy of heaven is the gift of

God, the joy of our life. Here is the indwelling Holy

Spirit. That is the best gift God could

ever give us. He gave us Himself in the person

of the Holy Spirit. If you know Christ, I'm not

saying you're aware of it every minute of every day, but you

know what I mean when I talk about the witness of the Spirit.

You know if you possess the Spirit, there have been times

that you're clearly can distinguish.

Yes, God's Spirit indwells me. In fact, you could never have

put your faith in Jesus in the 1st place had not the Spirit

poured out the love of Christ into your heart.

Why would you even want him? The Holy Spirit has to show that

to you. So it's proven.

This personal peace is proven by a gift, but it's also motivated

by love. How many of you like to read a

good book that has a plot twist? I mean, a really incredible plot

twist that you never saw coming? You like that?

I do. OK, so here I will say this is

the biggest, greatest, most mind blowing plot twist ever

conceived. Verse 6 For while we were still

weak, listen to all the flattering terms that God is

going to use to describe who we were before we came to Christ.

We were still weak at the right time.

Christ died for the really good people.

Is that what it says now 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 declared righteous 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 that we are reconciled, shall we

be saved by his life. Jesus never waited for you to

get good. He died for you while you were

still a Sinner, while you were still weak, unable to save

yourself, when you were ungodly. If He did all of those things to

bring you peace, will you not rest in the peace that you have

with God, that you are no longer at war with Him?

You stand in the throne room of grace and he treats you on the

basis of grace, not on the basis of your performance or works.

I'm convinced and I just I've had two or three interactions

with with friends of mine in the last week and I, I am more

convinced that ever that we as believers, we really struggle

believing that Jesus truly loves us.

This is proof this is exhibit A. He died for you while you were

his enemy. He loves you that much.

And if he if he died for you while you were his enemy, if you

put your trust in him, he's surely going to save you from

the wrath to come. I want to close with a just a

brief story. They're they're in a service

like this. You're always going to have

you're going to have believers at different levels of of

understanding of the gospel. We never, we never move on from

the gospel. The gospel is like rebar in

cement it. It holds everything together and

everything is connected to it. We just don't ever.

Everything in the Christian life connects back to the gospel.

So we never leave the gospel. We just go deeper into it.

But I'm convinced that we struggle with the love of God.

There are also people here. However, in a room this big

there's I feel pretty confident that there are people here who

have never, ever trusted Christ. In September 2nd, 1945, General

Douglas MacArthur on the USS Missouri formally accepted the

surrender of the Japanese to the Allies.

It was a There were celebrations all over the world.

VJ Day. It was finally over.

The conflict was over. There was true peace.

The hostility had ended. But there was a Lieutenant, his

name Hiru Hiru Anoda. He was a Lieutenant in the

Japanese army. He was stationed in a small

island that had in the Philippines that had been cut

off from the rest of his army. And people on the island begin

to announce the piece. He refused to believe it.

In fact, he went into the jungle and for the next 29 years

carried out guerrilla raids on the people of the island.

They would drop leaflets. They would have bull horns

announcing and trying to convince him.

And he thought that's all propaganda.

He did not believe the news that there was peace.

It wasn't until 1974. I was a senior in high school.

It's kind of weird to think about this.

Finally, he surrendered. And the only reason he

surrendered was they had to fly his former commanding officer to

the island and that that commanding officer had to give

him the order to surrender. Now the gospel is an

announcement. It is a proclamation that there

is now peace between God and man.

Only reason you don't experience that peace is if you don't

accept it. If you're here today and you

have never surrendered, that's what you have to do.

That's the only thing necessary is to surrender your pride and

believe that Jesus did everything necessary for your

righteousness. That is, that is trusting

Christ. In a minute the praise team is

going to come. We're going to sing a hymn or a

song of invitation. I don't know where you are

spiritually. I'm just going to ask you to

respond. If you want to trust Christ,

Brother Steven will be down here.

We have other encouragers that will be here.

We would love nothing more and to pray with you as you trust

Jesus. And to help you and and and to

and to speak some words of encouragement to you.

Perhaps you're a believer and you have a burden.

You just come need to come and pray, please.

Again, we would love, we have encouragers.

We would love to pray with you about anything you need.

We had a good friend of mine came in the first service and he

was just, he knew that he needed to understand the love of Christ

even more. So that would be my invitation

to you. And Stephen James is going to

come forward and whatever you want, whatever the Lord is

calling you to do, I would ask you to be just to trust Him and

be obedient.