Endurance

Reading from the Word of our Lord.

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.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not put us into shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

One more time for the people in the back.

Yep.

I can see it right here in my notes.

It was perfectly red.

All right.

Well, thanks so much for joining us this uh uh Sunday.

Uh it's great to see you all.

Um man, weren't we just here?

Uh it's good to it's good to be back.

And um today we are in you know I have no idea what day it is or uh what I I know it's Sunday, um, but we're in that strange in-between Christmas and New Year's space where there is no time, and we don't I'm not quite sure what my obligations are.

Uh but uh uh I know that we are we're here and we're gathered together, and I'm so thankful for that.

Thanks for gathering together with us as a church um on the Lord's Day.

So that's a nice little touch point for this in-between space.

Uh let's pray, and we'll look into today's text.

It's one of those in-between sermons.

We are not in a series, this is a one-off.

And uh that means I just got to pick a theme, and the theme I chose was is endurance.

And so we're going to look at a passage on endurance.

So let's pray for that.

Holy Father, we thank you that you restore our souls.

Lord, that in but in these in-between times that you are present and constant with us.

We thank you for your promises towards us, that you hold us and that you guide us, that you go before us.

Lord, we thank you for your forgiveness, that you cleanse us and restore us to you.

Lord, we praise you for the wonder that we've celebrated at Christmas, that you took on flesh, that you were born to die on our behalf, and that because of your sacrifice we are no longer under the law, but under grace.

We praise you for that, Lord, and the freedom that you've purchased for us.

We pray that we would hold fast to it.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So, over the past year of preaching, which I got uh to reflect on a bit, uh I noticed a theme, and the theme was endurance.

Um, I'm probably projecting a bit of that as well, but I think that it's at least partially there.

You know, we started off when we were looking at the story of Exodus, and in our minds, the story of Exodus is just like this moment of escape.

You know, it's the walking through the waters.

But you see the long season of Moses' life where he's just in the wilderness, unsure of where his future will go.

And then finally, when he's brought back into Egypt, he's brought back in, and it's not like he just walks in and says, Let my people go.

And Pharaoh says, Great, we wouldn't even have the song then if that happened.

We uh instead, what happens is uh it takes a series of ten plagues in which Moses suffers as as well as the Israelites who are rescued, and there's this patient endurance that seems to take place throughout the whole process.

And uh then as we continued through the text that we looked at this past year, we looked at Titus.

And Titus is sent to this extremely difficult island of Crete, uh, where he's left behind to set the church in order.

And this the church that he's tasked to serve uh is surrounded by this island of incredible moral decay.

And then within the church, to sort of match that moral decay, is this rampant legalism.

And so he is sent to a place that would require such endurance to minister.

And finally, looking over uh Jesus' time in the temple, as we look through the Gospel of Mark, uh, we see that Jesus is it has a ministry of endurance.

He is constant, he's facing constant opposition.

His time in the temple is uh just a who's who of temple authorities that stand up to oppose him.

And then what he describes to his disciples in the Olivet discourse, and that the final exhortation in the Olivet Discourse is to stay awake, to hold on, to he says that the in the discourse he says that the one who endures to the end will be saved.

And so there's this call to endurance throughout the scriptures.

And I wanted to look at that uh sort of virtue of endurance, and it also seemed like uh, you know, when I was sitting down to uh write this sermon in the the after, you know, Sunday and then Wednesday Christmas, and uh and then it I don't know if you guys feel this way, but when I look over across next years that are coming, I'm like, oh my gosh, another year is the is my initial reaction.

And uh I uh get this sense of like, how could how could we possibly do another another year of life?

You know?

Uh and uh what stood out to me was like, man, this this call to endurance seems really, really necessary.

Uh and it might it might just be perfect timing to reflect on that quality.

So uh one of the great texts on endurance is Romans five.

And the beginning of Romans five uh says in verses five, one through two, it says, 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 the hope of the glory of God.

Now, Paul has made this amazing case in Romans chapter four, that we are justified by faith.

And he introduces this at the end of Romans three after he spends the first three chapters binding us all up in sin.

The way that I like to describe uh Romans 1 is uh they're all terrible.

And we read Romans 1 and we say, they are, aren't they?

All together.

And then Romans 2 is you're all terrible.

And you read that one, and it's like, oh yeah, okay.

That one's a little less good.

And then Romans 3 is everyone is terrible all the time, always.

And so then it's like, okay, we're pinned.

What do we do in this sort of situation?

And the answer is Jesus.

Jesus is the one who justifies us.

He is the one who took the punishment that we deserved, and he freed us from the curse of the law, which we were all under.

And then the question of Romans 4 becomes how do we apprehend that?

And the answer is by faith, by trust in the promise of God which is shown to us in Jesus Christ, that it is Jesus' sacrifice which atones for our sins.

It is his death which frees us from the curse of the law, it is his resurrection, which is our hope of eternal life.

And so we get this therefore in Romans 5, which is, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, by belief in Jesus, you're saved.

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

You know, I hope that the tinge of Christmas hasn't totally worn off yet.

You know, the wonder of that celebration.

What is it that we're celebrating with the incarnation?

It's that why did Jesus become incarnate?

It was so that he would take on our flesh and then become an offering for sin in the likeness of our sinful flesh, so that we might be freed from the curse of sin.

And so he takes on this flesh.

That's the that's the wonder of the incarnation.

And in him taking that on, we become justified by faith in what he did.

And in our faith in what he did, we now have peace with God.

Right now, because of what Jesus did, by faith in Jesus, you have peace with God.

And then Paul continues on, and through him, so through Jesus, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

That standing will become an important word.

It's the the word for endurance is just the word, it's like a a lot of standing, is basically what the like hypo standing, you know, it's the lot of standing.

Stand a long time is uh like a direct translation.

Endurance is better uh than stand a long time.

Um it says, through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

I want you to I want you to consider where do you stand before the Lord.

In Jesus, you stand in his grace.

The grace of God is upon you because of Jesus.

We have to understand this dynamic in order to understand the call for endurance.

We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Why do we rejoice?

Because the further into the future we look, the more glory we see coming our way.

Why?

Because Christ has atoned for our sins, so there is no punishment coming our way.

By faith, his righteousness has been imputed to us.

We've been justified by Jesus Christ.

And by being justified by faith, the further we look into the future, there is more and more grace that is going to be shown to us.

What is it that we stand in before the Lord?

We stand in his grace.

And that means we must hold to that reality by faith.

You cannot hold to the reality of standing in God's grace empirically.

Because in this life you will experience all sorts of trials and difficulties and sufferings, which might lead you to conclude that you couldn't possibly stand or be standing in the grace of God, but you are.

If I stand in the grace of God, then I won't need to endure anything in this life.

I'll just be able to, you know, it'll just be from glory to glory, more enjoyment, stacked on more enjoyment, and it will just be like this wonderful uh like it, like the type of happiness that like uh like hippies and boulder pretend to have, you know?

I had one particular college professor who really felt like that.

She was uh always like floating and everything was wonderful and magical and mystical.

And um and I always wondered, I wonder what's going on here.

Well, why would we need endurance now that we have the news that we have peace with God?

You have to understand the shape of the fallenness of the world in order for this to make sense.

Peace with God means enmity with the world.

Peace with God means that Satan is your enemy.

Peace with God means that the flesh, which still has this remnant of sin within your own body, is now adversarial to your peace with God.

And so peace with God means you'll need endurance because you are going to be living in a world and as a person that is seeking to attack this peace that you have.

And to expose in all kinds of ways that no, that peace isn't actually there.

That peace you have with God is not worth trusting in, that peace you have with God is not worth holding to, it's just some sort of illusion, it couldn't possibly be true.

And this is a dangerous place to live.

Because when you understand that you have this adversary in Satan, who before you had peace with God, was your adversary in an absolute sense, but not in an experiential sense.

He was the one who could offer you the kingdoms of the world and immediate pleasures.

And he had no interest in attacking you.

Why would he?

Or disrupting you.

He would just keep cauterizing your conscience so that your experience of sin didn't even feel that bad.

Didn't even really feel like it was tearing you apart from anything.

But now that you have peace with God, he is clearly exposed as your enemy, and your flesh hates this experience of enmity between you and Satan.

And you know, practically, when you are caught in a relational triangle like that, you know how it is that you can bring immediate peace between you and this estranged friend, between you and Satan.

Well, you can just gather together and talk badly about the friend that's not there.

That's the way we bring peace to estranged relationships.

We talk badly about someone who isn't present, and we both agree to dislike them.

And so we garner this agreement with Satan in our flesh to relieve the tension that we experience with him as a way of saying, Don't attack me anymore.

I cannot endure your attacks anymore.

I'll just agree with you, and I will begin to think God is, he must be against me.

God is withholding.

Disobedience to God does not lead to death.

We get agreement with Satan, and we no longer endure.

So you see, peace with God means now you have these enemies who you must endure.

And that's why Paul starts talking this way immediately.

And he describes, okay, so now that you have peace with God, you might think, okay, I know I have no need for tools to withstand suffering anymore because I have peace with God.

Well, no, it's actually the opposite.

Now that you have peace with God, now you're going to need tools for how to withstand suffering, because the tactics of Satan will become the ones to cause you suffering so that you no longer trust in the goodness of God.

So Paul's take on suffering is uh it's very strange because he understands the shape of the endurance that we need.

He says, not only that, so we have this peace with God, but not only that, listen to how his perspective on suffering is transformed.

But we rejoice in our sufferings.

Knowing that suffering produces endurance.

So we rejoice in our sufferings.

I I don't think there's another, there's not another worldview or faith or or philosophy that has this idea in it.

Rejoicing in your sufferings.

But when you get the shape of our peace with God and the alignment of peace with him, and the the inflaming of Satan, our adversary, then when we are experiencing and holding fast to Christ, when we are rejoicing in the sufferings that we experience in this world, then it becomes evidence of our faith in him, evidence of our justification before him, so that we are able to actually rejoice that we are standing with Christ in the experience of these sufferings.

Because we know that strangely, in Christ our sufferings do not deplete us, they do not take from us, but they actually build us up.

Now that that's strange because how how could that be?

Well, normally, you know, I love to um watch the Tour de France every year.

I like watching skinny men suffer.

I like this dynamic of how small can you be with that much steroids in you.

I like this tension of the tour.

And what they'll often say is like on like a long mountain stage, which is the most fun to watch, because they're the amount of suffering that these men are enduring is just incredible.

And you just get to be on your couch and get this beautiful tour, you know, of France.

Uh and hear about uh, well, this chateau was built in uh 1412 and it is uh this lovely place.

But of course, we're not here to look at chateaus, but to watch a bike race.

I like hearing the announcers say things like that.

Anyway, I'm a bit off track.

What they'll often say on these mountain stages, it's like uh it's like uh um it's like a cycling cliche.

Oh man, on that attack, he burned up another match.

And you've only got so many matches.

And if he keeps burning up those matches, uh they're all gone.

There's not gonna be anything left at the end of this race.

Now uh that's that's because that's the way endurance works.

That when they are enduring, when they are you know making these pushes and they are depleting themselves, they they only have so many matches that they can use.

And uh once they burn them, then it's it's done.

And so at the end of the race, you'll see you'll see guys.

These mountain stages just stretched out because they just bonked.

There's no energy left in their bodies because they burned up all their matches.

And that's the way endurance works.

When you add up that much suffering, eventually you're just depleted.

But Christian endurance doesn't work that way.

As we endure, we become stronger.

That's very strange.

As we hold on to Christ, we're not wearing out.

You know, there's these sort of ways of thinking of this that can that uh I think can sort of infiltrate and and destroy your your ability to endure for Christ.

Of like, you know, you've got um like discipline fatigue or something.

Like it, like if you if you use too much discipline, it's like you're burning your match of that.

That's not the way it works.

As you hold fast to Christ, then you're actually more and more becoming the type of person who is able to hold fast to Christ.

You're not using it up, you're you're you're growing.

So that's why our suffering becomes an occasion for rejoicing.

Because we are actually being transformed in this suffering more and more into the image of Christ, more and more into like our older brother, Jesus.

And in that, in that way, suffering becomes this occasion to celebrate the peace that we have with God.

Now, that only makes sense, that's only feasible to do if you have peace with God.

If you don't have peace with God, then your suffering is just depleting.

Your suffering is just taking from you.

But if you have peace with God, it actually produces in us this character.

So I want us to consider these three occasions of suffering from our three enemies, from Satan, the world, and our flesh.

So, first to enduring Satan.

Enduring Satan means resisting the temptation to trust in anything other than Christ for our salvation.

And Satan has these two lies.

They're the original lies, they're or they're they're ordinary.

Uh they're the lies in the garden.

First, when he asks Eve, did he say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Now, did God say that you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Just pop quiz.

No, what did he say?

That's exactly right.

That's gonna work on the podcast, you guys.

There's uh it can you say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

No, he said you can't eat from this one tree in the garden.

All the trees in the garden you can eat from.

But there's one that you can't eat from it.

So, what is the implication?

Uh God is not generous.

God does not give abundantly.

God is a withholding type of God.

He's always keeping things from you.

In fact, that's why he's put you in the particular life that he's put you in.

And he hasn't put you into the life of these other people that you see all the time.

He's put you into your life with all these constraints, the particular family that you have, all these financial constraints, all these difficulties and burdens, and you're the one who has to live it.

You have to deal with yourself.

Yeah.

It's the reason that God's done that is because he doesn't give abundantly, he's constantly withholding.

See, that's the lie of Satan.

And then the next one is you will not surely die.

If you disobey God, you won't die.

God isn't good, and there's no cost in abandoning him.

So just walk away.

Walk away and follow me.

So we must counter those.

We must endure.

And here's how here's how Satan might work on it for the Christian.

In saying that God is not really good, he is causing you to despair in your sin.

Because when you recognize yourself to be a sinner and you experience the present war against the flesh in yourself, it is easy for Satan to come in and say, Surely Christ doesn't mean you.

Surely his death was sufficient for those who hold to him by faith, but look at the patterns in your life.

That obviously isn't you.

And he causes you to look back onto yourself and look to yourself and your own works for your own justification.

And now he says, you don't have peace with God.

All that suffering is just fruitless and useless, and eventually you despair.

Or he says to you, you know, you won't surely die.

You know, you're it doesn't matter now that you're in Christ.

None of these sins, they there's no sense in waging war against them in any way, because it doesn't really matter, right?

Anymore.

Christ paid it all, so it doesn't matter how you live.

Sin doesn't lead to death.

And he'll weasel in and he'll he'll tell this same lie over again.

You will not surely die.

So how do we combat that with these two truths?

God is abundant in his goodness.

How is it that you have peace with God, faith in Jesus Christ?

Jesus paid it all.

There's I I you're no longer under the law.

You're under grace.

What would Satan hold up to accuse you before God?

God is the one who justifies.

Who is the one who can condemn?

Let me go to the legal code that I would condemn you by.

Oh, you're dead to that because of the death that Christ accomplished on the cross.

Now, how should we then live?

Well, well, if God is so good, we ought to live by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the body, so that in Him we might walk in the fullness of life.

We should, our mind should be set on the Spirit.

The mindset on the Spirit is life and peace.

The mindset on the flesh is death.

It leads to death.

So we combat those lies with God is good, Christ is sufficient, for real.

For real.

He really is.

And disobedience leads to death.

So we put that to death by the Spirit.

Second, the world.

The world is all that is on offer to you for satisfaction.

So the way that the world works is offers of pleasure, threats of pain.

And our culture has formed an ethic around pleasure and pain.

Pleasure and pain are not, they're not morally neutral.

Okay?

Pleasure and pain are not morally neutral, but they are not grounds for morality.

Pain does not equal sin.

Pleasure does not equal righteousness.

But in our cultural framework, we have swapped pain for sin and pleasure for righteousness.

And this is because we're functionally utilitarians.

The way that we make assessments is something is wrong insofar as it limits experiences of pleasure.

And something is right insofar as it maximizes experiences of pleasure.

You know, right insofar as it limits pain, wrong insofar as it causes pain.

But that is not the appropriate way to discern right and wrong.

That is a deceptive way of discerning right and wrong.

Because there are right ways of living which lead to extreme experiences of pain.

So that means that you may be this is why life requires endurance.

Endurance is about bearing pain.

I was talking with my sisters, and she was what over Christmas, one of my sisters is a high school teacher, and she was like, I just want to tell them that life is very, very hard.

And I said, Well, you're the teacher.

You know, just tell them.

What once they hear it, they'll know.

And she was like, like, gosh, like parenting is so hard.

And I was like, well, the thing about parenting is it has these critical points where you have to make these really challenging decisions.

And you're making decisions about education, you're making decisions about, you know, should we take them to the doctor or not, or should we, you know, there's these critical points.

And in in in that way, it's like a lot of other challenges in life.

Like a lot of challenges in life are like these critical moments that they kind of come and then you face them and then they disappear.

But the great thing about parenting is that it's also very day-to-day challenging.

It's not uh most of the other problems that I experience places, it's like uh um, man, that the church is looking for a place to rent or a place to find, or we've got this conflict that we're trying to deal with.

And it's like, okay, and then you kind of make it through, then you make it through, and it's not day-to-day challenging.

Parenting is like this is hard every every day.

Like, okay, like I guess I'm gonna have to die to myself again.

Um I would like to wake up and consider how I'm feeling.

And instead, I'll just think about this these other people, which is actually better.

That's the twist.

My point is that that that the things that God calls us to in life and faithfulness, those are experiences of pain.

You must endure.

I've kind of jumped ahead of myself, but uh that is the framework of pleasure and pain.

We have to we have to remove pleasure and pain from our moral frame, in a sense.

And we have to, in faith, rather, consider that what God has called, what God has called me to, what honors him, is what leads to life.

At his right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Now you're on an adventure.

Because an adventure is seeking, you're you're following the Lord and you're saying, I'm not exactly sure what's going to come next.

Uh, but uh I know that there will be experiences of pain in the midst of it, but man, it will be worth it.

It will be worth it.

Uh the threats of the world are the threats of rocky ground or the weeds.

So those that fall on the seed that uh the sower sows fall on, that the ones that fall on rocky ground, they sprout up immediately.

But then when the threats of pain come, they wither away because they have no root in them.

Well, what is our root as Christians?

It's we have peace with God.

So that means the suffering that He has called us to is not to punish us.

It is not to deplete us, it is to build us up for the glory of His kingdom.

It will be fruitful always.

The other one is the uh thorns and thistles, and those are the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of the world.

These are the things that we might pursue in order that we might gain pleasure.

But when we start following Christ, we say, you know what he calls me to pursue, I can't describe to you how it will work right now, but there will be greater pleasure in that.

It will be a better thing to have pursued.

This is difficult to describe, but it will be a better thing to have pursued.

So we are not deceived by riches, we are we are not threatened by pain.

Instead, with our eyes fixed on the Lord, we are able to endure, day-to-day endure as well as endure the particular, you know, different chapters of life that have their own, you know, villains and enemies.

Finally, so that's Satan and then the world, finally the flesh.

Um, this can be the hardest.

Because it's it's this brutal dynamic in our faith.

Because it it is you, and it isn't you.

This is the way that Paul speaks about this.

Your your flesh, what am I talking about?

It's that that aspect of you in your your members, be those mental faculties or in your body, in which sin still remains.

The contamination of sin still has tainted these parts of ourselves, even in Christ.

And it will not be put away until we die.

And so now there is a war inside of you, a war of the flesh against your spirit.

And you must endure this war.

Paul says in Romans 7, 19 through 20, he says, For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Very strange way of talking.

It's not me doing this sin because I hate it, but I'm doing it.

But I hate it.

I uh I I wish I could I wish I could uh button this up for you and say, here's precisely what he means.

All I can rather than tie it up, maybe I just want to give an invitation to like us Christians, you know?

And when you hear that, instead of like, man, what does he mean?

Don't I get that?

Instead, perhaps just think, man, isn't that what it's like though?

Because I don't know that, like, if you're a Christian, I feel like you're just kind of like, yep.

Why am I finding myself like I don't uh my my child is a child, I am an adult.

Why are they why I don't care what they think?

You know?

Like, over a long enough timeline, I care, I love them, I desire for them to think right things.

But when they're saying things to me like, you're the worst dad ever, I don't care about that.

They don't know anything.

They couldn't have possibly, and you it's a very hard negative to prove, right?

You have to meet all the dads.

And yet, my my flesh will will not because of the phrase, you know, it's because what the phrase means is it's gonna take longer to get out the door.

And they're in my way.

And uh, and all of a sudden I'll I'll I will teach them that it is okay for my passions to be in control.

And I will lash out in such a way where I'm now the I'm I'm the bigger sinner between the two of us.

And just moments before they were.

And that was bet it was better for the family.

Uh that that is to lit to live with that in ourselves, is like, gosh, when am I gonna shake this off?

I don't want to do that.

I want them to know that we have self-control in this family.

And when we encounter things that are in our way, our passions don't just get to rule.

But we treat one another with love and with patience.

And we're and uh how would I treat like a like a you know a child?

I was gonna say the age, but I didn't want to rat out what I'm talking about.

How would I treat a child?

So you know, one of the one of the best ways to get this interplay, because here's the reality of the Christian faith.

You have to get this tension if you're gonna be able to endure.

You are absolutely justified by faith, secure.

The ones whom Jesus has called, he doesn't lose any of them.

Heaven glory awaits the Christian.

And you are not perfect.

You experience in this life all sorts of unholiness and sin.

The war of the world, the flesh, and the devil doesn't stop.

It does not stop in this life.

That is the way the Bible describes the Christian life.

If you don't understand that that's the way the Bible describes the Christian life, you won't be able to endure it.

You'll you'll walk away and say it didn't work.

You won't be able to trust the depth of his love towards you.

And so you'll leave him.

One of the best summaries of this is in the Westminster Larger Catechism, question 77.

And it says, Wherein do justification and sanctification differ?

Justification accomplished for us on the cross in Christ.

Sanctification, the progress of our holiness over the course of our lives, as this as we learn to live life by the Spirit.

Wherein do these differ?

The the answer to this question is wonderful, I think.

It says although sanctification be inseparably joined with justification.

Justification, yet they differ.

They're inseparably joined.

Because if you're not justified, you're not being sanctified.

They're inseparably joined, yet they differ.

These are not the same categories of the way the Spirit interacts with us.

In that God, in justification, so what happens in justification?

God imputeth the righteousness of Christ.

Imputeth, bam, that's yours.

The righteousness of Christ counted to you.

You go before the great white throne of judgment, and they say, What uh what uh righteousness do we have to look at here today?

And they say, It's another Christian, sir.

Uh and uh Jesus says, Wonderful, that's my own righteousness.

I take that, and you know, enjoy.

You're gonna really love it here.

Things like that.

The righteousness of Christ.

You can think of the the I I I can't even believe a religion makes this claim.

God's own righteousness is given to you freely.

It's the free gift of God.

God's own righteousness, righteousness of Christ imputed to you by faith.

Now, in sanctification, his spirit, and you're gonna be blown away that the confession, maybe some of you will be blown away, the confession uses this language, infuseth grace.

In sanctification, this is an infusion of grace.

So you can think of Christ's righteousness as it's an imputation, it is counted to you.

It's the the evidence in the court of your life.

You are justified.

But our participation with it in this life is an infusion of God's grace.

He gives us this measure of grace by the Spirit and enableth to the exercise thereof.

So in the former, the former being justification, sin is pardoned.

In the other, sanctification, sin is subdued.

In justification, your sin is pardoned.

In sanctification, sin is subdued.

It no longer has this authority in your life.

As a Christian now, you don't have to listen to Satan, which is great.

You don't have to.

Sin is subdued.

The one justification doth equally free all believers from the revenging wrath of God.

We all have in common justification.

You look around at the Christians you're sitting next to in here, equally freed before the Lord.

No wrath of God coming your way because of Jesus.

And that perfectly in this life.

In this life, your justification is perfect.

It was accomplished in Jesus' perfect righteousness, his death.

That they never fall into condemnation.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is true of you while you're being sanctified.

The other, sanctification, is neither equal in all, so it's different among all of you.

Some of you are more sanctified, some of you are less sanctified.

It's not an equal distribution.

Isn't that weird?

It's kind of a it's a it's important to know.

Otherwise, how could you have patience with one another?

Or how could you not become boastful and prideful and arrogant?

Or how could you not become despairing among one another?

No, I know I'm held completely by Christ, and he is working out our sanctification in us in different measures, according to his good purposes.

So what do I do with that?

I endure the measure that I have been given, I rejoice and give thanks for the measure that I have been given, and I seek to honor the Lord with the measure that I have been given.

Okay, it says so sanctification is neither equal in all, nor in this life perfect in any.

There is no Christian that experiences perfection of righteousness, but it is growing up to perfection.

For every Christian, we are on this march toward perfection.

We will not receive it in this life.

So this is the situation you must endure, and these are also the tools of your endurance.

So this means when you encounter sin in your life, you keep fighting it.

You don't give up.

You rest on your justification and you push forward against the sin.

In Romans 5, 4, it says, endurance produces character.

And character produces hope.

This endurance that you practice, this this uh, which is often sitting in pain.

Man, I'm feeling all of a sudden very, very tempted.

It's like an appetite has arisen in me.

And in order to resist this like explosion of my passions, I must it just endure this pain.

Sit in this, be unsatisfied.

Hope that it will pass.

That produces character.

Character means you're trustworthy over time.

You're a type of person who can endure.

Now then you become the type of person who has hope.

An embodiment of hope.

Hope means that the Lord will meet me in this suffering, and it will not be meaningless, but it will be useful and fruitful.

Three really quick applications.

How do you grow in endurance?

First one is repentance and faith.

You have to see the grounds of your endurance and your justification.

You have to return here over and over again.

If you don't constantly return to the effectiveness of the cross on your behalf, then you will become puffed up or despair.

It is by grace alone.

Return to Romans 7.

Look at Romans 8.

Consider the argument that Paul lays out for our justification by faith.

Uh this this is essential.

I'm no longer under the law, but under grace.

Okay, he hasn't let go of me, I'll keep pursuing him.

He hasn't let go of me, I'll keep pursuing him.

And Satan will come in and say, You seem like the type of person he had let go of.

And then you say to Satan, yeah, but remember, uh, he went to the cross already.

He already did the hardest thing.

He's accomplished this.

I have I have faith in him.

He will see this through.

And then you endure.

You keep going.

Second, is this one's gonna take practice, rejoice.

Rejoicing in the midst of it.

And one of the ways that I think you can do this is to say you're enduring while you're enduring.

You know, this is one of those things we're gonna have to endure, isn't it?

Yeah.

We're gonna have this is just one of those days where we're just enduring today.

Man, it's gonna be fruitful, won't it?

This will be fruitful.

Oh man.

The Bible tells me to discipline my children.

If I start disciplining this one, it's gonna be a horrible next hour.

Pain, pleasure, those don't matter.

Honoring the Lord, seeking the good of the heart of my child.

Okay, this is when we're gonna have to endure.

It won't be fruitless.

I just trust that in the Lord it won't be fruitless.

It won't be fruitless.

And so a way I'm enduring.

We're enduring this together.

Man, I'm in a season of endurance.

I'm gonna hold fast and rejoice.

This is gonna work.

This is gonna be fruitful.

And lastly, hope.

Uh, 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.

God loves me.

And he desires to give me the world.

When he's calling me to this suffering, I have hope that it will be fruitful, it will be effective.

So, endurance.

That's uh a bit on endurance, this sort of uh neglected virtue.

But man, I think it could be really great.

You you've got suffering and pain coming down the line this next year.

Uh if you endure it, you could have a very joyful year.

A very joyful year.

If you don't endure it, you've just got another year of suffering and pain coming down the line.

So let's let's endure it.

This is the promise that we have in Christ.

All right.

Now let's take communion.

If I had more time to prepare this week, that sermon would have been shorter.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So the Lord took the bread on the night before he was betrayed, and he broke it, and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.

And he took the cup, and he said, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

He offered them to us.

We remember that what his death purchased, you know, we were under the law, it was like we were married to the law.

But then when Jesus died, we were no longer under the law.

It was like it was like our spouse died, and then we were no longer with that person.

We were freed from the law and from the curse of the law upon us.

Now we are under grace.

We are under the grace of God.

By the grace of God, we can endure.

So we remember that he endured all the way to the cross on our behalf.

The great endurance that we would love for our lives to show has been demonstrated on our behalf in Jesus.

And he knows how to endure.

So he will equip us by his spirit to endure.

Never in such a way where we are perfect and do not need to depend upon the justification that he purchased on the cross, but in a way that causes us to constantly return to the wonder of what he did on the cross as evidence that he will preserve us all the way through.

It won't be forever.

You won't endure forever.

One day you'll be freed from sin, resurrected with him in eternal glory.

But for now, we are called to endure.

Let's rejoice that our victory is secured while we do it.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal, that you would bless our time together, that over this next year that we might endure with rejoicing, we might endure the lies of Satan, we might endure the temptations of the world, and we might endure our own flesh as we patiently receive and in by rejoicing trust in your continued work in our hearts, that we might be made more and more like you for your glory, for our joy.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name, Amen.