- Thank you, good. Well it is, like I said, good to see you and special greeting to our friends who are down in the warehouse. We will be in Romans, chapter five this morning. So, you can start turning there in your Bibles, electronic version, whatever you have with you or it's on page 942 in the chair rack ahead of you. But as you're turning there, we've been going through this series called Unshakeable Truth, as a church. And we've been walking through the key foundational truths that believers in Jesus have affirmed for centuries. This isn't just a 2019/2020 thing, this is getting back to what are the key foundational truths upon which we exist as a community of believers. If you are new to Rock Point, you can go back on our website and re-listen or watch those messages from the Fall of where we've been so far. Some good, good stuff. But last week, Pastor Roy taught on the truth that only by faith in Jesus Christ alone are we declared justified in God's sight. Because of His substitutionary sacrifice on the cross on our behalf and His victorious resurrection from the grave giving us new life in Him. And so today's message actually starts with that. That's why when I was choosing, man, where are we gonna go this morning, verse one of Romans 5 says therefore, since we have been justified by faith. So today is gonna be the part two of this series. I'm looking forward to jumping into that. So Romans, chapter five, starting in verse one. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we've 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, 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 has been given to us. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, now may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, our King and our Redeemer. Holy Spirit, please reveal to us more of who God is and who we are in Him. And it's in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord we pray, amen, amen. Well, to be or not to be or to boast or not to boast, that is not the question and that is all I got for Shakespeare abilities, that's all we're gonna go with, right. But that is what I want us to talk about this morning is boasting, what does that mean? And it may not be exactly the way you would think, right. 'Cause what images come to your mind when you think of boasting, this guy? This is not me, right, I'm more follicly challenged up here, okay. But this is what image that'd normally comes to mind when you think of boasting, right? Someone who's very self-absorbed, right? Braggadocious is a fancy word, which took me a while to find out how to spell. And just prideful, right? So, would it be a surprise to you this morning that God invites us to boast? And I'm gonna mess with us a little bit this morning, okay. I don't always do this but I like every once in a while it's fun to mess with people. 'Cause what image, 'cause we all have an idea of what a Christian looks like, right? At least images come to our mind, right? Someone who's super soft-spoken and gentle and doesn't want to offend anybody or kind of submissive, a little pacifist. I mean, picture every actor that's played Jesus in every movie, right? This stoic philosopher kind of floating through life, right? These are images that come to our minds often when we think of followers of Jesus. So, yes, it is difficult to imagine that we are invited as believers in Jesus to boast. But it is the object of our boasting that changes everything. You see, we are invited, we are encouraged, we are called to have a boasting hope in Jesus Christ. It shows up twice in our passage this morning and it's the word that you see, rejoice, but it's literally, it literally means boast. Exalt, glory in, or translated here, rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. So, what does that look like for us to have a boasting hope? So, let's jump in verse one. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Boasting hope brings peace. Well last week Roy clearly covered the groundwork for what justification means, right? In the courtroom of heaven we have been declared not guilty to anyone who is found in Christ, the price has been paid. He covered that last week, okay? But now what? And here's where the illustration changes. 'Cause it goes from now a criminal court case, where there is punishment, a price that needed to be paid, and in the same courtroom it goes from a criminal court case to now a civil court case and adoption takes place. You see, our legal standing with God changes. And at the same moment our relational standing with God changes. Galatians 4 says this, when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son born of a woman, born under the Law to redeem those under the Law that what? That we might receive adoption. So that you are no longer a slave but you are God's child, and since you are His child, God has also made you an heir. This is an objective truth. It's not just a subjective feeling, which means it's true whether or not you feel it or not. And I wish we had the whole morning just to talk about adoption, right? Because what happens? What happens in an adoption? You receive a new name. You have a new identity. You receive a new family. You belong to a new people group, like permanently. And you have a new future. Your security has changed and we have peace with God, not just because sin has been removed. I want you to see that. Yes, the price had to be paid but the peace that it's talking about is not just because sin was removed, it's because we have been adopted and that changes everything. It changes our understanding what peace, you see peace is not the absence of something bad. It's the over-abundant presence of good. Let me give you an illustration, all right? You were all kids at one time, right? And there's always that, there comes that moment, you're at home, mom and dad are somewhere and say hey, we'll be back later. We won't be long or so and so will watch you but you're a kid, right? And what happens? You start to see shadows on the wall. You start to hear noises, okay. When I was a kid, I still don't know why my dad, I watched "White Fang" when I was a kid. I was scared to death of wolves, all right. I grew up South Dakota, my room was on the second floor and we don't have wolves in South Dakota where I'm from but we have coyotes and I thought those coyotes were wolves, who were gonna crawl up the second floor and eat me, you know. It was this, when you're a kid you're mind is just not logical. But then what happens, headlights come into the driveway. You hear the garage door open, the door closes and who's home? Mom and dad are home. Now are those shadows still on the wall? Yeah. Do you still hear those same sounds that you just heard? Yeah. What has changed? It wasn't the absence of the bad things you thought were there, it was the presence of something good. Someone good who is there who is for you. You see peace is not the absence of bad, it's the over-abundant presence of good. Now let me share you a real-life story. Recently a friend of mine found out the news that he had to have open heart surgery just before Christmas. And with his permission I want to share with you a text that he sent me because it's exactly what we're talking about. He says, Seth I just want you to know that I have never in my life been as afraid as I am right now but at the same time I am at total peace. And there are reasons for that. I am not alone and I know that more than I have ever known that before in my life. I have experienced things recently that are proof of that and I look forward to sharing that with you. Notice my friend's peace was not dependent on the removal of the scary situation. He still had to go through that and still are going through that but peace isn't the absence of the bad thing but the over-abundant presence of the good thing and specifically in my friend's life, the realization of God's presence with him that he had not know before like this in his life. Boasting hope brings peace and it's not the absence of bad but the over-abundant presence of good. The second thing I want us to see, boasting hope stands on grace. Boasting hope stands on grace. Verse two, through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Grace, all right. Churchy word, I know. I know we say it a lot, we sing about it a lot. We don't, often don't take the time to understand it. Grace means what? Unmerited favor or, getting what you do not deserve, right. Or unconditional love is another way to say it. A love that's not based upon any condition, which means to be worthy to receive love cannot be based upon any condition or quality upon which you possess or any performance that you do. Does that make sense? That is grace. And this is a very hard concept to understand in a merit-based society like what we live in. We live in what's called a guilt culture. Now this is a much deeper topic and I encourage you to look into it a little bit more. Just search cultural anthropology, guilt, shame, fear cultures. You'll understand a lot more about who you are but also any people in your life, right. And cultural anthropology, guilt, shame, fear cultures but in America we live in what's called a guilt culture. Which means simply it's based primarily around rewards and punishment, okay. You're rewarded for good things. You're punished for bad things. And we would agree that's a good thing for society at large. It's part of the blessing of living in America. We actually have a justice system that protects and keeps bad things out and say hey, this is good. And we would all agree as anybody who's been kids or raised kids that corrective discipline is needed when negative behaviors happen, right? So, there's many parts of this that I would say, this is good but when we're talking about the intricacies of our inner selves, when we talk about our understanding of love or even our worth, this can be very damaging. It leads us to believe that we are only valuable based upon our ability to perform or to love, to love is either given or it is taken away based upon what? Your ability to earn it or deserve it. It seeps into that inner place of who we are and the way that we think the world works. Let me give you both negative and positive illustrations, right. Negative first just because I'm a more positive thinking person but negative first, all right. Sports. All right, I love sports. I'm a big advocate of sports, all right. I played sports. I think sports are incredible at teaching really positive things in a person's life. It shapes our character. It learns how to be part of a team, right. How to deal with a coach you may not agree with or a ref who makes a bad call, right. There's a lot of great things that playing sports can teach you that are positive, okay. That said, they can also be incredibly negative in solidifying this concept of merit-based performance driven value. So, a personal example from my life, right. And let's get real, I wasn't a sports stud back in the day, all right, so this is a little real talk but I did play sports. I was from a small town where sports was a big value in the community, okay. So, I played, I played basketball and I was a streaky 3-point shooter. I was shorter back then. Late bloomer, it's all right. But I was streaky and so that played a part too but I also played football and there's a lot more to this story and I won't bore you with the details but you know, in practice I was pretty good at catching the football and for whatever reason when game time came, my number, my number was never called till my senior year, playoffs. We basically already won the game but goal line, my number is called. I run my route. Bad throw at my ankles, I'm turning, I'm about ready to get smacked by a linebacker and I dropped the ball. But I know, poor Seth, but here's what I want you to hear. When I go back to the sideline, here's what my coach looked at me and said. That was your shot Fagerland. Whew. As I high school kids, do you know what that, do you know what that entrenched in me? I'm only as good, I'm only as important as my ability to perform and if I can't perform I'm not important. I'm not worthy. Now, this creeps into every area of life, right. Marriage and parenting and job and friendships and it creates fear, it creates anxiety of both, am I doing enough, am I good enough, am I failing, right? And this still has an effect. So, again, sports are great. I'm a big advocate of sports and I am so thankful and proud that Brent Voight, with FCA, is a part of Rock Point and that they work with coaches and teams in the area that can use sports in a positive way, that can teach good things that young people need. And again I'm a big fan of that but sports can be incredibly negative sometimes and entrenching this concept of a merit-based performance driven value. Now there's other examples of course. Academics, your GPA, college, your appearance, your job performance, all of those things can connect and you can see how this can be a challenge in the culture that we live in. But that is not grace. That is what I want you to hear. That is not grace. And I have to emphasize it because it bleeds into our understanding of grace. 'Cause as much as we say the right things in church, we operate and we live sometimes like, well, with God I got to do the right things for God to love me and if I do the bad things, He's disappointed in me. We start to believe that that's how it operates with Him. Unmerited favor, unconditional love cannot be based upon any quality you possess or performance that you do or don't do. So now let me give you some positive examples, okay? All right, my wife and I, we have two kids, an almost eight year old and a four and a half year old, and again, real talk, we got the same kind of kids you, we get the fix it reports and the phone calls from school, okay, it's life, it's part of it, it's working with you people and kids. But with our kids we've tried really hard to wanting our kids to understand this concept of what unconditional love really looks like and means in our family, including the apologies when it's messed up. But a couple things we try really hard with our kids. One is regularly we ask them why do we love you? Why does mommy and daddy love you? Because I'm your son. Because I'm your daughter. All right. But more specifically, with my son, lock him in the eyes and say, why am I proud of you? Because I'm your son. Not because of anything he's done and in fact, I normally lean in hard with that question when he's messed up. Why is daddy proud of you? Because I'm your son. And with my daughter, she's only four and a half and so far we're doing pretty good. I look at her and I say Maya, why does daddy love you, or no, no, I messed it up , why are you beautiful? And she says because you love me. I know, pretty good, right? I want my daughter to grow up knowing and believing in here, not up here that that it's no quality of what she looks like and nothing she has to do to earn it. But the one who is put in her life to declare you are loved is all she needs to know that she's beautiful. And even more real talk, with my wife, okay, my love for her is not based upon a quality of what she looks like or what she has or hasn't done but purely because she's my wife. And I regularly, and I need to for her sake and my sake, to declare I love you not because of what she looks like, not because of what the house looks like but because she's my wife. And love is given, it is not earned. And both of these things, with our spouses, with our kids, with friendships, the only way we have the ability to even do this, because otherwise we're still gonna do it for selfish motivations to try to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, the only thing that this can be real is if we first receive this kind of love from God. That we first have tasted an unconditional love from Him because love can only be given. And we can only give what we have first received. And that's what the Bible talks about, we love because He first loved us. That is what we're talking about with grace. And through Him we've also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. We now stand. Why doesn't it say in this grace we now lie down in like that peace we talked about earlier? Why doesn't it say in this grace in which we now sit, just unmoved, like we're not changing? It's because that's not the life that Jesus invites us into. That's way too, to lie down and to sit is too passive. Yes, we are, we are saved to something, we are saved for something, and to stand is this bold declaration of that we have, you know when you stand up for something, when you believe in something, it is, it is, why do we stand for the National Anthem, right? It is a reminder of what this country's built upon. It is a reminder of who we are and where we, where we live, where we exist and how we then live our lives in this country. We stand on grace because it is that movement, that declaration of who we are in Jesus. To stand is also pressing forward. We're not waiting to go around, we're not sitting here waiting to go to heaven when we die. The gospel is the rule and the reign of God in our lives to this broken world. We reveal by our standing that it is God Himself who is love by definition. It's not that God is loving, God is love the Bible says. And therefore, He is the only one who has the authority to declare to you and to me that you are loved, not because of anything you have done or haven't done but because He's the one who can say so. And it's not the mushy, gushy kind of love that our culture talks about. It's the love that meets the desires of all of us that we were created with at the core of our being to be heard and understood, to be affirmed, to be touched, to be safe, to be included, to be chosen, to be blessed. God loves you and He proves it. You can have peace with God, boasting hope, because of the over-abundant presence of good, which is God Himself. And you stand on the unconditional, radical, everlasting love of Jesus Christ for you. And lastly and most importantly, we see that boasting hope is in God's glory. Second half of verse two, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. The word boasting, like I said earlier, it shows up twice. It's the word in the passage that you look in front of you that says rejoice but literally it's the word to boast. And it threw me off when I was preparing for today because I was preparing for today how we were gonna approach this and when I looked down, footnote, verse and I look at the word, to boast in the hope in the glory of God, I'm like, man, that's what this is about right here. In fact Romans 5 through 8 is all about, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, what does this new life in Jesus look like. Spend time in those passages, all right? Romans 1, up 1 through 4 is talking about the groundwork that leads up to it and then Romans 5 through 8 unpacks this hope that we have in the peace of God. So now back to our question at the beginning of our time, to boast or not to boast, that is not the question. Okay? 'Cause here's why. We will boast in something, okay. As human beings, if you're breathing right now, we're good, right, if your heart is pounding, you are made in the image of God and you will boast in something. What you boast in is what matters. Have you ever wondered why we, why we do get into sports, right? I love even on Sundays I see out, I see jerseys, right, and I was the one screaming at the t.v. yesterday. I bleed purple, I'm a big Vikings fan, all right. Sad day, please once in my lifetime, but we're have you ever wondered why, why do we like sports so much? Why do we like competition? Why do we like achieving goals? Why do we like, why do we like profit? Why do we like, why do we like success? Do you think that's sin? It's been twisted, all right, the moment sin entered and we made life about us, yeah, all those things then became about our glory and that's why when I messed with you earlier and said yeah, boasting, that's a bad thing when it's us. But why do you think those things matter so much to us? It's because we were made for our lives to matter about something bigger than us. We were made to get caught up in life that's not about us and our story but about the One who made us and His story. That's why all those things we're drawn to and that's why it doesn't matter if you're a believer in Jesus or not, you see glimpses of it in our society and culture. We don't have to tell people to go be fans. We don't have to tell people to go try to do well at what they do in their work. We don't have to tell people to try to be successful. That is in us to live for something greater. That is talking about the Kingdom of God. That is God's glory. His weightiness in our life. And it says that boasting in hope, and the word hope here is not like the English word hope, all right, it's stinking Hallmark Channel has turned hope into like wishful thinking, right. Crossing our fingers or what are the odds. Positive energy, no, okay. That is not hope. Hope, the biblical word hope, the true definition of the word hope is a confidence expectation of things to come. So, illustration, and I wrote this prior to yesterday, I could be boasting that the Vikings will win the Superbowl. Obviously not gonna happen now, right. Okay, that's way, that's delirious thinking right now. That's not even wishful thinking, okay. But even if they had won yesterday and I would be boasting that oh the Vikings are gonna win the Superbowl, okay, I got plenty of text messages today from friends, right, it's not boasting. To truly boast in something means it's already happened. It already has taken place. So, to boast in the hope of God's glory means that there is something that has already happened and there's more to come. Now I had to, I had to make a decision based on time to actually leave you with a little bit of a cliffhanger in our passages this morning. We don't have to unpack verses three and four but here, let me encourage you. At some point this week, what Kevin talked about, if you're in a life group, go after those couple verses. If you're not in a life group, find a huddle of friends or with your family, but go through these verses three and four, right. Not only that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And there are different kinds of suffering. And I'll just give you that real quick, right. We suffer because we make bad choices, right. We have to deal with consequences. We suffer sometimes because of personal discipline, right. Like any New Year's resolution, like some of you have gone to the gym more this last week than last year, okay. Or diets or whatever, we sometimes personally discipline, we suffer through that. But there's also suffering just because of painful circumstances, right? My friend with the heart transplant. We didn't ask for that. We didn't sign up for that. That happened. But here's what I want you do in that group as you go through those verses, try to answer this question. Why, why does character produce hope? And I think you'll enjoy those conversations. I did that with people in my life this past week and it was a good time but I wanted to focus more time, I wanted to have more time to lean into verse five. So this is where this passage leads us, to this point. Verse five, 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. Two words, two words I want to look at. First is shame. Do any of you remember when that word first shows up in our Bible? The word shame. Genesis, chapter two, that's right, Genesis, chapter two. And it says this, and the man and his wife were both naked and without shame. They were naked and they were without shame, right. It is the creation account. God just finished making His masterpiece, men and woman, made in His image and they were in perfect relationship with Him and with each other. That is what that phrase means, that they were naked and without shame. That means that they were completely known and completely loved. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. They were completely known and completely loved. We see a glimpse of what God intended for us, what God intended for humanity to be. But we know it didn't last long, right, because shortly after that, and we don't have time to cover this entire thing in detail but the first humans chose to reject God and they wanted to decide for themselves what is good and what is not good. Thanks but no thanks, we want to be our own gods and they went after a life, tried to, independent of Him, and sin entered human existence. Now, the first thing that happened when they took a bite of that forbidden fruit, right, from the tree, right, they experienced shame. Now shame is different than guilt. Guilt is where you feel bad about something you did, like I broke the cookie jar, all right. Shame is where you feel wrong in who you are. And that is what happens in this moment. Adam and Eve, they didn't feel guilty because they ate the fruit, they felt shame because they had wanted in their hearts to kick God off the throne, to be their own gods. And they thought that was a game changer. They say, we are no longer worthy to be loved by God. It's over. And that's why they ran and hid. And I love it, I love it when God comes to them in Geneses 3, the very next chapter. What does He deal with? He doesn't go after their guilt. He doesn't come in with the gavel of heaven and say, all right, it's time for your court date for the possession of an illegal substance, okay. That is not what God does. He doesn't go after their guilt. What does he go after first? Their shame. God says why are you hiding from Me? Who told you you were naked? Romans 5, and therefore hope does not put us to shame, why? Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He's given us. And that's the other word I want to hit this morning, is poured, right. What comes to your mind when you think of poured? I think of coffee, mmmm, coffee. And that's not even, you can see through that. That's not even strong enough yet, okay. All right. Best picture I could find. And for those of you who like a little coffee with your creamer, I got this one too, all right. So, and what happens when you're trying to get that perfect combination of the creamer to coffee ratio, I've messed this up so many times with my wife, like add, add, add, you spill over, right? And by definition, something is full when you cannot add a single drop to it, okay. Simple. So often we think when we hear the word poured or maybe even of church life, we get this idea that well, that's what it's talking about, we get this idea like, well we come to church, we fill up our cups of Jesus and we go around and we share that with the world around us. That is not what this word in verse five means, poured. It actually means this. Think about it. What has been poured? It says God's love has been poured. That is 100% of an infinite source. 100% of an infinite source. Literally the word poured here means to literally distribute largely. Which means it is coming from a very powerful source, right? What happens when you get close to this kind of pouring? You are undone. It is powerful. You are overwhelmed. You are never the same. You are so caught up in just shear, raw power. You know if you enter into that, you are gone. Your bones shake from the sound, the roar of it. And you are drenched just from the mist, not even directly from the source itself but the residual effect of where it's been, you are soaked. That is the word it's talking about right here. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He's given us. God made a promise. I will never leave you nor forsake you. So the moment that you believe in Jesus, you are declared justified by faith, you become permanently adopted because you receive His Spirit. You have peace with God. The over-abundant presence of good of God Himself, who will never leave you. But not only that, you are standing on the grace of God's unconditional, everlasting, eternal, radical love. And you rejoice, you boast in the hope of the glory of God because of God's infinite love has Niagara Falled into your heart. You see when you truly experience the power of God's glory, your life is altered. You are not the same. The object of your boasting changes everything. And you know this is what heaven is gonna be like, right? That's a whole other talk but heaven is gonna be the continuous powerful declaration of look at God's glory, look at what God has done, look at who we are in Him and it'll be like that for eternity and eternity, eternity. You think you're gonna be bored? You are gonna feel like you will be undone, like you cannot handle that anymore and then He'll give you the ability to endure a little more and it'll be like that day after day after day after day. So where do we go from here? How do we live this out, right? To stick, to stick with our illustration, how do you fully experience the overwhelming power of Niagara Falls? You gotta get close to it. It's your proximity to the source that changes the impact it has on your life, right? 'Cause some of you can look at a postcard or look at an image online and say what's the deal, it's a bunch of water, it's a waterfall, right? You've never been there. You're like, yeah, maybe someday. You talk to somebody who's been there. Who's been in the boat. Who's been right up to it. Ask them what that is like as they try to come up with words to describe their experience. Many of you have a very small view of God. Maybe you were a kid, you grew up and you heard Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so and your understanding of God was maybe just slightly bigger than that but then what happens, you grew up and the world got more complex. Got harder. Was no longer black and white, there's a lot of gray. And maybe your understanding of God is still like when you were a kid. What happens then, God's not big enough is He? Many of you have a too small view of God or you have too small of view of God's love for you. And I dare say, lovingly, you haven't gotten close enough yet. Do whatever you have to do. Remove whatever distraction you have to remove, talk to somebody who has been close and say tell me again about who Jesus is in my life. Because so much of our struggles in life and I tell our young people this all the time, it comes from an incorrect view of God or an incorrect view of who we are in Him. We have to draw close to this again and again and again. We sang about it this morning. Life is a journey and it is this tension of the already, of you can experience the power of God in your life right now and the what is still to come, of Jesus making a promise, see I am coming soon and I am bringing the Kingdom of God with me. Something has already happened and that is why we can have a boasting hope. You can have peace with God only because of the over-abundant presence of good, of God's presence. You can stand, only stand on grace. And there is new way to be human. You will boast in something but boast in the hope of the glory of God and when you have tasted the confident expectation of things to come, you will be like the prophet Jeremiah who said, but if I say I will not mention His word or speak anymore in His name, His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in, indeed I cannot. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you. It just seems so small to say thank you. God if we boast, we glorify, we worship You because You are worthy to be worshiped. Lord, I pray again by your Holy Spirit that You reveal Yourself more to us. That we may see You rightly and therefore see ourselves rightly in You. I pray for us as we leave this place that we will be boasting in the hope, the confident hope of the glory of God. It's in Your name that I pray, amen.