Guest Speaker - Daniel Thompson
The Cure for Fear: 1 John 4:18
The Replacement for Fear: PEACE
| FEAR | REALITY IN CHRIST | |
| PAST MISTAKES | (Rom 5:1) | JUSTIFIED BY FAITH |
| LACK OF BLESSINGS | (Rom 5:2a) | ACCESS INTO GRACE |
| FUTURE | (Rom 5:2b) | HOPE OF GLORY |
| STRUGGLES OF TODAY | (Rom 5:3-5) | PURPOSE IN SUFFERING |
| UNCERTAINTY | (Rom 5:6-11) | DEATH FOR AN ENEMY |
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:00
Good morning, everybody.
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First of all, I want to thank Pastor Jeff and the elders of the church for asking me to speak.
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You know, my parents and my siblings that are here know that public speaking is actually not what I'm genetically or conditionally trained to do.
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Thankfully, though, God has seen fit otherwise to make me work with youth, which I've done over the past 10 years.
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And one thing you learn from working with teens is that if you can talk in front of teens, you can pretty much talk in front of anybody.
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You guys are way easier than their attention span.
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So today we're going to be talking about the Book of Romans.
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We're going to be talking about a passage out of the Book of Romans from chapter 5.
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So why study the Book of Romans?
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What's the big deal about Romans?
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You know, it seems like a lot of people focus their attention on it.
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It's the book that changed Martin Luther's whole course of direction of his theology and things like that.
00:49-01:50
Well, one of the quotes that I had found out there is Dr. Barnhouse, who is the original pastor of the radio program, the Bible Study Hour. He passed away in like the 60s, so I never actually heard him. But, he had a great quote here, "A scientist may say that mother's milk is the most perfect food known to man. And a scientist may give you the analysis showing all the chemical components. He may give you a list of all the vitamins in the milk and an estimate of the calories in each given quantity. But a baby will take that milk without the remotest knowledge of its content and will grow day by day. So it is, the profoundest truths of the Word of God. Some of us may be able to analyze it and some of us may not. But all of us do well to drink and to grow. The point is, there's a lot of complex stuff in Romans and you may not understand every aspect of it. There's people out there thankfully by God's grace that do understand more than any of us. But the idea is we should always grow every time we look at it. Every time we look at the Book of Romans we should walk away different than before.
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And so that's what I'm hoping we will do today.
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As Pastor Jeff mentioned, I am a teacher, but I hate teaching out of context.
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And since I'm not permitted to speak to get all the way to Romans 5, I only get one Sunday to talk, I have to give you some context to get you to chapter five.
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All right, so here's one sentence summaries of the preceding chapters to get you to chapter five.
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Chapter one, God's wrath is coming on man, and here's why.
02:19-02:20
God lists the reasons.
02:21-02:26
Chapter two, God's people are no better because we should know better, and we do the same things.
02:27-02:31
Chapter three, because no one is righteous, God stepped in.
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And chapter four, Abraham was justified by faith, not the law, and so are we.
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That brings us up to chapter five.
02:41-02:46
But before we start chapter five, I wanna give you some insight into how my engineer brain works.
02:46-02:50
So I'm a mechanical engineer, I work for a Navy contractor out in Monroeville.
02:51-02:55
And probably obvious to most people about engineers is that we're dominated by logic.
02:56-03:02
Normally in a battle between feeling and logic, logic's gonna win as long as my brain is appropriately engaged.
03:03-03:07
But something that people may not know about engineers is engineers talk a lot about risk mitigation.
03:08-03:09
What's risk mitigation?
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Risk mitigation is when you identify what the risks are to a proposed course of action, And then you mitigate them.
03:16-03:20
You try to either minimize the impact or the likelihood of those risks happening.
03:21-03:29
They talk about that in the business world as well, but I know as an engineer, I'm constantly having to defend my position of is this a bad thing or a good thing?
03:29-03:31
And how likely is that bad thing going to happen or not?
03:32-03:34
So today I'd like to talk about fear mitigation.
03:35-03:42
What fears are out there in life, some of them, and how can we make the impact or likelihood of that fear as small as possible?
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So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
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The Bible actually talks about a cure for fear.
03:48-03:54
And that cure for fear is found in a passage we're just gonna read here, 1 John 4, 18.
03:54-04:09
It says, "There is no fear in love, "but perfect love casts out fear, "for fear has to do with punishment, "and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." The theme that I want you to get there is perfect love drives out fear.
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So love is the way we get rid of fear.
04:13-04:23
What I'd like to focus on today is how can we replace that, what can we replace that fear with, or at least keep it as small as possible so that that fear has no impact in our lives.
04:24-04:29
Based on the title of my sermon, you can probably guess that the replacement for that fear is peace.
04:30-04:32
And that's what our passage in Romans talks about.
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So turn with me in Romans chapter five, verses one through 11.
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Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
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More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
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For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
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For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.
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But God chose this love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?
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For if while we were his enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we now have received reconciliation.
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Let's pray.
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Mighty God, I thank you for this opportunity and I pray that you would use it for your glory, Lord, and I pray that the distractions of my own stumblings and speaking and my own thought patterns, Lord God, that those would be removed. The distractions of the heat, the distractions of our own life, Lord God, would be removed and you would speak through me to reveal this text to our hearts, Lord God.
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Make us understand the reality of what you have done for us and how it should change the way we live.
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We praise you for this time and thank you that we've gathered here together.
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All this we ask in your name.
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So I think there's a lot of confusion out there about what peace is.
06:26-07:06
Is peace this, you know, anti-war, anti-God, free love movement of the '60s with that horrific sign that I despise? Did John Lennon have it right whenever he said, when all he was saying was give peace a chance? Or maybe peace is actually when all the UN representatives get together in a fancy room and leave with a peace which is actually just a Cold War like tension where missiles are aimed at each other but actually not fired. Or maybe peace is that feeling that you get when you've made a decision and your heart rate finally goes back to normal and you can sleep at night again. Or maybe you feel peace or at peace whenever you see doves flying in a sunrise or something goofy like that.
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I can't help but think of the classic scene from that movie, Independence Day. It's a victim of my time.
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When President Bill Pullman is in the bowels of Area 51 and he's down there talking to the alien that Will Smith had shot down in his dog fight, and the President asks him, Did you come in peace?
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The alien says, "Peace!
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No peace!" And then he threatens to kill them.
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But that's my response to all these types of peace.
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Peace?
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No peace.
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Those are not peace.
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That's not what peace is all about.
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Peace is not a feeling.
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Dare I say, Jay, that peace is more than a feeling?
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Peace is actually a state of reality for those of us who belong to Christ.
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what God has done for us, through his Son, we can experience a true and lasting peace that is actually beyond our ability to understand, as it talks about elsewhere in the scripture.
08:02-08:27
Let's take a look at the text and see what peace is and how it mitigates or minimizes some of the fears that we encounter. So the first fear on your outline, past mistakes. Fear of the past can cripple a person, the realization that what has been done can't be undone, or the feeling that your crimes are beyond redemption or beyond forgiveness.
08:28-08:35
Sometimes you get that overwhelming guilt that weighs on your heart and just prevents you from being able to make any future decisions.
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This fear must be dealt with.
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Let's read verse 1 again.
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Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Well, how does that deal with past mistakes?
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Well, to be justified means to be declared not guilty, which means if we were declared not guilty, we were guilty.
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And it's pretty easy to see the things that we've done wrong, many, many things that we've done wrong.
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Just go through the 10 Commandments and see how well you do.
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Bounce the 10 Commandments against Christ's clarification that the 10 Commandments are not purely external, but actually also internal, and we're downright awful at any kind of obedience towards God.
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So we justified by faith.
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Well, what's faith?
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The writer of Hebrews describes faith as being sure of what we hope for and being certain of what we cannot see.
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None of us have witnessed the resurrection.
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And likely, most of us have not physically seen the risen Christ.
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But in faith, but faith in him is recognizing our own mistakes, admitting that we are sinners and are in desperate need of saving from the punishment that we deserve.
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Faith is trusting that Christ is who he says he is He lived, died, and was raised in place of us.
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If this is you, you can accept this reality that you are justified by faith.
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Alright, so picture yourself in a courtroom.
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You're the defendant and God's the judge.
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All the evidence has been stacked up against you and you've nowhere to run and no excuse.
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You're awaiting your sentencing and God declares you not guilty.
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How is this so?
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Your much deserved punishment will not be assigned to you.
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Not only that, but this ruling is final.
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It can't be undone.
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Because of God's ruling, we now have peace.
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Well, we have peace with God, obviously, because there's not going to be that punishment that we deserve.
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He's not going to ever punish us for the crimes that we have committed.
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Furthermore, we have peace internally because we can let go of all that guilt and that shame and move on from our past mistakes.
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We've experienced His forgiveness, so we should be able to forgive ourselves.
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And finally, we can begin a road of peace with others, either who have hurt us or who we have hurt, because we've seen the example of Christ's free offering of forgiveness.
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And we should be able to model that and do that with others so that we can bridge a road of peace with them.
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So if you are in Christ, do not fear past mistakes, because you have been justified by faith.
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Alright, fear number two, lack of blessings.
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Lack of blessings.
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I bet most people wouldn't say that they fear lack of blessings, but most people live like it, because most people certainly worry about that situation to some degree.
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Everything we watch on TV from the news to commercials makes us so discontent that we not only worry about what we will have tomorrow or what we need to have in the future, but we are blind to the blessings that we have right now.
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The old is not desirable and we need the new.
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We worry about where the money will come from or how God is going to provide for our family, even as Christians.
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Let's read the first half of verse 2.
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Through him we have also obtained access by faith into the grace in which we stand.
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So the reality in Christ in the face of the fear of lack of blessings is that we have access into grace.
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The other week when Mark preached, he brought up a distinction between grace and mercy that's relevant here as well.
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As Mark pointed out, mercy is God not giving us something that we do deserve.
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Mercy was received when we were justified.
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We deserved punishment, but we don't get it.
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That's mercy.
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Grace is the opposite side of that coin.
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Grace is God giving us something that we don't deserve.
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We were declared not guilty, right?
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So that could have been the end of the courtroom scene.
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We could have gone home, left the room, and known that we were no longer guilty for our sins and we were no longer going to receive the punishment.
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But God was not done.
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He gets down from the judge's bench, he opens the door, and he invites us into his chambers.
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He invites us to experience the blessing of having a relationship with him for the rest of our walk on earth.
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The curtain of the temple has been torn and we can now boldly approach our God to ask him for the requests of our heart.
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and we trust that he will provide exactly what we need.
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The Bible says every good and perfect gift comes from him.
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We can taste and see that the Lord is good.
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All this is because Christ has done what he has done and we have now received access into grace.
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So we experience a peace that comes from the idea of knowing that no matter what I have or what I don't have, I know that I have a greater treasure in my relationship with the creator of the universe than anything I could ever possess on my own efforts.
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So, if you are in Christ, do not fear a lack of blessings because you have access into God's grace.
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All right, fear number three, the future.
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The fear of the unknown, what will happen tomorrow?
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What if this happens or what if this doesn't happen?
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Will things go according to plan?
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These kind of questions literally keep people up at night.
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We so greatly desire control of our own lives that we try to control our life by worrying about what may or may not happen in the future.
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In fact, Christ even says, "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?" There's the logic that works in my brain.
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What does worrying actually do to increase your ability to control the future?
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If anything, it actually shortens your life because of the stress.
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Christ concludes, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
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Each day has enough trouble of its own." Well, that's fine, but how do we stop this worry?
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Let's read the second half of verse two.
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"And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." The reality in Christ, the way to stop fear is by recognizing, the way to stop fear of the future is by recognizing that we have hope in the glory of God.
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God already has a future for us.
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We've yet to experience this fully, but he has made the promises to us.
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Christ is preparing a place for us, and he said he's gonna come back and take us to it.
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God will reward us for faithful obedience, so we should continue to be obedient now.
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This body that we live in is broken and only getting worse by decay as time goes on, but we hope in the promise that God will provide us with new bodies that will never see decay and will last forever, never breaking down.
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Look, if you read the end of the book, you'll realize that we win.
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The future is not something to fear, but something to rejoice about, as it says in the text.
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This is not a blind and wishful hope that says, "Every day is the best day of my life." This doesn't give you that warm, fuzzy feeling.
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This is a certainty of a reality that is to come.
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Therefore, this reality that is to come, that is certain, should affect our reality right now.
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The future for us in Christ is not only good, but beyond our imagination good.
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If you are in Christ, do not fear the future, but rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
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Fear number four, struggles of today.
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Yeah, that's great.
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Nice thoughts about the future, but what about what I'm dealing with today?
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There are very real struggles going on right now.
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How are we supposed to deal with them?
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What kind of peace can I find right now?
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If God is in control and he's got this great future ahead, why are things so messed up right now?
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Who can ignore that kind of day-to-day reality?
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Who can ignore the hardships that are going on in their life?
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Let's read verses three through five.
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More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
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And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
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So, our peace comes from the reality that God has purpose in suffering.
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God knows what he is doing.
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And Paul actually outlines a plan for what God is doing through suffering.
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Suffering produces endurance.
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That's pretty obvious, I think, from the physical training side of things.
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If you're training for any kind of race, I've never run a marathon, but I've run half marathons, you struggle through the training so that you have more endurance to be able to complete the race later on.
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From that ability to persevere, we build character.
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This is the process of God refining us.
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God uses the struggles of our life to strip us of our pride and our selfishness.
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We are chiseled down in a way that removes the undesirable qualities and leaves the things that God desires, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
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When we see this new character shining more brightly in ourselves, We're then filled with hope for the future.
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Not only that hope for the distant future of the glory of God, but we can face the next set of struggles with the idea and a better appreciation, God really is doing something.
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I saw it in the last struggle, and so I know that God is gonna do something in the next struggle ahead.
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God really does have a plan.
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And as the Bible says, this hope does not put us to shame.
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Or as the NIV says, this hope does not disappoint us.
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We're never disappointed by trusting in God.
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So, if you are in Christ, do not fear the struggles of today because God has great purpose in suffering.
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So the last and final one is uncertainty.
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Number five on your outline.
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As I said, I'm an engineer and at my company, as engineers, we make recommendations to the government.
18:43-19:12
And without fail, the first question that the government going to ask you is, how certain are you of that? You think that material is going to work in there? You think you don't need to replace that pump? So you did an ultrasonic inspection on that pipe and you think the crack is only 10% through? Well, how do you know? How certain are you? What's your confidence level? That's always the question that the government's asking. So you might be sitting there saying the same thing to me. Well, how do I know that these pieces of peace are really as certain and really a reality as you say?
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you've never experienced them or maybe you're just not sure that this hypothetical piece can stand up against the very real and present fear that is in your life. Well, I could tell you to just take it on faith. Just throw up your hands, check your brain at the door and just believe. But thankfully I don't have to. Paul anticipates this line of reasoning and he gives us an example. An example that tells us the certainty of the reality in Christ.
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That example is death for an enemy.
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Let's read verses 6 through 11.
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I want to read that in the NIV because the ESV is choppy and I don't like it in this particular case.
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Normally I do.
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You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
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Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.
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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this.
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we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? For if while we were God's enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life? Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
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First of all, at the beginning of that it says, "at just the right time." How comforting is that?
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God's timing is perfect.
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There is no uncertainty for God.
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So we might sit here and say, "We're not sure.
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We're not sure about this." God is always certain.
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But here's the example.
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What are the words that describe our condition in this example?
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We were weak or powerless as it says in the ESV.
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Ungodly.
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Sinners.
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Enemies of God.
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What does God do?
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God steps in.
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He acts.
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What are the action words ascribed to God?
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Christ died, shows his love for us, justified us, saved us, reconciled us.
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Look, if God saved us while we were his enemies, don't you think that all the things that he promised to his people, people that he now calls sons and daughters, are going to come to happen?
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Like, I can't imagine for a second letting Ellie die for anybody.
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My best friends, you know, definitely not my worst enemies.
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So I can't comprehend what God has done, but it certainly tells me that what he says he's going to do, he's going to do.
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So if you are in Christ, do not fear uncertainty because Christ died for us while we were his enemies.
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There's nothing more certain than that.
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Now, the caveat in all of this, the clarifier that I hope that I made at every one of these fears that I want to highlight to you is that without Christ, none of this is a reality.
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For anyone here or anyone that you know that does not have true faith in Jesus Christ as their only Lord and Savior, these fears are their reality.
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You will pay for your past mistakes.
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There will come a time when the blessings will stop.
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The future for you is not only something to fear, but something to run for and avoid at all costs.
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It's quite possible that without Christ there are no purposes for the struggles in your life that you now face.
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If Christ was not raised for you, you are still God's enemy.
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And what certainty do you have?
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Well, I can tell you this.
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It's certain that everyone will stand before God when they die.
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It's certain that there are only two options, God's kingdom or hell, the only place where God is not. And it is certain that there is only one way to enter God's kingdom, a life purchased by the blood of Christ. If this is not you, I pray that the reality of these fears will motivate you to seek peace with God, a complete and forever peace that starts now and lasts for eternity. Don't stay in the spot. Don't let fear dominate your life.
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Destroy these fears with what Christ has done. I pray that you would grab one of the elder or the prayer team members, or myself, or Pastor Jeff, talk about this.
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Don't wait to receive God's peace.
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Now, for those of us that are in Christ, live in the realities of these things that we've talked about.
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There is real peace in knowing who God is and what he has done for you.
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Don't let the feelings of fear dominate your life.
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This is my appeal to you as an engineer.
23:55-24:02
Let the logic of the reality of Christ dominate you and don't let the fears have control. Let's pray.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Romans 5:1-11
In your own words, describe what peace from God is. It may also be helpful to describe what peace is not.
It has been said (but apparently not by Einstein) that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". In any case, insanity is definitely a loss of touch with reality. In what ways have you lost touch with the realities discussed in this portion of Romans 5? In light of these realities, what things do you need to do differently in order to expect different results for handling the fears in your life?
What fear (in the list from Sunday or any other fear) has any control in your life? Why is this so? What truth do you need to remind yourself of to have peace instead of this fear?
List some people in your life who you would be willing die for or at least risk death for. Assuming that none of your enemies were on that list, how much more grateful should we be for what Christ has done for us: dying for His enemies?
These fears, and many others (including completely irrational ones), are very much a reality for those that don't know Christ as their Savior and Lord. Describe how this motivates you to share the gospel with the lost. Provide examples of things you can say to explain true peace to those who do not have it.
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another!