Lesson 16b
Romans 5:1-11 · Mike Doyle · Aug 19, 2018
Romans (2018-21), No. 31
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261911392070

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so we are on lesson 16. Everybody got one, hopefully. And we had just finished up question 5, which was, we revel in the hope of the glory of God, and we talked about the glory of God. Now, there's a bit of a change here, starting in question 6.

Romans 5.3, reads, and not only this, but we also revel or exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. So should we take this verse and put it up on the billboard out in the street? Come to our church because we exalt in tribulations here. How would that work out? We wouldn't be accepted.

Don't you find it interesting that we're in the middle of Romans chapter 5. We've gone through who man really is in sin. The grace of God to send his son to die for us and salvation and appreciation of what he's done and he goes through verses that talk about our response to what God has done and then right away he gets into the tribulation issue. Seems pretty quick to me.

I think he would have soft-sold it a little longer. So what does tribulation mean? What's that word mean? Like an earthquake? Earthquake? Shaking. Afflictions is what the interlinear translation is. It can be persecution, it can be any kind of external trouble, any kind of anguish, any kind of an affliction that you may have. We thought that once we became a Christian that all this affliction stuff would go away, right? So what I find interesting about this verse is that Paul never, if you read his letters fairly carefully, he never offers sympathy. You ever notice that about him? He doesn't offer sympathy.

He offers truth and doctrine. So if we were to approach him and say this awful thing happened to me, what would he say? Glory to God. That's what he would say. And I think if there's one principle that we still laugh about your dad, Hal, you'd call him up and say, Hey, Hal, my truck died. My wife left me and the dog is dead. And he'd say, Let's explore that mindset for a second. What is that like?

Because we absolutely shy away from trouble. We don't want... We're just praying for Monique and others that have medical issues. Why this mindset? And why this quick in the Word of God? What is it, I mean, this idea that we exalt in tribulation, why would we do such a thing? I think the only way we can is to really truly trust Him.

Okay. Trust Him to do what? To do whatever needs to be done that will work out for our good in the end. Okay. And I think you're hitting on it. And what he does in these verses is he lines it out specifically how he's going to do it and what the tribulation is all about. And if you don't understand the purpose of tribulation, you don't have any reveling about it or satisfaction in it or exulting in it at all. All you think is it's painful. Right? Woe me.

And I dare say that most of Christianity thinks that way today. I shouldn't be suffering. Not only the Christian church, but also pretty much the mental attitude of younger people is that I should never have to hurt. Yet here's the Apostle Paul telling us, look, we're excited about tribulation.

We really think this is a good thing. It got quiet in here. Is it a good thing? It is a good thing when you understand what it's for. What is it for? That's what the verses are about. Knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. So would you say that this is rational? You know what I mean by rational?

In other words, if I have a non-believer sitting in front of me, and next to him or her is a psychiatrist, and you start going down this road, what are they going to think? You're crazy. You're nuts. If you're not a believer, this is not rational. This makes no sense. Because that isn't the way it's supposed to be. The whole idea of the medical profession is to treat physical maladies and psychiatry is to treat the sin nature so it won't hurt you so much. So rejoicing in one's tribulation is not a rational thought from the old man's perspective. It makes no sense that you would do such a thing. The guys in the white coats are going to come and haul you away.

So does it mean that we are to rejoice in the midst of or in spite of tribulation? In the midst of. Doesn't mean either one. We're to joy in God. If you understand, let me maybe put it this way. God is our Father, and that's just not a title. He is our Father, which means that He cares for us and He loves us. And He has a specific purpose for us to know Him and to be conformed to the image of His Son. He, more than anyone else, recognizes the conditional bondage we're in to the old man. of fear and all of that that goes with it. And part of the process of freeing us from that old man starts with understanding what he's going to bring tribulation. In other places he calls it child training.

Those of you who are fathers, did you discipline your children or didn't you? Hopefully you did. And what did that show them? What did it tell them? That you loved them. that I loved them. If I didn't discipline them, it would demonstrate to them I didn't care about them. Now they may not figure that out until they're young adults, but when they become young adults and you did discipline them, they're thankful. They are thankful. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I think so.

Why should the principle change with our father? It shouldn't. And to join that, to be exalted about that, you have to understand we're not exalting in spite of what God has done, but God is our object. He's the focus of what we're doing. And we learn to trust Him that He's about the business of carrying out His purpose, and it starts with tribulation. So let me ask you this.

Believers have two natures, we have the old man and the new man. Is tribulation only attributable or painful or rejected by the old man or experienced by the old man? Does the new man in Christ say, oh here we go, this is great? What do you think? What does that mean? That means yes, the new man enjoys it and the old man I think that when you understand your new position in Christ actually gets pretty excited about what's going on in terms of tribulation.

John 16 verse 33 kind of covers this and the last few words in that verse says, but take courage I have overcome the world. Interesting. Overcome the world. From not only a positional standpoint, but from a conditional standpoint. Yeah, I have overcome the world.

So, if you were to... Did you guys get the thunderstorm last night? Is that good for the soil and the earth? All that lightning and wind and... Yeah, tribulation. Good. It's a good thing, right? Lightning is a really good thing. If we would treat storms like we treat ourselves, we'd say, we don't want any rain anymore, no more wind. But then nothing would grow. But we were all inside. Well, we were trying to sleep. Trees wouldn't have a root system. That's right, they'd fall over the first time. So, one more question about the Tribulation.

Can it be physical? Can it be mental? Can it be spiritual? It can be all three of those, can't it? You find that pressures that you're under, pressures that you're under can be physical. Monique's going to have open heart surgery, lots of physical pressure, and I would say probably mental pressure too, and especially for Bruce. Spiritual pressure? Tell me what spiritual pressure might be. Trust and love. Trust and love. Let me ask it another way. Describe to me what spiritual pressure would be on you. Let's say spiritual pressure on you, what would it be? And don't tell me it's Satan hassling you. That's not it. It's the little things that happen in your day that drive you crazy. Okay. What else? How about Paul and his heart for the believers that he ministered to? Understand what she just said? Yes.

Paul carried around a burden for the people that God had given him to minister to. that they would grow and that they would come into the fullness of what God had revealed to him to teach them. That's a spiritual burden. Do you guys have a spiritual burden for children or people you love who aren't Christians? Absolutely, you do. You pray for them, hopefully for opportunities to share Christ with them. That's a spiritual burden.

Or they walk away from sound doctrine to something that isn't sound and they get wrapped up in it and that gets to be a burden and they won't listen. That kind of stuff. And that happens a lot. Would you say that the pressure Paul felt from other believers who were against him in some way and causing trouble was the spiritual pressure? I think so. I think so. And I think there's like Dumas and some of the others that were with him at one point and then turned against him later, you know.

He complained to Timothy that all in Asia have abandoned me. That isn't that they packed up their bags and left spiritually, they abandoned him. You know, and that's interesting, if you spend any time reading about the Apostle Paul, you find that the first source of doctrine that gets abandoned in the church is Paul's epistles.

It's the first thing to go. Because he is the heavenly man. He had anguish over Israel. He did. He wanted every single Jew to come to Christ. Every single one of them. to the point where he would purposely set himself up to be tormented by them. And they were after him to kill him.

So, I made a list of tribulations that are, you don't have to go there, Romans 8.35.

I got seven of them. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and the sword. Interesting, huh? Any and all of those can be pressures on you. You can be hunted down. You could be in all kinds of distress. Maybe you're just stressing about whether you ought to change jobs or something, you know? We don't, in America, we don't understand what persecution is. Not yet, anyway. But if you're the guy that has the bakery out in Golden, maybe you do. Famine, nakedness, peril, or the sword.

It's interesting how these come in so many different ways, but the point here is this. You can't just wake up tomorrow and say, well listen, I was reading this Romans 5, and I'm supposed to enjoy my tribulation, so I think I'm going to enjoy today. Because the second part of that, exaltation, is because you know something. You understand what it's there for. Do you understand that Miles Stanford used to say to me, you have to realize that you're in his hand, and that's the hand that has the hole in it. I said, well, I'm going to slip through. He said, no, because it does have a hole, you won't slip through. That's how much he cares that you're in his hand from morning till night and through the night every day. every single day. And when you understand that, that's the knowledge that we need, the understanding we need, that there isn't anything.

You know, God works all things together for good. And how often do you have to say to somebody who's venting, say, well that must be, God must have missed that when he declared that all things, I'm working all things together for good. He must have missed that one, right? Somehow he was out of town that day, you know. all things, and it doesn't seem that way, and it's very difficult, I grant you, it's very difficult to settle down on the gist of one simple conviction that this, no matter what it is, is from my father. No matter what it is, it's from him. And it's for his glory and my edification. Usually it's our own faults.

A lot of times, but a lot of times it's not. You don't know. You guys agree with that premise? It's important because if you don't you have to go back in and operate out of the old man and you're back in insanity. So why do we pray like we do then? You're asking the guy who stands up here and prays all the time. And I don't know, I think about that a lot and I think about when I look at, I wrote down a list of the people, what should I say about them? Should I say, well I hope Monique learns from this. I can't say that. Can I say, well, Bob is going through a good deal, you know, and everybody around him would be great. Thank you, Lord. Maybe.

Is that what you mean? It seems like mostly our prayers, even though this is taught here, most of our prayers is that they would go away. The tribulations would go away. We'd feel better. I've had that thought for years where God, yeah, here comes my father, right? And he comes to you, Cheryl, and he brings a tribulation in your life, and he's going to use it, he picked it just for you, designed it just for you, for your spiritual growth, right? So you share it with all of us, and what do we do? We go to God and say, hey, you want to cut it out? That's really what we do, a lot of times.

I've thought about that too, and I reflect on Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before he was crucified. There's clearly a struggle going on there. Lord, if there would be a way for this cut to pass, and it's that intimate communion you have as you wrestle through that pressure. You know what's interesting about that? We talk about stress and anxiety. You think Jesus was anxious in the garden to get somebody?

Yeah. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. He even expresses to his disciples, can't you guys stay awake and pray with me? I need some help here. But that my father's will be done, I think is where this goes to. Father, I'm not excited about this, but I know it's from you and I trust you. And whatever you're doing, okay. I think that's what he's after. I was just going to say, and this passage is really helpful for what you're asking for, that there's peace and that you can have hope and joy through the suffering. Right. For whatever good result that the Lord intends that we don't necessarily see as we're going through it. We don't. We don't. And I think he purposely sometimes just withdraws the understanding from us to get whatever effect he wanted to.

I've resorted a lot to praying that God would comfort people in whatever it is, rather than make them better. Not that they'd find peace, but the prince of peace. But see, I think I'm comforted because God comforts me. I'm not going to whip this up on my own. You know what I mean? I can't be joyful unless I'm trusting in what the Lord, I know what the Lord's doing and I trust Him. And it's His peace that passes understanding, not mine. See? And I think that's really important to know. And it starts, I think, with this first premise right here that we exalt in our tribulations because we know. What do we know? What's the verse say? What do we know? That tribulation brings about perseverance. Okay? So, which fits into question eight, we'll answer that in a minute. Why does Paul teach us that knowing is more important than feeling? Because feeling is subjective and knowing is objective facts. Okay.

And then this verse 2, it says, in the midst of this, the love of God gushes forth for us. You know, in the midst of these afflictions, in verse 5, the love of God is shed abroad. It's poured out on us. That's a wonderful thing to think about in the midst of trials and tribulations. He's not just letting it He doesn't want to see us suffer, but he has a purpose. He's working out something in our life.

Yeah. I've often thought the fact that God decided that I was going to grow up in the United States meant that I was really weak. Because if I was in any other country where I was persecuted and all that, I'd lose it. I'm not strong, you know. So he taps all the guys like me and brings us into America.

But I want you to understand something. It's important when you look at these verses that you see the sequence. We exalt because we know. What do we know? We know that tribulation does what? What does it bring? Perseverance. What is perseverance? Patience. That's another word for endurance. Endurance. Yeah. The word is hupalani. Doesn't that mean to bear up under the induction? Yeah. He lifts us up underneath it. That's right. How would I say this?

Whose perseverance is it? Is God teaching me how to persevere? through my own experience. In other words, athletic events and things like that, people go to practice and get in shape so that they can go out in the field and perform. And then when they do perform, they can say, well, all of that practice and all that work that I put in got me through this circumstance. Hooray for me. Whose perseverance is it?

You're growing in the knowledge of Christ. See, when you understand And we're not even there yet. Romans 6, you can see it up on the board when I was teaching the kids. When you understand your position in Christ, my position in Christ isn't that I belong to a fraternity. My position in Christ is that I have a new resurrected life and that new resurrected life is the very resurrected life of Christ. And that life functions a certain way.

So the perseverance he's talking about here and my ability to endure and to exalt in the tribulation can't be because my old man worked out enough so that I can pull it off. It's the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus that pulls all this off. It's Him. This is His life we're talking about.

Applied to me, I'm walking around after salvation before I recognize identification and some of these other truths that we're going to get to. But this is how it's lived. I have to come to the realization, now wait a minute, this is beyond my capacity. Has God ever brought a trial in your life where you thought, there's no way I'm getting through this?

We all know what that's like. But somehow, at the end of the day, we're there. It was Him. All the way. You know that great painting you see where it shows two tracks in the sand and then one? The one in my house, there's always ever been one track. I never got it down on the ground. Come on. He carried me the whole way. And that's what this is. You've got to understand when we're moving in this direction, you have to say, well, wait a minute. What is this doing? And oh, by the way, who's doing it? It's God doing it to teach me what?

To trust Him and to rest in Him because... produces perseverance and then perseverance produces... My Bible says character. What does your Bible say? What does the word character mean? This is a provenness. Okay. Does yours say perseverance and then become a character? It says endurance and approveness by God in the sense that approveness works out a state of hope. This is from Newell. Does any of your Bibles... I know I have a New King Jameson that uses the word character. I like the word character. Do you know why? Because he asked the question, whose character is it? Is it mine? Or is it part of the conformity to Christ's image and it's his character? The Lord Jesus is totally and always approved of the Father, no question. And character and then hope, or you said a sense of hope? A state of hope. What's hope? Biblical hope? Assuredness. Hope is going to be okay. Absolute certainty about what is going to happen. And this isn't something happening. How do I say this?

If you understand the principle of position and condition, we already have this position in Christ, right? We have everything. Ephesians says that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. But our hope is that all of this position gets translated into our condition, our walking around everyday existence. That's what this hope is about. I'm absolutely certain that what God is doing is conforming me to the image of his son because all of those characteristics will be manifested through me and I'll be able to rest in spite of what's going on.

That make sense? Okay. So if you're going to get in the judgment business, what would you say is a major sign of spiritual maturity? Wouldn't this be a major sign that somebody lives like this? You understand my question? Yes. If I were, not that I'm to be judging, I'm not, but I am to be aware, a mature believer would function like this, wouldn't he? Or she? She wouldn't have to be coaxed. This is the way they would live. That's a sign that they would be able to deal with persecution, trouble, in a manner that they were recognizing what's going on, and they had this hope about them.

So question ten, list the steps in verse three through five that the Holy Spirit uses for our spiritual maturity. Oh by the way, before we get to that, let me do this. Verse five, now hope does not disappoint. We know what's going on, so we're not going to be, does your state disappoint Cheryl? Make us ashamed. Make us ashamed, oh I like that. doesn't make us ashamed or disappoint us, and here's the reason.

And by the way, this is the very first mention of the Holy Spirit in Paul's epistles. And it describes what he does. This is the first thing he does. Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and the second, and this is in this list, he's been given unto us. That's a whole new thing. The very first act of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life is to pour out God's love in their heart. Isn't that cool? We'd have probably come up with Him to do something else, but I like this the best.

And from now on, you're going to see a lot of the love of God towards us as believers because the Spirit of God is doing His job. He's the one that pours out the love. Now, question 10. Let's talk about the divine process. God brings us into tribulation and that of all sorts.

Okay? Everybody okay with that? Graciously supplying along with that a rejoicing expectation of deliverance or would you say of carrying out the purpose for the tribulation? Not necessarily deliverance. Correct. Transformation. Step-by-step, deliberate transformation through appointed trials. And I think that's critical for us because we may have a trial that comes in our life that we'll never be delivered from. It'll always be there. But through the work of the Spirit, we're transformed.

So Paul had to throw it in the flesh. For how long? As far as we can tell, until the Lord took him home for a specific purpose and he knew the purpose and he was okay with it. But Paul was human too. How many times did he go to the Lord and talk to him about it? Three times. And he got transformed in that process alone.

The knowledge that as the winds buffeted some great oak on the hillside caused the tree to thrust its roots deeper into the ground. really, really important principle to recognize that the tribulation that God has brought in your life is designed to sink you down farther in Christ.

Because if you're honest with yourself, you don't... How do I say this? If God didn't make things difficult, you wouldn't go to Him. You wouldn't go to Him. I had a friend come to me one time years ago. And he was a believer but not, you know, went to church once in a while.

And he had a real problem in his life. And he came into my office and he sat down next to me and he said to me, I got a problem with your God. I said, well, what is it? And he laid out the problem. And I said, well, have you been praying about it? He said, I've been praying about it night and day. I said, well, do you get an answer? He said, no. I said, so you're still praying? He said, yeah. I said, did it ever dawn on you that maybe God did this so you would have to go talk to him about it?

And he isn't going to fix it very quickly because as soon as he does, you're out the door? He said, OK, thanks. And out the door he went. I saw him about a month later. I said, well, how's your problem? He said, oh, the Lord took care of it. I'm fine. I said, you haven't been back to talk to him about it? He said, oh, I should have, shouldn't I? See, that's the way human nature is.

I'm going to go to the Lord about my thorn and when he fixes it, I'm gone and wait for the next thorn. When he did it to get us in increasingly intimacy with him so we can spend more and more time with him because he loves our company. He wants us hanging out with him all the time. So, these tribulations will result in a steadfastness, and that steadfastness is directly tied to our faith.

What do we believe? We believe not only the objective doctrine, but we also begin to learn, how does God work things out? You ever think about that? I study the doctrine, I learn the doctrine, but I'm also, at the same time, I'm learning how God does things. And my faith is not only in the doctrine, but it's in the person who said and told me what the doctrine is and how he works it out. There are very few people who ever write about that kind of thing. Miles Stanford was one of them who did that. He would write about, here's how God's going to do it. And, you know, down these lines, here he goes.

And that's why a lot of people would read his stuff and say, well, I don't think I want to read much more of that, because tribulation is part of it. Trials are part of it and they're purposeful. Faith and patience and endurance, our consciousness of steadfastness, of having been brought by grace through the trial. That's the other thing we learn in the trial. We begin to learn and understand what God's grace is, how it works. We have definitions of grace, right?

I hear this guy on the radio in the mornings when I'm walking out, well, grace is God gives me what I don't deserve. And His mercy is He doesn't give me what I do deserve. That's so far away from what grace is and mercy is. Macaulay said it's unlimited and unmerited blessings. Unlimited means there's no limit and it's totally unmerited and it's based on what Christ did on the cross. Grace is an environment or an atmosphere that we as Christians live in and we don't know about how that functions until the trial shows up.

You see that? As the trial begins to do its job with us and the Spirit of God is working with us, we begin to see God's grace in the middle of it and we would have never known it otherwise. Ever. Can't you look back over your life and say, boy, the Lord has been so gracious to me here and here and here and here all the time. That's how you learn. Which gives us a sense of divine approval or just approval that we didn't have before. Do you have a sense today that you're more acceptable in God's presence than you were five years ago? Or not? I think we all do. I think we all do. Unless we're backsliding. What is backsliding anyway? Do you ever really go backwards? Think about this for a minute.

God's our Father. He loves us. His Son gave His life for us. He's recreated us in Christ and He has brought trials in our life and so we don't do so good with them and so we backslide like he didn't know. I don't think you can backslide as a Christian. That's only my own personal opinion. I think that you may struggle for a while and you may, yeah, you may do that kind of, but that's all part of it. I can't sin as a Christian and be happy with it, you know.

This approval and love is only found in those who have been brought through the trials by God's all-sufficient grace. You recognize, hopefully we recognize that you got through whatever you got through by God's grace alone. There was no other reason. And because the love of God has been shed and brought in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. So, it's interesting We've done a whole class, and we'll probably do it again soon, on the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

What does he do? What does he do? Well, this is the very first thing you learn right here. The first thing you learn is that his job is to shed abroad the love of God in your heart. And so it makes it, how do I say this? If you're under a lost system, love is dependent on you doing something first. Is that how God's love works? You notice that the Holy Spirit's been given unto us, which is a great blessing in and of itself, because until Pentecost, the Spirit would only temporarily occupy human beings to carry out purposes that God has for them, but now it's permanent with us. And the very first thing he does is shed abroad God's love in our hearts. Otherwise we wouldn't know it.

Would you, without Christ coming and without the Holy Spirit, would you really, by studying the Old Testament, find out that God was a lover? Would you know that? You wouldn't, would you? You'd know he was a taskmaster and he was demanding, but you wouldn't know that he was a lover. That's because that principle was long.

But like even when Abraham was counted righteous because of his faith, did he know that God loved him? What do you think? I think he did. God provided the sacrifice and that's showing him. So he's got a history of 40 years of faith with the Lord. Do you think David knew that God loved him? I think David knew. And I think there's so much foreshadowing of his love in the Old Testament scriptures.

Then there are prototypes. Yeah, foreshadow. But now, look what he's done. For you and I as believers, he places the Holy Spirit in us. So from now on, wherever you go, wherever you do, the Holy Spirit is there with you, in you. And he's showing, well not showing, but shedding aggressively in our hearts the love of God. That love is... How do you describe agape? How would you describe it?

Unconditional. It's unconditional. And I know we all try hard to screw it up sometimes, but we can't. It's an action word. What's that? Love is an action word. An action word. He loves us unconditionally because you're so great. No, because he sees Christ, not us. That's right. But think about this. He loved us so much that even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The next verse says he died for the ungodly. That's right.

What's interesting about that is that God has always been a lover like that. It's just until he demonstrates his love towards us, we really don't get it. And the Spirit of God is in us primarily to show us that. Because we respond to love, don't we? We really do. If somebody loves us, we're in with them. We're in the game with them. We respond back. God loves us to such a degree and has included the Holy Spirit in each one of us to be showering that love on us all the time.

One of the biggest revelations for me was to realize that the Holy Spirit placed me into Christ and He sealed me there forever. And in Ephesians it says I'm in Christ 37 times or something like that. Sure. And in Romans 8 it says there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. That's right. There's a peace that comes with knowing that. That's that inward witness of the Holy Spirit that God loves you. That's where it is. Without that you don't know. You really don't know. It frees you up. And when you talk about frees you up, freedom in my mind is always from something to something.

From restrictions of my old man and sin and the old to respond to God's love. Respond to God's love. That's really cool. That was the second bell? That's close. So we'll do 17. No class next week unless you want to go camping with us. And the following week we'll do, start on 17.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you that you are so interested in us and love us that you have made every provision on your side of the ledger, everything to cause us to be accepted in you, to be loved by you and to rest in you and to realize The way you do things, the way you accomplish this program that you've designed so that we can know you and love you and abide and rest in your son. We pray in his precious name. Amen.