Exulting in Hope

Music Turn with me to Romans chapter 5. If you were to ask me today, why I'm preaching through the book of Romans, I would probably answer this way, because I want our church to be a church that loves without hypocrisy, of whores what is evil, clings to what is good, is devoted to one another in brotherly love, gives preference to one another in honor, never lags behind indiligence, fervency and spirit as they serve the Lord.

A church that rejoices in hope, perseveres in tribulation, is devoted to prayer, is continually contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality, blessing those who persecute us and blessing and not cursing, rejoicing with those who rejoice in weeping with those who weep, a church that has the same mind towards one another, not haughty in mind,

but willing to associate with the lowly, a church that doesn't is not inflated in its estimation of its own wisdom, a church that never pays back evil for evil to anyone, a church that respects what is right in the sight of all men, and as much as is possible, and as much as it depends on us as a church, we will be at peace with all men, a church that never takes their own revenge, but leaves room for the wrath of God, because God said vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

A church that doesn't attempt to overcome evil with evil, but overcomes evil with good, because the scriptures say, if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him drink, for in so doing, you will heap burning coals upon his head. Because that was Paul's goal in writing this letter to the church at Rome, that they would be this kind of church. We're turning up a corner in the book of Romans at this stage. It's transitional. We have been looking in the first four chapters about how we enter into the kingdom of God, justification by faith alone, apart from works.

But now Paul begins to talk about life in this kingdom, how we live in the kingdom of light. The predominant words in the first four chapters, one of them was faith that was used over and over and over again, 33 different times. But now as we go into chapter five, chapters five through eight, the predominant word is life and living. In fact, it's used 24 times in these three chapters. Because these chapters now talk about our life in grace, life under the reign of grace, under the reign of Christ. A lot of times people think that the opposite of grace is effort and it's not.

Grace always involves effort. The opposite of grace is earning. We don't earn anything from God.

But living the life of grace takes a great deal of effort. Paul, the apostle of grace said, I worked harder than all of them. I labored more than all. Understanding grace will motivate you to labor in the kingdom of God under the reign of Christ. In these verses, we're going to look at this morning. I'm going to read the first 11.

I'd like you to memorize these first 11 verses before next week. That isn't a big thing, by the way. 11 verses. For you to memorize these, it's a wonderful passage of Scripture as we'll begin to try to unfold it over these next few weeks.

But I'm going to start by just looking at the first two. But let me read from verse one through verse 11. The words of Paul, and remember, this flows out of the first four chapters where he has established for us this wonderful truth that acceptance with God being brought into the kingdom of God under the reign of Christ, being justified, declared right, made right with God, is by faith alone. Apart from works, we have this righteous standing before the God of the universe, our Father. And then he says in verse one, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we exalt in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance proven character and proven character hope.

And hope does not disappoint. That is, this hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even to die, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only this, but we also exalt in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the reconciliation. If you look at that passage, you'll notice that three times Paul says, we exalt. We exalt in the hope of the glory of God. We exalt in tribulations and we exalt in God. Exalting is a word that you probably don't use in your everyday vocabulary. It means joyful confidence.

It's translated, I think, boast in the King James Bible translation. Exalt, we are joyfully confident of this hope that we have based upon the promises of God concerning our life. We have entered into life and fellowship with the living God. We have come to sit at his table. We're part of the family. He is our father.

We have this relationship now and we exalt in the hope of the future that we are going to inherit the glory of God. One of the things I want to do in this passage is to, in the first two verses, we're going to look at how we are to exalt in hope of the glory of God. This is what you call the telos of the text. In other words, this is Paul's goal. This is what he wants to happen in your lives as you think about these first two verses. Is that you would come to exalt in the hope of the glory of God.

How do we do that? Well, first of all, we need to see the glory of God. We have to come to see it. What is the glory of God? How do you see the glory of God?

Well, the Bible says the main way that happens is through the story of the gospel. According to 2 Corinthians 4, the gospel is the gospel of the glory of Christ. In other words, the way that we are exposed to the glory of God is through the truth of the gospel as it is unfolded to us. As the Spirit of God opens our eyes to it. And this glorious Christ, Paul says, is the image of God. So the glory of Christ is the glory of God Himself.

The glory of the gospel story is the glory of God. It's the unveiling of who God truly is. If you really want to know who God is, you must come to understand the gospel. Because the gospel unveils the glory of God. And the effect of seeing it, coming to see the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, causes us to realize that the glory of God is the greatest value in the universe. When you really come to grasp it, when it's open to your eyes, you come to see that there is nothing more desirable than the glory of God.

In fact, notice in Romans 8, 18, Paul says, no pain is too great to endure if it brings us to the glory of God. That these present light afflictions cannot be compared with the eternal weight of glory of being in the presence of the living God. And then in verse 21 of that same chapter, we're going to be caught up into this glory. We're going to share in it. We'll be glorified, Paul says. The freedom is not a wonderful expression, the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

When we enter into our glory, when we enter into the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in the future, the entire universe is going to be set free from corruption. What a day that's going to be. And throughout this chapter of Romans 8, he keeps coming back to this. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, Paul says that the joy of this experience is beyond our imagination. You cannot imagine this. It would have never ever arisen in your heart this concept, this idea, this revelation of the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That you would come to be in the family of God, sitting at the table of God, being a child of God. Having Jesus Christ, as the Bible says, the first born among many brethren, imagine that. He refers to Christ as being our elder brother in the family of God. Who would have ever imagined this?

But Paul says this was revealed to us through the Word of God, through the gospel. In 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul says, I got caught up into the third heaven and I saw the glory of Christ with my physical eyes. But I am not allowed to even put it into words. God says, Jesus says to Paul, you can't even write this down. What a difference that is in these people who say they've seen had visions and deep spiritual experiences and they want to tell you all about it and write books on it and try to make a little money on those books. And the apostle Paul says, Jesus said that I am not even to utter what I saw in words.

And then in chapter 9, verse 23, he says that the riches of the glory of God is contained in vessels of mercy. In other words, in vessels that don't deserve to contain this glory, that God has redeemed you, God has saved you in order that you would be a container of the glory of God. Isn't that amazing? That throughout eternity, you're going to be a container, a manifestor of the glory of God to all of creation. See, that's what we have to look forward to. In Philippians chapter 3, Paul tells us how precious the glory of God was to him.

He says, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. Well, the surpassing value means there is nothing else in life that has this value to me. Nothing else. The value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them. That is all these things that he has lost because of knowing Christ Jesus. He says, I count them but rubbish, done so that I may gain Christ.

See, what happened to Paul was his eyes were open to the glory of Christ. He actually came to understand it in a degree and he says, I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing in all of life that is as worth as much as the glory of God. And then in 2 Thessalonians 2, it was for this, he called you through our gospel that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what we gain. We gain Christ. This is what we're looking forward to, a day in which we're going to be in the presence of Christ and we'll be comfortable there.

You know, there's a whole lot of Christians who would be miserable in heaven in the state they're in. In fact, most of us probably, but he's changing us and he's fitting us for his kingdom. The second thing we have to do after seeing the glory of God is to because of seeing it and tasting it, we begin to experience this hope in the glory of God. We actually get our eyes off of our circumstances, our eyes off of those things in the realm of the flesh that we can control, we can produce, we can acquire, and we get our eyes on the glory of Christ. And we do that, we begin to hope in the glory of Christ, in the glory of God. And then, out of that is going to flow, exulting in God's glory.

And exulting, as I said, means to be joyfully confident about the future because of the promise of God. It's because of what God is promise. Now, I think you're going to understand this by thinking about a lot of different situations.

Let me just mention one that has been fairly recent. Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped in June of 2002. She was gone for nine months, 13 or 14-year-old girl. Imagine if you had a child kidnapped, taken away, vanished for nine months. Many people had given up hope. Her parents said they continue to have hope, but no evidence that she's alive.

And yet they continue to have hope. But then their hope was stirred in March of 2003 when they got a phone call, nine months after she had been kidnapped from the police that she had been found. And that she was at that very moment in this Salt Lake City police department waiting on them to come and get her.

Now, think about it. Many people had lost hope. And then comes the news, the news when they get the phone call. That's called gospel. See, that's what the gospel is. It's good news.

The good news that he says in Romans chapter 5 is, you're going to be brought into the very presence of the living God as a child of God, conformed to the image of Christ. And that emotion that they felt, they were very, it was a very emotional time. Imagine what they were feeling, this confident joy as they took the phone call, they believe the report, they got in their car and they drove down to retrieve their daughter. Can you imagine the exultant joy they felt as they drove that 30 minutes or so to pick up the daughter? See, Paul says that's the kind of exultant joy we ought to have as believers because we have come to believe and hope in the glory of God that's found in the gospel. It creates an assured hope when you understand it regarding the future.

It is that glorious state of having a deep and joyful hope in the promise of God that we are going to enter into the glory of God. We're actually going to inherit the glory of God as the way, Paul puts it. That state of God likeness which has been lost because of sin and our alienation from God is going to be taken away, removed and we've already begun to taste of it. And he says that this will give you exultant joy that you'll be restored. Every disciple of Jesus Christ is going to be completely and fully restored into the glory of God through faith and Christ Jesus.

Now, what is the path of this exulting in the hope of the glory of God? There is a process that has to take place. One of the things that often happens with Christians who begin to get a handle on grace is they actually go, they swing too far and they begin to take on an idea of passivity. As though what the Christian life is is that I can do nothing, God does everything and I simply receive from Him and enjoy it and I'm totally passive. That's not the biblical gospel, is it? The biblical gospel is, I could never earn anything, any blessing from God I am in spirit and grace, but God has commanded me to make great effort to be diligent, to do due diligence in my pursuit of Him.

And here's the path. It begins with the saving work of Jesus Christ. If you'll notice in the first verse that expression, I'm not going chronologically here, but I'm going in the order of these things happening.

First of all, all of this is through our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, this is what He's been telling us in the first four chapters. Jesus Christ has come into the world, lived a life of perfect righteousness, died in our place, bore the condemnation of our sins and rose to vindicate the success of His work. And we have had His righteousness imputed to us. So we stand before God in perfection because of what Christ Jesus has done. The second thing is our faith in that response.

He says, this is by faith. This is our connection with the righteousness of Christ in the sin-bearing death of Jesus. We must believe. We have to take hold of Christ by faith. We have to have confidence in Him. We have to come to trust Him in order to receive this righteousness that He has provided.

The third thing is our acceptance with God. That is our justification. He begins this verse, therefore, having been justified by faith. Justification, of course, is the righteousness of Christ imputed to me. Put on my account so that when God looks at me, He sees me as being absolutely righteous in His eyes. As righteous as His Son, it's a gift from God that we receive by faith.

God made Him, Paul says, who knew no sin, that is the Lord Jesus Christ, to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That's our standing. That is our acceptance with God. That's our justification.

But then notice this. And this is what He isn't just now beginning to touch on. Now we have peace with God. We have peace with God.

Now, anytime when you study the New Testament, one thing you have to understand is that the New Testament flows out of the Old Testament. 300 years before the New Testament was written, the Old Testament was translated into the Greek language. In other words, the Bible that Paul probably read as much as any was a Greek translation of the Old Testament. Now why that's important is not just so you'll know it, but so you'll understand that the words that Paul uses in his letters, their meanings, flow out of this revelation that we have in the first half of the Bible. These words that he uses and so when Paul talks about the peace that we have with God, we have to understand this peace in light of how it is developed in the Old Testament. All of you are familiar with at least one Hebrew word and that word is Shalom. I daresay there's probably not 25% of the people in this room who don't know what Shalom is, at least to some degree or another.

Especially the two or three Jewish people we have in the room, you know what Shalom is and you know what the lack of Shalom is probably too. Shalom is peace and when Paul says we have peace with God, this is exactly what he's referring to. He's not referring to the Greek concept of peace because the Greek concept of peace was simply a cessation of hostilities. Stop fighting and you have peace. That's not the mindset of the Old Testament. The mindset of the Old Testament, the concept of Shalom was much more positive than that.

It has much more power and punch to it. It means well-being, prosperity, salvation. It was actually one of the words used in the Old Testament for our salvation. We are a whole and complete. Things are the way they're supposed to be. In fact, the Old Testament pictures sin as a violation of Shalom.

We have peace. God created a world in which there was peace. He created Adam and even the garden and there was peace.

But they violated Shalom. They rebelled against the God of peace and they went to war against him. The human race has been at war with him. And Paul says now that we have been justified, now that we have been accepted by God, now that we as who are enemies of God have been brought close to God, we have peace with God. We have the Shalom of God. Shalom is what every home needs and what so few homes have.

Peace, where there's wholeness, where relationship really do reflect the peace of God. Paul says in Colossians that the church ought to be a place where peace reigns. In fact, he says peace ought to be the umpire in your hearts. That is peace ought to be the one that calls the shots. Who is it that makes decisions between believers? Peace, the Shalom of God, the fact that we've been made right with God and we now enjoy the peace of God through the work of Jesus Christ.

In most important in the Old Testament prophets, this word was used for the very salvation that we have come to embrace by faith in Jesus Christ. We're right with God. We're at peace with God. Everything is right. We are whole and complete because of the work of Jesus Christ.

Now this is what Paul has in mind here and he says we now have peace with God. And in the context of the book, this has great impact because what Paul has been doing in the first three chapters and the first two and a half chapters anyway, he's been talking about how there was no peace. There was no peace between us and God. In fact, remember these verses, when he begins, he gives us the theme of the whole book. For the wrath of God is being revealed right now from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God is angry.

He's angry at sin and he manifests his wrath in a very particular way. He goes on in this text to say the way that he manifests his wrath against unrighteousness is. He allows us to get worse and worse. So when you say man, things are getting bad, you're right. And Paul says that is a manifestation of the wrath of God. We are in great need.

We're war with God. And God is a God of righteousness and wrath. And notice this in chapter 8 because the mindset of the flesh, that is our way of thinking. Have you ever thought when you watched the news this past week, what are they thinking? They're thinking according to the flesh. When men call light darkness and darkness light and when they say the way we have to make peace is to stop calling sin sin.

That's going to make peace. No, it's not. Because you see the problem isn't a cultural war. The problem is a war with a living God. And he always wins. This is a God of wrath.

This is a God who has anger every day against sin. Because the mindset of the flesh is hostile toward God. For it does not subject itself to the love God. Why is it? That the love God has no impact on the decisions of men today who are in a power. Why is it?

Because the mindset of the flesh is hostile toward God. And he says, for it is not even able to do so. And those who were in the flesh cannot please God. Our main problem is God's anger at our ungodliness. That's our main problem. God's anger at our ungodliness.

If God has resolved to part his wrath on us, then we are in a terrifying position. It's a terrifying thing. It's interesting to listen to unbelievers discuss, for example, the series of books which I don't happen to agree with the way they lay things out.

But it's amazing the impact it's had left behind. I heard some unbelievers speaking about this on the news. And as they begin to describe these books, they actually understood the flow of the books. They understood the argument. They understood all those things. And they thought it was quite amusing that there are hundreds of thousands of millions of people who believe this.

Jesus is coming. And he is coming as a judge. There is judgment coming to this world. There is a day of righteous wrath of God. Think about the power of God behind his wrath.

Now you've had people angry at you before. You've had people strut around. I've had people angry at me that didn't scare me at all.

But I've also had people angry at me that scared the daylights out of me. My granddaughter this past week had some, she was a bank teller. She had a man come in, push the person in the line aside and put a gun right into her and said, give me your money. Give me the money. And he pressed the gun into her ribs. You think she was scared?

You think there was fear there? It was scared me to death. I probably would have fainted. Imagine that. There's a lot of times we're fearful because people manifest their wrath towards us.

But there's no one like God. There was no one who has the power of God. When you look up into the sky on a clear night, you can see what's called the Milky Way. It's the name of our galaxy. It has 200 billion stars in it. 200 billion stars. So like the national debt, didn't it?

You can see a, they say on a clear night, when you're looking at it, you can see about a 40 millionth on a good night of the stars that are there. Isn't that amazing? Is this a big God? The disc of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, 100,000 light years, about 600,000 trillion miles. 2000 light years thick, this disc is. Our son will take about 200,000 years to make a circuit. And besides our galaxy, it is estimated there's 50 million other galaxies.

Is this a big God? And do you want this God to be angry with you? This God who spoke the universe into existence and sustains it with the word of his power, that's what the Bible says. He is so great that we can't even imagine his greatness. We try to, we can use all kinds of analogies trying to describe how big he is, but his greatness is beyond our ability to understand or describe.

But we feel it. We feel his greatness at times. When the Spirit of God comes and presses upon our hearts, we feel the greatness of our God. If such a great God is angry at us and has such indescribable power, then what a great need we have. We are in big trouble. Nothing could be worse than to be opposed by the wrath of this infinite power.

That's our situation. And Paul says in Romans 118 that God is revealing his wrath against all and Godliness. And he's going to bring it to a climax in a day of judgment, Romans 2.4. Our only hope is that God would provide a way of reconciliation if he could bring peace between a rebellious world and an Almighty God. And this is what he says. Notice down in verse 10, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son.

We were reconciled through the death of his son. He brought peace. And we have entered into peace. Christ bore our sins, fulfilled our righteous obligation and gave us his righteousness and now by faith where united to Christ, we are righteous. His righteousness has been puted to us and we stand at peace with God. You ought to give God praise for the fact that you were at peace with God.

At peace with God. That's the result. God's no longer angry at us. That's called propitiation in the Bible. God is satisfied with every person who is embraced by faith, Christ by faith. Satisfied.

We're at peace. We're reconciled and there's no condemnation. He's going to say in Romans 8 verse 1, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And then notice this, the fifth thing is that we stand in grace until we inherit the glory of God. What is God doing in your life now that he has saved you? What is he going to do?

That's what the rest of chapters 5-3-8 is going to talk about and actually it's going to go through the whole book. What is God doing in the lives of those that he has made right with himself? What is God doing in the life of those that he has justified? Is that it? You're justified and then you do whatever you want. You go your merry way and when you die you go to heaven.

Well, absolutely not. Jesus preached what he called the gospel of the kingdom. The reason he called it that it was the good news of the coming of the kingdom of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We're waiting for the ultimate coming of it, but we live in this time right now. What some have called the already not yet phase of the kingdom of God where we have entered into the kingdom of God in a very real way. Paul describes it this way in Colossians 1.

He has taken us out of the kingdom of darkness and put us into the kingdom of his dear son. So he has called us into the kingdom and the kingdom is the reign of Jesus Christ. When God saved you, he saved you. He forgave your sins in order to bring you into this kingdom. Remember Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus? And he says to Nicodemus, this teacher of Israel, he says, look, because Nicodemus is giving his evaluation of Jesus.

You must be from God because you teach these things and you do these things. We know you're from God. And Jesus says to him, you don't know what you're talking about. Because unless you have been born again, you can't see the kingdom of God and you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. You can only enter the kingdom of God. You can only come under the reign of Jesus Christ through the new birth, through salvation.

But once we have entered into this kingdom, now we have peace with God and now Paul begins to talk about what this life in the kingdom is really like. There's something greater that this peace leads to. Peace is one way to describe our life in this new sphere, but he says there's something greater than that. It is an experience of the omnipotence of God, the all-powerful God acting not against us but for us. Imagine this a second. The God we just described who you were at war with and who had his wrath as Paul says and Jesus says in John chapter 3, the wrath of God was hovering over us.

And he says, now the power of God that's going to bring this wrath upon those in rebellion against him, the power of God is now acting for you. Acting on your behalf, being exercised on your behalf. We are brought into this omnipotent sway of sovereign grace. God is at work. This is something more than justification and something more than peace. This is the mighty sphere and influence and dominion of transforming power of grace.

Notice this. This is not something that you can say, that's really nice. You can't do that because if you just open your eyes, you'll see that what's going to happen as a result of what he says in verse 2 is you are going to be completely transformed. You're going to be transformed, believer. There's no other way. There's no other possibility.

Now you can resist. Go ahead. Sometimes it's amusing to watch us resist because we know what God's going to do. He is committed to transform all those who have come into this sphere of grace. He is committed to transforming us and notice this. He says through whom we have also obtained our introduction by faith into this grace, into this grace in which we stand and we exalt in the hope of the glory of God.

This grace in which we stand. Now notice the evidence of this. This is the kingdom of God that Jesus was speaking of in John 3, the gospel of the kingdom that we preach. So that, Romans chapter 5 verse 21, so that as sin reigned in death, that's what was happening in your life. Sin was reigning in death. Sin was driving you.

Rebellion against God was driving you and it was producing and in you a death, an experience of death, separation from God. And so he says so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. Always in the New Testament, when it speaks about eternal life, it's not simply talking about living forever. It is always talking about a change of your life. Christ coming to live within you and you coming to have a relationship, a reciprocal life impacting relationship with the living God. That's what John 173 says.

This is eternal life that you might know experientially, really personally, the living God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Grace reigns. Notice that in chapter 5 verse 21. Grace reigns. In other words, my point is this. It is an exercise of power.

That's what grace is. Sometimes we think grace is a free lunch program. You've heard that story about the king who gathers all of his wise men. He says, I want you to go throughout the world, get all the wisdom of the world, and I want you to reduce it into the smallest form that you can so that I can know the wisdom of the world. They go out, they travel around, they come back, they put it all together, they bring 12 volumes to him. He says, no way.

I want you to condense this. And so they go back and work on it again. This happened several times. He finally threatens to take their lives.

Finally they come back one sentence. The sentence was, this is a compilation of all of man's wisdom. There are no free lunch programs.

Let me tell you, grace is not a free lunch program. Grace is a powerful reign of God. It will capture you. It will take hold of you. It will reign over you. This is why Satan hates it.

The devil doesn't want you to understand grace. He doesn't want you to be impacted by grace, but you will be because it is the reign of God. It's an exercise of power. Not just a disposition. Grace is a sphere. That's what he says here.

We have entered into and we stand in grace. We stand in the reign of God's infinite power working for us and not against us. And then notice in chapter 6 verse 14, for sin shall not be master over you for you are not under the law, but under grace. In other words, just as the law can reign over lives, grace reigns. Grace is a sphere of power that masters us in Christ and works to free us from the dominion of sin. It brings us into the experience of eternal life, life under the reign of Jesus Christ.

We stand in this grace. We stand in this grace. And we stand by this grace. In fact, he says in chapter 14, we stand. God makes us stand through grace before him.

Well, this is what we've entered into, according to Romans 5 too. We've entered into grace, the sphere of grace. Think of it that way that you've entered into a brand new sphere of existence. You are now in feared in grace and all of God's dealings in your life is he reigns over you in grace. You see, he is absolutely committed to accomplishing his good work and complete work of salvation.

But here's the problem. Sometimes we confuse what that work of salvation is. Let me make a couple statements. One is that God is not as concerned about what you produce for him as he is what you become as a person. What God is going to get out of your life for himself is not what you accomplish for him. It's what you become as a person.

Think about that a second. That God is more concerned about what you become as a person than he is what you accomplish for him. Now, the reason for that is because this is, God doesn't need you, right? I mean, you all understand that. God doesn't need you to do his work in order to get his work accomplished, does he? God can't accomplish his work.

Didn't Jesus say, if you don't praise me, there's some of you here who wouldn't praise God if your life depended on it. Some of you would literally take a bullet to the head rather than to praise God. There are people like that in this world. Jesus said, if the lips of men don't praise me, the rocks will. You see what he wants, what God is concerned about in your life, what the work of salvation is is changing you as a person for you to follow Christ in such a way that you get transformed in the process. There's so much talk today about spiritual formation.

Oprah is the popular expert on this. Watch her for a while and pick up on what the world says about spirituality. And you see the question that arises over and over again is two things. Identity and empowerment. Who am I and how do I get power to live in this world?

Let me tell you the only answer to those questions. It's the formation of Christ in the inner man. The goal of God in discipleship, the goal of God in calling you to be an apprentice of Jesus Christ. That's what salvation was. It wasn't just forgiving your sins. It was forgiving your sins and justifying you in order to bring you into this relationship with Christ, to bring you in the kingdom so that you would live for him and so that you would follow him as a disciple and apprentice.

So that your inner life becomes more and more as you live before him, conform to the inner life of Jesus Christ. When you read the sermon on the mount, sometimes it's so confusing, you read it and what in the world is all this about. Blessed are the poor, the meek. What is this? That is the character that Jesus Christ produces in the heart of people who are his disciples. He's changing us.

But we have to cooperate. We have to cooperate. We have to understand what he's doing. We have to see the means that he has given us and we have to have an intention to follow him as disciples and be transformed by this. We are living in the sphere and rain and power of omnipotent sovereign grace. That's where we stand.

That's why we exalt. We're learning to live. We're learning to live in grace, to live under his glorious rain, the rain of the God of all grace in Christ Jesus. Someone has said the great omission of the great commission is what? What's the great omission of the great commission? What is it that we never that we seem never to get to in the great commission?

Anybody know? And teach them to obey all that I have commanded you. That's the great omission. Do you know how?

Let me ask you something. Let me just ask you a couple things. Do you know how to bless those who curse you? Do you know how to do that? Has anybody ever taught you to bless those who curse you? Jesus commanded it.

Do you know how to turn the other cheek when you're insulted? He commanded you to do that. You see the commandments of Jesus Christ that are given to us or given to us as His disciples, His apprentices, He is at work in us to conform us into the image of Jesus Christ. And what God is interested in doing is us becoming like Him.

Now the wonderful thing is you will bear fruit. What He is saying here is that when we enter into this reign of grace, it will cause us to exalt in hope of the glory of God. In other words, we are going to experience. We are going to take hold of the glory of Christ. He is going to change us. He is going to transform us.

He is up to that right now in your life. No matter what you're going through. You're going through hardship, that's a part of the process. You're going through a time of great blessing. That's a part of the process. You confused.

That's a part of the process. He is at work. He is at work. Notice this. Dallas Willard in one of his books says, you really can't justify anything else, but giving your whole is speaking to the church, by the way, to the church. You really can't justify anything else, but giving your whole attention to spiritual formation in Christ.

If that is done, most of the rest of the stuff that churches are generally about will not matter or will come along. But if we do not make formation in Christ, the priority, then we're just going to keep on producing Christians that are indistinguishable in their character for many non-Christians. Why do we claim to do to have anything better than Buddhists or the New Age movement in producing spiritual formation? The proof is in the life. And if he isn't changing us, if our divorce rate is the same in the churches as is outside the church, if we have as many moral failures within the church, in fact among leaders of the church, then why do we claim that what we preach in the gospel has any more power than the good news of the New Age movement? The proof is in our lives, and God is up to transforming our lives.

That's what the rest of this book is about. Especially chapters 5-8, we're going to see over and over again, is we're going to see God's plan in changing us and transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ. So buckle your seat belts, and he will teach you how to be so changed, so transformed by the work of Christ as he is at work, and we're never going to be finished with this until he comes, but as he works in our life, you're actually going to learn how to obey Christ because you'll be changed as a person. Imagine if you became a person, ladies, imagine if your husband became the kind of person who blessed those who cursed him. Wouldn't that be a transformation? I hate to call out any particular ladies, but wouldn't that be a transformation?

If your husband became the kind of person, when somebody cut him off on the freeway, you know, we use this colloquialism, he blessed them out, which means he cussed them out. But imagine if your heart was so transformed, so incredibly transformed by the power of the Spirit of God at work in you, that when somebody insulted you, slapped you on the cheek, that's what that's about. Personal insult, a personal attack, and you simply turned the other cheek. Wouldn't you like God to transform your husband that way, ladies?

Now, men, oh well, we'll let that go. God is more interested in what you become than in what you accomplish. And what God is going to get out of your life at the very end is what you become, not what you accomplish. That's a clear principle. What are you becoming? What are you becoming?

Well, we'll learn about that in the rest of the book of Romans as we go through it. So I pray that God will tenderize our hearts, that He'll prepare our hearts, that He'll let the Word of God actually speak to us, and penetrate deeply in those areas of our life where we are so unlike Christ, and yet we have it so well hidden that almost nobody knows about it, except the all-seeing eye of God, and He's up to transforming His children. Let's stand together and close in prayer and have a time of fellowship. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are tenacious in Your love, that You have a stubborn love for Your children, that You are committed to transforming us into the image of Christ, and that You're able to take our failures in our rebellion and our shortcomings and use them as a part of the means in changing us and causing us to desire to cooperate with You as we live in this new sphere of grace, the reign of grace over our lives. We pray that we would humble ourselves under Your mighty hand, that we would bow to Me, that we would come to You even today, Father, and give our hearts to You and say, change Me. I don't want to be what I am today in a year.

I want to be changed. I want to be more like Christ and less like the flesh. We pray that You'd work in a deep way in us as a local church, that we would be a people characterized by the manifestation of the character of Jesus Christ and all of our dealings and all of our activities and all of our relationships we pray. Please touch our lives in every sphere for the glory of Christ, for the good of Your people we pray. Amen. Thank You.