Well, good morning everybody. I'm glad to see that we aren't all melted after this weekend. It's quite something, but I love the heat. As we've already talked about a lot, there has been a lot of highs and lows in the lives of many people this week. And every time I prepare a message like this, so I can really see the sovereignty of of God as he brings the right message at the right time.
And so today, we're going to be looking at hope in trial, hope in tribulation, hope in affliction. And I my prayer and my hope through all of this is that this would be a message where we approach the reality of trial and that it is something that we will all face but also that there is abundant hope in Christ in the midst of it. One of the greatest survival stories for those of you who are in into those stories of people who persevered and pushed through hardship in history is the story of the Endurance crew.
The Endurance was a ship that was captained by Captain Ernest Shackleton and was leading an expedition to the Antarctic. This was in the 1800s and at this time their these ships were not like modern day ships. They were usually made of wood. All of these things. The crew set out in late spring. And as they got towards the Antarctic, towards the South Pole, they encountered some early ice.
And it wasn't long before the ship, the Endurance, was trapped in this ice. Unable to move. They were completely frozen inside this ice and so the crew was forced to wait until the melt happened later in the year. Unfortunately, the Endurance was crushed by the moving ice and eventually sank. The crew was forced to stay on top of the ice on a little area called Elephant Island, far away from any other types of civilization.
28 men were stranded on the floating Antarctic ice. They were trapped there for 4 and a half months. But because of Captain Shackleton's heroics, him getting into a essentially a lifeboat and sailing, 1300 kilometers across an ocean to reach some sort of civilization, he found rescue and all 28 men made it back home alive. But Shackleton's heroics did not start with his boat ride across the ocean.
It didn't start with his perilous journey. It started months before that. Because Shackleton knew that if this crew had any chance at survival, the only thing that would keep them alive was hope. And so Shackleton doubled down and refused at any point to let his crew give up. And he repeated over and over and over during this four months, we'll all get home.
In the worst situation that you could possibly imagine, the number one thing that he knew he needed on his side was hope. So, if you have your Bibles with you, turn with me to Romans 12. This is where we're going to be spending majority of our time this morning, specifically in verse 12. And once, like I mentioned, my hope and my prayer is this small but mighty verse would comfort and encourage us as believers as we walk through the lows of our life.
Because the sad reality is it doesn't matter who you are, where you are in life, what you've gone through. We are in a sinful fallen world where a lot of garbage happens. And as we walk through the muck and the meer, we need that hope. No one is spared from sin's farreaching grasp. And so because of that, we need to cling to the promise of hope that comes from a sinless savior. So to give a little context about the passages that we're going to be looking at today, the Paul has just finished this large section on theology.
Essentially the first 11 chapters of Romans are all on theology. It's all teaching. It's teaching about the gospel, who Christ is, where we all fit into the midst of that. He makes this statement in chapter 1 in verse 16 and 17 that the gospel is for everybody. And the gospel comes from the righteousness of Christ. And because of Christ's righteousness and his work on the cross, we are then brought into good standing with God. We have been justified or as Romans 5:1 says, we have peace with God. Now Paul goes on to prove this point throughout all of these chapters.
And now we're moving into the section where where Paul is now answering a different question. He's now answering what do we do with all of this? We've learned all about Christ's righteousness and about the truth of the gospel. What do we do? How do we actually apply this to our lives? And Paul starts with a pretty strong statement, but it's a very clear summary of what we are to do. At the beginning of chapter 12 verse one he says there I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship.
This is what we are to do. This is the summary statement. We are to lay everything aside and to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to be fully sold out to God to hold nothing back. And then Paul goes on to show us practically what this looks like in day-to-day life. And that's where we get to our section. Chap verses 9 to 21 are essentially the marks of a believer. If you are a Christian, these things should be evident in your life. And so we're going to look at one verse of that section because if we were to preach through this, it would take us all day and all of tomorrow and a long time.
So we're not going to go into all of it. We're going to read verses 9 to13. And then we're going to focus in on verse 12. Let love be genuine. Abhore what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation.
Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. And seek to show hospitality. So verse 12 here is really straightforward. A few marks of the true Christian and that they the sorry a few marks of the of the true Christian is that they are able to rejoice in hope. They're patient in tribulation and they are constant in prayer. Really those are essentially our three points for this morning. That's what we're going to walk go walk through. Now these three points aren't in this order by accident.
So let's break them down one by one. The first thing that we are told here is that for the believer, their hope in Christ produces tremendous joy. This is the beginning of the process of how believers continue to have hope in the face of affliction and h continue to have vigilance in trial. How they keep getting up, how they keep moving forward.
The word for rejoice here is an interesting one. It's the Greek word cyro or sero which means to be glad. It's to be happy. It's to rejoice. And this word is used plenty of times throughout the New Testament. There's a lot of joy when Jesus is on the scene. And the other uses that we see in the New Testament give us an idea of what this word really means and the details that come along with it. One of the ones that gives us the most clear picture in my personal opinion comes actually from the story of Jesus' birth in Matthew 2:10.
Here in Matthew 2, if you want to turn there, this is the story of the wise men. The wise men are coming and they're looking for this predicted savior from the book of Daniel. They have all these manuscripts and Daniel's teaching from way back when. And finally they find the place where Jesus is. And then in 2:10 it says this. When they saw the star that was resting over the house, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
>> So here we have the wise men. They're coming to see Jesus. They find the place and they are so unbelievably believably excited that they rejoice. But if that wasn't enough, they rejoiced exceedingly. And in case you didn't get the picture, they rejoice exceedingly with great joy. They were jumping up and down. They were so excited. We have found the savior. If the Calgary Flames ever win a championship, there will be great joy in Calgary, but nothing like this.
These guys were over the moon, excited, overwhelming joy at the sight of the savior that they had found. But then we could continue to dig deeper into this word rejoice. We could look at some other instances where it's used and most of the time it's linked to Jesus. Real quickly, let's take Luke 13:17, which says this, "As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at the glorious things that were done by him."
Or Luke 7 or Luke 19:37 which says as as he was drawing near already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. Or one last example in John 16:22 which says when Jesus is talking to his disciples about his second coming he says so also you have sorrow now but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you.
We begin to see this thread that's weaved through this word. This is the type of joy that's connected to seeing and specifically seeing the work and person of Jesus. So it makes sense that our our joy would be connected to our hope in Jesus. Having true hope in Jesus gives the believer irrevocable joy. We have a sure and solid hope that one day Jesus will come and take his people home.
And when he comes, we will be the ones that rejoice exceedingly with great joy. We will rejoice then and we can rejoice now because we know that that promise is sure. That promise is guaranteed. No one is going to take it away. The Christian is the only one who can rejoice up to the very day they die because we know that we have something greater coming. We can continue to praise him and we can continue to know that this hope is solid.
We've already talked about 1 Peter 1:es 3:5 in previous weeks which says we have a living hope. Our hope is not dead. It's not apathetic. It's not lazy. It's not absent there one day and gone another. Jesus remains alive today and he's petitioning on your behalf before the father and interceding for us. That is why the believer can rejoice in hope just like the disciples. And just like the disciples, our hope will never be taken away. The work that Christ did on the cross buys us infinite joy.
But let's be real, not every portion of life is happy. I don't have to sell you on that. I imagine that every person in this life has gone through that reality. We have to be able to understand though in the middle of tribulation and suffering and hardship all of that comes with the territory. But we are able to endure this hardship because our joyful hope produces unshakable patience.
Growing up, I was taught about a lot of things that were dangerous that I thought I would encounter more often than I do. Quicksand, tornadoes, the Bermuda Triangle. But one of the major one of these things on this list of dangerous things is maelstroms or whirlpools. Basically there's this crazy phenomenon where bunch of storm and weather stuff makes the ocean spin into a huge funnel and it pulls you down into the middle of it and you go to the bottom of the ocean. I don't know.
I well, like I said, I thought I would counter these a lot more than I have, but I was taught that if you ever are sailing a ship and you get caught in a whirlpool, one of the worst things that you can do is to try and turn your ship around and sail out. They say that the best thing you could do is actually to turn with the flow of the whirlpool to go along with its momentum so that you can get closer to the middle and then eventually slingshot your way out the back of it using the momentum created by the whirlpool to get to safety.
I have never had to use this information practically, but the concept still applies. You Christian cannot run from your trial. You have to go through it. Tribulation is a reality that we all must come face to face with. And it doesn't take much convincing to show people that the in this world struggle abounds. Even an atheist will admit that life is full of diff disappointment, difficulty, and trouble. And that's going to be a constant and there's nothing you can do about it. For some of you here, it might be health related.
Maybe you're going through personally health troubles or health crisis. Or maybe someone you know is has a serious or terminal illness. Perhaps you're struggling financially. Maybe you're going through being outcast from work or school or wherever you belong for what you believe. Maybe you're dealing with the consequences of a mistake or a sin from your past. Maybe you feel like you're going nowhere in life. Maybe your relationship with your family is strained. Or maybe you find finding friends feels impossible.
Or whatever your struggles are, whether you're a parent with a missing child or someone who just lost a a spouse or whatever it might be, your struggles are so unfortunately normal. And these trials and sufferings were promised to the believer. Romans 8 30 verse 36 comes to mind first. Says, "As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." It's a nice promise.
Hey, we're in John 16 verse 33, a portion of that in there says, "In this world, you will have trouble." Or even in 1 Peter 4:12, which Jensen read, the first verse there says,"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you." He says, "It's not strange. It It's promised to you. Don't be surprised." These verses all heap on the promises that we have trial coming.
We've talked about it in this church, how you were destined for suffering. Your date with trial is inevitable. And so you might be hearing that and you're like, how is this a message of hope? How is this a message of hope that trial is promised? I don't understand. How can I have hope and joy in the midst of suffering? How can I find that joy when everything is darkness? Where is the light? When everything is pain, where is the healing?
And when everything is falling apart, where is the hope? Well, thankfully in these verses that we just read about the suffering that is guaranteed for us, each one of them is followed up with a promise of hope. Right after Romans 8:36, verse 37 says, "No, for we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." The himymn being Jesus. The entirety of John 16:33, which is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, says, "I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.
In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world." And right after 1 Peter 4:12 says, "But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed." you share in the same sufferings of Christ. And all these things have and all these verses have the same thing in common. They show us that the reason we can patiently endure the suffering that we go through is because Christ suffered first.
Hebrews 4 and 15 is where I want to take you next. This passage holds a pretty special place in my heart because it was one of the first verses that I memorized in Aana. And it's I'll read it here in its entirety. Verse 14 says, "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.
Jesus understands where you are because he is all knowing but because Christ suffered too. And no matter what you are going through, Christ understands what it meant to suffer. We need to know and understand in our theology side that Jesus was is 100% God. But it's critical to remember that he is also 100% man. Entirely God and entirely man.
And we need to stand in awe at the fact that he is God. And also remember that Jesus is human too. Jesus went through ridicule in front of the human soldiers. He went through stress as he sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane. And he suffered as he marched up on a broken body up that hill towards that cross. If there is anyone who understands suffering, it's Jesus. So this passage in in Romans here, verse 12, is saying, hold on, stay the course.
Christ went through this type of thing, too, and he is on your side. You can get through it. You have Christ on your team. Have hope in the one who already finished the race and look to him. Keep your eyes on him. Focus on him. Don't be like Peter, distracted by the waves here and there and start to sink. Keep your eyes firmly focused on Christ. The Greek word here for patience, patience literally means to endure, to stand firm in the face of trial, knowing that Christ is walking with us.
And knowing that the hope which Jesus bled and died for on that cross will be a soothing balm to our souls when we desperately need it the most. When I was at Miller in my third year, I ended up being mentored by a guy who did some blacksmithing as a hobby. In his shop he had most of this bunch of tools and he made them all. Chisels, hammers, etc. He blacksmith them all. And so we did some of our mentoring sessions in his little shop that he had.
And I was watching as he was making a knife and he would take this knife and he would put it into the furnace until it was like red hot and he would take that knife out and then he would dunk it in water and there would be the fun hissing sound. He'd take it out right back in the fire and he would just repeat that process. And I don't know anything about blacksmithing. So I sat there and I asked him why he was doing this over and over and over because it seemed kind of pointless. And he said something along the lines of, "It is only through this process of going through the heat of the fire and the coolness of the water that the metal gets stronger and is able to endure the work that it will be put through.
I think that for the believer, it's the same. It is only through the heat of trial and tribulation and then being driven to the cool, soothing hope of Jesus that makes us strong enough to endure the work that is ahead of us. But it's really easy to just say that, right? It's easy to stand there and say, "I know you have trial in your life. Just get through them. Just try harder, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and keep going. You know, I I love my dad to bits and pieces.
When I was playing volleyball and I would get knocked down, we lose a game. That was my dad's advice. Just pick yourself up. And there's a time and place for that. But the thing is, when I was in junior high, I was really bad at volleyball. I needed the skills in order to actually do better. I needed the skills necessary to get through them. And our passage tells us exactly what we need to do to get through our trouble and trial. It's not rocket science.
In order to be patient in tribulation, we need to be constant in prayer. Patience produces prayer. This is not a standalone command in re in Romans 12:12. There are plenty of places in scripture that tell us to be constant in prayer. The classic one, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, we we can turn there if you want. It's a real short verse. Which says this three words, pray without ceasing.
But then there's also Philippians 4:6 if you'd like to turn there as well. Which reads this. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.
It says there in everything make your requests known to God. I think it makes sense that if we pray about everything we will be praying all the time that there would be nothing that we don't bring before the father. Got a job interview? Pray about it. Having a bad day, probably a good idea to pray about it. Anxious about life, pray about it. Having the best day of of your life and the best week of your life, HAVING A MOUNTAINTOP HIGH, PRAY about it. Rejoice, praise the Lord for it.
Our lives should revolve around constant prayer. Prayer and breathing should be synonymous for the believer because praying is like breath for our soul. Our we see this modeled by Paul who's constantly praying for the churches that he's writing to and also by Jesus who frequently took time away from the disciples to pray to the father on his own for those both of these men it was a constant in their lives and this makes sense as well theologically prayer is essentially prayer is essentially an outworking of faith we talked about faith already last month but I'm going to take take you back to Hebrews 11.
Hebrews 11 is that classic definition of prayer passage or of of faith passage. Hebrews 11 verse one says this. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now I don't know about you, but out of all the times I prayed in my life, I have never physically seen God. And I imagine that you haven't either. And if you have physically seen God, Matt will have a conversation with you after the service.
But we pray to God who we can't see. And we trust that he hears us. We trust that he takes our prayers in and we trust that he's going to answer us. This is the essence of what faith is. This is the truth of faith. It's trusting in something you can't see. We do that all the time when we pray. To pray also reveals the fact that you understand that you are not enough to solve your own problems. We see this all the time. Believer or unbeliever.
Everybody is willing to pray to something when things go wrong. When your life is in danger and they know that there's nothing they can do to save themselves, that's when people start to pray. But for the believer, you have the joy of knowing that you can't do anything all the time. So pray all the time. What a great truth because it puts our pride to the side and allows us to fully lean on the one who is more than enough. To pray to God, as Joe Su would say, is to understand our not enoughness.
And this really brings us full circle in our passage and creates this loop of dependence in the midst of our trials. Because who do we pray to? The one who is our hope and our salvation. The one in whom we find incredible joy. And that hope and joy is how we remain patience in trial. And how do we have patience in trial? Well, we pray to the one in whom we find hope. And so on and so forth. We go through this cycle in the midst of our lowest moments. We might find ourselves going through this cycle multiple times a day, multiple times an hour, reminding ourselves of our hope and joy, clinging to that so that we can endure this round of hardship, praying to the Lord for rest, for strength, for wisdom, and that he would fill us with insurmountable joy and then starting all over again.
This is the cycle for the believer. And for the believer, we can say with utmost confidence that the Lord hears our prayers. Let's turn quickly to First John chapter 5 verses 14 and 15.
Lay it out pretty clearly for us. Says this, "And this is the confidence that we have toward him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requ that we have the requests that we have asked of him." This means that when you are in your distress, the Lord hears you. You can go all in and bet with confidence that your prayers are not bouncing off the ceiling.
You're not putting your prayers in an envelope and sending it off to Canada Post and have it be lost in the void. It is going to reach its destination. And if that doesn't instill enough confidence in us, we also know that the Holy Spirit is on our side too. As Romans 8 26 says, it says that the Holy Spirit is interceding on our behalf with groanings too deep for words. So even if you don't know what to say, your prayers are always getting where they need to go and are always fully understood.
What a great comfort that is to know that in the midst of your hardest days, your weakest moments, the times where you feel completely out of strength, where there's nothing left, when the world seems to be falling apart, you have a direct pipeline to the father. In your lowest of lows and in your darkest moments, it is always available. So if you are in that trial today, you have a direct line to the father. And if you are in that trial today and you don't know Christ, hope is available and it is free.
Christ went to the cross, lived the perfect life, and died the death we should have so that we have this joy. So we can have hope in heaven and hope for what comes next. I've performed in a lot of plays throughout my life. I love theater. But one that continues to stick with me is a play about DL Moody, the great American preacher and evangelist. After his rise to popularity in America, he decided to go on a tour throughout England. And really all of Europe, doing a preaching tour and as well as singing.
And he got invited to a pretty small church last minute to do multiple services there. He had the time and so he went. The first service was nearly empty and he thought maybe he wouldn't even come back to do the rest of it. But the church elders pushed him and he came back and did an evening service that night. That evening service, hundreds of people showed up. And upon the altar call at that service, hundreds of people stood up and came to know Jesus that day.
DL Moody was completely baffled by what was going on, even admitting that he wasn't in as much prayer for the service as he should have been. But thankfully, there was someone who was. There was an anonymous British woman. We don't know her name and it was discovered later that she had been bedridden for many years, had not left her bed, but she had gotten a pamphlet about DL Moody's tour and for weeks prayed for this service that the Lord would move here, that the Lord would use the Almoody in this way, and that people would come for Christ.
And that's exactly what happened. This woman in the worst of physical health knew that the Lord would still hear her prayer, that he would still move in places that she couldn't go. That is hope in the affliction. And that is confidence in who God is. And it is because of this confidence that we have in the Lord hearing our prayers that should fuel our desire for them to be constant. And constant prayer is consistent prayer. It is more than just one heroic day where you pray for eight hours straight.
It is the slow and regular practice of a burdened heart laying everything down before the Lord. So my friends, whether today you are on the highest of mountain tops or you are in the depths of woe, the the joy, hope, and there is joy, hope, and patience and confidence to be found in Christ. So cling to him, hold fast to him. Tie yourself to the mast. Do not allow yourself to be shaken.
Draw near to him and who he will do the same for you. So God, I thank you for this day. I thank you so much for this truth that we can cling to in our hardest moments. Lord, that we know that there is not only hope, but there is joy to be found in the midst of difficulty. That we know that you are present. We know that you are there and that you do not leave us behind. Lord, carry us through our trial wherever we find ourselves today. Lord, help us to look to you, to not be distracted by the waves that surround.
Lord, give us the strength to pray more often, to have our prayer be as consistent as breathing, that we would not rely on ourselves, but that we would rely wholly on you. We thank you that that's available. We thank you that we have that pathway to you, that line of communication to you all the time. Strengthen those who are hurting. Build them up. And Lord, if there are those who are suffering here that don't know you, Lord, we pray that you would bring them closer to your heart.
We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
Transcribed automatically from YouTube captions, so names and words may be misheard.
