Let's go back to chapter five and read just a few verses at the beginning of that chapter. I had suggested so and I gave it a reason as we went along. Now actually the first verse of chapter five opens what is called by commentators a leading section of the epistle. So I suppose these verses do belong to the study of which we terminated on Sunday night. However, although they may open a leading section, and I'm quoting, of the epistle, they obviously cast us back to what has gone before. That's obvious from the very first word, therefore. Now we're not going to understand that word, therefore, unless we figure out what is... what these verses prove to be the result of. Now actually what's happening here, a preliminary argument in the early four chapters has been both placed and proved. It's a twofold argument, first of all, that justification of men is needed. Now the argument was placed in these early chapters. If you know anything about Romans at all, you know that there's a chapter that deals with the Jew and there's a chapter that deals with the Gentile and there's a chapter that deals with the world at large. That's chapters one, two and three. And all of these put together indicate the need for justification. And then as Paul writes in Romans, he logically proves it. So that's the first argument that has been placed in these first four chapters, namely that there's a need for justification. He places and proves the argument. And then the second part is that there is an equal footing for both Jew and Gentile. They are one in their sin and as far as God is concerned, they are one in sharing the love of God. Now that's another argument that is placed in the first four chapters and that is true. Now having done this, Paul says, therefore. And I've said to you before in the words of another, whenever you see the word, therefore, find out what it's there for. In this instance, it's there for this reason. that we might cast our minds back to what has been said about our need for justification and the sufficiency that there is to meet that need in the person of the Lord Jesus. So keep that in mind as we read the first eight verses. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoiced in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope make us not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, In due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet for adventure for a good man some would even dare to die, but God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Now that's as far as we're going to read tonight. On Sunday night we noted some couplets in that lovely verse Romans eight and twenty eight. I want you to notice some couplets here and we're going to do what I used to like to do as a boy when I lived in the city of Birmingham. We have a very famous museum in the city of Birmingham in England and I used to wonder through that museum, I I rather think that, I don't know what they called them, the attendants. I was going to say the warden. The attendants were a little suspicious of my visits to begin with, but they got used to my going in and out. And I discovered, visiting the museum, that there was an area that I thought would never interest me into which I strayed one day. It was just simply full of pictures. But as I wandered around, I found them so intriguing and so interesting that from that time on I used to enter by the back door of the museum so that I could get to the pictures first. But of course, whenever I went in the back door, I got to the last picture before I arrived at the first picture. Now that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to start at the end and work our way backwards until we come to the beginning. Now here's the first couplet. Verse eight, that little word, we were. Now it's repeated again in verse six. We were. Now here then is what we were. Now that's a good place to begin. It's always good to look back to the pit from which we've been digged. Our hearts will be certainly stimulated to gratitude every time we take a good look at the place we came from and the condition that used to be ours. We were. Now twice I read it to you. Now look at verse three and having just mentioned, we're going to come back to these things, what we were, we now see what we have. Let's go to verse one. We're going to end in the middle, not at the start. Here is what we have. Verse one we have. Verse two we have. And then in the middle, in between the end and the beginning, comes what we do. Verse two says we stand, and verse three says we stand. glory. Now I've left you on the last two Thursday nights with very little time to pray and I tell you frankly I had a conscience on both Thursday nights. I want to try to finish a little earlier than night. That's why I chose just these eight verses and these few simple thoughts. However, I'll try to keep my eye on the clock and finish before eight fifteen, which is where I finished last Thursday and the Thursday before. How much before eight fifteen remains to be seen. What we were. Verse eight says, we were yet sinners. Verse six says, we were yet without strength. All right, two things that are said about our past. We were sinners, and we were without strength. Now, when it says we were sinners, what is indicated is not so much an activity as a category. We have to face up to the fact that believers still sin. And so they are sinners in the first sense, the sense of activity. but they are not sinners in the second sense, which is meant here, in the category of sinners. Instead, our category has been changed, and tonight we are numbered among the saints. Let's look at that verse eight. But God commends His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. There are three things here. First of all, our condition was a fact. We were yet in the category of sinners. And that meant to say we were lost, we were undone, we were enemies of God and so on. Our condition was a fact. And then the second thing, God loved us in spite of that condition. God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet... sinners. I don't think even throughout eternity we'll be able to fully understand the love of God. We're going to know, as we are known, but the love of God is unfathomable. And certainly to think that God loved us in spite of our condition, though he knew it in full detail, is a thing we can never get over. So our condition was a fact. God loved us in spite of that condition. And the third thing that's here is that Christ died to change that condition. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Now certainly there was going to be no other way of bringing about that change. Look at verse six. For when we were yet without strength, In due time Christ died for the ungodly. Now here is the second part of what we were. We were without strength. Now what he's saying in verse six is this, the reason why the Lord Jesus died was our powerlessness. Had it been possible for us to do anything for ourselves, the Lord Jesus would never have gone to the cross. Had it been possible for us to do anything for one another, the Lord Jesus would never have gone to the cross. But the word of God says, no man can by any means redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for him. Now that's the reason why the Lord Jesus died. We were in the category of sinners and we were strengthless. powerless to do anything about it. But the verse not only tells us the reason why the Lord Jesus died, namely our powerlessness, but it also tells us very clearly that the death of the Lord Jesus was deliberate and not accidental. In due time Christ died for the ungodly. The margin says, according to the time. Now what time? God's time, of course. This was God's timetable, and at the right moment, under the right circumstances, dire as they were, the Lord Jesus surrendered up his life. No man takeeth my life from me. I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down. I have power to take it again. So the reason why the Lord Jesus died was because of our powerlessness. do anything about the condition that's described in verse eight. And the death of the Lord Jesus obviously was deliberate and predetermined, certainly not accidental. And it was right on schedule. In due time. Just at the right time. You know, Satan knew that there was a right time for the Lord Jesus to die. And Satan tried so hard to change the timetable. That's the reason why he stirred up a mob, to push him over a cliff. You know, it's possible to drive a little way out of Bethlehem and to turn a very sharp bend, to climb out of your butt and to stand and look at the brow of the hill over which the people wanted to thrust. the Lord Jesus. By the way, if that makes you envious and you'd like to do it, we are leaving here on November the tenth to go there. Why not come and join us? The Lord Jesus wasn't pushed over the brow of any of us. He wasn't born to die mangled at the foot of a cliff. Again Satan stirred up a mob to pick up boldest to crush him, but he passed through their midst and they couldn't fling their stone. He wasn't born to die that way. And long before that, the soldiers had come to kill every male child up to two years of age. It was an attempt to destroy the Lord Jesus. Anything to do away with the cross. Anything to spoil God's timetable. It wasn't possible to do it. In due time Christ died for the ungodly. So much for what we were. We were in the category of sinners, and we were without strength to do anything about it. Now in contrast, the beginning of the verses, what we have, what we have now is what we didn't have then. When we were sinners, When we were without strength, my how our consciences troubled us, my how our hearts failed us, my how our future frightened us. But now it says, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, that's verse one, and we have access by faith. Peace and access. How important peace is. Our president is in Helsinki. So is the Russian leader and thirty-six other leaders, I believe, also. And they are there to do some ratifying. Brezhnev has gone after peace. A peace of this and a peace of that and a peace of the other, and he's going to get it. All the advantages are his, and America is on the defensive, and he's going to come away beaten again. Make no mistake at all about it, but it's all being done in the interest of peace, and beside the president is Mr. Kissinger. When they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child. But you know what we are seeing in Helsinki is the importance of peace. What we are seeing in Helsinki is the elusiveness of peace. What we had already demonstrated for us is the frailty of peace. Mr. Kissinger, just a little while ago, got the noble peace prize. Do you know how many people died in South Vietnam after peace was declared, forty-eight thousand one hundred and fifty-one, plus all that have died, undoubtedly hundreds upon hundreds since the Communists took over. That's the kind of peace the world talks about, tries so hard and can't to rejoice in, grass tractor and sees it slip through the fingers. But this peace is real. Being justified by faith we have peace and it's real because it is peace with God and it is real because it is peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me read the whole verse to you again. Therefore being justified by faith We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And once again here in Romans, we see the writer bringing our attention to the person of the Lord Jesus and pointing out that all that we are and all that we have is through him and in him and by him and because of him. we have peace. Real peace, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse two says, we have access. And notice verse two is linked to verse one. Verse one says, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And verse two says, by whom also. Just as peace comes by him, so access. comes by him. And the Lord Jesus becomes the open door to all of God's blessings, not the least of which is the ability to come boldly into God's immediate presence, access by faith. Christ is the open door to all of God's blessings, and it is faith that takes us through the door. The Lord Jesus was sent by the Father to bear the sins of the world. The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. But the world is not saved. It's only when a man exercise his faith in the Lord Jesus that he's justified. Verse one says that. and that he has access to God, verse two says that. I don't know what kind of an individual you consider yourself to be as far as faith is concerned. I think we all of us are a little discouraged for ourselves when we read about men like George Muller and some of these others whose faith was so tremendous that remarkable things happen. Do you realize that George Mueller's faith is no different from the kind of faith that you can exercise and I can exercise? And God has no favorite. I was going to tell you a story there, but I mustn't, about George Mueller. You know enough about him. You've heard enough about him to know that God honored his faith. It seems to have been a special kind of faith. And yet... Any believer who's willing to exercise faith can see the same kind of miracles happen as they happened in the life of George Mueller. So we have what we were at the end. We have what we have in the beginning, and in between the two we have what we do. And this again is twofold. We stand and we glory. Look at verse two. by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. Now literally the Greek here says wherein we are made to stand. In other words the thought is that we are being constantly upheld. We don't stand by our own power. We stand because we are being constantly upheld. The one through whom we have peace, the one through whom we have been justified, the one through whom we have access, is the one who says, I will never, never let go your hand, and the one who constantly upbears. You know, that special request was very appropriate tonight, because it fits in with the thought here. We are constantly upheld. We are constantly upborne. And God's grace, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is more than sufficient to meet every need and enable us to bear any burden. So we stand. And here's a good finishing note. We glory. The believer is triumphant. He looks back at his past and knows it's under the blood it's over and done with, and sin is never going to be brought against him. He looks around and sees how fortunate he is as a man justified with access to God who is constantly being upborn, no wonder his heart rejoices, and even in his tribulation. He glories. Do you know why? Because tribulation is very productive. I don't have time to go into this because I want to finish before quarter past eight. But tribulation worketh patience and patience experience, experience hope and hope make us not ashamed. So when tribulation comes, remember that it is bound to be productive. surely as you will accept it from God, and then enable him holding your hand to lead you through the experience. What we were, what we have, and what we do. No wonder the last two words are, we glory. What a happy lot of people we ought to be.