Christian hope is presented as a unique and certain possession of believers, grounded in God's faithfulness and the finished work of Christ. The sermon begins by contrasting the uncertainty of the world with the assurance found in Jesus, drawing from Romans 5:1-2 to explain that justification by faith leads to peace with God and a confident hope. It emphasizes that faith is an affirmative response to God's Word, particularly as revealed in His Son, and that this commitment results in God's immediate acceptance and imputation of righteousness. The message concludes by highlighting that this state of grace allows believers to rejoice in the hope of God's glory, an inheritance shared with Christ.
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As Dick Andrews mentioned on Sunday morning, Grace and I come from the Dominican Republic. We live there now almost fifty years, and it has been our home and experience that has greatly enriched our lives. Back in the late eighties, in the last year of the life of a woman called Marion Carter, she was asked to write a book about her life in the Dominican Republic. The night that she went to be with the Lord, she heard just moments before her death that the book was going to be printed that week. It was printed privately in Vancouver, Canada, and it circulated among her friends.
Last year, Mr. Sam Robinson and Mr. John Jeffers of CMML in New Jersey asked if I would edit the book, enlarge it, and prepare it for a second edition. and it was published at the end of last year and it is the only book that we have at the present time on the Dominican Republic and the story of God's grace through the eyes of a woman who for over twenty years after her husband died served God in our land as a widow. Marian Carter wrote this book and it will make you laugh and it will make you cry And above all, it will take you right into our country and our culture.
If you're interested in missionary biographies, this is a beautiful book. It's called God's Miracles to Marion, and it's available on the table at the bank, and it costs two dollars, and the money will be taken back to Christian missions in many lands. May I emphasize again that it's not my book. It was written by Marion Carter, but it certainly reflects in many ways our feelings. about the Dominican Republic. And if you read it and you would like more copies, they are available from Christian missions in many lands. Most of this box, thirteen, Spring Lake, New Jersey, zero, seven, seven, six, two, and they will send it to you, but not for two dollars, but for three dollars to cover postage and handling.
We are thinking this week about Christian hope. And as I bring this subject into focus this evening, without any arrogance, but with a deep sense of confidence, I remind you that Christian people are the only people in the world that have authentic hope. Even good hopes, you may not believe it, but once I was a young man, and I went to Sunday school picnic, and at that Sunday school picnic, A vision of beauty passed by, and she captivated me. She's here tonight, a distinguished, mature student or a half-citizen now.
And we met, and our relationship developed. And then I left for the Dominican Republic, engaged to be married. Marriage is according to the will of God. Christian marriage receives His blessing. Everything about it was good. But I lived for two months in the Dominican Republic and looking back on those years when we traveled by horseback all over the country on the northern part, anything could have happened to me. Something could have happened to Grace in Lady Smith, British Columbia, Canada, car accident, some type of illness. A very good biblical hope.
But it may never have been realized. But we have a hope, and the Bible says it is a sure and steadfast hope. Again, not with arrogance, but with enthusiasm, with joy and with confidence. We are the only people who have real confidence in the future, a certain hope. Paul wrote about his world two thousand years ago. He said without hope. The same term is applicable to our world today. There is no real hope outside of Jesus Christ. Now Paul, he deals with a subject of hope.
And I'd like to take you tonight to Romans chapter five, where the apostle goes into the wonders of our Christian hope. As you look for the portion, I'd like to suggest to you that in the opening verses of Romans chapter five, Paul looks at this subject from two different angles. First of all, he's going to look at it from the angle of theology and doctrine, and then he's going to look at it from a very down-to-earth practical way. We begin with verse one of Romans chapter five.
I'm going to read the first two verses. I would like to highlight in the reading the key words. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Now you begin right where you are tonight on Lookout Mountain. Even though you're a visitor, this is where we're spending this week.
And we're talking about a journey from where we are right into the midst of the glory that belongs to the transcendent, eternal God. Humanly speaking, that is a long journey. When you look at this verse, I suggest we begin with the word faith. Many of these words come from the Greek language of two thousand years ago, but when they're brought into the Christian vocabulary, they're charged with new dimensions of meaning. Faith is one of the key words in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, but sometimes difficult to define.
I'm going to suggest to you that faith is that great yes that comes right up out of your being when you listen to what God says and you respond affirmatively. That great yes, when you say this is what I need, this is what I want, and you say yes to God, that is faith from our point of view. There is a verse in Romans in which Paul helps us to understand this. He says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Now let's turn it around.
God speaks. You listen. And if you really listen, you will respond affirmatively to what God says. When God speaks, when God acts, He always does so within the sphere in which His Son reigns supreme. I know of no action of God outside of His Son. When it comes to creation, all things were created in Him. Difficult part to understand, if you think of it in a physical sense, in Him.
But that's not the idea. All things were created within the sphere of Christ's authority and glory and dominion. Nothing outside of that sphere. Even when it comes to God's eternal purposes about human beings, like those of us who are here this evening, you read in Ephesians, He chose us before the foundation of the world in Christ. Nothing outside of His Son. God spoke in different ways, but the fullness of His message comes to us in His Son. And John tells us in his Gospel and in the book of the Revelation that his name is the Word of God.
Not just words, as I used them this evening, like a vehicle to communicate an idea to you. But he is not only the communicator, he is the message. God has nothing really to say to us outside of his son. He is the message. It is in Him, the Lord Jesus, that God reveals Himself, and He comes to us, and He speaks to us. The trouble with our world today is that most people never take time to listen. How many marriages would be saved if the husband would listen?
Just listen to what the wife is saying. or maybe the wife if she would listen to her husband, but so often we act as if the world revolves around us and we never listen to what other people are saying, even in families. I had a secretary many years ago in the Dominican Republic and as she grew older, She married and had a family, and when she married, our past separated. I didn't see her very often. They actually lived for a period of time in Spain, and they came back to the Dominican Republic, and I would hear now and then about them, and I heard some very sad things about the children as they matured and became young adults.
Some very sad things happened. I never asked any questions, but I sorrowed about it. And it was just recently, about two years ago, I think, that we had the opportunity of meeting in a very select group of people, to which Grace and myself, we'd been invited to the home of a friend, and here was the ambassador from Israel and his wife and the ambassador from Haiti and his wife and other people. We just got in because we happened to know the host and the hostess, but it was nice to be there with them. And my friend was there and her husband. And I remember that after a few moments we found ourselves seated in a corner of this large living room and we began to talk.
I never raised the question, but she talked about the heartaches. And she said to me, you know, Jim, it's only now rather late that I've learned to listen. My children came to me with problems. They never finished a sentence. And I had Bible verses and a sermon. I never listened to them. There could be a friend here with us tonight who likes to be with the Christians. But you know, in your heart, you have never made a commitment to Jesus Christ. And I would like to ask you, have you ever listened? to what God is saying to you in the good news of salvation.
Because if you listen to what He offers you, He offers you forgiveness of all those things that have caused turmoil in your life. And some of them, if you could live your life over again, you would never have done those things. God gives you free, eternal forgiveness. He gives you a new outlook to life. He offers you a prospect of glory, but most people out there who say they believe in God have never taken the time to listen to him. So I suggest that faith is that great yes of response. When you listen to him and he speaks about his son and you meet him and in repentance you make a commitment to him, that's faith.
Now when you do that, God acts immediately. The technical term is justification. In our verse this evening, the verb justifying, it's a verb that we do not use very often in our ordinary conversation. We don't talk about justification too much or being justifying. You hear it when you go to church. But this is one of the great words of the Bible. And Paul, right around this verse in chapter four and on in chapter five, he's talking to us about something that happened a long time ago in history. There was a man and God spoke to him and the man listened.
And God said some almost humanly speaking unbelievable things. But the man listened, he understood, and the New Testament tells us he believed that God was able to perform it. So he understood the message that in an old age he would receive a son. And he believed God. And the Bible says that belief, his faith, was counted to him as righteousness. And I don't see any distance in those two movements. He believed in God acting. When he believed God's word, he was righteous in the sight of God.
Now in the New Testament, in much greater detail, this is dealt with. You say yes to God, he just turns right, right. He takes you exactly the way you are. There are no demands about reformation or change. He just takes you. the way you are. You're upset, you've repented for all those things of the past, it just takes you the way you are. And he makes you right. He makes you right with himself. He makes you right with yourself. You receive the grace to accept yourself. You're not a biological accident.
You are a creation of God. You may not be like Jane or like John. You are unique, a special work of God. You will accept that. And you'll also find that things round about you, people, family, relatives, little by little, you'll find you are right with them also. He works in your life and He makes you right. So right that when this life is over, You can enter with your head high not in arrogance, but in confidence and entrance of the presence of God. Listen to Paul.
Before he met the Lord Jesus outside of Damascus, he really thought that he was blending together through certain things in his life a garment of righteousness in which he would stand at the door of heaven, and God would throw it open and welcome him in. Paul believed that with all his heart, until he saw the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ. And in that glory, the element of righteousness is one of the fundamental elements. And in the light of God's righteousness, It was with shame that he looked at himself.
So he writes about it. Many years later, writing to the Philippians, he says, that I may be found in him. I believe he's thinking about death when this world is over. It's not that he has any doubt about it. He's reflecting his confidence that I may be found in him not having my own righteousness. He says it with horror. but the righteousness of God, which is by faith in Christ Jesus. You said yes to Jesus Christ. God said yes to you, and He closed you in that righteousness. You're ready to enter into the presence of God.
The cost is overwhelming. It's mentioned specifically in verse nine, justified by His blood. And so you go back to Calvary and you stand there and you remember the price that God paid for our redemption. He spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. And on the basis of that death, God has made you righteous. You can enter his presence. Now it may take a little time. but you're going to find out very quickly that you are at peace with God.
It wasn't always like that. You may have heard of Martin Luther when he was just a boy of twelve. His father sent him out to do things in the community where they lived, and he had to go near the church. He would go round about two or three blocks to avoid the church. The only concept he had of God came from the great paintings paid for by the church, which depicted the horrors of purgatory and the torment of hell. And the little boy thought that God was really standing over human beings with a stick to punish them until he met the Lord Jesus.
And he entered into peace with God. It's one of the great blessings. It was touched on earlier in our conference, but peace is something that is a little difficult to describe. If you ask an artist to paint a picture of peace, well, he might come to Lookout Mountain on a clear day and paint the valley and the trees. He might even put in one or two little birds and some bright colored flowers. And it's so tranquil, so peaceful, and you think of it as peace. Well, that may be one of the meanings, but it's certainly not the fundamental meaning.
Peace comes from a term in the Old Testament when Joshua built an altar for God, and he made it out of whole stones. No one took a chisel. They weren't squared or cut. They were complete. They were whole stones. And from that basic thought, both in the Hebrew and the Greek, develops the idea of peace. It means stability. completeness. Nothing is lacking. And this type of peace, as you live in the turmoil of the world that surrounds us today, is a very real thing. Even in the church, there was turmoil in the church in Corinth, and Paul said, as he writes to the Corinthians, God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.
That is of order. Not a legalistic type of order, but an order that comes from God that is filled with life and vitality. Even in our world unconsciously, we sometimes give witness to that order. Please bear with me, one or two personal experiences. But we were walking down Young Street in Toronto, Canada last year. I think it was in the month of June. It was a beautiful sunny day. And we were down between King Street and Queen Street. And we were holding hands. I think people our age are allowed to do that. So we're walking down hand in hand.
I think we were smiling and talking to each other. The lady came out. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. They were coming out of the big towers of offices. Hundreds of men and women coming out onto the streets. And this smartly dressed lady came up. with her briefcase in her hand, striding up the street in the opposite direction. And she went right by Grace. And as she went by, she said, You too deserve a medal. And Grace told me what she said. And we were perplexed. We didn't even know the lady. And then I thought, I wonder how many affairs she's been through.
How many broken marriages. And here are two senior citizens. And they're walking hand in hand. And she probably took for granted they'd been together their whole lives. That's order, in disorder. We were down in Atlanta, Georgia. I shouldn't tell Doris this tonight, but we had a free night. We went out and had a nice dinner somewhere. I've forgotten where it was. And it was a very nice restaurant. But the waiter hovered around the table far too much. It was embarrassing. And I was wondering how to tell this young man that we just, you know, go and do something else.
But finally came over and he bent down and he said, and the quiet voice is, sir, you are married, aren't you? Oh, my wife heard him. And she spoke up. She said, we certainly are. Over forty-five years marrying. He said, I knew it. I knew it. He said, I've been married four months, and I want my marriage to go the whole way. And I thought to myself, not all the young people in our world today are satisfied with the type of lifestyle we witness. Here was one young man who saw two old people. He knew they were married. And we didn't even think about it, but being together and happy together, we apparently were reflecting a witness to a young man who was yearning for something like that.
That is peace. An ordered, stable, God-like life in a world that is filled with chaos. It's all round about you, but you live in peace with God. Before your life was disordered, not now. Now I think it'll take you a little while longer, but you're going to find out all of a sudden that you are in a state of grace. I say it takes a little bit longer because grace is a great subject. And when you come to the Lord Jesus, probably the first thought that may go through your mind if you have a long list of sins that have bothered you for years, I will never go to hell.
I am saved from all punishment and that's all true. But one day you're reading the Bible and you come to a verse and you think you've misread it. So you stop and you go back and you read it over again and you find out you did not misread it. And you might say to yourself, I don't merit that. I'm not worthy of that. certainly couldn't have bought anything like that. Here's an example. Paul, using the Baraka, the Jewish form of praise and worship, it always is two parts. The first part is the outburst of worship to God.
The second part is the reason why you worship God. You'll find it in the Psalms, you'll find it throughout the Old Testament. It usually begins, blessed be the God, blessed be the God of Israel, and then the reason comes in why we should worship and bless it. Paul takes that form, but he fills it with the Christian message, beginning with God himself. Ephesians one, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He identifies God in his relationship with the Lord Jesus. And then he says, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Every spiritual blessing. Let me go back to faith. You said yes to God. You made that commitment to the Lord Jesus. He immediately said yes to you. and he showered you with unbelievable blessings. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Let's imagine, we're just imagining tonight, that you've worked very hard, you're now retired, nobody knows it, but you have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars invested. You don't really oversee the investment, you probably put it in mutual funds and somebody somewhere is then the return is favorable you're happy with that you have a son a good son he's just graduated with honors from university and you're very proud of him and one night you're seated on the sun porch and you're talking father son he says you know dad all these years of study I know exactly what I would like to do and he begins to outline a little business on a small scale that he would like to start.
And you know he's being prepared for that. And with your experience, you analyze every word he says, and you know it's a sound project. You also know it will never get off the ground without capital. And your son is an honorable man. He will never ask you for anything. So you have to make a decision. what would you do to help him twenty five thousand we've been a good son maybe you might go to fifty thousand dollars and if it goes well you might even consider something else later on i'm almost sure you would not give everything you have now when you made a commitment to jesus christ god bless you with every spiritual blessing he did not take the attitude I'm going to give them a few blessings now if they behave themselves and if they walk well and there are no problems I might give them some more no no he just opened his heart and in his tongue he blessed you with every
spiritual blessing if I was to say something like that in the Dominican Republic I might have a friend come up and say to me, Jim, did you notice the adjective spiritual? Well, it is there in Ephesians one, verse three, spiritual blessings. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, and you have a family and a wife, sometimes spiritual blessings, they don't seem to meet the immediate need. And yet even in that case, I know that if my friend sat down just for a few moments and thought it through, he wouldn't change every spiritual blessing for temporal blessings here.
When you think about it, what God has given us in Christ is overwhelming. But there is another verse in the New Testament where the adjective spiritual is missing. I've already quoted the first part of that verse. He who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? Now that's one of Paul's synonyms for cosmos, for universe. Going back to Colossians one, all things.
were created in Him, the whole created order, whatever level, whatever dimension, all things were created in Him. Now you come to Roman faith. With Him, He will freely give us all things. It's the same term that Paul uses for the whole creative order. It simply staggers the imagination. And then to compound the issue, in that same chapter, Paul says that we are heirs of God.
And that's a difficult phrase to try and analyze and explain that the people here today And all God's people in all times, we are heirs of God. One of the men who signed my letter of commendation in nineteen forty-seven came from Northern Ireland. He was a good man. And he was very helpful to me as a young man. Then I went to the Dominican Republic many, many years later. I heard that he had gone to be with the Lord. I also heard that in his testament, in his will, he did not refer to investments or to properties or to homes, nothing like that.
He just had a very simple will. All that I leave, I divide into forty parts. He had two daughters and a son, ten parts for each one. That left ten parts over. And I know that two parts went to a missionary serving God in Africa. I think a part went to a nurse who cared for him in his latter years, and that's how he distributed his inheritance. We are heirs of God. Does that mean in some way that God's inheritance, to use that terminology, is divided into millions of parts, and there's two or three parts for you and a part for me and more parts for the person over here?
I don't think so. I think Paul defines what he means when he says we are heirs of God, because he immediately adds, joint heirs with Christ. Ephesians one, he is the heir of all things by right and by grace. God's people have been invited into that inheritance. Again, you just stand in awe. So in this grace in which we stand by faith, Paul adds, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
You can't go any higher than that. In the Old Testament, you'll have stories of a king, mighty king, and under him will be lesser kings. and you'll find it in the history of the world, you will find it in the United States of America. You have a president and you have governors over your states. The governor has prestige, he has authority and power, but the president has a higher authority and a higher power. This term, the glory of God, is not some lesser glory. This is the glory of the transcendent, eternal God.
And Paul says, standing in grace, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Let's go back for a moment. Some of you have traveled to London, England, I'm sure. And if you have as a tourist, I'm sure you went to the Tower of London. Now if you were up on your English history, when you walked through those doors, in your mind you heard the screams of torture, the agonies of death and so on, the horrible things that happened down through the centuries in the Tower of London, but today it's a museum. But I don't think that most people go to see the museum.
Most people go because they know that underneath the museum is where they keep the crown jewels of Queen Elizabeth II. So you stand in line, God forbid that it should rain, and you slowly make your way down to the big gates where the guards stand, and then you go down the steps and into this subterranean room, lighted skillfully, And as you stand in sort of semi-darkness, you're looking towards this beautiful display of the crown jewels of the Queen of England. I have never seen a diamond that size, and all the colors that come out of it.
You have these beautiful crowns and the sceptres and the swords. It's all there. It's just absolutely off. I'd seen replicas made of crystal in Victoria, British Columbia, where we come from, and I'd seen pictures of them, but nothing comes up to the real thing. And the ladies, I speak very respectfully this evening, they stand there and they look. The guards can be kind of humorous, and when we were there, One of them said in a loud voice, Now ladies, this is not a department store. There's nothing to buy here. Please keep moving along. And they move along until they come to the exit.
I have since heard they put in a moving platform to make them move around. And they look back. And you know, I think many would like to put up... No, no, no. You can't touch it. You stand behind a wooden barrier. They are behind great slate glass windows. You see them from a distance. When Paul says we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, I do not think he has in his mind that we're going to sit a way up in the bleachers in some type of heavenly stadium and see in the far-off distance the glory of God.
There are too many verses in the New Testament that remind us this glory belongs by right to Christ. And the marvels of God's grace, when you said yes to him, you came into that inheritance. You became a member of his body, and what is his by right, he shares with you by grace. And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Tomorrow morning I want to share with you the ways that Paul sometimes aggravates me.
I say that respectfully because he has a match of bringing you from heaven right back down into the world with a thud that shudders your whole being. Our Father, we thank you for the hope we have in the Lord Jesus. We rejoice tonight that though many feel that we live in a world of religious fantasy, we have listened to your word. In the Spirit's power it captivated us. And we said yes to your Son, and we have still not lost the wonder of your response in justification, in making us whole, and in placing us in a state of grace where we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
We give thanks as we worship you this evening in his name. Amen. Please remember Marian's book. It will be on the table at the back.