Peace with God, access into His grace, and hope of future glory are the objective realities established through Christ's work, as detailed in Romans 5. The sermon highlights that tribulation, rather than being a negative experience, works endurance and fortitude, leading to a deeper, more resilient faith. This hope is not in vain because God's love is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, assuring us of salvation from future wrath. Ultimately, believers are called to joy not just in God's blessings, but in God Himself, recognizing His sufficiency and presence in all circumstances.
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Now, we can indeed just settle down and enjoy the word. We shall be thankful. Now, I think there's a kind of an evolution in the ministry of a conference. By that I mean that the opening messages should be of a foundation character, wherein the great affirmations of our faith are declared. And then, in the days that follow, give a more detailed application of those things. So I'm going to ask you to just turn for an illustration to Second Kings chapter four, and then go over to Romans chapter five.
I had intended something different, but it doesn't strike me as It would be as easy to speak from it as it might be from this person. Sometimes a preacher seeks that kind of a refuge. One of the advantages of coming back to a conference after a goodly number of years is that a preacher hopes the congregation has forgotten what he preached on before. But, you know, I might have spoken in this before. I don't remember. But, you know, Brother Fraser's sermons are so good that you like to hear them over and over again.
Amen? Amen. I didn't expect quite a good amen. Second Kings, please, chapter four. And verse one. Now, there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets, sons of Elijah, saying, Thy servant, my husband is dead. And thou knowest that thy servant is free of the Lord. and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bond men. And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me what hast thou in thy house? She said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, but a sabre for a while. Then he said, Go borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even unto vessels, borrow not of you.
And when thou art coming, thou shalt shut the door upon thee, and upon thy son. and shall pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is poor. So she went from him and shut the door upon her, and upon her sons who brought the vessels to her, and she poured out. It came to pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a bit. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more than the oil's stay. Then she came and told the man of God, And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.
Now, you'll agree with me, I'm sure, that this woman was in rather a bad way. Her husband was dead. She herself was destitute. And her sons were in danger. When she came, she came not pleading her own piety, but the piety of her husband, and that she might be heard because of the piety of her husband. Now that might have been a mark of her humility. On the other hand, she might have discovered all too late that she had been trading upon the faith of her husband and piety far too long.
Now that he was gone, she didn't have any resources upon which to rest. Let us beware, sisters, of trading upon the faith and strength of faith and piety of your husband, so that when he is gone, you have not exercised a faith and confidence of your own, and you realize that you have been trading all too long upon the piety of your spouse. And that's good advice also for husbands to be sure. Let us make sure that we have a confidence of our own, born of long personal individual experience in the school of God, that when he or she who is more dear to us than life itself is taken away, we are not so bereft that we have nothing upon which to live.
Be that as it may, she was in desperate flight. In the husband's death, she destitute. Oh, but destitute. She seemed to have forgotten the pot of oil she had probably behind the door. And her sons in danger, according to the law that obtained, are being sent into slavery at least for six years, to pay the debt which she could not pay. a bitter experience indeed for her. Now she came to the man of God and asked for help. And he said to her, what have you got in the house?
She said, lying, handmaid has not anything. And then she seemed to remember, well, save a pot of oil. If there was a bitter experience, there was a blessed exception. She did have a pot of oil. And in the hands of the man of God, that was sufficient to meet her need. For he said to her, Go borrow thee vessels abroad. Vest, borrow not a few, and go in and shut the door. This is the chapter of the shut door. You'll find the door is shut three times in this chapter, and upon a different thing in each case.
We can learn from each of those. But we wouldn't have time tonight. And so she did so. And she sent her sons out to bottle vessels and they brought. There wasn't a word of the kind of vessels that they had to bring, whether gold or silver or earthenware or stone or whatever. They were just to bottle vessels, not a few. And she took them and shut the door and began to pour from the vessel of water. And to her great amazement, she had a bountiful excess. A bountiful excess. For all the vessels were filled, and the oil kept coming.
She discovered she was only straightened in herself. And she said, bring some more vessels. The oil is still coming. And they said, there are no more. And the oil stopped. Now then the man of God said, go and pay your debt. But then he didn't stop there. And if the words that follow, I want to emphasize for us tonight. He says, Go sell the oil and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children off the rest. That is to say, he not only removed the past debt, but he provided for the present and for the future.
Go and live off the rest. Now in Romans chapter four we have our debt pressed. Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven and whose sins are cut. And we're shown by which, the means by which our debt has been pressed and the debt removed. But when we come to Romans chapter five, to which I'll ask you to turn now, please, We shall discover the bountiful excess which has taught us in Christ. In fact, the Spirit of God seems to say to us, Go and live off the rest.
I want us to speak briefly tonight. I will try to make it brief. I'll try to leave a little time for my young brother, Peter Pell. After all, he's my brother. But on the other hand, it's not very often you have brother Fraser, right? Now our debt is covered in chapter four. Now in chapter five, I want you to know the such words as also, not only so, and much more. These are the key words of Romans chapter five, in case you haven't noticed them.
And as we read now, the first. There are ten verses, eleven verses at least, three flesh. Let us know the recurrence of the words, O so, not only thou, and much more. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Some versions say, let us have peace with God, making it an exhortation. I think that is wrong. You haven't reached the exhaustive portion of Romans when you come to chapter five. We are still in the realm of the objective values of justification.
The objective values of the work of Christ, not the subjective responsibilities of it as yet. So I think the word stand has given here in our authorized version. being justified by faith, we have peace with God. This is not the individual tranquility of your heart at this present moment. Now this present moment, the tranquility of your heart might have been disturbed by the recent happening. This has to do with the great objective fact of peace with God wrought by the work of Christ. When peace was declared in the war between the states, they tell me that the reaction of the soldiers was different in different places.
Some soldiers threw their hats in the air for very joy, and others sat down and wept for very relief. Now whether the news that peace had been declared resulted in smiles or tears, made no difference. The fact remained that peace was declared. And irrespective of the tranquility of your individual hearts at this moment, verse one draws attention to the fact that sin as a barrier and as a block has been removed through the work of Christ, and because of that we have all of us peace with God.
How much could be said about that? But we pass up. By whom also, there's the first of those extra things, by whom also we have access by faith into a grace in which we step. We have access. As to the past, we have peace with God. As to the present, we have access into a grace in which we step. Esther the queen was not sure of the grace in which she stood. And when her uncle Mordecai, or what her older cousin, uncle I think, said to her, now you've got to go into the king's presence and intercede for your people, the Jews.
She said, I don't know if I can go in. You know the law of the country. If anybody enters the king's presence, unasked, unless he holds out the golden scepter, he'll die. And the king hasn't asked me to come into his presence for thirty deaths, which makes us think the king was tiring of his beautiful queen. I haven't been asked into his presence for thirty deaths. But she says, I'll die. And if I perish, I perish. wasn't sure of the excess that she had into the king's presence of the grace in which she stood.
But she said, I'll take a check. And so she put on her beautiful robe. And she stood in the doorway. I was glad what her brother had to say about why he's being nicely dressed when the husband's coming up. Never let your husband go home in the evening and find you and sleep. Amen. But that's a fact. Whatever you use them in the daytime, I'm not here to suggest to you. Be nice when he comes home. Amen. Anyway, she'd be on her beautiful road.
And she stood in the doorway. And the king looked out and saw his lovely wife. And his heart went out to her. And he held out the golden thread. And timidly she came down. And she touched it. And he said, what is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Just name it. And it will be yours. Unto the half of my kingdom. Just name it. And she was so startled and confused that she said, well, I'll tell you tomorrow. She discovered really, although she wasn't sure of the grace in which she stood, that now she could approach the throne of grace and find the king's pledge to meet her needs into the half of his kingdom.
But you know, when you and I come to Christ, We have access by faith into a grace in which we stand. We have a perfect and eternal sense in grace before God so that we can come to him and by faith touch the golden scepter of the promises of God and find our need met according to the half of Christ's kingdom? No. my God to supply all your living according to his riches and glory, all his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
And you may come to him, my brother, and you may come to him, my sister, with the most unusual request. And if you touch the golden scepter of his promises with the hand of faith, they are given to you. I was talking to some brethren in the interval about the Fifth Park Avenue Methodist Church in Minneapolis. Years ago, that was a place standing for God as far as they knew. And it was a Dr. Valentine who was a preacher there. I heard him one time when I was in Minnesota, in Virginia.
And he told us this story, not that what he had read in a book, but what had happened in his own faith. He fed his sister down in the southern part of the steppe, I think in Manchuria. Well, don't you have a dinner party one evening? And she had invited about a dozen guests. And she decided that for so many people she had better have baked ham, fine, easy things to have. So she ordered a baked ham for the guests. But that afternoon the snow began to fall. And it fell and fell as only ten and then it fell on occasion. And she said to herself, now I know that a lot of my guests are not going to turn up.
And she was right. And when she was cleaning off the table from the few that changed, she said to herself, what am I going to do with all this hands? And she immediately thought of a woman who lived up the street, who lived alone, poor woman. She said, I'll give her some of that hands tomorrow. And the Lord seemed to say, no, no, give it to her tonight. And she said, no, I can't give it tonight because I've got justice. And the Lord seemed to say, no, you take it tonight. But she said, I can't take it. Do you ever try to expostulate the drop? She didn't.
But she had no peace until she put a shawl on her head and ran all the way. and dumped down at the woman's door some of the baked ham wrapped in tissue paper and pounded on the door and ran back to her desk. And the next day or the day after when the story had subsided, she went to visit the woman. She said, how are you? Oh, she said, how did you like that baked ham? Said, you bring that baked ham? Oh, yeah. Oh, she says, let me tell you about that. She said, no, I was sick in bed. I'd been sick for a couple of days. Couldn't eat. But then when I began to feel better, I began to go over the few things I had in the house to eat.
And my stomach revolted against every woman. I lifted my heavenly, my voice to my heavenly father. And I said, Father, you know what? I could eat baked hemp. And she says, I just lay on the bed, and I just said over and over again, Father, Make it baked hands. And I speak reverently, friends. And I speak reverently, I trust. But God looked down from heaven and said, Well, who's got baked hands for me? In fact, that did me a lot of good. You know that? You and I can touch the golden scepter of the promises of God with the hand of faith and trust God to be sufficient for all of us.
And then you'll notice it says here, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Peace as of the past, access by faith as of the present, and glory. Rejoice in hope of the glory of God. That may not draw attention so much to the rapture, the catching up of the church through heaven. Although saying God is part of it, But the words, the glory of God, seem usually to be connected with his manifestation to the earth. We're apt to think that the biggest thing on the horizon in the realm of eschatology is the rapture of the church.
Probably isn't that. The rapture of the church is only incidental to God's great prophetic statement. Of all that God has in the future. Yeah, but rejoice in hope of the times, for the knowledge of the Lord will cover you as the waters cover you. What a death. And then it says, And not only so, not only so, but the glory in tribulation. Oh, you see, I beg to stop. See, I couldn't call you there. Glory in tribulation. See, I don't glory in tribulation.
I'll notice what he says. Knowing, glory in tribulation, knowing, you can only glory in tribulation as you know. Why? Knowing that tribulation worker passions. Tribulation worker passions. And they tell me that word passions means fortitude. endurance are fortitude. Now tribulation in itself is not a palatable thing any more than the individual ingredients of a loaf are palatable things.
You never went to somebody's house for supper and the host said, while you're waiting, how would you like a spoonful of flour? Well, how would you like a little piece of yeast cake? Only health in Eat mischief. Or how would you like a spoonful of salt while you're waiting? Or whatever else to put in good bread. But put all these things together. And we'll give you a pallet for good. Now, you'll never glow in tribulation until you see them working together for your good. Knowing that tribulation works for the good.
is when God goes in with you into the tribulation, into the valley, and shows himself strong there, and teaches you things you couldn't otherwise learn and profit by, then you welcome it when it comes. After all, steel at its lowest value may consist in horseships, which you pitch around in the dirt. But steel at its highest value may consist in what springs? Those things, springs that move delicate instruments. And how do they arrive at that value? When heating and hammering, and heating and hammering, and heating and hammering again.
And you and I are to welcome those things because of what they produce in us. They make life valuable for us. Our lives are not to be tortuous, pitched around in the dirt. They are to be watchstrings used in the plan of God for his glory. Do you believe that? I trust we do this. Tribulation works, that thing, and that fortitude expires. Here's a young fellow, he's made up his mind to take up the sea as a cult. This is his first voyage. He's out there in the water, and there's a storm, a terrific storm.
He's scared. He says, if I ever get off here, you'll never see me back. But he happens to look up at the bridge. And the captain is leaning on the bridge, talking to the mate, and he's smoking his pot. He's not a Christian. I said that one place I was preaching years ago, and somebody said, didn't you know? He said, no, why? He said, two of the elder brethren smokes. I said, I'm sorry I didn't know. He said, by the way. But he looks up and sees that man and says, My, my, how can he do it?
You see, he had been through this, dear friend. It had worked, endurance, fortitude, and despair. Now, God doesn't want your life and mine to be free from heating in heaven because of the value that it produces in heaven. and experience hope, and it's a hope we read here, that makeeth not a shame, not a vain thing. Why? Because we have to earneth already. Because the love of God is shed abroad. That word shed abroad is a Greek word that means poured out like a torrent, poured out like a torrent in our heart by the Holy Ghost which is given to us.
Let's go on for the sake of time down to verse nine. Much more. Much more. Then being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. It's not just a salvation from the past. It's a salvation from the future. From wrath through him. From all the wrath that's in the future, including the great tribulation. Amen. For in the book of Revelation, the wrath is confined between chapter six and nineteen. I think I'm correct in saying.
The wrath is confined between chapter six and nineteen in Revelation. The church has not seen on earth at all. It's in heaven in chapter five, and you don't see it again until you get to the end of the book. And the wrath are those judgments which fall upon the earth. And we read in Thessalonians that Jesus not simply has delivered us from the wrath to come, but our deliverer, presently, from the wrath to come. That's why I know and believe that the church will not go through the tribulation, for Jesus is our deliverer from the wrath to come.
And God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. Now whether we watch or sleep, we shall live together with you. Thank God for that. And then notice what it says in verse ten. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Now this is his life on the other side of his death. We are reconciled by his death, much more being reconciled by his death.
We shall be saved by his living, by his life at the right hand of God, of which we have heard quite a little already. Now, I want you to think tonight of the fact that at this moment, There is in heaven a man who is called in first John chapter two our advocate with the Father. Perhaps you'd like to keep your hand in the place and we turn over to first John two and one. I find that as God's people see it in the Bible, it's even better than hearing it.
in the Bible, first epistle of John, chapter two, verse one. My little children, these things right I am to do, that ye sin not. And if any men do. It doesn't say, and when any of you sin. As if sin were a necessity. as if sin were something that could not be avoided out of faith. And if I'm writing to you that you don't sin, but if you do, remember, we have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus Christ the Lord. Two things I want you to know that speaks about this. It does not sin. If any man can sin, He's talking to little children in the sense. It's true. It does not say, if any man confess, we have an advocate with the cross. But if any man sin, we have an advocate with him. In other words, the advocacy of Christ does not begin when you confess your sin. The advocacy of Christ begins when you sin. It's not your confession that results in his advocacy.
It's his advocacy that results in your confession. Amen? Yes. That's a wonderful thing to get a hold of. You see, our dear Pentecostal brethren who love the Lord with all their hearts and are continually thanking him for the precious blood of Christ and who often make you ashamed with their consecration to him. We believe they're sadly lacking in number of things. And they believe with all their hearts that you can be saved for many years. And if you sin as a believer, the advocacy of Christ only begins for you when you confess. And if you were to die between the time you sin and the time you confess, you'd be lost forever.
But it doesn't say that the advocacy of Christ begins when you confess. It says, if any man sins, we have an advocate of sin. So let me repeat what I said. I'd almost only ask you to repeat. It is not my sin that results. It's not my confession that results in his advocacy. It's his advocacy that results in my sin. Amen? You're not too sure. But it's true. It's true. Now, if you lost your salvation when you sinned as a believer, God wouldn't be your father anymore.
He'd still be your God, but not your father. The relationship would be gone. But this verse says, if any man sinned, we have an advocate with a father. He's still the father. Amen? He's still the father. Because we have a man there who saves us by his love. Aren't you there? And now to close, please. Going back to Romans once more. And verse eleven. And not only so.
Live off the rest. Not only so. but we also joy in God. That's the same word in the Greek as rejoice in verse two and glory in verse three and joy in verse twelve. Verse eleven. Not only so, but we also joy in God. Exalt through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement the reconciliation. The last thing I want you to notice then is one. We joy in God.
We have peace with God. We have access by faith into a grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We glory in tribulation. We are saved from wrath through him. We are saved by his life. And finally, we joy in God. Not in his blessings, but in God. We're not like the nine who stand in the robe counting their blessings. We're like the one who turns back and falling at the feet of his benefactor gives them thanks. And he was a Samaritan.
We get beyond the blessings to the blessings and rejoice in God. Do you ever joy in God? I mean, do you ever get along with God and just joy in God? I think David did that in second Samuel chapter seven or eight. Do you ever shout hallelujah out loud? You should know anything. I do. I'm very careful if you wait till I'm on the highway with all the window shafts. Joy in God. You ever sit in your car and just enjoy in God?
I do sometimes. And tell God what you think about. That's what David is. One of the things he said, Lord, I thank you that's spoken about me for a long time to come. Your joy in God. Get beyond all the things he gives you and get you into it. Brother and sister, let us live off the road.