If you would turn with me to
Romans chapter 15, Romans chapter 15. My text will be from verse 13, Romans
15, 13. When I was a, A younger man, long time ago. Lost in my sin. I was without God. I was without
Christ. And without hope. You know, I
used to think that if I could just achieve some level of fame
and fortune that I'd be happy, that I'd be full of joy and that
I would have peace and hope. But now that I'm older, I see
that's not so. When you look at the rich and
famous of the world, it's somewhat easy to see and to say that it's
really quite the opposite. The most well-known, the most
wealthy of the world usually die in a miserable, unhappy state. You've seen it, so have I. I
used to want to be Elvis Presley or one like him, but he died
a miserable, unhappy death. I'm reminded of the words of
our Lord found in Revelation 3, verse 15. It says, Because
thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing,
and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor
and blind and naked to be rich and increased with goods, those
who physically and fleshly have need of nothing. In most cases,
this reveals that person to be wretched, miserable, and spiritually
poor. It reveals that the one who has
everything is blind of eternal spiritual things and naked without
the covering of the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, that
perfect righteousness that God requires, that God demands in
order for them to be truly rich in spiritual things. For in Him,
Christ, does all fullness dwell. If you want it all, that's where
it is. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ. He that believes not
on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, shall not. That's
pretty adamant, isn't it? Shall not see life. This spiritual poverty is clearly
seen in Christ's words in Matthew 16. I won't turn you there, just
two verses. Let me read them to you. Listen
close to them. Matthew 16, verses 25 and 26. For whosoever shall save his
life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake
shall find it. And then he says, for what is
a man profited? if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? You see, friends, without Christ,
a man is not profited by gaining the whole world. Not in the least. What profit
is gained if you, in the end, lose your very soul? In Mark 8, verse 37, the Lord
asks, what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? I dare say that one of notoriety,
fame, fortune, in the end, on the day of judgment, would give
up all his fame, and all his fortune, and all his extravagant
living, and even more in exchange for his soul that is bound for
hell forevermore. Don't you? But it'll be too late. Won't
have that opportunity. Not the one that he has now.
To lose his life so that he might gain it. Now this is speaking
of the sinner who in the same passage, who saves his life,
her life, only to lose it in the end. But the sinner who believes
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and for Christ's sake, loses his
or her life here in this world, saves their life in the end.
Isn't that something? It's one of the great mysteries
in life. It's such a great mystery that
it's gotta be revealed to us. The man who has everything yet
denies Christ, what does he really have? Nothing. If that man was ambitious and
determined enough and desirous enough to gain the whole world,
has he really gained anything if he loses his own soul? Of
course not. The world can only be enjoyed
for a season. That's what the scriptures teach
us. There's joy in sin or season. The world can only be enjoyed
for a short time. And that even then with fatigue
and trouble, but the soul continues forever. The soul continues forever and
if it's lost and it's damned, it's torment always abides. The worm never dies. The fire
is never quenched. Those in his world who seek profit
seek their own profit, and what advantage will it be to such
a one in the end? He gains the whole world, its
power, its pleasures, its riches, and loses his own soul. He's
consigned to everlasting torment, torture, misery, ever banished
from God's presence. That's just a horrible thought
to me. The ringing of the words of a
true preacher that says, Christ is all, Christ is all salvations
of the Lord, will ring in his ears forever, and him knowing
and her knowing that it's so. The warmer conscience never dies. The redemption of a mortal soul
requires a greater price than silver and gold. Nothing short
of the blood and life of the Lord Jesus Christ is a proper
exchange. Now, look at our text, Roman
chapter 15, verse 13. Here Paul writes, and pay very
close attention to every word, now the God of hope He's the
God of hope. The God of the Bible is the God
of hope. Fill you with all joy and peace. Now look at these
next two words, in believing. There's no joy or peace apart
from believing. That ye may abound in hope through
the power of the Holy Ghost. So how is the child of God filled
with joy and filled with peace and filled with hope? Through
the power of the Holy Spirit. The gospel of Christ is the power
of God unto salvation. We've read that many times. Do
we believe it? To whose salvation given unto? To everyone that believe us. This joy, peace, and hope comes
from the God of these things in believing. If you don't believe
them, they're of no worth to you, no profit to you. Whosoever believes in Christ
shall not perish, but have everlasting life. You're not only not gonna
perish, you're gonna live forever. What would a man give me? Shame
you that. Joy, peace, hope come only one
way. Last week, we saw that there's
only one message. It is the message. There is no
other. These three things, joy, peace,
and hope, they come through the God of joy, peace, and hope.
They belong to Him, and He's the only one that can give them. He's the only one who can fill
us with these things. Did you notice that? May He fill
you. You know, if you're filled with
something, there's no room for anything else. God, the author and giver of
grace, who we are naturally without, born without God, without hope,
without Christ, has wrought in the chosen sinner's heart in
and by and through regeneration, gives them. Us, a new birth,
a new creation we are. Old things passed away. Behold,
all things have become new. God is the sovereign who gives. God is the one who loves the
unlovable. God is the one who gives grace
to the ungracious. God is the one that shows mercy
to the unmerciful. And God is the one that has interest
in one who is uninterested. How do I know? I once was all those things. And these precious and undeserved
things continue unto death. He fills us with all joy, it
says. How much joy do we get? All of
it. What about peace? The text says,
and peace. How much peace do we get? All
of it. God's the only one that we can,
that all of us can get all, and there's still, He can have all. You can't figure that out. You
just have to believe it. In believing. Peace in believing. In believing, our hope abounds
through the life-giving power of God the Holy Ghost. In believing, we're filled with
joy. Now, not every kind of joy. Not worldly joy. Not the joy
of sin. Not the joy of our boasting.
That's an evil joy. This is talking about spiritual
joy. This is talking about not an earthly self-righteous joy. This is talking about joy in
a covenant God. This is talking about joy in
Christ, His person, about joy in His righteousness. Oh, I am
so full of joy because my righteousness is Christ's righteousness. This
is not self-righteousness. That's not gonna get me anywhere.
Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but by the
righteousness of Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us. Joy in the Holy Spirit, the author
of joy. Joy in the one whose fruit it
belongs to. The other fruit that hangs from
the branch of faith believing in Christ is peace. Peace with
God made by the blood of Christ. It's free to you. God's grace
and mercy is free to you, but it costs Christ His life. It
costs Christ the shedding of His blood. Peace through the
blood of Christ. Now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of
the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working
in you. that which is well-pleasing in
His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and
ever. Amen. Isn't that good? That's good, isn't it? How are
we as believers justified? We're justified freely by grace. Grace and peace come in believing. Faith in Christ is not trusting
in what you do. It's not. It's either faith or
it's works, but it can't be both. As grace increases, so does peace.
Where one is, the other is. God fills us with joy and peace.
It's a feeling of joy and peace in us. And sin has emptied us
of life, joy, and peace and hope by nature. We have none. But
faith in Christ causes His grace to come into our joyless, conflicted
hearts and fills us to the overflowing state of fullness. I'm full. Full. The earth is the Lord's and what?
The fullness thereof. All that belongs to him belongs
to me. I'm full. For it pleased the
Father that in Him, Christ, should all what dwell, fullness. In Christ I am full. We're filled with the fullness
of God, Ephesians 3.19. Jesus Christ is the fullness
of God. He fills to the fullness. There's not room for anything
else but joy, peace, and hope. That's why I say we ought to
be the most Joyful, happy, peaceful, hopeful people in the world.
So much so that the sense of guilt is washed away. How can
there be any guilt in my heart if it's full of joy and full
of peace and full of comfort and full of Christ, huh? No room for the distress of sin.
Are you distressing over your sin? No, I ain't got room for
it. This peace in believing will
fill your soul so full that it will drown out even the fear
of death. The fear of dying. Believer has
no fear of what they shall eat. They don't have any fear about
what they shall drink. They don't have any fear about
what they'll be clothed with. The same one who provides all
those things in its fullness is the same one who removes the
fear of death. Death is something to look forward
to. It's a departure. It's leaving
this life and world of sin and going to where there is no sin.
Come on! Well, they're in a better place. Are they? I hear every funeral,
every preacher at a funeral, that's usually the first thing
they say, well, they're in a better place. I've been to some funerals
for folks that weren't in a better place. I can assure you of that. Oh my, Lord help us. Sin is the
reason for fear. We have no fear in Christ because
in Christ we have no sin. That's good, isn't it? Sin is
the reason for fear. We have no fear in Christ because
in Christ we don't have any sin. Our Heavenly Father knows what
things that we have need of and we worry and we fret and we fear
over so many things that we shouldn't. Yet one thing's for certain,
we will never be perfectly at peace if we're ambitious and
we're craving things that this world and those in it offer,
desire, and strifle, just want, just want. Joy and peace in believing
make us confess with David concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. He is
all my salvation, all of it. He's all my desire. He's all
I desire to have. But what is your life? It's but
a vapor. It's just here for a little time
and then vanishes away. This is the life of the lost
in this world. Here for a little while and then
it's gone. Knowing that there's nothing
here but Christ for us to desire. He is the believer's all in all. There's some of you who are wanting
to find peace for your souls. You've sought many places for
it, yet not the place nor the peace that comes from faith,
believing in Christ. There's a false peace that some
possess. They find the peace of carelessness. Everything with me and Jesus
is okay. Me and the man I've served, we've got a good thing
going. They're content without considering eternity. They're
content to live in the moment. How many people tell you, I'm
living in the moment? It's a moment of sin is all it is. They bury
their heads in the sand and they close their eyes when trouble
comes. And this false peace is beggarly
and it's cowardly kind of peace. It's the kind of peace in which
the man protects himself when after the thief is broken into
his house, he covers up his head in his bed. and thinks that all
must be safe because he can't hear or see the burglar at work. I always heard that ostriches
stick their head in the sand. I don't know if that's true or
not, but we by nature are ostriches if that's true. The child of God walks by faith,
not by sight. It's the eye of the soul that
looks to Christ alone. He looks to Christ for wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And he has made
all those things unto us. We don't have to look far. The
child of God looks in the face of trouble, trials, tribulation
that causes the weak man to fear. And he's not moved by what he
sees. Faith, believing is how he sees. He says, I'm not afraid. I'm
more than a conqueror through Christ that loved me. Well, you're
arrogant. Well, I'm arrogant in the one
who loved me and gave himself for me. If you want to say that,
go ahead. In believing we have peace, we
fear not because our Lord told us not to. We don't worry and
fret because our Lord told us to cast all our care on Him. Why are you worrying and fretting?
Give me that care! And we cast it and we take it
back. And we cast it and it's still
stuck on our hand. Me too. Me too. Some have a false peace with
self-confidence. They say that they have the faith
to move mountains. But they're the ones who in the
very end will cry for the mountains to fall on them when Christ comes. No peace found in baptism. No
peace in church membership. No peace in church going. I remember Brother Darwin. I'm sure I've told you this,
but he and Kathy, his wife at the time. Kathy has. Has passed
from death into life. And he said that they went to
a church and they were trying to raise money and they did a
car wash. And he said they washed cars all day long. And they were
sopping wet and just dead tired. And later on, with Kathy sitting
there with her hair wet and sticking straight up, they got to talking
about salvation by grace. And Kathy said, you mean to tell
me I washed all them cars for nothing? Yep. If you were depending on that
for salvation, You did it for nothing. My mom used to tell me good intentions
paved the road to hell. That's true, isn't it? Beloved, the only real peace
is to be found in believing. It's a peace which is the result
of believing the Word of God, who is God the Word and cannot
lie. What God has spoken must be true. Let God be true, and every man
a liar. If there's a better foundation
for peace in this world, then you ought to trust in it, but
there's not. There's no better foundation for peace than the
Word of God, who is Jesus Christ. And the old saying goes, God
said it, I believe it, that settles it. says there's peace in believing. By His grace, I do believe, but
my believing is not what settles it. God saying it and Christ dying
and shedding His blood is what settles it. It's a finished work
that I can rest in. Men's and women's unbelief cannot
and will not make void the faithfulness of God and His promises to Christ
and His people. The promises that God made to
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the same promises that God
makes to us. That's just, that's overwhelming. Paul said that in Romans chapter
three, verse three, for what if some did not believe? Shall
their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid. Men and women's unbelief cannot
and will not make void the faithfulness of God and His promises to you
and to me. The word of God is by inspiration
of the Holy Spirit. It's God-breathed. Well, that's
just a book a bunch of men wrote. I've been told that so many times.
No, they were inspired to write it by the God-breathed Holy Spirit. If you don't believe that this
holy book is inspired, then I don't have any good news for you. Every
part of God's Word is God-breathed. It's the infallible Word of God.
We have sure ground to stand on. Christ is the sure foundation. Christ is the Word of God. The
Word was made flesh and did what? Dwelt among us. And He died for
us. He went to the cross for us.
And He washed away our sin by the shedding of His blood. Either
this book is a lie or our faith is dead. Let me rephrase that. Either
this book is a lie or our faith's fully warranted. This book, its
author, its object, its subject is the only hope that we have. After all, he's called the God
of hope. Isn't that what it says in our
text? Look at it again. Now the God of hope. fill you
with all joy, peace, and believing that you may abound in hope. You ride above what most call
hope. You abound in it through the
power of the Holy Ghost. What are we going to stand upon
when we depart from this world? We have nothing but what God
has promised in this book to stand upon. Christ said, he that
cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. That's my hope. David wrote, yea, though I walk
through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for thou
art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. That's my hope. He that hath
the Son hath life. That's my hope. Our peace is
found on the testimony concerning God's Son. The Only Begotten
took on human form, the form of a servant. He was made of
a woman, made under the law. Why? To redeem them that were
under the law. Christ didn't become a man just
to see what it was like. Yes, He was touched with the
feeling of our infirmities, but it wasn't just so that He could
sympathize with us. He came and took on the form
of a servant that He might die in our room instead, fulfill
the law for us, satisfy God's holy justice against us. Don't
ever miss that. In the days of our Lord, that
word bastard, you know, that's a biblical word. It was a term for an illegitimate
child, yet today it takes on the term of being one who is
unpleasant or despicable, it means that too. Spiritually speaking,
outside of Christ, all of us by nature feel the meaning of
both. Fatherless and despicable. But, but, God the Father put
his elect in Christ. Christ is the elect and we're
chosen in him. Then we cease to be fatherless.
He adopts us into his kingdom, into his household, and he becomes
our father. God is my father. He really is. And we become his sons and daughters. You ever heard such good news?
2 Corinthians 6, 18, and I, God, will be a father unto you, and
you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. My father is almighty. I remember
as a boy, we used to get in arguments about whose daddy was the strongest.
My daddy's stronger than your daddy. No, my daddy's stronger
than your daddy. Listen, my daddy is stronger than everyone. He's
the Lord Almighty. He will keep the feet of His
saints. His sheep hear His voice, and He knows them. And they follow
Him, and He gives them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them
out of his hand." Just try to pluck me out of my daddy's hand.
Can't be done. I'm a man who trusts their doctor
and not the great physician. Men will trust their banker,
but not he who owns all things. Men will trust a king, but not
the king of kings. Men will trust a man's word,
but not God's word. Men will trust that the sun will
rise, but they don't believe that God's sun rose. It's a good and wise and true
and just and proper thing to trust the Lord Jesus Christ.
How do I do so? In believing. Peace in believing. And for instance, to believe
and trust in Christ brings a most fruitful peace. It's not a peace
that is provided for us here and there. We experience it that
way because of us. We're up and we're down, we're
up and we're down, but it's always there for us. Always, ever present. It's a fruitful peace. Faith
and believing takes the sting out of all our troubles. There's
no man who is so ready to cope with the troubles of life as
the one who knows that it's all right and has been since eternity. Men and women, even professing
believers, worry about so many things that they cannot have
true peace and rest. Don't do it. Stop doing it. I
know that's easier said than done. we strive to, one has faith
in believing Christ can say that every matter is already settled.
It is. The Lord's already settled it. Everything has worked out together
for my good. I have trusted myself to Christ. He is able to keep that which
I committed unto Him against that day, that day of judgment.
He took the burden that once shackled me. A man who runs up
a hill with weights on his back is gonna make slow work of that
upward incline in life, but you take off those weights from him
and he'll head up that hill like a gazelle. He leaves with ease up that mountain,
doesn't he? This peace with God is fruitful
in the growth of all other graces. One who puts out a garden does
not take the fruit out of the ground two or three times a year.
Well, I'm gonna plant some corn, and then they go back the next
day, Steve, you know something about this, and pull it up out
of the ground, look at its roots, and go, yeah, I think it's gonna
be okay, and then stick it back in the ground. It's not gonna
live long if you do that. You plant it in good soil, you
water and you fertilize it. And when the fruit bearing season
comes, you'll have fruit. Your labor would have proved
to be fruitful. Same results apply to faith.
So do. Plant your faith on Christ, the
good soil. Water it with Christ's living waters. Fertilize it with
the preaching of the gospel. Keep the weeds from allowing
strong roots to take over. You'll grow and you'll bring
forth fruit if you do. We have a couple of ladies here
that are master gardeners. No offense, ladies, but Christ
is the master gardener. Patience that you need. You'll
have the hope that you desire. And soon you'll have full assurance
that all is well as we just saw a moment ago. You'll grow strong
in the Lord and the power of His might. God will give you
peace in believing. Oh, I believe. Do you? Do you? Do we act as
if we do? And you know what? This will
help you to serve others. You'll want others to know about
what you have. When you find something good,
you want to share it with folks, don't you? You know, when a doctor
serves us well, we tell all that we know about it. Hey, let me
tell you about this doctor. Man, he really helped me. Why
not tell them about the great physician who can do what no
other doctor can do? He can heal incurable diseases. I've said more than once that
if I had a potion or a pill that would give eternal life or a
fountain of youth, Butyl Road would be backed up in both directions
as far as you could see, endless miles with those who desire to
have that. I have such an elixir. I do. I've got such a potion. I've
got such a pill. It's called the gospel of eternal
life. And the amazing thing is that
it's free for the taking. I take a pill right now that
costs the insurance or somebody hundreds of dollars. This one
is free. It's free. Medicare ain't got that good
yet. So dear sinner, I encourage and
exhort you to believe. To believe means to trust. It
means to trust Christ with your soul. It means to give your soul
to Christ and say, whatever you see to be best for me, I trust
it to you. Trust Christ with your soul.
You shall have peace in believing. He'll fill you with joy and peace.
How do you know? Because he said he would. based
everything I know upon this book. Had a man tell me recently that
it's just a book written by men. No, it's much more than that.
It's a book written for men, sinful men, depraved men and
women who need the help of the Great Physician. Joy, peace,
and hope. You can have all three in this
life and in the next. May God be pleased to make it
so for His glory, our good, and for Christ's sake. Amen.