How God Grows Hope (Rom 5:3-5)

Big Idea:

Tension: How does God lovingly grow our hope that we have because of the gospel of justification by faith alone?

Resolution: By using suffering to build endurance which builds “character” which builds hope.

Exegetical Idea: God lovingly grows our hope that we have because of the gospel of justification by faith alone by using suffering to build endurance which builds character which builds hope.

Theological Idea: God loves his children by growing the hope gave them in the gospel through suffering.

Homiletical Idea: God loves us by growing our gospel hope through suffering.

Sermon

Introduction: How can we grow in hope?

Francis Collins: Had everything. Two doctorates. A thriving practice. Being set up for the world. Money. Prestige. Everything he could ever want.

“Growing up, Collins’s religious instruction was limited to being sent to the local Episcopal church choir to learn music, “instructed by my dad to ignore the rest of it, which I did,” he told me. In college and then graduate school, he found himself moving from the category of agnostic to atheist. “I would have challenged anybody who wanted to bring to the conversation some discussion about God. I would have asserted they were basically stuck in some past era of supernaturalism that is no longer necessary, because science has eliminated the need for it,” is how he put it to me. But the time came when, as a third-year medical student, he was no longer learning about the human body in a lecture hall; he was sitting at the bedside of people with terrible illnesses, most of which physicians had imperfect methods to be able to help.

“Watching those individuals’ fates, what was going to be coming soon, the end of their life, I was trying to imagine what I would do in that circumstance,” Collins shared with me. “This was in North Carolina, and there were a lot of wonderful individuals, many of them having had relatively simple lives, but lives that were totally dedicated to helping other people. Many of these people were deeply committed to faith. I was puzzled and unsettled to see how they approached something that I personally was pretty terrified about: the end of their lives. They had peace and equanimity, and even a sort of sense of joyfulness that there was something beyond. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“It made me realize that I had never really gone beyond the most superficial consideration of whether God exists, or a serious consideration about what happens after you die.”

Collins told me about a patient he had gotten pretty attached to—“she reminded me of my grandmother,” he said—and who suffered from advanced cardiac disease, which included almost daily episodes of crushing chest pain. “And yet she came through this all with remarkable peace and was very comfortable sharing the reasons for that with me, namely her faith in Jesus. And at one point after one of those sharing moments, she looked at me in a quizzical way and said, ‘You know, doctor’—she did call me doctor, I wasn’t yet—‘You have listened to me talk about my faith, but you never say anything. What do you believe?’ Just very direct, very simple question, and it was like a thunderclap. Like a realization that I could not walk away from, but that was the most important question I’ve ever been asked.”

Would go on to become a Christian through the help of a pastor and through reading the works of C.S. Lewis

One question caused him a lot of trouble early on was the problem of weakness, “I found that striking, particularly in this moment. “One of my great puzzles when I first became a Christian is that verse, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, because My strength is made perfect in your weakness,’” he told me. “That was so completely upside down for me. Weakness? And now I embrace that with the fullness of everything around me when I’m realizing that my strength is inadequate, whether it’s coronavirus or some family crisis, God’s strength is always sufficient. That is a such a great comfort, but it took me a long time to get to the point of really owning that one.”

How did Collins get from point A to point B?

Review: Hope we got through the gospel

Christ’s death and resurrection

Justification

Peace

Access

Hope

Quality

Object

We rejoice in our sufferings

Suffering

Any kind of suffering

Produces - agricultural metaphor; suffering is the soil that endurance grows in.

Endurance

Testing of our faith produces endurance: James 1:2-3

This endurance helps us to wait with hope: Romans 8:24-25; Romans 15:4; Col 1:11; 1 Thess 1:2-3

Illustration: working out, breaks us down to build us up

If we don’t have endurance, we will never understand how great our hope is.

Endurance produces character

Character

Means “testworthy; holds up in a trial or test”

In Scripture word often means to melt gold 1 Pet 1:6-7

When you heat up false gold, it reveals itself for what it is.

When you melt real gold, the dross floats to the top. You see, suffering has a way of purifying our hopes that are good and Godly from those that are bad and ungodly. It has a way of rebuking us for putting too much hope in certain things, and not enough hope in Christ and our salvation.

Don’t resent God because he is ridding you of the dross. It is for your good.

Hope

Character purifies us to have this hope

This is an expanded hope from what we saw, a hope that has grown

This hope does not put us to shame; It does not allow us to be embarrassed or let us down

The only way we sustain this hope is through suffering

Why is this all true?

Because God’s love for us is poured out in our heart

God’s love is shown in putting his son on the cross in our place and raising him for our life

In seasons of suffering lean into this love, because this is the only way you get this kind of hope

Pine tree releasing seeds in wildfire

Suffering is the fire your faith needs to release these seeds. These forests grow through dying. So the only way for foresters to grow these forests and to keep them healthy is to set them on fire.

Don’t resent God for a thoughtful, well-prepared, well-curated, well-designed, control burn. It is so that your hope can come back bigger and stronger. It is so that in death, you might find life.