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Rejoicing in Our Suffering
 
 
*Romans 5:1-5*
*October 9, 2005* (*Thanksgiving)*
* *
 
*/ We can rejoice in suffering because it is productive.
It yields character, hope, and an opportunity to minister to others in their brokenness./*
* *
I do have a Thanksgiving message this morning, but it’s not your traditional “feel good” Thanksgiving message.
We have so much to be thankful for, and yes we will count our blessings this day, but will you count suffering as one of your blessings today?
For that is what I want you to do with me this morning.
If you make the ultimate goal in your life to become successful in business, what do you do when you reach a certain level of success?
If you make a goal in your life to get your children through college, what do you do when they receive those diplomas and are now living in distant cities?
If you make a goal of your life to get back into shape and run a 10K road race, what do you do when you break that finish line and you finish those 6.2 miles?
If you make a goal of your life to become financially secure and independently wealthy, what do you do when you reach that goal?
John Paul Getty, the richest man in the world while he was alive, was asked if having  three billion dollars was enough.
His answer was no.
When asked how much more he would need to make him happy, he replied, “Another billion, then I’ll be happy.”
Can you imagine?
I remember Tom Landry, coach of the Dallas Cowboys, saying, just after they had won the Super Bowl (the Dallas Cowboys, year after year after year, had been coming so close, and finally that victory had come), “The overwhelming emotion—in a few days, among the players on the Dallas Cowboys football team—was how empty that goal was.
There must be something more.”
So some of those football players just discover a little younger than do some of us in our forties or fifties or at retirement age how hollow those goals have been and how, ultimately, the only great goal worth giving a lifetime to is that goal of becoming more and more conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
That’s a goal we can keep growing into all the days of our lives.
When our children were young, we read to them /The Chronicles of Narnia/, these wonderful children’s stories about the magical land of Narnia.
In the second book, /Prince Caspian/, Lucy enters Narnia again, and she sees Aslan, this lion figure who represents Christ.
She has not seen him in a long, long time, and so they have a wonderful reunion.
Lucy says to Aslan, who represents Christ, “Aslan, you’re bigger now.”
Aslan says, “Lucy, that’s because you are older.
You see, Lucy, every year that you grow, you will find me bigger.”
Hasn’t that been the case for many of you?
For many of us, every year we grow, we find him bigger in his grace and in his goodness and in his faithfulness and in those promises that he has given us upon which we can depend all the days of our lives.
Paul, in Romans, is addressing a group of Christians who are living during the time when the reign of Nero is at its most irrational.
The Christians are literally being fed to the lions.
They are saying, “/Iesus Christos Kurios/,” Jesus Christ, Lord.
We can sort of mumble that—“Yes, we believe Jesus Christ is Lord”—but in the first century, if you said, “Jesus Christ, Lord,” you were crucified, because you were supposed to say, “Caesar is lord.”
But those early Christians said, “Jesus Christ is Lord,” and so they were nailed to the cross, or they were fed to the lions.
It is in this kind of environment that Paul is writing.
How in the world in that kind of environment does faith work itself out?
That’s the question Paul addresses in the fifth chapter of Romans.
So, lets read Romans 5:1-5 now.
/“//Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.
Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of highest privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory.
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to endure.
And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation.
And this expectation will not disappoint us.
For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”/
/ /
*Let’s Look at Three Biblical Principles of Suffering Taken From This Passage*
Now, before we dig directly into Romans, let me give you three biblical presuppositions that we have drawn from these opening chapters of Romans as they relate to the suffering that Paul describes in the fifth chapter.
First of all, the vast majority of human suffering can be at least partially explained through the doctrine of free will.
And Paul, in Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3, has been very clear in sketching for us the doctrine of free will—that we have been given by the grace of God free will; and in that free will, we will to rebel; and when we will to rebel, we bring havoc and suffering to ourselves and to others.
When a man makes a decision that he wants to fulfill himself and do his own thing and irresponsibly leaves his wife and his children, a suffering comes into that household, we ought not blame that suffering on Jesus.
God has not to caused that suffering.
That suffering has come as a result of that man’s free will.
He’s in rebellion.
That leads us to the second principle.
Because of man’s rebellion, we live in a fallen world.
We understand as biblical Christians that Satan is still the prince of the systems of this world (Ephesians 2:2 says that Satan is the spirit who works in those who are disobedient), and he will seek to bring havoc and heartache and disarray in any way that he can.
When Francis Schaeffer was suffering with cancer in Rochester, Minnesota, at Mayo Clinic.
He used to comment on how struck he was with the courage and the character of the Christians who were suffering there with terminal illnesses, but yet at the same time how he was struck with the naivete of Christians, in terms of, What in the world do we expect?
What in the world do we expect when we live in a fallen world, realizing that Satan is still the prince of the systems of this world?
Yes, Satan is still the prince, but Jesus Christ is a King.
Third, we will not fully understand in this life the reason for many of life’s greatest tragedies.
And so with the apostle Paul we will say in this lifetime, “We see through a mirror dimly.”
The Pilgrims would not fully understand in their lifetime the reason for the suffering that beset them.
The first official Thanksgiving Day occurred as a unique holy day in 1621—in the fall of that year with lingering memories of the difficult, terrible winter they had just been through a few months before, in which scores and scores of babies and children and young people and adults had starved to death, and many of the Pilgrims had gotten to a point where they were even ready to go back to England.
They had climbed into a ship and were in that harbor heading back to England, ready to give up.
It was only as they saw another ship coming the other way, and on that ship there was a Frenchman named Delaware, and he came with some medical supplies and some food, that they had enough hope to go back and to try to live in the midst of those adverse sufferings.
And yet they came to that first Thanksgiving with the spirit of giving and of sharing and of thankfulness.
The free will of man, the fallen world in which we live, and the reality that we see through a mirror dimly—these three biblical principles serve as a backdrop to what we learn this morning in the fifth chapter of Romans.
*II.
Rejoicing in the Midst of Suffering*
“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand and we rejoice.
We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”
So says Romans 5:1
 
The key word for this passage of Scripture is the word /rejoice/.
It comes from the Greek term /kauchometha/, and it literally means “hope and glory.”
We have hope and glory.
Then we come, in verse three, to a verse that has puzzled and troubled Bible students through the centuries.
What in the world is Paul driving at in verse 3 of Romans chapter 5? “More than that,” he says, “we rejoice, we glory and hope, in our suffering.”
Notice the preposition.
He doesn’t say for our suffering, as it’s taught in many segments of the Christian church.
We don’t rejoice /for /the suffering, but (a better translation in terms of New Testament Greek) /in the midst of/ the suffering.
Right in the midst of it, we can rejoice.
Please realize this is no verse that we can just pull out of its context and say that it is affirmed only here.
No, it is the unanimous witness of the New Testament that somehow in the midst of suffering the Christian can rejoice.
Now, why?
He doesn’t just say, /“We rejoice in the midst of suffering,”/ period.
He says, “We rejoice in the midst of suffering because it produces something.”
What does it produce?
Look at the next phrase in your Bibles.
/“We rejoice in the midst of our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance.
Endurance produces character.”/
/Character /is the blockbuster term here in Romans chapter 5. That’s the Greek term /dokimas/, and it literally means “someone or something that has been put to the test and has measured up.”
If you have ever traveled to the Middle East, you may have taken note of the fact that you can visit a potter and you will look at a vessel that’s been through the furnace, and it’s been through the fire, and it hasn’t cracked.
It hasn’t broken; it comes out whole.
It comes out complete.
If you turn that vessel over, on the bottom there is stamped /DOKIMAS/.
It means “approved.”
This is a vessel of character.
It has withstood the test of the furnace where it has been refined, and it hasn’t broken; it is whole, complete.
That’s character, tested and true.
We will be refined in the furnace of life.
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