I have been posting so much on social media that I actually wrote this yesterday, “Have you ever gone through your own Facebook feed like you’ve woken up out of a drunken stupor and been like, ‘What in the world have I done? What did I do last night?”
Is there something wrong with me? I’m the only one I know who posts this much stuff. And it makes me wonder why? Why aren’t other pastors out there saying these same things? It’s a wake-up call to the Church if there ever was one. Now is the time for pastors to be bold.
Two weeks ago, I preached on peace in troubled times. Last week I preached on the truth about truth. Both were in reference to the swirl that is all around us–maybe not around us in Watkins Glen, but around us nonetheless.
Only the truth of God and His Holy Spirit can provide that calm assurance and rock-solid faith that we need in these times moving forward.
If you have your Bibles, we are going to go yet again to Romans. Ironically, this is a chapter that we skipped when we did our Romans series because, when I read through it, I found it difficult to pull a sermon together on this chapter. Perhaps God wanted to save this chapter specifically for today?
Let’s take a look at Romans 15, verses 4-6, and then skip down to verse 13.
As you’re turning there, I’m going to go two chapters back, to Romans 13, and read to you a couple of verses from there.
It says:
11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Paul, in Ephesians, talks about the whole armor of God, but doesn’t specify light. That is because he is using the armor metaphor a little differently here. He says to put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. In other words, we shed darkness for light. I believe it was Leon Morris who said, “Putting on Christ is a strong and vivid metaphor. It means more than putting on the character of the Lord Jesus Christ, signifying rather Let Jesus Christ Himself be the armor that you wear.” (Morris)
Scripture: So let’s go a couple of chapters ahead to Romans 15:4-6, and then down to verse 13.
4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6 so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, you see where I’m going. I didn’t intend to do a series or continue with a theme; it is just that the news around the world is progressing in such a way that I can’t not speak out on what is going on. I believe the birth pains that Jesus described in Matthew 24 are ramping up.
In these troubled times, we need inner peace, we need to siphon out the truth from lies, and we need to be reminded that we have hope as children of God.
Our only hope for mankind is Christ alone. There is nothing else in which we can truly place our hope. With such a topsy-turvy, upside-down world we live in, who can hold it all together? Mankind’s hope is in mankind. And there will come a day, maybe sooner rather than later, when mankind will place that hope in a false messiah–a false Christ whom we only know as The Antichrist. But the true Christ, who is alive and well today, who lives within us, is the hope not only of those of us who know him, but of the whole world.
Yet the world rejects him as it did when he was here on earth, plainly seen, plainly heard, doing the miraculous that only God could do.
And because he lives within us, he provides us with hope and a firm foundation, so we can be confident in troubling times. Just like the hymn, “because he lives, I can face tomorrow; because he lives, all fear is gone; and I know he holds the future, and life is worth the living just because he lives.”
When I sat down at the computer to type out today’s sermon, I was pretty sure that I was going to write about the Bible. The importance of the Bible, the importance of maintaining reading the Bible on a regular basis, but as I sat there, it seemed that the tone of the world needed to be addressed, and how was I going to balance that out with reading scripture in a more specific sense?
Let’s look at verse 4 again; we can find it there.
It says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.”
It is interesting that Paul had no idea that we would be reading this letter in the same way he is describing the ancient scriptures of the Old Testament. But here we are, looking at not only those same Old Testament scriptures, but Paul himself, who taught and practiced and emulated patient endurance so that we, now, might have hope.
Gotquestions.org says: To endure is more than just continuing to exist; it is continuing to exist in the same manner as before the suffering began. If Paul had lived through his sufferings but at some point had thrown up his hands in defeat, stopped being obedient to God, or no longer worked for the cause of Christ, he would not have “endured.” If he had responded to his sufferings with an attitude of bitterness, anger, or retaliation, then Paul could not have said that he “endured.”
Paul’s response to suffering was not to buckle under the weight of circumstance but to realize Christ has called His church to endure hardship (John 16:33; Luke 14:27).
Notice that last part? Christ called His church to endure hardship. He knew it would have to. He knew that as the world hated him, it would hate his followers. Look at the kinds of hardships his apostles had endured. And now, in Vietnam, South Korea, Nigeria, and other places, His church is getting hit hard.
People don’t believe me when I say that it’s coming here. Even the smallest persecution could hit hard. For example, a lot of people want the churches to be taxed. Not a single church in America would remain if we were taxed. I can’t imagine what the assessment would be on this church alone, and any other church in Watkins Glen. We would have to go back to house churches, which is fine with me, so long as we can gather.
It’s still nothing compared to the underground church in China and what Christians elsewhere have to endure.
But they endure, and they endure with patient affliction. If we go back another couple of chapters, to Romans 12, Paul encourages the Roman Christians to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. If you’ve heard any stories from the underground church, that’s exactly what they are practicing. And it isn’t by their own strength. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that enables them to live in a way that is so mind-boggling that it has to be from the supernatural grace of God.
Paul goes on to say, “5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6 so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Just like the underground church, just like Erika Kirk, who forgave her husband’s killer, which inspired Tim Allen to forgive his father’s killer, which happened some 60 years ago, we are not to be like Bruce Wayne and harbor bitterness and revenge. We are to find love and strength and compassion, and forgiveness.
But how? God gives endurance and encouragement and the same attitude of mind that Christ Jesus had. I don’t think Erika Kirk or Tim Allen, or anyone else, could forgive a killer without the gift of God to do so. It is beyond our own understanding. We would never even think to do such a thing if it weren’t for the Bible.
I’ve seen a meme that said something to the effect of, “If the Bible was written by man, then why does it go against everything mankind desires?”
Scott Marshall, on his blog, said, If the Bible was something people made up, it wouldn’t be telling us to deny ourselves, sacrifice, forgive the people who hurt us, or keep purity in a world overflowing with lust. That’s right—it’d be saying, “Go on! Follow your heart. Chase after everything that feels good.” But it doesn’t do that. The Bible challenges us, it confronts us, and it calls us to something higher. And you better believe that kind of truth didn’t come from human nature.
Not only is the Bible something that is not natural–even completely foreign and unthinkable to mankind’s wisdom in its content, filled with not man’s truth but God’s truth, as we talked about last week, but the living God who dwells within the believer continues the progression of sanctification by giving us boldness, power, love and hope that we cannot naturally have on our own in spite of what Hollywood and Oprah Winfrey tells us.
Only the power of the Holy Spirit can give us that which we not only cannot attain on our own, but also that which we cannot explain on our own: joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.
Verse 13, Paul says, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The Power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus promised us affliction, but what else did he promise us? The guarantee that he has (past tense) overcome the world. He said it in the past tense when he said it in the present. Think about that. I have overcome the world. In other words, there’s nothing that God can’t handle.
Alexander MacLaren, a Scottish Baptist preacher at the turn of the ‘other’ century, said:
The truths conveyed are that God is both the origin of hope and the object of our hope (“Who inspires hope and imparts it to His children” Harrison). God is the Source of hope and the Giver of hope. Stated another way, the great benefits (hope, joy, peace) Paul prays for the saints at Rome, cannot be possessed apart from God. In the same manner, believers today can possess them only as He gives them to us. And what is the believer’s part in this divine transaction? To believe.
And I would add: to willingly and faithfully receive.
John Piper comments…The pathway that the Spirit cuts through the jungle of our anxieties into the clearing of joy is the pathway of faith.
Luke says of Stephen in Acts 6:5, that he was “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,” and he says of Barnabas in Acts 11:24 that he was “a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” The two go together.
If a person is filled with faith, he will be filled with the Spirit, the Spirit of joy and peace. Notice [in Romans 15:13] that it is in or by believing that we are filled with joy and peace. And it is by the Spirit that we abound in hope. When we put those two halves of the verse together, what we see is that through our faith ((or) our believing) the Spirit fills us with His hope and thus with His joy and peace.
And, of course, since hope is such an essential part of being filled with joy by the Spirit, what we have to believe is that God is, as Paul says, the God of hope. We have to rivet our faith on all that he has done and said to give us hope.
So do you see how all of this ties together with where we are in this day and age, and perhaps in the near future, as who knows what progresses day by day?
There’s an old saying, and it may even be a song title, “We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.”
When we turn on the news, maybe you turn it on and then turn it back off again. Maybe you don’t even turn it on at all. There was a time this past summer when I didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to the news. I kind of had to have a news sabbatical for a few weeks.
But ever since the Charlie Kirk shooting, there has been something stirring in my spirit. Can you feel it? A change that is coming, or already has come. When you see things ramping up–and I’m talking end-times stuff–we’d better seek and be filled with oil in our lamps. Even though it was predicted that the rapture would happen last week, it could still come sometime soon, the way things are going.
Like I said, out of nowhere, England announced mandatory Digital I.D. cards whereby their citizens can’t work if they don’t have one. That’s not step one, that’s more like step four. Step one was when RFID chips started to become more common to track pets.
Then, step two, we got these little chips in our debit cards, then step three, along came these same types of chips that people, more so in Sweden–voluntarily put in their hands to use for all kinds of things.
- Medical Use: RFID chips can store medical information, making it easier for healthcare providers to access a patient’s history quickly. This can be particularly beneficial for individuals with chronic conditions or those who may be unable to communicate their medical needs.
- Identification and Access Control: Many people use RFID implants for identification purposes, such as accessing secure areas, unlocking doors, or making payments. In some countries, like Sweden, thousands of individuals have opted for these implants to replace traditional keys and cards.
- Tracking and Safety: RFID chips can potentially help track individuals, which raises concerns about privacy and consent. They could be useful in situations where individuals may be at risk, such as those with dementia.
It’s only a matter of time until mandatory digital ID cards come here, and then at some point, it will be mandatory to be placed in the hand or the forehead. All we need to do is bear allegiance to a false god. But I hope and believe we’ll be outta here by then.
What other end-times scenarios are we seeing today? I mentioned earlier that lawlessness has increased in our society. I don’t think I need to expound too much on that–in fact, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Let’s just say political correctness and wokeism have had a lot to do with it. But I think it started when people stopped attending church. They say there’s a revival; let’s hope it’s not only true, but lasting. And not only lasting, but let’s pray that those who are returning to church are going to Bible-believing churches.
Jesus said, “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” Has the love of many grown cold? When nearly one-third of the Far Left says that political violence is a good option? The party of tolerance has become extremely intolerant. Many on that side celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a completely innocent man, yet how many of those same people, I would bet, would probably be appalled at the death penalty?
You can have your own opinion about the death penalty, but you see the irony. Killing an innocent man, but not a man guilty of something heinous?
Paul also tells Timothy the way in which society will be in the Last Days.
He says there will be “terrible times in the last days” (2 Timothy 3:1). “People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:2–4, ESV).
Unsurprisingly, love for God and neighbor—the two greatest commandments—will grow cold.
I want to quickly go through a few passages from the three chapters in Titus before we close. Only I’m going to go through them out of order.
From Chapter 1:
15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. 16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
That’s Paul. That’s in the Bible. It sounds harsh, but listen to this passage from Chapter 3.
He says,
3 At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.
And finally from Chapter 2:
11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
In these last days, in this world gone awry, may we be eager to do good, to love our neighbor, to be full of self-control. May we know what His truth, His good, pleasing, and perfect will is. May we be full of grace. May we be filled overflowing with faith, hope, and love. And in these troubling times, may we be of good courage.
To “be of good courage” means to possess an inner quality that enables us to confront danger and difficulty without fear but with calmness, boldness, confidence, strength, and trust–trust in God, in His goodness, His faithfulness, and His provision.
One more from gotquestions.org as we close: Amid this bleak outlook, Jesus shines a light of hope. Indeed, He is the only hope. He says, “The one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13, ESV). Those who endure to the end will persevere in the face of persecution, false teaching, and unrestrained wickedness. They are the ones whose love does not grow cold. They are truly born again; they are sealed, and their lives are transformed by the Holy Spirit of power.
Featured Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay
