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God loves you lavishly. When we read the Bible as a whole we begin to get
a picture of a God who doesn’t give up on the people he has created.
As a people we rebel, we revolt, we grumble, we do vile things and yet God
continues to reach out to us in love.
This love is most clearly revealed in the incarnation. This wondrous gift
of God in the flesh, in the birth and life of Jesus Christ, we come to know
the intimacy of God’s presence and love. In Christ’s death and resurrection
we are justified by faith and given a new life. In the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit we come to know God’s power and presence in our lives. This is
a God whose love supersedes all loves. This is a God who gives good gifts.
On this Father’s Day I want you to think of the most wonderful Father.
That might be your own, or it might be one you have seen from a distance.
I understand that not all fathers live out their call to love their children
well. But just for this morning I want you to imagine a father who loves,
who gives good things to his child, and a father who is willing to sacrifice.
I am so thankful for my own father and the fathers of this church who exemplify
such characteristics.
Illustration of a Father’s love.
I remember when Wesley, my first child, was born. Bruce, his father and I
looked down on him with breathless awe. Bruce looked at me, with tears in
his eyes and said, “I would do anything to make sure he has what he needs.
There would be no job beneath me.” In all the years since that day, Bruce
has been a Dad who loves to give good gifts to his children. And yet if you
take Bruce’s love and multiply it by a thousand or a million you have
just begun to get an idea of the magnitude of God’s love for you.
In this letter to the Romans, Paul is caught up in the wonder of what God
has done in Christ. “Therefore”, he says, “since we have been
justified through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We have a new relationship with God. We have been reconciled. Not because
we have earned this new relationship, but because of God’s great love.
And Paul says, not only that, but God has these great gifts to give us as
we live out this new life in him. God wants to give you grace, peace, endurance,
character, and hope. A hope that does not disappoint.
Paul calls us throughout this passage to rejoice at two levels. First we are
invited to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. This passage has just
begun to describe all that God has done for us and can do for us in Jesus
Christ. The privilege to be a people who stand in grace should cause us to
give thanks. We are to give thanks for all the gifts we have received and
continue to receive through Christ Jesus. Even when there are tough situations
in our lives, there is cause for hearts to be grateful.
Paul calls those who know suffering and affliction to rejoice as well. At
that point, we who have been singing God’s praise are tempted to stop
and say, “I don’t think so.” We have to be careful of laying
this burden on others.
Illustration: I remember at the time of my Father-in-law’s death, we
sat around the table in the hospital and began to give thanks. We gave thanks
for this wonderful man who was so gifted, so loving and so ready to make himself
available to us. We gave thanks for the ways that God had used him in our
lives. We gave thanks for the faith in Christ that was such a foundation in
his life and our lives. It was a healing time. And yet, if someone had come
to us before the table experience happened and said, “Now you need to
gather around that table and begin to give thanks”, it would have been
a bad scene.
Our call is not to demand thankfulness from others. Paul is not demanding
thanks in suffering, he is giving testimony to what he has known and seen
in times of suffering. He is offering a word of hope to those who know suffering.
It is the assurance that God can bring about something good even from this.
Sometimes I like to imagine the letters of Paul being read to the gathered
people in the house churches. I can hear their silence as Paul talks about
rejoicing in suffering, “…because we know that suffering produces
perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope” (Romans 5:
3,4). Other translations use the word “boasting” instead of “rejoicing.”
Perhaps that is a better translation. We “boast” or “rejoice”
not because we are glad about the situation but because we are glad that God
can bring about something good.
The word for perseverance or endurance is hypomone, which means a persistent
patience. It’s actually one of my favorite Greek words. The translation
is “perseverance” or “endurance.” For me, these words
relate to a long period of suffering or a dreary trek through tough times.
Hypomone on the other hand has a joyfulness to its sound. This word reflects
that rejoicing or boasting we heard about earlier. This is not a boasting
that claims things are good when they are really bad. It is not a boasting
about our own strength and ability. It is a boasting that arises from a heart
that knows, “only God could have brought me through such a time as this”
and “only God could bring something good out of this.” This kind
of endurance does not deny the difficulties that are experienced in times
of suffering and affliction. Rather, this boasting gives witness to God’s
faithfulness and presence.
Paul also wants to assure those who are in difficult times to know that God
is not finished with them yet. If they allow God to walk with them through
these tough times there is a strength and a peace and a depth of character
that they would other wise never know. This kind of hypomone creates martyrs
who sing at times of near death, it creates the words of testimony when Christians
aren’t physically healed, it creates the testimonies I hear from those
who have given their lives to serving the poor, it creates the wise words
I have received from the elderly saints of the church. There is a hypomone
about them that I want in my life.
I have to be honest though … I want it without the suffering. The truth
of life on this earth is that whether we like it or not, suffering comes.
Paul is giving us an anchor in suffering. As someone who has known suffering,
Paul is offering words of assurance. Suffering and affliction are not signs
of God’s abandonment. Suffering happens, but through it all, God is with
you. God will give you hypomone, strength to endure and God will create something
good. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those
who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”(Romans 8:28).
I heard a television preacher speak about the rights we have as children of
God to take our inheritance – to “get our stuff.” She even
directed the congregation to turn to each other and say, “I’m getting
my stuff.” The problem with her preaching was not God’s desire to
give good stuff to his children. It was that God has better stuff then what
she was promising. While she was speaking of the materialistic things of this
world, the stuff of our inheritance is grace, peace, endurance, character,
and hope. Our problem is that we can be like rebellious children wanting cheap
trinkets of this world instead of the good gifts of God.
Think of the saints of God with whom you have been privileged to spend time.
It is those who have endured times of suffering who have the gentlest spirits,
the clearest understanding of God’s grace and offer the most contagious
testimonies of hope. It is this promise of a living, growing discipleship
that we are promised in today’s scripture. These good gifts are what
our God wants to lavish on us. Wondrous gifts of a relationship of peace with
him, a relationship of peace with each other, a grace that is received and
extended, the strength to endure through the tough times, a depth of character
that moves us from shallow ways of living and a hope that never disappoints.
All these gifts are being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
We sometimes seem to embrace an image of a restrained God. A God who holds
back and kind of sprinkles out the good stuff upon those who have prayed enough,
lived well enough, served the church long enough. This is not the image that
we get from today’s scripture. In verse five the word of God says, “And
hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our
hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
These are the life giving waters that flow from God. The verb “poured
out” speaks of God giving of himself without restraint, an extravagance
and blessing beyond our imagination. It is this endless flow of God’s
love that simply is waiting for us to turn away from all other gods of this
world, and turn to our God in the name of Jesus Christ and simply say, “I
want the gifts you have for me.”
It is this outpouring of God’s love that causes the dying to sing, the
suffering to have peace, and all Christians to have hope. God, by the Holy
Spirit, pours out a love that surrounds us and fills us and gives us a hope
that does not disappoint. This image of pouring out speaks of the living waters
that we should let flow in and through us to others. There should be something
spiritually attractive about us that offer others grace, peace, endurance,
character, and hope. Then it is our job to point to the source of all these
good gifts.
God’s desire is that we might be a people made alive by this gift of
grace and be a people of peace and hope. God’s desire is that we would
be reconciled with him, filled with peace, standing in grace, living under
an out-pouring of his love.
Who would turn away from such a love as this? Who would turn away from the
good gifts God has to offer? These gifts are effective in good times and hard
times, because they are gifts from a God that loves us lavishly.
Let us rejoice!
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