Session 12 – Romans; Romans 5: Mark Lanier, 08/17/25

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[Music] It is a joy to be back. Thank you for being here. I'm excited to get back into Romans. Are you excited to get back into Romans? Then let's do that together. Now, you are here today. Today. There we go. You are here today. And when you come in here, if someone could climb inside your head, they would find some of you celebrating. You've got the yays of life. They would find some of you looking at the ugs of life as you try to handle some issues that just leave you with that unsettled feeling in your stomach. And some of you are just working through the blas of life. It's just same old same old and so it goes. But who you are today is a moment in time. And everybody in here has a past where you have been before. You also have a future. Now, for some of you, your past may be a little bit shorter than it is for others. For some of us, our future is uh probably a little bit, you know, I I I'm fond of saying the end for me is not as far as the start. My start was a lot longer from point today than my end will be. Now I don't know when my end is. But all of this is true for all of us who are living at the moment. And the thing about it is who we are today has to some degree been made up of things that have happened to us in the past. Our blas are blas that we've come into. Our ugs are because of things that have happened before. Our yays may be reasons we're celebrating. All of our blas and yays and ugs are also linked to what we anticipate or dread or fear about tomorrow. Now, I don't know where you are. You've got to decide where you are. But I can tell you this. If you put up a concern meter for your yays, flaws, and ugs, for some of you it's not that big. For some of you, it's a much bigger figure. For some of you, it may just be sort of in the middle. But I'd like you to think about where you are right now

because it's going to be relevant to the passage that we study today in the book of Romans. So the passage today is a passage that needs you to look at your yays, your ugs, your blas in light of the past and in light of the future. And if you will do that, it will make a difference as we do three things today. First, we're going to remember where we were. We're going to do the first 11 classes of Romans in about 10 minutes. So, you'll have to fasten your seat belt, but it's think of it as a refresher. And if you have not been here for the 11 weeks we did in the spring, um, now you don't have to watch it. Then secondly, we're going to look at Romans 5 1-5. I was thinking about going up to eight, but I don't realistically think we'll have time. And then the third thing we'll do is spend some time on points for home. So let's start remembering where we were. Romans is an unusual epistle or letter. It's unusual because of its size. It's unusual because Paul had not been there. And and and it's it's big for an ancient letter, but it's also big for just Paul's letters. It's by far the biggest letter Paul ever wrote that we know of. There's nothing that's close. He wrote it to the Christians who were at Rome. We know that Rome at the time was a million person city. It was a huge city. It was the largest city in the world at that time. That means it's not just bighearted like Leach, Texas, but it's big in numbers. The church there came out of the Jewish population. The Jewish population was also large. 40 to 60,000 are the best estimates based upon not just the synagogues we know were present, but other evidence we've got as well. The church actually began on Pentecost. The same day the church started in Jerusalem. There were Romans who were in Jerusalem, Roman Jews who were there temporarily who became Christians who then took the church back with them when they went home. Over time, this Jewish church added to it Gentiles and that created some disturbance. We don't know the degree of disturbance it caused in the larger Jewish community itself that the Gentiles were in. But we do know that the larger Jewish community in Rome started fighting and having great public disturbances over Jesus Christ. And we know this because Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews out of Rome because they were fighting over Jesus. We've got from uh Sutonius's life of the Caesars written that around 49 AD, Claudius expelled from Rome the Jews who were constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Crestus, a poor Latin spelling for Christ, a Greek word, a reference to Jesus. Most scholars agree. Now we know this not only because ancient history shows it to us. Sutonius wrote the lives of the Caesars and wrote about this within the decades following. But we not only know it from there, we know it from the biblical text because Acts chapter 18 said that Paul left Athens. He went to Corenth and it was in Corinth that he found a Jew named Aquilla. Aquill originally came from Pontis, but he had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. So when Claudius commanded all the Jews leave Rome, that included the Jewish Christians as well as the Jewish non-Christians. And that left a Roman church that for the next five years is being run entirely by the Gentiles. The church that started Jewish is being run by the Gentiles. And only upon Claudius's death in October of 54 AD did the Jews return. Now, by the time Paul writes the letter to the Romans, the Jews have returned. So, we know he's writing after 5 October 54 AD. We know that because in the Roman letter itself, Paul says, "Greet Priscilla and Aquilla, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risk their necks for my life." So, we've got an understanding of who's writing the letter, where it's being written to, and some of the situation in which Paul writes. Now, Paul's writing from Corenth, and to some degree, Paul seems to be rehearsing his theology and his positions because he's about to take the Gentile money to the Jerusalem church. And so he's walking through this merger and relationship and consideration of Jew and Gentile and he's working it out theologically. But it's very relevant to work it out for the Romans because you got a church that starts Jewish. The Gentiles kind of get put into it, but then the Jews get swept away and all you've got are the Gentiles. The Jews then return and they're kind of like, "Okay, it's ours again." And and the Gentiles are thinking, "You know, actually, we were doing pretty good while you were gone." And so, there's just going to be some inherent issues of how the two go back together. And so it's good for Paul to be rehearsing. Not only he's going to Jerusalem to take to the Jewish Christians there, money that's been raised by Gentiles in the Gentile church in the Mediterranean world. But he's also just working through this. And so Paul puts together a letter that is not um so much a personal letter as it almost is an exposition, an oration, an argument if you will. And he uses ancient rhetorical devices in this letter more so than anything else that we have he wrote. So for example in Romans 1:16-1 17 you have his propos proposidio

you have his propacidio that is his thesis statement. That's where he lays out what he's going to say. It's it's the theme of the book. Wrapped up in those two verses is the message of the book of Romans. And so if we understand that, we will see that what he's done is he's created four different clauses in those two verses. And this should be our guiding star. This is our GPS for understanding the rest of the letter. We can tie it back into what he said here and understand it. This is the passage that begins. Paul says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel." Now, gospel is a Paul word. Paul uses it more than anyone else in the New Testament by far. And when Paul uses it, he uses it in a very Pauline way. It's one of his words, if you will. Other gospel writers will or gospel writers will use it their own way. Peter uses it his way. Um John uses it his way. But but Paul uses it in a uniquely Pauline way. and he's got 60 of the 76 uses in the New Testament. So, it's a good way to understand that word and we need to understand it as Paul uses it. Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15 what he means when he uses the word gospel. Paul uses the word gospel to refer to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. That's the meat of it. The word gospel is a composite word in the Greek. It means good or excellent or great and then news or message and it can be used for a variety of ways in antiquity. But Paul finds no news as good as that which says Jesus Christ died, was buried, and resurrected on behalf of his church, on behalf of God's people. Leon Morris wrote, "There is no good news to compare with the news of what God has done in Christ for humanity's salvation. And that's what Paul means. So Paul's gospel, his good news is Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection on our behalf. And Paul says, "That does not shame me. I'm not embarrassed Jesus had to die for me. I'm not embarrassed that that the the greatness of God is revealed through the stigma of a cross.

I'm not ashamed to say that the death of Christ has irrevocably altered who I am and how I live. Paul then says because the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the gospel, that's God's power to save everyone. everyone who believes. It was chronologically the Jew first. But then it came to the Greek. That was true in Jerusalem. That was true in a timeline. It was true in the Roman church. It came first chronologically to the Jew, but also to the Greek. It's not the power just to save a Jew. It's not the power just to save a Greek. The cross of Christ is God's power to save everyone. There is no way to go successfully into the father's presence eternally into the father's presence but through the death of Christ. He is the door. So Paul says second clause it's the power the death and resurrection of Christ is the power of God to save everyone who has faith. Clause number three, for in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, in the gospel, in it, God's righteousness is revealed. It is it is uncovered for everyone to see. You have at the cross of Christ not only emerging of God's judgment upon sin but in the resurrected tomb you have God's announcement of eternity for humanity. And so you have here the righteousness which changes who we are, declares us not guilty before God in an eternal judgment court, but also manifests itself in how we behave. We become a kingdom of righteous ones, no longer a kingdom of sinners with no hope under wrath. And Paul then takes from Habach that phrase as it's written, the righteous shall live by faith. Now that is the opening of Romans. And then from that point, Paul says, "Let me tell you what life is like without the gospel." What is life like if you don't have Jesus Christ paying the atonement, the price for your sins? Answer: judgment and darkness. And it's on the Gentiles. But then he says, "It's on the Jews. It's on everybody." God's principles of judging are ones that bring death and condemnation on everyone who tries to stand on their own merit or worth or value because nobody makes it. Nobody makes the cut. Nobody's good enough. All have sinned. All have fallen short of God's glory. There is not one person who does that true good. Not even one. So, we're all destined for God's wrath if it weren't for what Paul begins in Romans 3:21. But now, there is a righteousness of God that's manifested apart from anything you do. It's apart from all of your works. It's apart from how good you are. It's apart from how you feel. It's apart from anything associated with your accomplishments.

It's based entirely on the cross of Christ. And that's what the Old Testament, the law, and the prophets bore witness to. That is what explains the sacrifices and the meanings of them as laid out in the law. That is what explains Isaiah 53 in its ultimate sense. This is what the Bible's been saying. Humanity has a problem. This people are sinful. They're inadequate. But the love of God is so great for his creation that he from before creation decided I will have to die for these people to have them eternally but I will do that and I will pay the price for their sins. So this means that what was desolate now has life but now there's a righteousness of God. Romans 3:21, Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones says there are no more wonderful words in the whole of scripture than these two. But now, and then in Romans 4, Paul says, "Look, I'm not abandoning the Torah here. I'm demonstrating the harmony of the Old Testament with the understanding that we are made right with God and made right as people by our faith and trust in God. And this is all part of Paul's message to put that community back together because there's no dividing line now between Jew and Gentile. We all come to God through the one person, Jesus Christ. He died once. He didn't die once for the Jews, then once for the Gentiles. It was a one time for all. And so that's where we've been so far. And now we get to Romans 5 1-5. And if we go back to that slide, Paul's putting this community back together. What he's doing in these verses is he's saying, "Okay, I've explained to you we're made righteous. We're justified by faith." So what what does that mean for us today? Are we simply talking about punching a ticket to heaven? punching a ticket to an eternal earth, punching a ticket into a divine fellowship, or does it have some other significance? Does it is it only about the past and the future, or is it relevant to today and our yays, ugs, and blas? Paul says it's very relevant today. So let's look at this. Romans 5 verse one. Paul says, "Therefore,

since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Now the first word in the the Greek passage is deythentase. Deyotentes is translated we have been justified. And we know that because we remember Romans 1:16 and 17.

He says for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed. That word righteousness is also from the same DK word group. It's the same as justified. We just use a different English word, but it's the same Greek family. We have been justified. Now, I got to talk to a couple who were sitting in front of me. I won't embarrass them by name. Maybe David, but probably not. But they said they've signed up for Greek class that we offer at the library this fall. Uh we offer free Greek class for you. And um I was so excited and and I was told, "Yeah, but then I started looking. It's there's like quizzes and homework.

I was like, "Huh?" And it's going to be really good for your brain. A number of you, Larry Burgess, showed me he's been writing the Greek out on this class and translating it before every class. I'll get an email from him. How far are you going to get this Sunday? Because I I want to translate it. Now, if Greek is not your thing, don't worry about it. We got you covered. But if Greek is your thing, let's digent.

This is an aist passive participle that here is expressing a completed action. Now, you say, "I don't follow any of that." You don't have to follow any of that. Here's what you need to understand. When Paul says, "We've been justified," he's talking about something that happened in the past. It's already happened. Don't think, "Oh, I hope God justifies me when I die." He's already justified you. Don't think, "Oh, God, please justify me today. Please save me." He's already done it.

That's that uh story I tell of of my Greek professor, Harvey Floyd, and I tell it over and over, and I'll keep telling it. It just blew me away. But you need to know the story. You'll get a chance to do it. That was the class where we went and we were all talking about how we became Christians and all and when and where we accepted Jesus. And some student asked Dr. Floyd as he walked into class to teach. He said, "Dr. Floyd, tell us about the day you got saved." He took his glasses off. He said, "Oh, that was a big day. That was a special day. The day I got saved, oh yes, it was about 2,000 years ago. right outside Jerusalem on a hill. That's the justification we have is is something that's been completed in the past. So when Paul says since we have been justified by faith, that's something that's happened to us. But he says since we've been justified by faith, we right now present tense have peace with God. We right now have peace with God. We have peace to or toward or before God right now.

This is a present tense verb. Echomen is a present indicative means it's stating a today fact because of what happened before. It is a fact that today we believers have peace with God. Say, "Well, my heart's not at peace with God." He's not talking about your heart. This is not a how do you feel peace. This is a true objective fact piece. This is a a today piece. This means if you've got yays in your heart, know that you've got yays while you have peace with God. If you've got ugs in your life, you have ugs while you have peace with God. It's objective. It's a fact. It's real. Whether you feel it or not, peace has been made. the blas. Peace has been made. We have peace with God. Period. It's a fact for today. That'll be Romans 8:1. We'll get there. All right. So therefore, since we have been justified by faith past, we have peace with God today through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been justified by faith. We have in the past, but today we have this peace with God. Got it? Can't say it enough. Now I want to pause for a moment though and talk about what this peace with God is translated peace with God in the Greek proton Theon. Um

Paul's not talking about feeling peace. He talks about that in Philippians 4:7.

He in Philippians 4:7. That's that's feeling peace. Look at at I'm not saying feeling peace is irrelevant. I'm just saying that's not what he's talking about here. Okay. Philippians 4:7.

He says, "Don't be worried about anything." We'll back it up to uh six. Don't be anxious or worried about anything, but in everything by prayer and sub. You got your pocket knife.

You don't have your pocket knife. Thank you very much, Mike. I knew somebody would. Okay. I mean, come on. He went to&M and everything.

Um, this is just too important not to highlight it, right? So, we got Wiler's pocketk knife here. Appreciate that. He's an engineer. Of course, he's going to have a pocketk knife. Okay. Can't figure out how to close it, but he's an engineer. He will. Don't be worried about anything and everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which passes understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. That's talking about a subjective peace. That's a peace you have. That's a peace you feel. Paul's not talking about that here. Here he's talking about the peace before God to the face of God. Pros tone the peace. It's an objective factual peace. We are not God's enemies. He's not out to get you. He's out to help you. He's out to love you. He's out to save you. He's out to restore you. He's out to bring you joy. He is not your enemy. He wants evil and sin gone, including from your life, because it's so destructive. He doesn't want you bitter because bitterness will make you into a worse person. He wants you to be a gentle, kind, forgiving, loving person because that will help you flower into the fullness of what you can be in this life. He doesn't want you enslaved and and bound by the temptations of this world and the flesh. He wants you thriving to serve freely in his kingdom and to help make this world a better place. He wants you to help be a leader in your family. He wants you to help. He is out for nothing but your good. He is not your enemy. He is your best friend. So, everybody should set aside sinner's dread. H yeah, but I don't know if he really loves me. I've done some pretty bad stuff. That's He's already justified you. It's been done. It's in the past. It's a completed action. It's over. Don't ever dare say to God, "Yeah, but he did a really sorry job. He didn't do it for me that good. I was worse than even he could forgive." Don't be so prideful, pompous, and arrogant. You know, there's not a person in here who's able to do anything to thwart the love of God. You are not that bad. You are not that powerful. I don't care if you're Adolf Hitler.

There is nobody who can sin to a degree that God can't forgive if they turn to him and forgiveness. The God who justified you in the past is at peace with you now whether you feel it or not. This is the significance of that prayer in number six. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you. The Lord be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. This is Ezekiel 34:25 where God said, "I will make with him a covenant of peace." We have peace with him. We have been justified by faith. It's in the past. We have peace with God today. That is the fact. And it is through our Lord Jesus Christ. It's not through how good you are. It's never been and it never will be. It is through Christ we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We through Christ we have obtained access prozagain in the Greek here is um it's an interesting word it had uh good use in antiquity. Um it was used uh 100 plus years before Paul to talk about uh uh with Cyrus how there was a royal audience that was uh given to to people. They were allowed into the presence of the king. They were given access to the king. Think uh in our terms um

you you want to talk to King Charles of England. Let's say you got just a bug that's really itching you. You've been just Man, I've been needing to talk to King Charles about this. Uh, does anybody have his cell number? I'm gonna text him. Oh, coach does. That doesn't surprise me. I'm gonna text him. We I don't have access to him, but I have access to God. Access. It's a introduction to a royal audience, but it's also used in navigation. Like with ships, it's the way that ships come in. If you're going from sea into port or from a larger body of water to a smaller body or I think it's clockwise around the US or if you're in the Great Lakes, it's from east to west. You always need to know red right return. There's a channel through the water that'll keep your boat from getting stuck. and you see the red buoys and you see the green buoys. If you're going into port, the red needs to stay on the right, the green on the left. If you're leaving port, it's the opposite. But those buoys are there to give you access to the port. And Paul's saying that it's the same word. That's that word access. Through Christ, we have obtained access. It's not just the the holy uh audience with the king, but it's the idea of you you know exactly how to get there. And this is something Paul says we have also obtained that we have obtained. This is in in Greek called the perfect indicative. It means that something happened in the past. But I really want to emphasize its importance today. Something happened in the past that is so important today. Something happened in the we obtained access in the past because Jesus Christ opened the doors.

He prepared a way for us through the cross. So we have the path. We have the way. We have the boys. We have the access. It's something we have today because of what happened in the past. Let me tell you something. Uh this week coming up, I've got a a pretty big day on Wednesday. Wednesday is my anniversary of marriage. Now, I got married in the past to this incredible woman. That's a past event, but it really is important to me today. I can stress to you today my life is richer because of what happened in the past. I don't remarry her today. Thank you, Miss Carolyn. I don't remarry my wife every We married already. What we do today is we live the life of a married couple. I have access to her that I didn't have before we got married. I have a VIP status with her I didn't have before we were married. And in the same way, Paul is using that grammatical idea to say we have obtained access. And it's the access we have now. And it's by faith into this grace in which we stand. And that word stand in the Greek

is also in what's called the perfect. It means we're going to stress the current situation because of what happened in the past.

So we stand because we stood, we stand because of we stand in this grace. Now, grace is another word for Paul that he often uses to reference the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. You can see it in Romans 3:24, see it in Romans 4:16. Go back and look. But we stand, the reason we stand, what happened in the past that has the current consequences is we stand with the death of Christ. We were there. We were there. I have been crucified with Christ. It's the way he said it to the Galatians.

So into this grace we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. See, it's the same. It's all wrapped up. Colossians 1:27. What is the glory of God? Christ in you is the hope of glory. It's Christ in us. It's what we have after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. He reigns within us. So, we got to pause for a moment and I gotta play you a song and it's going to take four minutes. I want this song to wash over you. If you don't know this song from Keith Green, you need to, especially those of you who've been believers for a long time, listen to this song for just a moment and uh let's see if you know it. [Music] Oh, [Music] you're the feeling. Things are not the same.

I guess I'm older.

I guess I've changed. [Music]

And how I wish it had been explained

that as you're growing,

you must remember

that nothing lasts except the grace of God by which I stand.

Jesus, [Music] I know that I would surely fall away

except the grace

by which I'm saved. Oh.

Oh. Oh [Music] Lord, I remember that special way

I vow to serve you when it was brand new.

But like Peter, I can't even watch and pray. One hour with you. And I bet I could deny you, too.

And nothing except the grace of God which I [Applause] Jesus I'm sure my heart

will waste away [Music] except regret. [Music] by which I'm saved. Oh [Music] yeah, it's pretty profound. It is what Paul is saying. This is stuff that God's been doing for you. This is stuff that God's been doing for me. This is stuff that's already happened. Don't let the enemy deceive you and get you so caught up in the yays and the ugs and the blas that you lose track of what you have in Christ. that you have access, that you stand, that you can rejoice in hope of the glory of God, which is Christ in you.

Paul continues, and this um I I want to have time for Paul says, "Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings.

knowing that suffering produces endurance. Take a moment and absorb this. We live in a time, we live in a culture, we live in an age where we abhore suffering. We think suffer do you know what suffering is? You can look at it at different levels. Oh, you could be a cold chemist and say suffering is biological chemical levels in your brain that don't make you happy. It comes about because of circumstances. It comes about because of conditions. It comes about for various different reasons. Some people just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, but their brain chemistry is saying, "Oh, this is miserable.

I want to go back to the Greek idea of suffering. Paul uses this word philipsis. Theis is a very very common word in antiquity of Greek language. Theypsis is could be translated with any of these words. We could translate it as press, squeeze, compress, crush, afflict with pressure, him in, restrict, constrain.

Uh my Greek, one of my Greek professors described it as uh taking a rope and making uh a U shape with the rope. I'll show you like this. Taking a rope and making a U shape in the rope. And then taking a second rope and making another U shape. And then somebody pulls this rope this way and pulls this rope this way. And that stuff in the middle, that's philipsis.

That That is in the middle. That's the stress. Let me give you some ways it's been used in antiquity. If you wanted to make wine out of grapes, you'd put the grapes in a wine press and you'd twist that little puppy down to crush the grapes. You know what that process is of crushing the grapes? Suffering. Philips. Or if you wanted to take wheat and make grain, you could put it between two big millstones and they would grind that to a flower pulp. They'd use the Greek wordpsis. You get hurt, you need a tourniquet, you squeeze that tourniquet, theis. You're in a crowd. You've been to the coliseum to see um

I don't know uh Johnny and the Gladiators. I whatever the old old working group was. You leave the crowd and the crowd crushes in on you. That's the also had a rich usage in the Old Testament, Greek translation of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, philipsis can be used to refer to persecution, opposition. It could be referred to uh economic hardship and distress, emotional and spiritual anguish. Suffering is a bad thing in that sense. It's it's turmoil. It hurts. It's pressure. is feeling the weight of the world smashing down on you. It's the elephant sitting on you. It is just when everything is so tightly wound and under pressure and you can't figure it out

and everybody in the world suffers it. So for the Christian, is suffering something we simply suffer through? No. Paul's got this what some would consider outlandish proclamation. We rejoice in our sufferings. Oh, does that make him a massochist? No, it makes him a realist because everybody in this world suffers. Suffering is not unique to you and it's not unique to me. It is a fact. Everybody suffers. But when the Christian suffers, God's at work because that suffering is going to produce endurance.

That suffering is going to make you strong. It's going to make you race ready. I ran that half marathon. I suffered. But I made it. The training was suffering. Now I've decided to run a marathon. So I'm training. So yesterday I went out and I ran five miles. I suffer. Yeah, that's exactly right. That sanity is gone. Pastor Jarrett's got this uh plaque. It says, "If you see me jogging, please kill whatever's chasing me.

But suffering will make us strong and race ready. Endurance will produce character. this word character doimeain domain is is a a word that's talking about um kind of measuring up. It's it's a it's a life that that that can produce the metal or to use another metal metaphor. It's a life where the suffering, the the hard work of the forage makes a steel that's tempered, that's ready and raring to go. The world will suffer, but the Christian can rejoice in suffering because the Christian can know God is at work and he won't let your suffering be in vain. His son suffered. Was it in vain? No. So when we suffer, even just a smidgen compared to what Jesus suffered, we're aligning ourselves with the God who works through suffering to bring an end ultimately to all suffering. He is at work to get us to that place where there are no more tears. And it's interesting to me because the big debates on is there a god often hinge on well if there's a god why is there suffering. There's suffering everywhere in the world because there's sin everywhere in the world. That's the presence of sin. God will wipe it out by the way one day. We can have that debate after the Lord is done with this world and he's created a new heaven and earth because there won't be any suffering and everybody's going to say, "Oh yeah, I guess he's real." But right now, it doesn't mean anything to the person outside of the faith to say, "Hey, God can work through suffering." But to those of us who are in the faith to know that that suffering will produce endurance and that endurance will produce character and that character will produce hope and hope will not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us. We understand that God is at work. We understand that God hasn't abandoned us. We understand when we feel helpless, when we feel hopeless, that there really is objectively a reason to hope, it just may not be working into our brain yet. And we need to pray, "Lord, may your spirit help us in our affliction. Hear us in our distress. Give aid to us. Walk through the fiery furnace with us. Be present in the den of lions.

These are present benefits we have. Which brings us to these points for home. You may have your yays and your blas and your ugs right now. But if you understand your past and you have that future hope of what God is doing, then today is different. And that's why I give you these points for home. There are present benefits today of being right with God. Number one, Romans 5:1, we have peace with God.

Number two, we have access to God. We have an introduction. We have a a presence. And number three, when we suffer, we have joy in suffering because we know it's not the end of the story. And we know who is at work in that suffering, not only for our good, but for his kingdom's good. Amen. Let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and we will see you, God willing, next Sunday. Father, thank you for the presence of being back in this class with your word open before us. May your Holy Spirit minister to everyone right now, everywhere they are today. Father, if they're in yay mode, may it be to your glory. If they're in ug mode, be with them and give them consolation and hope. If they're in blah mode, pick them up, Lord, and excite in them what comes from a loving God who passionately cares for his people. We praise you, our holy one, our deliverer, through the one who gives us access, Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected. Amen.