Enjoying the Blessings of God in the Bumps of Life

The Summit of Our Salvation

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

May 26, 2024

Enjoying the Blessings of God in the Bumps of Life

As LaQuedra Edwards went to purchase lottery tickets, someone bumped into her and made her push the wrong buttons. She never even got an apology. All she got is $10 million dollars.

Edwards had put her $40 in and was about to pick a bunch of cheaper lottery tickets when, as she put it, some rude person bumped into her making her hit the wrong button, purchasing a $30 200x scratcher ticket. Edwards was annoyed because she used most of her money to buy just one ticket. But when she went back to her car and scratched the ticket she saw to her surprise she’d won the top prize of $10 million.

Often our lives can be so busy going from this thing to that, late for an appointment, pressured to make a deadline, rushing from one event to the next, filling our free time with the noise of social media, TV, and the news. And then come the “rude” bumps. Someone “bumps” us the wrong way. We have everything planned out and then some unforeseen circumstance bumps our plans off course.

Life can seem pretty random. What are the odds that a “rude” stranger would bump LaQuedra Edwards at just the moment she was about to hit the buttons to pick her tickets and make her hit the wrong buttons, which against all odds turns out to be the right buttons? It’s such a crazy story that mathematically it almost demands that we believe in a God who, for His own mysterious purposes, wanted LaQuedra Edwards to become rich that day and become rich in a humorously unexpected and ironic way.

The passage we are about to read is all about the benefits, blessings, riches that God has lavished on us in Christ. And it’s good to slow down enough to treasure them. So let’s do that this morning. Let’s treasure the goodness and riches we have through faith in Christ. That’s what these verses are about: the blessings and treasures God has given to those who believe in His Son, Jesus.

5 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Rom. 5:1-5

Pray!

Romans chap. 1-4 is Paul making the case that no one can be justified by keeping the law. No one can be righteous enough to keep God’s holy standard. In fact in chapter 3 he tells us no one is righteous, not even one. All of us have hearts filled with the cancer of selfishness, pride, hate, gossip, and we deserve God’s wrath on Judgment Day.

Abraham gives us the only way to be righteous in God’s sight: he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. When we believe in Jesus as our Savior and Lord, when we believe that he bore our sins on the cross so that we might be given the gift of his righteousness, then, not to sound irreverent, we hit the lottery of God’s blessings and benefits.

1. Peace with God

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Peace with God is different than the peace of God. The peace of God is that sense of peace in troubled times. It’s the wind and the waves of life calming down at the word of Jesus. It’s precious but peace with God is even more precious.

The peace of God speaks peace to our emotions. Peace with God is a legal position. It’s true for the believer whether we feel it or not. God has no problem with us. He did have. Until salvation, there was a war going on between us and God. The lack of peace in our relationships, in our homes, in our hearts – all come from the fact that we were not at peace with God. In David Powlison’s book When God is Small and People are Big, he suggests that all the fears we feel are echoes of a deeper terror we instinctively have of facing God one day. Jesus has taken away any terror of that day because we have the beautiful blessing of peace with God.

2. Nearness to God

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…vs 2

The word “access” means to bring near. We can come near to God with confidence by faith in the grace God has give us through Christ. Jesus didn’t just remove the negative hostility between us, he has given us a positive friendship with God.

Have you ever just felt you needed to talk to a friend? I can think of a couple times when, as a pastor, someone unloaded on me, calling me all kinds of names and accusing me of all kinds of bad motives and character traits. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone unload on you in such a harsh way but it shakes you. Both times that I’m thinking of, when I left their presence all I wanted to do is talk to a friend. Both times I had a friend there who was ready to listen and give me gracious perspective.

The Father invites us to draw near to Him not only as our God and King, but as our Friend as well. If you’re going through something, bring it to God! Talk to God as you would a friend because that’s what God is – the most faithful Friend we could ever have. And He has the power to get us through anything that’s troubling us.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Heb 4:16

3. Hope of the glory of God

…and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Vs. 2B

There is a longing in our hearts for something nothing in this world can give us. With all due respect to LaQuedra Edwards, money can’t come close to filling that hole. Spending time outside in God’s nature is heading in a better direction, but even that still leaves us thirsty for something this world doesn’t have. Working and being productive in something we find worthwhile offers deep satisfaction, but it always leaves something missing. Relationships with family and friends bring us the closest and provide us the deepest experience of meaning and value to life but even with that, there’s still something missing that we just can’t grasp.

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” CS Lewis

We rejoice in hope. Hope in the Bible doesn’t mean what we often mean when we say hope: it may or may not happen. Hope in the Bible is looking forward to a future certainty. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. God’s glory is certain, but we don’t see it fully revealed yet so we hope – we anticipate – the day when we do see it fully. Glory is one of the deepest and highest longings we have. Not our own glory – that is the cheap substitute pride offers – but God’s glory. Being in awe of His glorious kingdom and power and wisdom and compassion and creativity and character and…

4. A gospel so good it brings good out of bad

³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Vv. 3-5

Paul isn’t saying to rejoice about our sufferings. Suffering isn’t good, it’s bad. But we can rejoice in our suffering because God has given us in Christ a good so good it can even bring good out of bad.

This is huge because life has pain in it. When Paul says suffering he’s talking about real suffering. Life was really hard for a lot of the believers he was talking to, much harder than what most of us go through most of the time. But every life experiences pain and at some point that pain will be bad enough to call suffering. We will all experience the suffering of loss. Of sickness. Of conflict. Life has pain. Disappointments, rejection, misunderstanding, oppression, injustice, grief. If life is only good when things are going good, we are left hopeless because sooner or later things aren’t going to go good. Suffering and pain will bump into us.

Some people live a blessed life. Others are born with incredible suffering right from the start. I am always touched by the commercials put out by St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and we give a small amount monthly because seeing children with cancer and imagining the pain their parents suffer seeing their children suffer – knowing they’d take their kid’s place in a minute if they could – it can’t help but touch our hearts.

But it’s amazing how often there’s joy on those little faces. They endure so much but they find meaning and joy in their lives. What makes a life rich and meaningful can’t be reduced to a comfortable, pain-free life. It can’t be. Paul declares it isn’t: the gospel of Jesus is so good it’s good enough to bring good out of bad. Even out of suffering.

Life has pain. We get bumped by rude people who hurt us, we get bumped by hard circumstances that bring loss and regret and tears, we get bumped by our own foolish choices, but God says He will make all things work together for our good. We hit the wrong button, but in Christ God gives us riches that nothing can take away from us.

Paul says we can rejoice in suffering because for those who believe in Christ suffering starts a chain reaction of good.

• Suffering produces endurance. The word endurance means single-mindedness. Suffering has a way of focusing us on what’s really important, really lasting. Suffering can burn away the frivolities and re-align our priorities.
• Endurance produces tested character. We can’t know who someone really is until its tested. A friend recently posted that going through a hard time helped show him who his true friends are. Everyone’s character looks great in good times. It’s the ones who have strong, good character in the hard times who have “proven character”.
• Character produces hope.

These treasures don’t disappoint or shame us cause God’s providentially working good in us and for us even in the worst bangs and bumps life can throw at us. In fact, many people can testify that suffering helped them feel the love and closeness of God with an intensity we may not feel when things are going good. Gospel is so good it’s good enough to bring good out of even the worst bad.

If you believe in Jesus you’ve won the lottery! Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God, nearness to God, and hope in God. Take time to treasure the riches we have in Christ and the blessings of God in the bumps of life!