Good morning. It's good to be with you all. Reflecting before the service that it's been a little bit since I've gotten to come and worship with you all. So it's good to be back here. It's good to see God caring for your congregation and working in your midst. If you'll turn with me in your copies of God's Word to Romans chapter 15, Romans chapter 15, you can find this on page 1750, if you're using the Bibles in the pew. We're gonna be looking at one verse of this section, verse 13. And verse 13 is a benediction. That's a benediction. Now, kids, do you know what a benediction is? You maybe heard the word. If you can read, you can see it in the bulletin, in the order of service. But the benediction is something that I think often gets glanced over when it comes to worship by maybe kids and adults alike. And maybe the kids are actually more excited for the benediction because it usually marks the end of the service. But the benediction's important. It's there for a reason. And so there are a number of these passages in scripture that are benedictions. They're a blessing pronounced from God to his people. And we could do a study on all the benedictions. We're just going to look at this one this morning. But these benedictions are important because it's a way in which God encourages and blesses his people, the church, to go and do his will. One of the reasons we have the benediction at the end of the service is after the sermon, after you've been encouraged to apply God's word to your life, sometimes that can be hard. It can be even discouraging to think about how far you are from applying God's word adequately or appropriately to your life. And so the blessing, the benediction at the end is a reminder that God is strengthening you, that God is equipping you to do His will, that God's blessing rests upon you as His people. And so as we look at this verse, verse 13, which we'll read in a minute, then I want you to look forward to the encouragement, the blessing that this contains, even in kind of the latter portion of Romans. There's a lot of encouragement to be had in Romans, but this verse is often used as a particular encouragement, and we'll consider that. So now please do give attention to God's holy and inspired word. We're gonna be reading verses one through 13 from God's holy word. We then, who are strong, ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please himself, but, as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope. Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God, Now I say that Christ Jesus has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written. For this reason, I will confess to you among the Gentiles and sing your name. And again he says, rejoice, oh Gentiles, with his people. And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. Laud him, all you peoples. And again, Isaiah says, there shall be a root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in him the Gentiles shall hope. Now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let's pray as we consider God's word. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your perfect and inspired word, your truth communicated to us as your people, your truth that contains the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ. Lord, as we look to your word for instruction and life and faith, we ask that you would be teaching us this morning teaching us about the hope that you offer, teaching us about how to follow you, that you might be glorified, that all the nations ultimately might praise your name. We do ask this in Christ's name. Amen. So as we come to this verse of Romans, it's important that we consider maybe a little bit of where we've been in Romans. If we were to go back and trace Romans, the book of Romans, we could see that it's been building and unfolding even the reality of this world. From our sinfulness in the first three chapters, to the unfolding of this glorious gospel that Paul describes in chapters four through 11, to the outworking of the Christian life In chapters 12 through 14, Paul has been building and building and unfolding what life in Christ looks like. And so then in chapters 15 and 16, Paul begins to close out this letter to the church in Rome. And as he does, he doesn't want to leave you with thoughts that are unorganized. Instead, he points you back to Christ. Particularly here in chapter 15, we find an emphasis on hope. Hope. This is mentioned here in verses 4, 12, and 13. Paul uses the word hope several times. And if we need a definition of hope, we could go back to Romans chapter 8, where Paul says that hope is something that's not seen. Hope is something that's yet to be realized. Hope is that expectation, that desire for future good. And that prompts the question, why is Paul so focused on hope? He's already given us Romans chapter eight, that glorious chapter that lifts the soul of the believer up into the heavens, realizing that there is no condemnation, realizing that nothing can separate you from the love of God. So why does Paul need to come back to hope? Why do you need hope? Well, that may not be a hard question to answer. If you look around in the world today, the world that's always been since the fall, you see people who are without hope. Oftentimes, we can look at the world and be hopeless if we're not careful. Even in the first few verses of this chapter, Paul is trying to show that Christ came for both Jew and Gentile. and that both Jew and Gentile should be united in their love for Christ, that they should have one mind in glorifying God together. That unity can be hard to find. It can be hard to see that unity in our world today. And if you were to say, can our nation even, just scoping it to our nation, be one nation, truly indivisible, truly undivided, You might not have a lot of hope for that. But you can also need hope in your lives individually. You might struggle to know what's the good thing that I'm looking forward to. Has anybody ever asked you that question? What are you looking forward to next? What are you expecting that's going to be good, that's going to be enjoyable, that's going to be a blessing? I've been asked that, and sometimes it's hard to give an answer. Well, I don't know. I don't know what I'm really looking forward to. I'm just kind of in the midst of the grind, working day after day. So friends, we all need hope and Paul offers that hope. He points us to that hope here in verse 13. This is a hope that's offered, a hope that is confirmed even. And so then as we look at verse 13, I want you to see the fullness of hope that is offered here, the blessing of hope. And we'll both look at the source of hope, where this hope comes from, the object of hope, where we fix our hope, and the means of hope, how we get this hope. And even in this one verse, I think you'll see wrapped up in this hope the working of the whole Trinity, that all of God is participating and trying to give you hope. So first, let us consider that God the Father is the source of hope. God the Father is the source of your hope. In verse 13, Paul starts off with, now may the God of hope, he attaches of hope to God and gives God this label, Why is God the God of hope? Well, we could consider that God's nature supplies hope. God's very nature, his being, supplies hope. This is a God who does not change. This is a God who does not lie, as we read earlier in Hebrews chapter 6. an honest God, a truthful God that never changes, a God who confirmed the promises, as Hebrews 6 put it. This is a good God to put your hope in. This is something sure, steadfast. It's not only God's nature that supplies hope, God's plan, God's plan supplies hope. We see that as we understand God's sovereignty over all things. as we understand that he has elected all of his people, predestined them to be saved by his own hand. And that leads us to consider that God's relationship with his people supplies hope. As we reflect back on Romans, we could think about the passage where Paul talks about the fact that we are adopted, that we have become children of God, even co-heirs with Christ. That God is not a God who is far off, but he is our loving father. That he made a covenant with his people, a promise that he will not break. And we also see then that God's word supplies hope. It shows us all of these things. It shows us his nature, his plan, the relationship that we have with God. So when Paul says, the God of hope He's unpacking or he's packaging all of that into one label that God is a God who supplies hope. He is the source of all our hope. Now, where would you look to hope? Now, kids, do you like to read books? You like to read books sometimes? And I know I like to read books. And when I'm reading a book and there's a character that I really enjoy, I want to know what's going to happen to that character, and I want it to be good. Sometimes when you read a book, you want to know what's going to happen, and where would you turn if you wanted to have hope for that character, if you wanted to make sure that the story ended happily for that character? You would probably go to the author. You would go to the one who wrote the story and say, okay, I don't know what's coming in the next book, but make sure you take care of this character. They're my favorite. I don't want anything bad to happen to them. I want them to have the happy ending. You might talk to the author that way. You might appeal to the author for hope that the book character you like is going to turn out okay. Well, the same is true of us. If we consider ourselves characters in God's great story, where else would we turn to for hope other than God, who is the author of life, who is the author of all things? And God is more than just a writer. God is a perfect God, and his plan is perfect. And so surely we could turn to him, we could look to God as the God of hope. But conversely, we have to realize then that any hope that is not rooted in God is a false hope. If we're looking to anything else for the source of our hope, if we're looking to money or things or even people on this earth, and not acknowledging those good things that come from God, those hopes are false hopes. And so we need to actively look to God and his word then, for hope. We have to turn to the God of hope to find hope. But not only do we look to God the Father as the source of hope, but we also look to God as the object, the end of our hope. We see that God the Son is the object of your hope. Here in Romans 15, Paul makes clear that Christ became the servant to redeem both Jew and Gentile. Christ, as Hebrews 6 put it, who is the anchor for your soul. Christ is whom you must put your hope in. Christ is where you must fix your hope. That hope comes from God, but that hope is realized in Christ Jesus. to believe that Christ was the God-man who lived a perfect life, who died on the cross for your sins, and was raised from the dead in order that you might live and have life eternal. That is your hope, friends. That is something that is not yet seen, but is a good blessing to expect, to look forward to. Paul writes this verse, he says that, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. In believing in Christ Jesus, you have joy and peace. What an interesting thought. That to believe in something that is not yet realized, that that would give you joy and peace even now. Now the joy may be the more visible aspect of that. You know people who are just naturally more joyful. They always have a smile on their face. They always have an encouraging word. You might call them optimists, but they just have that sense that they're happy because of what God is doing in their lives. But that joy comes from that quiet peace. That quiet peace, that peace that surpasses all understanding, as Paul puts it elsewhere. Peace that comes from knowing your eternal end. Knowing that everything really will work out for your good and having confidence in that. To believe that Jesus has secured eternal life for you means that you can have peace because no matter what happens today or tomorrow or the day after, you know where you will end up. And you know it's with God in glory forever. See, this peace, this joy, this strengthens you. Sometimes the world will tell you that joy and peace are weaknesses. That you need to be ready for the bad things that are going to happen. You need to be ready for the fights in the world. And so just buckle down and be ready for all the rough things that are to come. That being joyful is a weakness. Because you're just going to be that much more disappointed when something bad happens. But the reality is that This peace, this joy strengthens you. It centers all the more your hope and your mind on Christ and his work. It places all your eggs in the one basket of salvation through Christ Jesus. And so then anything outside of that doesn't affect you permanently. It doesn't affect you eternally because you know with all certainty what Christ has done. That peace and that joy can be hard to come by. But think of it this way. Think of a football game. Maybe it's a cliche illustration. My family likes to watch college football. And if you watch a football game and it's coming down to the last couple of minutes and the two teams are tied, and your team is a good team. K-State's a good team this year. You trust that your team can do the work to win the game. And as you trust that your team will do what's necessary, you're interested to see what happens, but you're not worried. You can have peace and you can have some sense of joy. You can joke with the other people that are watching the game with you and, you know, this is going to be all right. You have some measure of peace and joy. And that peace and joy either comes to fruition when your team scores and you take the lead and hold on to it till the end, or when you realize that that peace and joy weren't very stable because the other team scores. The other team kicks the last second field goal and all of a sudden your team has lost. Now a football game is a small, unimportant matter. And the peace and joy that you could derive from such a thing is small and unimportant. But the reality is that it illustrates how we often work in this life. It's a small picture of what happened when Peter was walking on the water with Christ in Matthew 14. Peter had his eyes fixed on Christ. And while he had his eyes fixed on Christ, he had peace, he had joy. He was walking on water. But the moment that he lost sight of Christ, the moment that he turned from Christ and decided to look at his circumstances for hope, for peace, for joy, he started to drown. And then all of his peace and joy went away until Christ rescued him. The same is true for you, friends. In the midst of this life, if you keep your eyes centered on Jesus Christ as the object of your hope, on salvation in Him as the only object of your hope, then you can have peace and joy even in the midst of any given circumstances. But the moment you take your eyes off Christ, The moment you turn and trust in yourself, you trust in somebody else, you trust in your bank account, you trust in any number of things in this world, anything except Christ, that peace and that joy will evaporate. Because any hope that is not fixed on Christ is a false hope, any hope other than Christ is not permanent. It fades. Stock markets crash. Droughts happen. Any number of things can happen if we put our hope in this world. And so instead, put your hope in Christ. Cling to Christ and find the peace and joy that comes from Christ. So then we've seen that God is the source of your hope. We've seen that God is the object of your hope. But God is also the means of your hope. God the Spirit is the means of your hope. If you look again at verse 13, we see the divine plan wrapped up in this one verse. That God the Father authored a plan for hope and is the God of hope. That God the Son fulfilled that plan, gave you something to believe in, gave you the object of your hope. But then we also see that God the Spirit applies this hope to all his people. Paul says that he wants you to abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And again, if we reflect on what Paul has been saying all throughout Romans, we remember that God, the Spirit, has the power to open your hearts to this hope, to give you that heart of flesh for your heart of stone, that you could even believe in Christ. It applies that hope in giving you that faith that you might trust in God, that what is foolishness to the world makes sense to you. becomes a promise for you to cling to. But the Spirit doesn't stop there. The Spirit reminds you of this hope. It fills you with peace and joy in Christ, along with all the other fruits of the Spirit. God, the Spirit continues to work in you, friends, and apply this hope to you. But it's important that we note how Paul phrases this. He doesn't just say that he wants you to have hope. He wants you to have enough hope for today, enough hope for tomorrow. Paul desires that you might abound in hope, that you might abound in hope, that you might have more hope than you know what to do with, in a sense. I'm not sure that we all seek out that idea, that we really want to abound in hope and that we seek that in our lives. Are we content just to have enough hope for the day? I know that I'm a Christian. I know that God saved me. That's all I need to think about for now. I don't need to worry about that anymore. I can have peace and joy. I have enough hope for the day. No, friends, Paul wants you to abound in hope, and the way to abound in hope is through the power of the Holy Spirit. Consider how technology has changed in the last 20 years. In 2000, if you were going to charge your cell phone, you would use a USB cable, and that cable could deliver 2.5 watts. Now, you don't have to be an electrical engineer to understand this, but remember the number 2.5 watts in 2000. That's how fast power could come to your phone. Now, in 2023, you can plug in a cable and get 100 watts delivered to your phone. Your phone that has a much bigger battery can charge much, much faster because technology has improved. I think sometimes we're content to use a 20-year-old connection to God to find our hope. Instead of growing, instead of trying to obtain more and more hope, to develop a stronger and more powerful connection to Christ, we're content to say, well, it's good enough. It's good enough. My little bit of devotions and going to church once a week, that's good enough. It charges me for the day ahead. Friends, you can have so much more if you seek to grow in the spirit, if you earnestly desire to grow in the spirit and draw closer to God. The hope that you could have far, far exceeds any problem, any trouble, any trial that you could overcome. Friends, this thing that Paul desires, that you would abound in hope can be true. I think you might see this sometimes if you observe those who have been Christians for a long time. If you think about those who are models of the faith, you look at them and you see that nothing seems to shake them. Nothing seems to make them wonder what's going to happen. Their trust is so firmly rooted in God. Friends, these saints who are more sanctified are those that have drawn close to God, who have sought to grow in the Spirit, not just being content with the status quo, but seeking to draw closer and closer and closer to God every day of their lives. And if God is our loving Father, if God is the God who saves us, He will be found. To seek God out, to seek to grow closer to God, is something that God desires. And so then you can expect that God will fill you with hope through the Spirit. That as you earnestly seek to draw close to Him, that He will draw you close to Himself. But that expectation gets shaken when we diminish the flow of the Spirit, when we diminish our connection by allowing sin to persist in our lives. Instead of grieving the Holy Spirit with sin, we not only have to earnestly seek to draw close to God, we have to seek to leave the old man, the old ways behind. But when we do that, friends, when we do even that by the Spirit's power, we find we have an abundance of hope. Hope that God will give you victory over sin. whatever that sin is that you've been wrestling with for years and years, that God can sustain you, that God can help you prevail by His strength. So friends, how wonderful is it that all of the Trinity is a means, is a way for you to have hope, That God, the Father, is the source of your hope. That God, the Son, is the object of your hope. And that God, the Spirit, is the means to hope. Because remember, without God, your life truly is hopeless. There is no hope that will last. There is no hope that will endure. To make it day by day, you do need hope, friends. And don't fall for the false hopes of this world. These hopes that are never as certain as they seem. These hopes that never last as long as we want. These hopes that are never enough to satisfy your soul. Instead, find your hope in God. God, who we read here, blesses his children with hope. An abundance of hope. This hope will not let you down. This hope will not evaporate. This hope, friends, is, again as Hebrews 6 pointed out, the anchor for your soul. That which keeps you grounded. That which keeps you safe and secure in the midst of life's storms. This hope that God has blessed you, his people, with is the most stable is the most secure, the most real hope that you will ever have. So friends, be blessed, be richly blessed in this hope. Let us pray. Lord God, we do look to you for hope. We acknowledge that nothing else on earth, nothing in and of ourselves can satisfy our need for certainty of what will come. So we look to you, Lord. We ask that you would continue to give us hope by your spirit, that you would fix our hearts on Christ, that we would know you as the God of hope, and that through you we might abound in hope, that we might paint a picture for the world of people who have hope and peace and joy, not because we are rich, not because we are strong, but because we are yours. Lord, we ask that you would bless each one here with this hope and that you would continue to grow it in their lives. We ask all this in Christ's name, amen.