You people are very versatile in your ability to sing hymns you've never sung before. I'm serious. As you know, I don't get around to many other churches because I'm here on most Sundays, but I've been in a lot of places where people just do not sing. This congregation sings well. And you take on hymns you've never heard of before instead of running out the door. And of course, Rhonda does that deliberately to test us all. You know, OK, let's turn to Romans chapter fifteen. This is where I started a series that will go for. I don't know how long on the prayers of the apostles. I'm going through the New Testament and seeking them out now. See, in verse thirteen of Romans fifteen. Paul says, Now, may the God of hope fill you. That's that's the prayer itself, but it's preceded by a number of things that I need to look at with you. Prayer is an interesting subject could consume us for quite a while. They've also heard the expression. I've heard people say, well, we bathe that in prayer. I always cringe just a little bit when I hear that expression, but that's OK. I'll have to get over it. But actually, there's some truth to that. Sometimes the idea of getting a bath is that you get wet everywhere. Even if there's, you know, you've been doing out something outside or something. You got a couple of got some smudges on you. I like to crawl under cars and grease things and change oil and poke around and I can come out of a situation like that with grease in my ear and something on my shoulder and I figure, well, I could just scrub these two spots or what the heck, just get in the bath and let's take a whole bath. Prayer does that. Prayer accomplishes a lot more than we often think that it does. The Apostles' prayers, understanding the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, the Apostle Paul was inspired of the Spirit to write the book of Romans. And so, the prayers that are in here are also inspired of the Lord. And that's what's special about them. I mean, is John 3, 16 good for just when it was written or was it only good up to the seventh century or I mean, John 3, 16 still applicable today? But if I say to you, what about a prayer somebody offered two thousand years ago, you think that's still applicable or that was for then and we need different prayers now. See what I'm saying? Prayers that are in scripture are inspired by God. So they're not just any old prayer. That's something special and it's it's applicable today as it was then. It's got instruction for so it was always God's purpose to draw his elect from Jews and non-Jews. There's no question that God principally worked with the Hebrews in the Old Testament. He created the Hebrews mean. He called Abraham to himself and then gave him a name. He called him a Hebrew when he, in obedience, crossed over the river and went into the land of Canaan. That's where he got the word Hebrew, because the word Hebrew means one who crosses over. So Hebrews are those who cross over. Hebrews were really those who obeyed God. And Christians are those who follow Jesus Christ. So if you just look at the way God deals with his people and gives them names, we know that God gave his revelation originally to a people that he called to himself. And the Jews who believed in Christ's coming and resurrection were largely the writers of the New Testament. Romans 15, 13 is a prayer that you and I should understand and cash in on, if I can say it that way, because it is the footnote to a whole bunch of promises that came true. I don't know what kind of a translation you have in your lap if you're looking at a Bible, but there is a long quotation from the Old Testament between verses nine and twelve. Which means because God is all filled with the word Gentiles also, if you can see. And this is because Paul wants the Romans, the Roman Christians, these are largely not Jews. Gentiles in the Church of Rome to know that while it may look like they were a Johnny come lately thought on the part of God, that God had always intended to bring non-Jews into the kingdom. And he wanted them to rejoice. If you don't hear anything else tonight, hear this. He wanted them to rejoice in the fact that they themselves were the fulfillment of a prophecy. Let me read the verses, verses 7 to 13. Therefore, wherefore, accept one another, get that, love one another. Don't be looking at that guy who's a Jew on the other side of the picnic table and say, I don't want to eat with him. Accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. The us there would mean Jews, for I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers and for the Gentiles to glorify God for his mercy as it is written. Here comes the quotation. Therefore, I will give praise to thee among the Gentiles, and I will sing to thy name. Again, he says, rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people, meaning his Hebrews. Again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him. Again, in Isaiah, he says, there shall come the root of Jesse and he who arises to rule over the Gentiles. In him shall the Gentiles 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. In other words, if you Gentile Christians belong to Christ now because of a promise he made way back then, think of the promises that he's making to you at this point in history, which are going to follow you all the way through the rest of your life. In other words, if the early promises to bring you into the kingdom were reliable, you can take the promises that he's giving you now and rely on them for the future, just as surely as were these in the past. That's the encouragement you see that he's trying to bring forward here. God made infallible promises that were intended to show mercy to the Gentiles. And as I said, this letter was written primarily to Gentile believers. The Bible is a window of hope because it removes wishful thinking. How many wishful thinkers there are out there running around who want God to do something or think God should have done that and don't know why he did that? And they just they wish for a lot of things, a lot of candle blowing people out there who don't know a lot about what the Bible says. The Bible has been given to us so that we can have a hope, a hope which is always lodged in something that God has said. We are common usage of the word hope is weak. I sure hope it doesn't snow tomorrow. Well, you don't know if it's going to snow tomorrow or not. You just don't want it to snow tomorrow. But if you say, I hope in something in the future because I know God's promises, that's different. You can hope for things that God has promised because they're going to come true. They might you might as well see it right there on the horizon. I see there it is. I see it. I'm not there yet, but there it is. God said it would be there. I see it. But to say, I don't really know what's over the horizon. I sure I don't get eaten by a dragon on the other side. Oh, I hope I hope that's not the kind of hope God's talking about. He's talking about things that are sure you see the expression in believing there in verse 13. Now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, believing what? believing everything that you read from verse nine to twelve. You believe he's saying that God made these promises earlier that he's the one who brought it to being and that you yourselves are living examples of this. He's talking about the references to the Old Testament that he just cited. So that if believing Jews and believing Gentiles would together focus on Jesus Christ, they would get along just fine. Have you read the book of Galatians? You know, some of the tensions that were going on there. Fifteenth chapter of the Book of Acts talks about the Council of Jerusalem. Here's what was going on. Gospel is being preached. Jews were hearing and believing, Gentiles were hearing and believing. But there was a faction like we read out of Jude this morning, certain persons crept in unnoticed and began to stir things up. The Judaizers came into the Jewish believing community and said, you know, you can believe this gospel about Christ. That's fine with us, but you cannot chuck all of the Jewish ceremonies still have to be circumcised. You still have to eat only foods that were approved in the Old Testament. I mean, Moses. What he gave us is really still important. So you really can't be the Christian that this gospel calls you to be unless you take all your Jewish baggage with you. Well, believe it or not, Peter, who was a Jew, who was in the city of Antioch, was beginning to buy into this thinking. Council of Jerusalem was held. The apostles in Jerusalem wrote down an edict and said, all right, pass this out. Although all the old food rules are gone. No Gentile has to be circumcised. No Gentile has to eat any Jewish food. It's all gone. You guys need to be sitting at the same table eating the same food because that's not the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. Right. So we've got that straight. Well Paul came down from that meeting to Antioch and I'm going to build a little picture here for you out in the back behind the church. which there probably wasn't one church building, I mean, where six picnic tables where people were always have a meal after their worship service. And over here were three tables filled with just Jews eating Jewish food, and over here were three tables full of Gentiles eating non-Jewish food. And guess where Peter was? Over here. And Paul confronted him. It's a magnificent example of two apostles confronting one another, but truth is truth, and Paul rebuked Peter and Peter backed off. So the flow of truth through the Holy Spirit, even through those two apostles, was clearly seen. Paul basically said to Peter, you're doing a bad thing here. You are dividing the Church of Christ on the basis of food. when the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. Now, I said all that to say this. I just said to you that if the result of this prayer here was to keep the Gentiles and the Jews focused on Christ, that's how you get along on this level. It's always that way. If Jesus Christ is the most important thing to me, if I'm honed in on his cross, honed in on what he did for me, That I'm to obey him and love him and love my neighbor as myself. I don't really have the energy or the time to be nitpicking over here at my brothers and sisters who don't quite do the same things the way I do them. If they're looking to Christ, I'm looking to Christ. We're both going to be going in the right direction without spending our lives ruining each other. He says here also, the God of hope fill you. See that? And this tells us three things. May the God of hope fill you with all joy. There are degrees of blessings in the Christian life, and I believe personally that they have to do with how deeply you want to drink. I told you about my experience with Jim Boyce walking down the streets of Philadelphia many years ago, he was pastor of 10th Church, my dear friend, a theologian par excellence, knew his Bible so well. And we were walking down toward Broad Street, Philadelphia, and we were talking about something. He just I remember him just saying, Norm, it's getting harder and harder to take people into the deeper things of God. And he'd been teaching scripture for a long time, but he could just sense that it was it was harder to take his audience, which was well schooled into the deeper things of God. But that's where we have to go. It's where we have to go. The fact that you're even came back here tonight knowing last Sunday night that we are going to be looking at another prayer tells me a lot about what God's doing in your life. Most people find this really dull. Why talk about an apostle's prayer. What can I learn from that. The blessings of God come from digging deep into his word. And that's what gives us this abounding hope. Praying big. I mentioned this morning when I was talking about what I was going to be covering tonight, that we have to be careful what we ask God for. Well, you've heard that said before, right? Be careful what you ask God for. You might get it. I want to go a step past that. Whatever you ask God for, you've got to be willing to work at. Let's say, you know, your marriage is a little rocky and in your own private devotions, you say, Lord, bless my marriage, please, please bless my marriage, Lord. I kind of sense it's unraveling. But then you go ahead and keep doing or not doing what you've always done or not done. Don't ask God to change something that you're a part of if you're not going to be willing to do what you're supposed to do. It's it's it's a duty to be joyful. Imagine the Bible saying it is your duty to be miserable. You must be miserable. So that's weird. Let's turn it around. God tells us that we are. It's part of the prayer. Now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing. What is joy anyway? Not happiness, right? If happiness is a warm puppy, take the puppy away and now I'm not happy anymore. So happiness has to do with my circumstances. If it's sunny, I'm happy, if it's raining, I'm depressed. If the person I love is with me, I'm happy. If the person I love is not with me for a few days, I'm depressed. I can't function. I can't do anything until my loved one comes back. See, joy goes beyond that. Joy is like a ramrod up your back. It holds you up. You're able to function as God wants you to function, because it doesn't matter if that person comes or goes. It doesn't matter if it's sunny or rainy. It doesn't matter if your bank account's up or down. God never changes. And because your calling in this life is only going to be successful on the basis of your trusting in him, that's where you have to keep your eyes focused. You know, people, maybe you're one of them where literally your life is defined as I had a bad day today. I had a good day today. Oh, yesterday was a great day. Oh, man, last Thursday was horrible. What are you saying? You're saying your circumstances got the best of you and that's what defined your day. Instead of saying, well, to me, frankly, every day is the same, you know. I meet sinners, I'm a sinner myself, God calls me to do things, but I'm able to look over the din of all the stuff of life and keep focused on where I'm headed and what he wants me to do. That's what we should be saying. Christians who are doleful and despondent all the time are really offensive to God, you know, anybody like that. They're out there. Say, I don't even know you're a Christian, you know, all you ever do is complain, you're never happy. You're dour looking and you never have a word of encouragement. It's all about you. Are you sure you know him? Do you ever meet him, really? Well, what does he call you to do in this life? Be miserable? Be doleful? Be critical? Be judgmental? Be nasty? Is that what he wants you to do? Well, let me wrap this up by talking about blessings that are obtained through prayer. Some people won't believe in God until they feel joy. Well, I think that's like demanding a flower before you plant the bulb in the ground. Takes work to put the bulb in the ground, you got to water it and wait and then the flower comes. For you to say, I want joy in my life and I want everything to be going my way and then I'll believe there's a God. You hear that expression, don't you, all the time. Something goes well for somebody and they say, I knew there was a God. It's kind of a front up to God, don't you think? That's offensive. Because God knows exactly what we need. He's singing that great hymn, 660, here once in a while. I don't know what's coming toward me, that line, whether it's going to be good or ill, but God's going to be with me anyway. You don't know. If ill comes your way tomorrow, it is from God. If good comes your way tomorrow, it is from God. And we're to thank him in all things. You say, how can I be at peace when there's so much trouble in the world? Well, Because God calls you to be at peace. I believe you cannot oppose sin if you're joyless because God the Bible says the joy of the Lord is your strength. Think of the sins you're trying to deal with in your own life. You know Joe mentioned alcoholism and drug abuse. Maybe it's something else with you or somebody you know. I think about that for a minute. If the joy of the Lord is your strength and you need strength to combat sin in your life, then the joy of the Lord has everything to do with whether you're going to be successful in combating sin. If that does not produce joy in your life, when you think of Christ and him raised from the dead and what he did for you there, that doesn't produce joy in your life, you're not going to have any success in dealing with the sins in your life. Because you're depleted before you begin, like, wow, what's the point of living? Nobody's ever going to be able to fight a battle like that. The fact is that the best is yet to be. Do you believe that? The more you think about heaven and being with Jesus Christ, the better off you're going to be able to press on against the problems of this life. I mean, really think about this. If the grave was the end. If the grave was the end and you pass into oblivion, Why would you work at anything? What's the point? There's no reward. There's no judgment. I'm not doing what you tell me to do anymore. I'm going to do whatever feels good to me from the rest of my life. And if you get in my way, I'm going to crush you. That is the logical conclusion to having no hope. But if the hope is there, And the one who gives us that hope is calling us to a certain work. And you can press on even if it's difficult because you know how it ends. No promise of God to you is ever going to have any effect without the Holy Spirit applying it to you. And that's what Paul is saying here. Look at the last part of verse 13. By the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't know how the Holy Spirit applies a promise to you or me, but he does. What does that mean? You know, the Puritans used to talk about applying medicines before there were sulfa drugs and things that we can take in the antibiotic field. There were often surface medicines. A person had a flesh wound over here and there's an ointment in this hand, which if applied to the wound will help the wound. Well, here's the medicine. It's potentially got the ability to heal you. But the wound over here is going to make you sick. Well, apply the medicine to the wound, will you? So you'll get better. That's what has to happen. Just having what it takes to fix you over here isn't going to do it. The Holy Spirit has to take every promise and somehow apply it, press it into your life for you to understand that it's there and to work with it. He does that. That's his work. That's his promise. And he's the one who will never leave us nor forsake us because God put his spirit in us so we can hope. Here's a prayer. And I close with this, that should encourage us. Now, I'm not a Gentile in the Church of Rome, first century, where I say, oh, wow, this is fantastic. I never knew that the Old Testament prophets said the day would come when a guy like me would be a believer. Wow. So I guess I can believe in God from this point on. You don't have to be in the first century to get that message tonight. Just know that the promises that God gives you never fail. And so you should hope. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father and our God, we thank You for the truths of Your Word. We thank You for these prayers that are part of the inspired Word of God. And I ask that we be encouraged to know that we have a path set before us, not wishful thinking, but hope which is an anchor set into the very Word of God. Bless us as we go into the night and into the coming week. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Closing hymn is number 98. you. you. you.