From Suffering to Hope
Scripture Reading: Romans 5: 1 - 5 (NIV)
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Message: From Suffering to Hope
Trinity Sunday
On Trinity Sunday, we celebrate our Triune God - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
The Triune God is involved in our lives
The Father is the Creator of everything and He is also the Provider of all we need in life
The Son, Jesus, is the Saviour, the One to give us freedom and etenral life
The Holy Spirit is the One to comfort us and lead us in our lives following Jesus
Three persons of the Godhead in one God
And amazingly, all three mentioned in the section of Paul’s letter we read today
He talks about the peace of the Father, the glory of the Father and the love of Father
He illustrates how the Son gives us access to the peace of the Father
And he shows us how the Father’s love is poured in our hearts throught the Holy Spirit
The Triune God was actively involved in Paul’s life
Paul’s life story
Saul grew up Jewish, but his father was a Roman citizen
He was from the tribe of Benjamin
At age 13 he reached the Bar Mitzvah milestone of becoming a man (high school)
He continued his studies of the scriptures until he became Pharisee (PhD)
Saul was a man with strong convictions - so strong that he was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to defend his faith
He became known as Saul of Tarsis, a name that turned out to be feared Christians as Saul saw the Christians as a threat to his Jewish faith
Saul had a life-changing encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus where Jesus changed his life (his name was also changed to Paul to signify his conversion)
The light of Jesus blinded him and he was healed of his blindness to become an apostle and devout follower of Jesus
He had to earn the trust of the other apostles - he had to prove himself among them and later became the most influential apostle through the letters that he wrote
Paul travelled most of the known Roman Empire on foot on his missionary journeys to places like Ephesus, Philippi and Rome
On his journeys, he was persecuted on many levels: Faced beatings, imprisonment, shipwrecks, and rejection (children's stories the past few weeks)
Tradition holds he was beheaded under Nero (c. AD 67)
The story of this man’s life is a story that any Christian can identify with
Suffering chain reaction
Paul says: “because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”
He describes a chain reaction of how suffering plays out in the life of believers
As we reflect on this chain reaction, Paul describes, let us allow ourselves to identify with the process he describes:
Suffering produces perseverance
Perseverance produces character
And character produces hope
Hope to be found
Paul also says: “… we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”
We find hope in God through all our challenges
We find hope in God because God will be glorified even through our times of hardship
We have hope because we trust in God
Our hope does not put us to shame
We have hope because the love of God was poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
We have something that makes us to be different
Through the cross of Jesus we are people of hope
We are people of hope, not because we are exempt from suffering
We are people of hope because our Triune God never lets go of us when we suffer
We are people of hope through suffering.
Amen
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