- 2 days ago
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 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.
Romans 5:1-2 ESV
The Common Sense Bible Study crew discuss justification, salvation by faith, peace with God through Yeshua, and what it means to say that "at the right time Christ died for the ungodly"?
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
Follow me on Whole Bible Community: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
Romans 5:1-2 ESV
The Common Sense Bible Study crew discuss justification, salvation by faith, peace with God through Yeshua, and what it means to say that "at the right time Christ died for the ungodly"?
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
Follow me on Whole Bible Community: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
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LearningTranscript
00:00:01We're starting in Romans chapter 5, and I'll go ahead and read the first 11 verses,
00:00:07and then we'll go back to the beginning and talk about them.
00:00:11Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:00:16Through him, we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand,
00:00:21and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
00:00:24Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.
00:00:30And endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.
00:00:36Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
00:00:41For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
00:00:46For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to
00:00:53die.
00:00:53But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
00:00:58Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the
00:01:03wrath of God.
00:01:05For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,
00:01:09much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
00:01:13More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
00:01:20All right, Romans 5, verse 1.
00:01:25Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:01:32One of those big words that we've defined a few times already, justified.
00:01:37And the idea of justified is that we have been made righteous in God's sight.
00:01:44You know, the thing that a lot of teachers say is, just as if I'd never sinned.
00:01:50Of course, we have all sinned, and that started with Adam and the fall in the Garden of Eden,
00:01:56and everybody since him, except for one person, has followed his footsteps and sinned and fallen from God's perfection.
00:02:04And the only way that we can be made perfect again, the only way that we can be justified in
00:02:11God's sight,
00:02:12is by his grace.
00:02:14Of course, he decides to remove our sins, and he created a way for that to happen.
00:02:20And that's what Paul is referring to here.
00:02:22We've been justified by faith, and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:02:28So, my first question for y'all, when he says we have peace with God, what do you think he's
00:02:35talking about?
00:02:35What does he mean by peace?
00:02:36And what does it mean to have peace with God?
00:02:39And actually, maybe before we try to answer that question, I've got a passage here if somebody wants to read
00:02:46it.
00:02:47Isaiah 27, verses 2 through 13.
00:02:51Okay.
00:02:52In that day, Adonai will punish Levithion, the fleeing serpent, with his fierce, great, strong sword.
00:03:00Levithion, the twisted serpent, he will slay the dragon in the sea.
00:03:05In that day, they sing to her a vineyard of delight.
00:03:09I, Adonai, watch over it.
00:03:12I water it every moment.
00:03:14I guard it day and night, so that no one may harm it.
00:03:18It is not that I have wrath.
00:03:21Who would give me thorns and thistles?
00:03:24And to battle, I would march against them.
00:03:27I would burn them up to get all together.
00:03:29Rather, let them rely on my strength.
00:03:32Let them make peace with me.
00:03:34Make peace with me.
00:03:37In days to come, Jacob will take root.
00:03:39Israel will blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.
00:03:45Did he strike Israel as he struck those who struck them?
00:03:49Or were they slain as their slayers were slain?
00:03:53You contend with her by banishing her, by driving her away.
00:03:57With his fierce wind, he expelled them on the day of the east wind.
00:04:02So by this will, Jacob's sin be atoned, and this the full price to remove his sin, when he makes
00:04:11all the altar stones like shattered chalk stones, so that the Asherah poles and incense rise no more.
00:04:19The fortified city is a lonely habitation, forlorn and forsaken like the desert.
00:04:25There the calf will graze.
00:04:28There lie down and consume its branches.
00:04:31When the boughs are withered, they will be broken off.
00:04:35Women come and set them on fire, for it is a people of no understanding.
00:04:41Therefore, their maker will show them no mercy.
00:04:44He who formed them will give them no grace.
00:04:47It will come about in that day.
00:04:50Adonai will fresh from the channel of the river to the wadi of Egypt, and you will be gathered one
00:04:57by one, benight Israel.
00:04:59It will also come about in that day.
00:05:02A great shofar will be blown.
00:05:04Those perishing in the land of Assyria and the exiles in the land of Egypt will come and worship Adonai
00:05:11on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.
00:05:14Excellent.
00:05:16I mean, there were probably a few verses in the middle there that we could have skipped and still gotten
00:05:21the picture.
00:05:22But this chapter describes Israel being scattered because of their sins, because they rejected God.
00:05:30He scattered them.
00:05:31He brought these foreign nations in to punish them, and they hauled them off into Assyria and Egypt and Babylon,
00:05:39all these foreign lands.
00:05:41But God promises to restore them.
00:05:43He says, I've sent them out there for a reason.
00:05:46They're out there to be winnowed.
00:05:47In other words, he's going to throw them up in the air, let the wind blow the chaff away, and
00:05:52then he's going to collect the grain and bring them all back to Israel again.
00:05:56And he says, let them rely on my protection.
00:06:00Let him make peace with me.
00:06:02Let him make peace with me.
00:06:04And then at the end, it will come about also in that day with a great trumpet will be blown.
00:06:09And those who are perishing in the land of Assyria and who are scattered in the land of Egypt will
00:06:15come and worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
00:06:18So considering the peace that God is promising to Israel in this passage, or the peace that he is encouraging
00:06:27them to create and then that he promises.
00:06:31What do you think that Paul means by peace with God?
00:06:37Repentance and forgiveness?
00:06:39Yeah, it's mostly the forgiveness.
00:06:41It starts with repentance.
00:06:42You don't get peace with God until you acknowledge your sins.
00:06:46You know, what we talked about before when Paul referred back to the Psalms of David,
00:06:52David spelled out that the first step in repentance and being reconciled to God is, what's the word I'm looking
00:07:01for, confession.
00:07:03You need to acknowledge that you have sinned, that you've got flaws, and then you go to God and repent
00:07:09of them.
00:07:10God forgives you, and he's the one who justifies you.
00:07:13I mean, you can't earn your way back into God's graces.
00:07:18He's the one who makes that peace.
00:07:20But it is, it starts with repentance and ends with reconciliation.
00:07:25So that's what the peace with God is.
00:07:27You can kind of read into this that, you know, inner peace.
00:07:32You know, once you have, you've been justified by faith and you have this good relationship with God,
00:07:39then, you know, you can have a state of inner peace.
00:07:42God doesn't promise that, though.
00:07:44I mean, that's one of the things that can come from having a good relationship with him.
00:07:50And Paul talks about that when he talks about, you know, finding joy.
00:07:54And David talks about that, too.
00:07:57But that's something that comes later.
00:08:01The peace that Paul is talking about here is something that comes immediately.
00:08:06When you confess your sins and repent of them and ask God for forgiveness, God bridges that gap.
00:08:14He justifies you because you believe in him.
00:08:16And what it says in Isaiah 27, 5, let him rely on my protection.
00:08:25In other words, you can't defend yourself against Assyria and Egypt.
00:08:28Israel couldn't.
00:08:29Judah couldn't.
00:08:30They were supposed to rely on God, not themselves.
00:08:34And as long as we're relying on ourselves to save us, we're always going to fail.
00:08:39When we rely on God to save us, that's when we have peace with him.
00:08:44But then he adds this part at the end.
00:08:46Through our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:08:49What do you suppose that means?
00:08:51I think I'm throwing you kind of a softball here.
00:08:53Through the action of the mechanism of Yeshua's sacrifice?
00:09:02Because that would...
00:09:03Yeah, he's the one who enables that.
00:09:06God's justice requires death as a penalty for sin.
00:09:12And because we are broken, corrupted people, our death could never really satisfy the requirements of the law.
00:09:21But a perfect person, an infinitely perfect person, can satisfy the requirements for everybody.
00:09:29And so, as long as we are putting our faith in God's protection, in God's salvation and not ours,
00:09:35then Yeshua's blood satisfies that requirement for death and reconciles us with God.
00:09:43And all of that is enabled by God's grace.
00:09:46I mean, none of it is anything that we have done for ourselves.
00:09:49All the confession and repentance in the world wouldn't do anything for us if God didn't decide to make this
00:09:56happen.
00:09:58Go ahead, Jules.
00:10:00Yeah.
00:10:01This is where it gets so tricky because we could bring up so many verses.
00:10:05I'm thinking about Isaiah 45 also.
00:10:10Turn to me and I shall save.
00:10:12And I alone shall save.
00:10:16And I think about that.
00:10:18This is where it gets very tricky also.
00:10:20Not to bring many irons to the fire.
00:10:24But when I always think about...
00:10:26Because people want to ask, is Jesus was really God?
00:10:29And this is where Paul is very careful to say that even this concept is beyond him.
00:10:37And what I mean by that is he brings a chapter, Isaiah 45, and he brings into Philippians chapter 2,
00:10:43a name above every name.
00:10:46And he doesn't say Yahweh or Adonai or Adonai.
00:10:49He says Yeshua.
00:10:50So I guess the point I'm trying to make is it's the faithfulness of God that saves us.
00:10:57God alone had to save us.
00:10:59This is where it gets very tricky because we got monotheism showing up its head and we got the Trinitarian
00:11:08showing up its head.
00:11:09So what I'm trying to say is that it had to be the faithfulness of God alone had to save
00:11:15us.
00:11:16It had to be God's blood had to be shed.
00:11:18It had to be...
00:11:19We think about Adon, which means...
00:11:21When you think about the word Adon, it's just Adama from the dirt.
00:11:25But it means also you take the word...
00:11:28You divide that word Adon.
00:11:30A would signify El or Adon or Aleph as for God.
00:11:35But also D-A-M.
00:11:37In Hebrew, it means God's blood.
00:11:39The point I'm trying to make is it's the faithfulness of God himself dying on the cross.
00:11:45I think John Stalk...
00:11:47I don't want to go too far into study here tonight.
00:11:49But when you think about what happened at the cross, I think John Stalk said it very well.
00:11:54It had to be self-satisfaction by self-substitution.
00:11:58God had to save us.
00:12:00Jesus himself, God himself had to be the faithful one to die on the cross.
00:12:04He could not be just as good...
00:12:05Jesus could not be another Enoch, a wonderful man walking on the earth.
00:12:10And God took him for what he was not.
00:12:13It had to be more about God taking responsibility.
00:12:16I hope I made my point clear.
00:12:19Yeah, I think you did.
00:12:20And you're absolutely right.
00:12:22The scriptures are pretty clear.
00:12:25I mean, I know that some people will argue all day that Yeshua can't be God.
00:12:29You know, how can God pray to himself?
00:12:31That doesn't make any sense.
00:12:32Well, if you think you understand God, you're kidding yourself.
00:12:38Nobody understands God and ever will.
00:12:41That's just beyond our capacity.
00:12:44But especially the writings of John, you know, the gospel of John, his letters in the book of Revelation are
00:12:50very clear that Yeshua and Yahweh are one in the same.
00:12:55I don't understand how that works.
00:12:57That's a mystery.
00:12:58How can God become a man?
00:13:00How can God die?
00:13:01That doesn't make any sense to me.
00:13:03But there it is.
00:13:05I don't have to understand everything that the scriptures say in order to believe them.
00:13:11I just have to accept that Paul and John and Peter and all these people, they understood it better than
00:13:17I do.
00:13:19Let's go on to verse two.
00:13:21Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in
00:13:26the hope of the glory of God.
00:13:30So through him, this is referring back to Yeshua.
00:13:33Through Yeshua, we have obtained access by faith into the grace in which we stand.
00:13:39We've already talked about most of this.
00:13:41The grace is God's decision to give us something that he didn't have to give us.
00:13:48It doesn't matter whether we deserved it or not.
00:13:50That's not the point.
00:13:51The point is that God didn't owe us anything.
00:13:54He decided to save us because that's what he wanted to do.
00:13:57And that is God's grace.
00:13:59But that grace is enabled by our faith in Yeshua's blood and in his righteousness and his resurrection.
00:14:08Because we believe in what he did, God extends grace.
00:14:12Not because we've earned it, but because those are the rules that God decided on.
00:14:16There is an implication here.
00:14:18I might be making too much of this, but this phrase, we have also obtained access.
00:14:24We have obtained access to the grace.
00:14:28That means that, at least the way that I understand it, that means that that grace was not ours until
00:14:36that happened.
00:14:37And God has made it available to us.
00:14:40There is a doctrine that says that from the very beginning of time, before God even created mankind, he decided
00:14:50who was going to be saved and who was not.
00:14:53And you were created to be saved or you were created to be condemned.
00:14:58And I can believe that God, well, I can believe whatever the scriptures say.
00:15:03I just don't see the justification for that in scripture.
00:15:06I've looked at all the scriptures that people use to support this doctrine.
00:15:11I just don't agree with them.
00:15:12I think that those scriptures are saying God knew who would be saved and who would not because he knows
00:15:20who we are.
00:15:21But he didn't decide ahead of time.
00:15:24Like he didn't create each individual person specifically for salvation or condemnation.
00:15:30And I think this verse here kind of proves that, that we have been given access to God's grace.
00:15:37We have, it has not been imposed on us.
00:15:41Condemnation was not imposed on us.
00:15:43Grace was not imposed on us.
00:15:44We chose which one we wanted.
00:15:46We might not have been conscious of the choice at the moment.
00:15:50But at some point we chose which way we were going.
00:15:54And I think that as long as we're alive and we are able to tell the difference between right and
00:16:01wrong and we are aware of our sins, we still have that choice in front of us.
00:16:06I suspect that some people eventually get to a point where they can no longer tell.
00:16:11Their consciences are so seared.
00:16:13They no longer feel any kind of guilt or shame.
00:16:17They have no desire to know God.
00:16:19Those people may be beyond that, the possibility of choosing.
00:16:23But most of us, as long as we're alive, still breathing and still thinking, we are still able to access
00:16:30that grace.
00:16:31We just have to make the conscious choice to do it.
00:16:34All right, second half of the verse.
00:16:37We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
00:16:40What do you think it means for, what is the hope of the glory of God?
00:16:44What do you think that means?
00:16:45Any thoughts?
00:16:47When I look at, not to take this verse too far, when I'm always looking at the word faith, I'm
00:16:54always, I have to put slash fullness.
00:16:58Faith, fullness.
00:16:59It seems like when Jesus had to be faithful all the way to the end to die on the cross,
00:17:06when even he prayed to the Father, sir, is there another way?
00:17:09Can we accomplish what you want to accomplish?
00:17:12Is there another way?
00:17:13No.
00:17:14Even Christ knew he had to be faithful to die on the cross.
00:17:17And that was the only way to access our redemption to his faithfulness, his activity count.
00:17:26And I always go to Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 4.
00:17:31The just shall live by faith.
00:17:34But I think the word should be emunah in Hebrew, which means pistis in Greek.
00:17:39It means fullness.
00:17:41It seems like no matter what happens, when we have no control about all the situation, we remain faithful.
00:17:49By what, like me and my wife will stay married as long as I remain, oh, I believe that the
00:17:54marriage isn't going to work.
00:17:55No, in my mind, no.
00:17:57But if I remain faithful to the marriage, the marriage will last until with death do us part.
00:18:03It's more about faithfulness.
00:18:05I don't even explain myself correctly, but that's when I every time I see the word faith, pistis in Greek
00:18:11in the New Testament, it's going to be emunah, faithfulness.
00:18:16Yeah, well, yeah, let me put it another way.
00:18:18And, you know, correct me if I'm getting this wrong or if I'm misunderstanding you.
00:18:22But the idea of faith in the scriptures, you know, it depends on context, exactly how you translate it into
00:18:29English.
00:18:30But in some context, you might translate it as belief.
00:18:34Like, I believe that this is true.
00:18:36In some context, you would translate it as, I believe that this person is true.
00:18:42I believe his word.
00:18:44But both of those lead to an action.
00:18:48If you believe in the word of God, if you believe in God, you will be faithful to God.
00:18:54And so the idea of faith encompasses all of that.
00:18:58Belief leads to action, leads to consistent, persisted action.
00:19:04In other words, faithfulness.
00:19:06Is that along the same lines?
00:19:08That's why you can speak English better than I can.
00:19:13Okay, but in this verse, what is the hope of the glory of God?
00:19:20Or maybe what is the glory of God that he's talking about?
00:19:23I put another passage in the comments.
00:19:272 Corinthians 4, 16 through 5, 2.
00:19:33It's not quite as long as the last reading.
00:19:35Anybody want to take that one?
00:19:37I could try.
00:19:38I could try.
00:19:39Okay.
00:19:40Just give me one second.
00:19:41Okay, here it goes.
00:19:442 Corinthians 4, 16.
00:19:48And continuing to chapter 5, verse 2.
00:19:52Therefore, we don't faint, but true, our outward person is decaying, yet our inward person is renewed day by day.
00:20:03Verse 17, for our light afflictions, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly and eternally
00:20:16way of glory.
00:20:19Verse 18.
00:20:20While we don't look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
00:20:26For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
00:20:35For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we having a building from God, a
00:20:52house not made with hands, eternal, but eternal in the heavens.
00:20:59That's the last verse 2.
00:21:02For the most certainly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with the habitation which is from heaven.
00:21:11Throughout Paul's writings, he keeps referring back to this hope.
00:21:15And he's, every time he does, he's usually referring to one of a very few things, and they're all related.
00:21:22He may be referring to the establishment of the kingdom of God and the reign, like the rebuilding of the
00:21:30tabernacle of David and, you know, the throne of the Messiah.
00:21:35He may be referring to the resurrection, or he may be referring to our glorification after the resurrection.
00:21:43And this passage in 2 Corinthians, he's kind of wrapping all of that up into one, one, a few sentences.
00:21:53He's talking about how we may be facing trials here on earth, but if we are persistent, if we hold
00:22:01the line, remain faithful through those trials, then at the resurrection, we will be, we're all going to die eventually.
00:22:10Or we're going to be at the resurrection where we'll be transformed, one of the two.
00:22:14Either way, this temporary shell, the flesh that we wear now, that's going to go away and be replaced with
00:22:21something permanent and much greater.
00:22:25And this is the resurrection and our glorification afterwards.
00:22:29And all of this is done by the grace of God.
00:22:32I mean, God himself can't get any greater, can't be any more glorious than he already is.
00:22:36He is already infinite, and you can't get bigger than infinite.
00:22:40But we can be glorified.
00:22:43And God's action in us, our forgiveness, our justification, our resurrection and glorification, all of these things are for the
00:22:52glory of God.
00:22:54And this, I think, is the great hope that Paul is talking about.
00:22:58So, I guess I asked the question and then I answered it, but next time I'll try to give you
00:23:03all a chance.
00:23:04So, in the 2 Corinthians passage, you can see that Paul is repeating kind of the same thing he's talking
00:23:09about here in Romans 5.
00:23:10He's talking about rejoicing.
00:23:12And in the next couple of verses, we're going to get into some of the other things he talked about
00:23:17in 2 Corinthians, the suffering and endurance.
00:23:20It says, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
00:23:26And so, that word rejoice stands out to me because doesn't that sound like a celebration of some sort of
00:23:39celebrating and being ecstatic of coming, well, the hope that we have in our Lord?
00:23:51I guess that word is more of like, we're not just supposed to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's going
00:23:58to happen.
00:23:59And not be cheerful and boastful of that, I guess.
00:24:07That's going to be, that's what we're looking forward to.
00:24:10And I think, I just don't know how, as Christians, we don't get excited about the hope of the glory
00:24:22of God and the kingdom.
00:24:25So, I don't know, what are your thoughts on rejoicing in that hope of the glory?
00:24:32Well, I think for most of us, it is kind of a difficult thing because it's difficult to imagine.
00:24:38I mean, we only know one world.
00:24:40And I know that, at least from observing the people around me, my parents, you know, other friends and family,
00:24:48that the older people get, the more they have experienced and witnessed, the more excited they tend to get about
00:24:56that future resurrection.
00:24:58You know, the idea that Jesus come quickly, quicker than you planned, the quicker, the better.
00:25:07These ideas get bigger in your mind as time goes on.
00:25:10But for most of us, especially when you're younger, if life is going well, it's really hard to focus on,
00:25:17you know, this eventual hope.
00:25:20Isn't life good now?
00:25:22What do we need this other thing for?
00:25:23But we just cannot imagine the difference.
00:25:27And I think that's one of the purposes that God has for suffering and for hardship in this world.
00:25:33How will we really know what true joy is unless we've experienced suffering?
00:25:39And that suffering helps us to focus on the hope of the future resurrection and glorification, on the future rebalancing
00:25:48of the scales.
00:25:48You know, we look at the, at all the injustice in the world around us and all the terrible things
00:25:54that happen in the world and think, man, God, how can God allow this?
00:26:00Let me read these next couple of verses.
00:26:02Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character
00:26:10produces hope.
00:26:11So, God always has a purpose for suffering.
00:26:14And there are multiple purposes.
00:26:16And one of those is to highlight joy.
00:26:20You don't really know what real joy is until you've suffered.
00:26:24And I am aware that there are people in the world who have experienced suffering that I cannot imagine.
00:26:32And my only consolation there is that those people, that their joy will be that much the greater eventually, if
00:26:41they are faithful.
00:26:42I want to ask you all, what do you think, what are some of the purposes that God might have
00:26:48for suffering?
00:26:49I mean, it's not just that suffering allows us to appreciate the pleasures that God has in the world.
00:26:56There is more to it than that.
00:26:58Go ahead, Kevin.
00:27:00Well, he did that.
00:27:01Didn't he do that to the prophets?
00:27:03Didn't they suffer a lot?
00:27:07And from reading that, I just get that he does it so we can know his attributes, his character, because
00:27:20we're humans and we don't really know the mind of God.
00:27:23But when Hosea went through all that stuff, that's what the Lord has done with us, with the Israelites.
00:27:35And so the sufferings that we face, I believe, help us to understand our Lord Christ more, his attributes.
00:27:53And it's not a bad thing.
00:27:55It's just to really bridge the gap between the world we live in and in the heavenly realm of what
00:28:04God is actually like.
00:28:07Like, this is what God himself has experienced in ways.
00:28:14I don't know.
00:28:15Like that.
00:28:16Yeah, and I think, you know, your reference to Hosea is right on point there, is that God instructed Hosea
00:28:23to marry a woman that he knew was going to cause him heartache.
00:28:28And he did that so that he would have this illustration for us.
00:28:32It's like saying, okay, I'm Hosea.
00:28:34Israel is, I can't remember Hosea's wife's name.
00:28:38But, you know, this is what you people are doing to me.
00:28:41You can see the suffering.
00:28:43Yeah, Gomer.
00:28:44You can see the suffering that Hosea is going through, and you can relate to that because, you know, you've
00:28:49got neighbors like this.
00:28:51But now think of me in that position, and you are Gomer, and all of the things that you're doing
00:28:56to me.
00:28:58And, yeah, it really puts God in perspective.
00:29:02I think you also hinted at the idea that it also shows us, it gives us an idea of what
00:29:09Christ has suffered.
00:29:10You know, most of us will never suffer on that scale.
00:29:13Some people have suffered much worse.
00:29:15But most of us will never suffer physically on the scale that Yeshua did.
00:29:22But what Paul calls our light momentary afflictions, these things give us an idea.
00:29:28You know, I broke a toe once, you know, on the grand scale of things.
00:29:33That's not really that bad.
00:29:35But it hurt.
00:29:36And then just imagine not just a broken toe, but a spike driven through my foot and then hang there
00:29:46on that spike for hours.
00:29:49That's, the broken toe really doesn't compare to that.
00:29:52But it does give me a little bit of perspective on what that must have been like.
00:29:56And I know that there are other people who have experienced things that are much closer to what Yeshua actually
00:30:01did.
00:30:01Go ahead, Jules.
00:30:02Yes.
00:30:03I might use a very overly simplistic example about, you know, rejoice in your suffering.
00:30:10Think about when you are in a sporting event or you're Olympian or something like that, those aspects.
00:30:17Or even like a ballet dancer.
00:30:21When you think about practice and practice.
00:30:24In those events where no one's watching and you're just enduring those pains and suffering during those practices.
00:30:31And you might suffer broken bones.
00:30:34You might suffer an injury.
00:30:35But you continue to press on because eventually you will become, when the event does happen, when people are watching
00:30:44or just the event happening, you're at your best.
00:30:48All those pains, sufferings of achieving that you're going to be that perfect example of whatever you are practicing in.
00:30:56And now the event has happened.
00:30:59And all those practices, all those suffering, but the end game, the end goal, the event came without a glitch.
00:31:06You were perfect or you were complete in that event.
00:31:10I'm using an over-simplistic example of sporting events.
00:31:13But I think it illustrates, even though those simple explanations really drives over point.
00:31:21Yeah, I think that's perfect.
00:31:22And it's, it really matches the specific words that Paul is using here.
00:31:27He's saying that our suffering produces endurance.
00:31:31And our endurance produces character.
00:31:34And some of our translations may have it a little bit different.
00:31:37I think the King James says that the suffering produces patience and patience produces character.
00:31:44But if you look at the Greek word behind character, see, I wrote that down here.
00:31:50The word, it refers to something that has been tested and tried and made stronger through it.
00:31:57So like a tempered metal, you hammer away at metal, you put some, some carbon, some charcoal on there and
00:32:04hammer away at it.
00:32:05Infuse that metal with carbon and produce some carbon steel.
00:32:09It gets better, you know, you fold it, you hammer it together, you fold it again, hammer it together.
00:32:15If that metal had nerves, it would be suffering.
00:32:20But through all that process, it gets stronger and stronger and it will hold an edge longer.
00:32:26You can sharpen it better.
00:32:29It's more flexible.
00:32:31And this is what Paul is really getting at that, you know, who was it?
00:32:35The German guy.
00:32:37Can't remember his name.
00:32:38Anyways, he says, you know, what, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
00:32:41And, you know, in a way that's from his perspective, that's stupid.
00:32:47He didn't believe in God.
00:32:49And so there are so many things in the world that if you don't believe in God, if they don't
00:32:54kill you, they can permanently maim you.
00:32:56They can make you a quadriplegic, break your back, you know, brain injuries, all kinds of things.
00:33:02Those things don't make you stronger unless you have faith in God.
00:33:07If you have faith in God, it doesn't matter what the world does to you.
00:33:12Everything works together to the good of those who have faith in him.
00:33:16You're trusting his plan.
00:33:19You are keeping the faith through suffering that produces endurance and produces greater faithfulness, which tempers the metal of your,
00:33:30your faith, your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to say.
00:33:34And makes you a stronger, more faithful disciple.
00:33:39Go ahead, Kevin.
00:33:40So it's interesting how, I love this verse because it basically walks you through all the way to hope and
00:33:51it has character.
00:33:52It actually builds character in us from the sufferings or tribulations that we experience.
00:34:01And Christ was perfect.
00:34:05We are sinners.
00:34:08So a perfect man whose God suffered the cruelest death that he could suffer and he had no reason to
00:34:22die from his own people.
00:34:24And so when I look at that, I look at the sufferings of Job and most people that have, you
00:34:35know, of the past have suffered to some extent.
00:34:38But it produces endurance and they have perseverance, but an easy life, if our lives were easy, then we would
00:34:50have no need for, to produce, we would have no need to, for anything.
00:35:01And, yeah, so I think having a life that you never know what the next day is going to bring.
00:35:10But every time that I go through something, it does produce that character because, whereas before I used to do
00:35:22something, but now I'm putting off and putting on things, that's producing endurance.
00:35:27You're enduring through that suffering.
00:35:31And I relate it to sports, right, or something like that, a marathon, like the scripture says, or working out,
00:35:43lifting weights.
00:35:44You're not going to get, you're not going to be built right away.
00:35:50It takes time.
00:35:52But as long as you keep on going through that, it's going to hurt.
00:35:55There's days that your legs are going to be sore, but you keep going.
00:36:01And sometimes people, they hurt something, they pull a muscle, but you keep going.
00:36:07And so I find it interesting how God has placed sufferings to endurance or endurance to character, character to hope.
00:36:18And that's just for our good, like you said.
00:36:21Yeah.
00:36:24Anybody else want to add some ideas on, on why God might allow suffering?
00:36:29I mean, Paul, obviously, he talks about a couple of ideas there, and we've talked about a few others, but
00:36:37there are multiple reasons that God would allow suffering or even cause suffering.
00:36:42Anybody want to take a stab at it?
00:36:44He calls, when the Israelites were leaving Egypt, they suffered, they wanted to know their degree of faithfulness.
00:36:56Were they going to follow him?
00:36:58Were they going to be obedient?
00:37:02Yeah, it revealed their character, both to God and to them.
00:37:06I mean, I'm sure that God already knew who they were, but he needed them to go through those trials
00:37:11for their sake and also for the world's sake.
00:37:15But who else, who else suffered because of what happened to Israel in Egypt and the wilderness, really?
00:37:23But I'm really thinking more about Egypt.
00:37:26I kind of gave away the answer there.
00:37:29Egypt suffered.
00:37:31The Egyptians suffered a lot through those plagues.
00:37:35But why?
00:37:36Why did God cause the Egyptians suffering?
00:37:39Pharaoh?
00:37:40What was that?
00:37:42Pharaoh?
00:37:44Sure.
00:37:45I mean, he was, he was hard and he was the king at that time.
00:37:50He didn't listen to God.
00:37:52Moses told him, this is what's going to happen.
00:37:57And he didn't, he didn't believe.
00:37:59Yeah, it, it kind of sealed Pharaoh's fate.
00:38:02And the suffering that Pharaoh went through and that the Egyptians went through, Pharaoh could have ended that at any
00:38:07time.
00:38:09But the more you dig your heels in, I mean, the more you resist God, the more you have to
00:38:13be committed to it.
00:38:15You have really have two choices with God.
00:38:17You can submit or resist.
00:38:19And the moment you submit, you have to repent.
00:38:23You have to give God what he wants.
00:38:25If you're going to resist, you have to keep resisting harder.
00:38:29And God is going to keep pushing you.
00:38:31He's going to give you more and more chances.
00:38:33Pharaoh had multiple chances before God stepped in and hardened his heart for him.
00:38:40But then once, once God hardened Pharaoh's heart, why did God keep punishing Pharaoh and the Egyptians after that?
00:38:48The best answer I could come up with is because what is exactly what you wanted.
00:38:53You wanted to continue in this suffering.
00:38:57I want to be careful when I answer that question you just asked earlier, too, about, you know, why the
00:39:03pain and suffering.
00:39:04But if we want to live in a world where there's many gods, we want to live in a world
00:39:09that we want to decide for ourselves, not let God decide what's right and wrong.
00:39:13I always, whenever it comes to any Bible study, even like this one tonight, I always go back to the
00:39:19Garden of Eden.
00:39:20And it's when Eve decided to say, no, no, God, I, you know, thank you.
00:39:24I know you're the creator.
00:39:25I know you do tell us what is right and wrong.
00:39:28And we should maybe submit and be obedient to that you tell us what's right and wrong.
00:39:34But no, we want to do that for ourselves.
00:39:37When creation itself, when the creatures and creation itself decides what's right and wrong, then the peace and sufferings.
00:39:43So when you said he hardened Pharaoh's heart, it's more like you said, you want that way, Pharaoh?
00:39:49Here you go.
00:39:50I'm going to let go.
00:39:51I'm going to let you decide what's right and wrong.
00:39:53Sorry.
00:39:54My phone made a noise.
00:39:57But I just want to mention that this is what we need to mention is that this is the struggle
00:40:02that we have between believing and following one God or wanting to believe or wanting to follow many directions instead
00:40:11of the one direction.
00:40:12And that's the best way to understand it.
00:40:15When we think of biblically speaking, biblically speaking, the opposite of belief in God is disobedience.
00:40:21And once we want to go in that way of disobedience, we want the pain and suffering.
00:40:26So Pharaoh had the pain and suffering because that's exactly and his people submitting to Pharaoh's guidance, instruction, direction.
00:40:34The continue of pain and suffering will continue.
00:40:39Yeah, these kind of talks always remind me of the warden's speech in Cool Hand Luke.
00:40:48And y'all already know what I'm talking about, right?
00:40:52Some people you just can't reach.
00:40:55And he wanted life to be hard.
00:40:58He gets it.
00:40:59And I think it goes beyond that, though.
00:41:02There were multiple reasons that God caused the Egyptians to suffer.
00:41:07And, you know, of course, the obvious one is to force them to let Israel go.
00:41:13He made the Egyptians suffer because they were making his people suffer.
00:41:18And he had to rescue his people.
00:41:21Now, obviously, he could have just destroyed Egypt with a wave of his hand and brought the Hebrews out.
00:41:26Or he could have just made a wall.
00:41:28Like, I'm going to put a wall up between the Egyptians and the Hebrews, and I'm going to walk the
00:41:32Hebrews out.
00:41:33Nobody gets hurt.
00:41:33Everybody's fine.
00:41:35But he didn't do that.
00:41:36He caused a lot of death.
00:41:38He caused a lot of suffering, a lot of disease.
00:41:42And all of those things had a purpose.
00:41:46First, he had the purpose of rescuing his people, forcing Pharaoh to surrender.
00:41:52Second, he needed to teach the Egyptian people who he was.
00:41:57He had to reveal his own character to them.
00:42:00He had to show his character to the Hebrews to say, hey, I am the God that your forefathers told
00:42:08you about.
00:42:08I'm the God you've been worshiping all these years, and you haven't seen me.
00:42:11Now I'm going to show myself.
00:42:14So he shows himself.
00:42:15But he does it not just by rescuing them with a high hand, but by humiliating the gods of Egypt.
00:42:24He made the Egyptians suffer because they were relying on the wrong God.
00:42:30They were putting their faith and trust in the river, and in Anubis, and Ra, and all of these false
00:42:38gods.
00:42:39And through each one of these plagues, God was pointing out, I'm bigger and badder than all of your gods.
00:42:46And the very first one, the very first of Israel's gods was the source of life in Egypt.
00:42:52I mean, the very first of Egypt's gods, sorry.
00:42:54The Egyptians looked down to the river for life, while the Hebrews looked up to the sky for life.
00:43:01Now, neither the sky nor the river were the gods.
00:43:03These were just the things that the people looked to as the source of the gods' blessings.
00:43:09The Egyptians didn't worship the river itself, necessarily.
00:43:14They worshiped the god who caused the river.
00:43:17And so, the first thing that God struck was the river, and he turned it into death.
00:43:22He says, this is the source of Egypt's life, and I am turning it to death.
00:43:27Because you put your trust in the wrong God, the thing that you trust will betray you.
00:43:33That reminds me of, there's another prophecy where God is rebuking Judah for relying on Egypt to protect them from
00:43:42Assyria.
00:43:43And he's saying, Egypt is a weak river reed.
00:43:48And, you know, you're going to lean on that reed, and it's going to break and splinter, and it's going
00:43:53to stab you in the hand.
00:43:55And that's what Egypt's gods were to Egypt.
00:43:57Egypt trusted in all of their gods to save them and to make them prosperous.
00:44:02And God said, look, I'm the creator.
00:44:05I control all these things.
00:44:08And, you know, some people take more pain to learn a lesson.
00:44:14The Egyptians apparently took, it took quite a bit.
00:44:18And even that lesson was short-lived.
00:44:20Within another generation or two, they were back to the same ways.
00:44:24And I think somebody mentioned something about the pain also makes people change.
00:44:29And, you know, that's illustrated a little bit by the Egyptians, but the repeated suffering that God put Israel through
00:44:34was to provoke them to repentance.
00:44:37The passage in Isaiah that we read earlier about, you know, God scattering Egypt to the winds, well, he's winnowing
00:44:45them like chaff.
00:44:46You know, he's blowing the chaff away and beating them.
00:44:48And then when all of the chaff is blown away, he's going to draw them back to the land because
00:44:53the only thing left are the fruitful remnants of Israel.
00:44:59So suffering produces repentance.
00:45:01It reveals your character.
00:45:04It reveals God's character.
00:45:05It reveals the character of the false gods that you worship.
00:45:10It produces strength and endurance in people who have faith in God and who embrace whatever trials that God puts
00:45:19in their way.
00:45:20It builds people's faith in God as he sees them through their trials.
00:45:28And the more that you're talking about exercise and preparing for a marathon or a race, well, faith is the
00:45:35same way.
00:45:36The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
00:45:39So God puts you under trial so that you can exercise your faith.
00:45:43And sometimes your rescue doesn't come the way that you expect it to.
00:45:47Sometimes you're not rescued at all because God has other purposes that he's working through that, through those trials.
00:45:54And we don't necessarily know what they are.
00:45:57So our job is just to maintain our faith.
00:46:00Be faithful to God through those trials and our faithfulness will increase.
00:46:06Our belief in him and our trust in him will increase.
00:46:10Any other thoughts on that?
00:46:12I just think of a wonderful, I think she passed away a few years ago, Marva Dawn, a wonderful, beautiful
00:46:22theologian.
00:46:23And I almost remembered, not word for word, but as much as I could remember her, one of her most
00:46:29beautiful statements.
00:46:31And it talks about biblical patience.
00:46:33Just think about biblical patience.
00:46:35And she said it in this manner, in this way.
00:46:39True biblical patience is not just waiting for things to change in your life, but true biblical patience just to
00:46:47wait patiently for just for the fact who God is.
00:46:53Even when things do not change in your life, you need to have that faithfulness, that steadfastness.
00:47:00Even in, you think of the people in the 11th century looking for Christ's return or the 12th century or
00:47:05the 14th century.
00:47:07Their patience had to be there, even though things did not change in their life.
00:47:11So we need to have that faithfulness, that belief, that persistence, that steadfastness.
00:47:18Even though nothing changes in their life, but that's the true biblical patience.
00:47:23You just hold on, even though you don't see the benefits in this world today.
00:47:29I think Marva Don hit the nail on the head.
00:47:32Yeah, that's great.
00:47:33I'm not familiar with that name, but I'll look it up.
00:47:37That D-O-N or D-A-W-N?
00:47:40Oh, sorry, Marva.
00:47:42Marva, yeah.
00:47:43M-A-R-V-A.
00:47:45And Don, like the Don in the morning.
00:47:47Yeah, she was a wonderful T-O-L.
00:47:49She was in Canada, by the way, Western.
00:47:52She was a Jew at this, and she was a professor in a university in Canada.
00:47:58Okay, thank you.
00:48:00Go ahead, Kevin.
00:48:02Real quick, I just want to mention about kind of what Jules was saying about patience and the definition.
00:48:11We have to be very careful of taking the word love, other words out there, and think that's what the
00:48:19meaning is,
00:48:20because the world has a different meaning for these things.
00:48:24And so, it's just something that I learned, is like, what does that really look like?
00:48:34What does God say that is?
00:48:35So, I think Jules bringing that up puts some perspective on how important words are,
00:48:42and especially in today's culture, it feels like we're just really, society just seems to not care about what things
00:48:55mean anymore.
00:48:56And so, I just want to mention how important words and meanings of those words mean, or what they mean,
00:49:05because if we're not careful, we could be really making, if we're not careful, we can have a distorted view
00:49:17of God and what He says.
00:49:19Yeah, and I think to a great extent that the changes in language that creates that confusion are deliberate.
00:49:29You know, to some extent, it's just the natural way the languages go.
00:49:32They change over time, and English is probably worse than most languages.
00:49:37But some of that is deliberate, sometimes by people who are trying to distort, trying to trick people into believing
00:49:44something.
00:49:46So, whether it's marketing or politics or whatever, they will emphasize one meaning of a word,
00:49:52or slightly distort it, and try to make that popular, so that then they can distort some older idea that
00:49:58people have that uses the same word.
00:50:01Hopefully, it makes sense.
00:50:03And to some extent, this is also something that Satan does.
00:50:09He will deliberately try to distort words so we don't understand the scriptures.
00:50:15And you can read the King James Bible and see that in real life, that, you know, the King James,
00:50:21it was a good translation.
00:50:24But I don't recommend it to people today, because sometimes people read it and they think they know what it
00:50:29says.
00:50:30But words have changed meaning.
00:50:32And, you know, one of the obvious ones is the King James Version talks about meat.
00:50:37It doesn't mean meat, it means food.
00:50:39But today, we use the word meat to talk about animal flesh.
00:50:44But in King James English, they use the word flesh for that.
00:50:47And they use the word meat for all food.
00:50:50So, I mean, there are much more subtle instances of that in the King James English.
00:50:55And it can really twist people up, because they think they know what the word is.
00:51:00And they don't, really.
00:51:01They have a different definition for the same word.
00:51:04Go ahead, Jules.
00:51:06Yeah, sorry.
00:51:06Yeah, it reminds me, because it was a study I learned from Dwight Pryor.
00:51:11He was saying about the Battle of Hastings.
00:51:14The word righteousness and justice, it had a different meaning when it comes to it.
00:51:20They're synonymous when we look at it today.
00:51:22But in King James, it was probably different, because the English in the King James is more generic,
00:51:30not closer to the Latin or French.
00:51:32For justice and righteousness means the same thing in our understanding.
00:51:38It should be in our understanding.
00:51:40So, I just want to ditto what you were saying about looking at King James.
00:51:45We think it's two different things.
00:51:47Righteousness is one thing, way out in one left field, and then justice is way out in the right field.
00:51:53No.
00:51:54Righteousness and justice, because of the Battle, I think it's 1611, the Battle of Hastings.
00:51:58You're good with the history, my brother, Jay, so maybe you could lift that up.
00:52:01But the word meaning between righteousness and justice has a totally different meaning.
00:52:07I just want to amplify what you just said.
00:52:11Yeah, and it's important to look at how the words are used in Scripture.
00:52:16And, you know, you don't have to know Hebrew and Greek to read the Scriptures and understand them.
00:52:22But it can be very helpful to have some tools that let you see what the Hebrew and Greek words
00:52:28are behind the English.
00:52:29Because sometimes, you know, the translators will introduce their own bias, maybe not on purpose, but just because they have
00:52:36an idea of what a word means.
00:52:38If you look at the words for righteous and justice, or justified and righteous, if you look at the Greek
00:52:44words behind that in the Book of Romans, it's the same word.
00:52:49Or it's not exactly the same word.
00:52:51It's a different form of the same word.
00:52:54So, to justify something is the verb form of righteous.
00:52:59It means to make something righteous.
00:53:02And we do get that confused because we don't, we have very different ideas of what those words mean now.
00:53:09And even when the King James translation was made, they used different words to represent something where in the Greek
00:53:18you'd use the same word.
00:53:20Because those words didn't, you know, you can't use, if Greek uses the same word in two different places to
00:53:26mean two different things.
00:53:28Because if we don't, if we have words that mean those things in English, the translators are justified in using
00:53:33different words.
00:53:34Don't always think that the translators are wrong or trying to pull one over on you because they're using a
00:53:38different word.
00:53:39Sometimes there's a good reason for it.
00:53:40But it is important that when you're talking about theological, scriptural things, that you understand how the Bible is using
00:53:48that word, not how pop culture is using it.
00:53:51Pop culture has one idea of love, and it is totally foreign to the Bible's idea of love.
00:53:57Totally different things.
00:54:00So, when you read in the scriptures, God is love, it does not mean what Taylor Swift thinks it means.
00:54:07Thank God for that.
00:54:10Okay, there's another passage I want to go to to illustrate this Romans 5, 3, and 4.
00:54:15I put it in the chat.
00:54:171 Peter 4, 12 to 19.
00:54:20Who's got that one?
00:54:22Oh, I got it ready, if you don't mind.
00:54:23Okay, go ahead.
00:54:24Okay, so 1 Peter 4, chapter 12 to the end.
00:54:30Beloved.
00:54:32Am I honorable?
00:54:34Yeah, chapter 4, verses 12 to the end, yeah.
00:54:37Beloved, do not, don't be astonished at the fiery trial which has come upon you to test you as though
00:54:46a strange thing happened to you.
00:54:49Verse 13.
00:54:52But because you are partakers of Messiah's suffering, rejoice that at the revelation of his glory you are also made
00:55:02rejoiced and exceedingly joy.
00:55:05If you are, verse 14, if you're insulted for the, yeah, I hope that's the right word.
00:55:10If you are insulted for the name of Messiah, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God
00:55:17rests on you.
00:55:19On their part, he is blasphemed.
00:55:22But on your part, he is glorified.
00:55:26But let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer or as a
00:55:32meddler in other men's matters.
00:55:35But if one of you suffer for being a messianic, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God
00:55:44in this matter.
00:55:46Verse 17.
00:55:47For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.
00:55:53If it begins first with us, what will happen to those who don't obey the good news of God?
00:56:00But verse 18, if it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will happen to you ungodly and
00:56:08the sinners?
00:56:09Last verse.
00:56:10Therefore, let them who also who suffer according to the will of God in doing good entrust their souls in
00:56:19to him as to a faithful creator.
00:56:24You know, Peter is saying much the same that Paul is, but he uses a lot more words.
00:56:29He goes into a lot more detail about exactly how this works.
00:56:33Why should we rejoice in suffering?
00:56:36And he's very specific that not all suffering is the kind that produces faith and endurance and strength.
00:56:45Some suffering is just because you deserve to suffer.
00:56:48And so that's why he says, make sure that none of you is suffering as a murderer or a thief
00:56:54or an evildoer or a troublesome meddler.
00:56:56Make sure that if you're if you are suffering, you are suffering because you're doing what's right, not because you're
00:57:02doing what's wrong.
00:57:04Everyone who is who is being oppressed or put upon by the world.
00:57:10Isn't being isn't a martyr.
00:57:13I mean, some people just deserve it.
00:57:15And this is another reason that God allows suffering.
00:57:19God set up the world so that consequences follow actions.
00:57:23If you do something stupid or criminal.
00:57:27Very likely you're going to suffer because of it.
00:57:30Now, whether the law catches up with you or just natural consequences.
00:57:34That's not really the point one way or another.
00:57:36This is going to come back to you and cause you harm.
00:57:39And God set the world up that way to discourage people from behaving badly.
00:57:45If you suffer as a murderer, you are in the Roman world, maybe you're scourged and then crucified.
00:57:53Well, hopefully that deters the next guy from following in your footsteps.
00:57:58That stops you from doing it again.
00:58:01Sometimes suffering isn't for you.
00:58:03It's for the people around you.
00:58:05Just wanted to point that out before we go on.
00:58:07All right, let's go on to verse five.
00:58:09And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
00:58:15Spirit who has been given to us.
00:58:17Why in the world would hope put anyone to shame?
00:58:21What do you think Paul means by that?
00:58:23Before you answer that, remember what we talked about before.
00:58:26What is the hope that Paul was talking about?
00:58:29He's talking about the fulfillment of God's promises.
00:58:33The restoration of the kingdom of David in through the Messiah.
00:58:38Our justification, the forgiveness of sins and our in our our peace with God and ultimately our resurrection and glorification.
00:58:47So when he says and hope does not put us to shame, what does that mean?
00:58:52We're not disappointed.
00:58:54Yeah.
00:58:55God's promises are certain.
00:58:57You know, if you hope in something, if you have false hope in something, that's a shameful thing.
00:59:01Like if everybody around you knows you are hoping to win the lottery.
00:59:07So you go down to the gas station, you you buy a lottery ticket every single week and everybody around
00:59:13you knows, you know, maybe you're going to win 10 bucks here or there, but you're going to waste more
00:59:17money than you spend.
00:59:18Same thing if you're going to a casino.
00:59:20Casinos are in business because most people lose most of the time.
00:59:24If they didn't, there wouldn't be any casinos.
00:59:27If most people didn't lose buying lottery tickets.
00:59:31Then nobody would sell them because it would be a losing business.
00:59:35So everybody who has thought the problem through.
00:59:39Knows that buying lottery tickets is a false hope.
00:59:43Even if you get rich, you are not earning your wealth.
00:59:46So you're not you're very unlikely to be prepared for it.
00:59:50And it's probably just going to make your life worse.
00:59:54God, on the other hand, his promises are certain.
00:59:57We know that if we put our faith in him because he has promised that.
01:00:03If we are faithful to him, if we have repented of our sins and we have put our trust in
01:00:08him for our salvation.
01:00:11We will be saved.
01:00:13We might not be saved from persecution and trials in this world, but we will be resurrected.
01:00:20Yeshua will return.
01:00:22He will set up his kingdom.
01:00:23There will be a new world.
01:00:26The world, of course, looks at us and thinks this is foolish.
01:00:29They think this is way worse than buying lottery tickets.
01:00:33But we know that God keeps his promises.
01:00:35So there's no shame in that.
01:00:37They can think we're stupid all that they want.
01:00:40They're the ones who are not trusting in the creator of the universe.
01:00:43I'm pretty sure he's got the power to do whatever it is he said he's going to do.
01:00:48So there's no way that that is a false hope.
01:00:51Does that make sense?
01:00:53Yeah, I was struggling to give an example.
01:00:56I was trying to, and I think I am still going to struggle for a good example.
01:01:00But I think about most people, to everyone else that are outside the Judeo-Christian faith, they believe that this
01:01:10world is everything.
01:01:12You get all the guts you can, the survival of the fitness, you know, and just worry about yourself.
01:01:19Because after this is gone, there's nothing left.
01:01:22There's no next life.
01:01:24But our hope is we have to believe that, no, don't get what you need here.
01:01:29Keep everything, keep faithful, keep that faithfulness for the next life when only God will be God.
01:01:35But I was trying to struggle with the way of explaining it, but we're looking for a next life.
01:01:43People today are looking towards what they have in this life, and there's nothing else.
01:01:49So that's, I'm struggling with words, but that's the best way I could understand it, that I could understand.
01:01:54Yeah, he who dies with the most toys wins, where in reality, he who dies with the most faith wins.
01:02:01The rest of the verse, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has
01:02:06been given to us.
01:02:07Okay, God's love has been poured into our hearts.
01:02:11Galatians 4, 6.
01:02:12I'll read it.
01:02:13And because you are children, God sent out the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
01:02:23Yeah, first off, I want to point out that Paul wrote both of these verses.
01:02:29In Romans 5, 5, he says, God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
01:02:36That's God's Holy Spirit.
01:02:38And then in Galatians 4, 6, he says, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,
01:02:44crying, Abba, Father.
01:02:46It seems to me that he's equating the Holy Spirit, God's Holy Spirit, with the Spirit of his Son.
01:02:52They're one and the same.
01:02:54So here's another testimony that Yeshua is God, that he is Yahweh.
01:02:59In any case, the point of reading Galatians 4, 6 is an illustration of what God's love poured into our
01:03:06hearts through the Holy Spirit does for us.
01:03:08What does it give us?
01:03:11The Spirit poured into our hearts is crying, Abba, Father.
01:03:15You know, in ourselves, you know, we have this innate longing to worship God, but it's always twisted around and
01:03:23misdirected.
01:03:25We worship false gods, we worship ourselves, money, power, whatever it is.
01:03:32We're always trying to trust the wrong things for protection, for providence.
01:03:38And the Holy Spirit put into our hearts redirects that in towards our Heavenly Father.
01:03:46Left to our own devices, we can logically come to the conclusion that there is a God and that we
01:03:52owe him allegiance.
01:03:53But it is so easy.
01:03:56We have this evil inclination in our hearts that is always trying to push us in the wrong direction, away
01:04:02from the really logical conclusion and the right thing, off into worthless pursuits, lottery tickets.
01:04:10And so the thing that the Holy Spirit does for us is steer us back towards God.
01:04:17It's a course corrector.
01:04:19This is the thing that when our hearts tell us, hey, we need more money to secure our future, we
01:04:31need more guns, more whatever.
01:04:35And the Holy Spirit is saying, okay, you know, there's a place for that, but really what you need is
01:04:39to trust God.
01:04:40But that's the more important thing.
01:04:43In the natural, we would not do that.
01:04:46And so God's love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit is God's love for us, for our
01:04:56neighbors, and for him.
01:04:58It's part of that sanctification process.
01:05:02You know, when you confess your sins, when you repent, and you first beg God's forgiveness, he justifies you.
01:05:10But having done that, now there's this process of transforming you, turning you into a disciple of Christ.
01:05:20And this is what the Holy Spirit does.
01:05:22It teaches us how to love.
01:05:23And it uses tools like suffering, and the scriptures, and teaching.
01:05:29He uses all of these tools to help transform us.
01:05:33But all of that would be worthless if the Holy Spirit wasn't in there directing that tool to the right
01:05:41part of our spirits.
01:05:43Hopefully I'm making sense here.
01:05:45Does that make sense to everybody?
01:05:47Yes.
01:05:48Yes.
01:05:48Okay.
01:05:49Any questions about this verse?
01:05:51Or any other thoughts?
01:05:53I was going to mention, according to what are the apps in my phone, verse 5 of Romans chapter 5.
01:06:02It also tells us to go to Philippians chapter 1, verse 20.
01:06:07I just want to read this.
01:06:08It might make something.
01:06:10It might not make something to anyone.
01:06:12According, so this is verse 20 of Philippians chapter 1.
01:06:16According to my earnest expectation and hope that I will in no way be disappointed.
01:06:24But with all boldness, as always, now also Messiah will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by
01:06:34debt.
01:06:35But I think it was, I think that's a good one.
01:06:39Yep.
01:06:39That is good.
01:06:40All right.
01:06:41Let's go on to verse 6.
01:06:43And I think this will be the last verse for tonight.
01:06:45For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
01:06:51This is one of those verses that everybody memorizes in Sunday school, or at least I did, along with 6
01:06:58.23, 3.23, John 3.16, 1 John 4, 7, and 8.
01:07:05Those are all the really popular ones.
01:07:08So while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
01:07:12Well, first off, we are the ungodly that this is talking about.
01:07:15And that's what he means by while we were still weak.
01:07:21He's speaking, he's going directly to the idea that we are powerless to save ourselves.
01:07:28We can never bridge the gap between our imperfect selves and the infinitely perfect God.
01:07:35So by comparison, all our righteousness is as filthy rags, to another Paul quote.
01:07:42And that may be hyperbole, but it's as filthy rags compared to God's righteousness.
01:07:49It's worse than that.
01:07:50It's pond scum.
01:07:52Everything, all our, the strongest man in the world is nothing compared to the God who can create galaxies.
01:08:01But really, he's talking about spiritual weakness here.
01:08:04Nobody is perfect enough.
01:08:06Nobody is obedient enough to earn their way back into God's graces after having fallen.
01:08:10And none of us are strong enough to have gone through life without falling at least once.
01:08:16There's only one man who's ever done that.
01:08:19So the second half, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
01:08:24What does he mean by at the right time?
01:08:26I think there are a couple of interpretations, but I want to know what you guys think.
01:08:31Go ahead, Kevin.
01:08:34Okay, so in the KJV, it says, for when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for
01:08:42the ungodly.
01:08:43He's writing to believers, and he was saying, for when we were yet without strength.
01:08:55So he was talking about when we were enemies and ungodly people.
01:09:03So was he basically saying that, like, he knew that, I don't know, I know this is going to be
01:09:10bigger down the road, but does he say that, hold on, my thought process, when we were yet without strength
01:09:19when Christ died for the ungodly.
01:09:21Is he talking about, he's talking to us believers that were the ungodly, right?
01:09:27He's not talking about the ungodly in general.
01:09:31I want to make.
01:09:33Well, I think, excuse me, you know, compared to Christ, we're all ungodly.
01:09:39Right.
01:09:40Christ, you know, Yeshua himself said that he didn't come for the people who are healthy.
01:09:46He came for those who are sick.
01:09:48So whoever is ungodly, that's who he died for.
01:09:53You know, the strict Calvinism will say that Christ only died for those who were predestined to be saved.
01:10:01I don't agree with that.
01:10:02I think we are all ungodly.
01:10:04He died for us all and made that grace, made God's grace available to everyone.
01:10:11It's just up to us to take advantage of it.
01:10:14Does that answer your question or am I going down the wrong path?
01:10:18No, no.
01:10:19Again, you know, I guess I struggle with, if it's up to us, like God does the saving.
01:10:30So I can't do anything on my own to be saved.
01:10:35And so I know that's probably, was it chapter nine?
01:10:37Does it get into that stuff?
01:10:39But I guess my question here is, while we were still weak at the right time.
01:10:45So it sounds like he's talking, he died for the ungodly.
01:10:50So yes, he's talking generally that, okay, he died for the ungodly.
01:10:55Not everyone is going to accept that gift, but he is writing to believers.
01:11:03So while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
01:11:08Yeah, so I guess, sorry, I'm just trying to process this, but while we were still weak at the right
01:11:15time, Christ died for the ungodly.
01:11:17So he, yeah.
01:11:19Yeah, I'll let someone else chime in because I'm a little confused by it while we're still weak.
01:11:26I mean, I know what he's saying.
01:11:27You were, he died at the right time.
01:11:31He died at the time that he needed to come.
01:11:36I don't know.
01:11:37Anyone else want to chime in?
01:11:38Well, that's, that's kind of the way that I was, I'm not sure if I was taught it or I
01:11:43just kind of assumed it, but I thought that Christ came at the right time in history because, you know,
01:11:50he came at this moment when the Roman empire, you know, ruled that entire region and they were building roads
01:11:54and communication was easy.
01:11:58But it wasn't like today where everything can be faked and nobody believes anything.
01:12:02So it was just at the right time in history to maximize his impact.
01:12:06And while I think that is definitely true, I don't think that's what Paul meant here.
01:12:11I want to bring this over.
01:12:13I didn't make slides for verses seven and eight, but I think verses seven and eight really explain what he
01:12:20means by that.
01:12:21So it says, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would
01:12:26dare even to die.
01:12:27But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
01:12:33I think that Paul is addressing a hypothetical point.
01:12:37A person might say, I'm not going to die for the scum of the earth because I don't have any
01:12:43guarantee that that person is ever, is ever going to come around.
01:12:47That might just be a waste.
01:12:49And that's the way I would think.
01:12:51You know, if, if I were asked to give up my life for someone else, I would want to know,
01:12:56I would want to guarantee that it's going to actually do something good.
01:13:00If I'm going to die for somebody, then it's going to heal them.
01:13:03Or I know that they're going to be saved from death themselves or something great is going to happen in
01:13:10that person's life because of it.
01:13:12Yeshua had, he had a guarantee that some people would take advantage of that, but that's not, that wasn't the
01:13:20point.
01:13:20He died while we were weak because if we were strong, if we were already righteous, we didn't, we wouldn't
01:13:29need him.
01:13:30We needed him when we were weak.
01:13:33So Paul is answering the hypothetical idea or maybe the objection that if God was going to come and die
01:13:40for people, wouldn't he come and die for the best people?
01:13:43Well, no, he's not going to wait until you're the best people because you're never going to get there.
01:13:47He's going to die for the weak and the sinners, the ungodly, because those are the people who need it.
01:13:53You know, when and where they are.
01:13:56Go ahead, Jules.
01:13:57Yeah, I'm thinking about, you know, that passage, it caused so much a stir in any Bible study.
01:14:04And for in this way, all Israel will be saved.
01:14:07We read that in Romans.
01:14:08All Israel will be saved.
01:14:09And we always think, we always focus on get the stopwatch out, you know, get the timer ready.
01:14:15But I think what, when I think about in this manner, in this way, or when I think about in
01:14:20the right time, it's more about,
01:14:23even though we don't understand it, but God understands it, this isn't a matter of where God is going to
01:14:29accomplish the ultimate goal.
01:14:32So when we think about in the right time, it's more about this is the right measurement that God will
01:14:39use to correctify what we had from the very start.
01:14:44And we need to fix it.
01:14:47So just like with all Israel will be saved, don't figure like how many or who's all Israel or when
01:14:53will this happen?
01:14:54Don't look at when it will happen.
01:14:56Don't focus on who is the all, but focus on whatever happens, but God will use the proper measurements to
01:15:06save the day.
01:15:06So I think it's not temporal.
01:15:09It's more about what God is doing in his measurements.
01:15:12Yeah, kind of like at the proper stage of your life.
01:15:16Yeah, it's more like the right time in the life of the unbeliever rather than the right time in general
01:15:25of history.
01:15:26Yeah, he's not talking about a specific moment in time, but a specific place, not even a specific place, but
01:15:32a, yeah, it's really, it's really hard to, to get the right words in the right way at the right.
01:15:40He died for you while you were ungodly while you were ungodly is the right time.
01:15:45You know, before you fell, if you were an infant and you haven't, you haven't committed any sins yet because
01:15:52you don't even know right from wrong, you can't even speak.
01:15:54All you can do is eat and cry.
01:15:56Well, he doesn't need to die for you then because you're not condemned.
01:16:00He doesn't need to die for you.
01:16:02If you are justified in God's eyes and you are perfectly righteous, there'd be no point in that.
01:16:09He dies for you at the time of your life.
01:16:11When you are ungodly, you have sinned and you have no hope.
01:16:15Hopefully that makes sense.
01:16:17All right.
01:16:17So we actually went through verse eight because verses seven and eight really helped to explain verse six.
01:16:23It doesn't make sense without those.
01:16:25So we actually went through verse eight.
01:16:26Yeah.
01:16:30That was three early months.
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