Outlines, students in kindergarten through second grade are dismissed to children's worship. Interestingly enough, the hottest thing on TV right now is not a TV program, it's commercial. It's a beer commercial. Budweiser commercial. Four childhood friends, actually they're not actors. They're actually four childhood friends. Whenever they would run into each other had a distinct way of extending and greeting. When they would run into each other, they would say to each other, apparently many of you in the congregation are far more willing to make fools out of yourself than I am. What's up? They say, what's up? And I can't do it very good. This morning we want to ask that very question. What's up with 27 buses? And that's pretty unusual. What's up with 3.5 million over and above? Being given over and above regular commitments by the folks in the church after we gave 30 families away to start a new church. What's up with that? I'll tell you what's up, people are getting the gospel. The profound security that comes with the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. So it came by our house this week and he's been in church all his life. And let's say he's in his late 50s, maybe even beyond. And he said, all my life, I've gone to church and I've been told what the law of God says. And I have not measured up and I have gone home guilty, frustrated, insecure. I have read every Christian Bible study, every Christian Fad, I follow them, every new teacher, every new counselor, every new thing that comes out, every local event. I've gone to them and I have never had peace. I have never had security until I heard the gospel in church over the last year. He said, and now I know it isn't about my behavior, it's about Jesus Christ obedience given to me. And that I stand before God righteous, holy, pure and I have the love and smile of God because Jesus obedience. I'll never meet the measure, I'll never obey the law. And here was a guy in some respects towards the end of his life saying, what, I get the gospel and he yields the profound security. Listen, churches all across America, almost every Protestant church has always thought you cannot be right with God by your own works. They all believe that. But how do I feel about my relationship with God on a daily basis? Well, that all depends on my work. That all depends on how diligent I'm being in my Bible study and my prayer and how diligently I'm obeying and how diligently to believing that the grace of God saves us is our present spiritual attainments that are going to give us any sense of daily security. And that's forgetting the gospel. And that's why we've got to come back to the gospel again and again and again because we forget it. We lose that sense of security that comes as being a child of the living God. I woke up in bed yesterday morning and my wife turned to me and she said, are you, you know, kind of cool today or you tense about, you know, the service and preaching and the worshiping. And I said, I'm really tight inside. And she said, what's the message on? And I said, joy. The preachers got to get the gospel. You got to get it again and again. What? You know, my tense because I'm so worried about the glory of God or I am my tense because my performance means too much to me. And I'm deriving some measure of my security from that. We know the answer is don't we? And when people get it and the radical security that comes and knowing that I'll be measured by God based on the obedience of Christ and not my obedience, then the fruit that comes in people's lives to change the transformation is radical. In fact, it will even cause people to look at you and say, what's up? What is up with them? My name was Mabel. I love to tell our story. It was a seminary student that went to visit in the state-run convalescent hospital in California. This convalescent hospital was overfilled understaffed. It, you know, it on weekends it was even worse. Less staff than usual. He said when he walked in on this mother's day, the stench of excrement, stale urine, you know, just the rancid smell, the conditions they were deplorable. And he counted one woman in the hallway, Mabel. Mabel was in a wheelchair. Mabel was blind. Mabel could barely hear. She had a big hearing aid. Cancer had eaten into her face. Her nose was shoved out of the way. Her mouth was turned sideways so that you couldn't help but constantly drool. Mabel had an open sore festering on her. And it was said that the employees there would send any novice to have to feed Mabel. And that would be the test that they'd have to overcome their probation if they could lovingly care for her that they could do anything else that they were ever going to be asked to do. The seminary student said that day, that mother's day, when I handed Mabel a flower, I met the most extraordinary woman I've ever met in my life. She's 89 years old and she'd been in that institution for 25 years. And I knew she was somebody special and she took the flower and she said, thank you, but I'm blind. And he said, I wheeled her down the hallway. And she found another woman and she gave her the flower and she said, here, this is from Jesus. She loves you. She said, I began to visit Mabel. One, two, three times a week for the next three years when I was in seminary. I'd go and read the Bible to her but before I could ever get to the word, she was saying them. I would, we would sing together. Her favorite ham was Jesus is all the world for me. 25 years, she didn't complain. She didn't murmur. She wasn't bitter. In fact, he said one of the last times he ever visited with her right towards the end of her life. He was taking final exams and his head was crammed knowledge. I'm going to go visit Mabel and he got over there and all this information swimming in his mind. He said, Mabel, what do you think about all day? And she said, mostly, I just think about my Jesus and how good he's been to me. 25 years, she's lived in hell and all she can talk about is how good her Jesus has been to her. It's extraordinary what happens inside the soul of a person when they get it that they are the objects of the love of the living God. Has that happened in you? Do you manifest the irrepressible joy of someone who knows they are a child of the living God and the object of his dearest affection? Now, some of you, it hasn't happened. I'm telling you that. I know. I look at your faces every week. If you don't show joy and worship, how are you going to show it outside? It's a joy. It's a character of the secure. The secure child. We all know you can look on a playground and you can pick out the ones who are secure. By the way, they interact. The security of those who know that they have a dad and he is for them and he loves them. It's a beautiful thing and it could happen in your life and you may have gone to church for 40 or 50 years and not be experiencing the fruit of that security. I want it for you. Take the sermon outline, the fruit of our justification of our being made right with God for the work of Jesus. That fruit, first of all, is peace with God. Isn't that what Romans chapter 5, verse 1 says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have life. Now, it's not saying we have peace like peace that passes all understanding. The Bible says that elsewhere. That's a different kind of peace. It'll be anxious for nothing. That's a different thing. This is saying that we have peace between two enemies. There's now peace. You could say, I've never been an enemy of God. Look at Romans chapter 5, verse 10. What does it say? We were once the enemies of God. We were once the adversaries of God. Romans chapter 1 says, the wrath of God is poured out on men because of man's unrighteousness and rebellion. Yes, that's our natural condition is to be hostile toward God. So hostile toward God, man has naturally and an hatred of God. In fact, the Bible says and tells us that when God actually left glory and came and put on skin and made himself vulnerable, that man did what? Given the opportunity to get our hands around God's neck, when he came and walked amongst us and became one of us and removed all the protection of his glorious position, what did man do? Strong enough, right? First chance we had. We executed God because naturally in the heart of man is a coup, is a desire to do away with God and be God ourselves. That's the natural hostility that exists between a man who craves his own way, autonomy, and yet to the work of Jesus Christ, the Bible says that hostility has ceased and we have what? Peace, the peace. We're not enemies anymore. The prince of peace has come and brought the messianic shalom of God so that now between God and his people there's peace, friends. You know, some of you guys, you may not be sitting in a wheelchair for 25 years, but there are people in this church. There's a woman in our church who sits in a wheelchair. She's here every Saturday night. She's been in that chair for years. I think she said 25 surgery. There's people in this room who have children in prison. There's people in this room whose marriages feel like prison. There's people in this room who are suffering with illness and financial difficulty and struggle. Some of us, it's our own sin. It's our own weakness. We're struggling. It's hard to live in this world. What does it mean that we have peace with God? It means that the God, the creator who made us, is not against us. He's our ally. He's on our side. We're on his team. We're in his family. Depression. I love the story of the monk and his apprentice who left the abbey to go visit a nearby village their plan was to part and join again the next morning for the return trip. Everything went according to plan except for when they rejoined in the morning. The monk noticed that his understudy was distant. At one point he said, brother, what's bothering you? And he said, none of your business. They began to drift apart even if they walked. The young students wanted nothing to do with the old sage. Finally, they reached the abbey and the monks stood there at the gate and waited and dragging up the dragled head down, pressed down by guilt, came on the apprentice. The monk said, what's eaten at you? He said, father, last night in the village, I committed a carnal sin with a woman. And I am not worthy of my vows. I am not worthy to enter this remain in this abbey. I am not worthy of the war. And the monk put his arm around the young center and said, we will walk in there together. But we will walk side by side. And we will go to the cathedral together and we will confess that sin together and nobody but God will know which of us is guilty. The Bible says that Jesus Christ comes and puts his arm around us and he takes the blame. He goes in by himself and confesses our sin as if it were his own. And we go in, bury his perfection, his white robe so that between God and us there is no barrier, all for the work of Jesus. Precious, peace with God. Secondly, Romans chapter 5 says, we have friendship with God. Friendship with God. Look at the passage. Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. The Bible says, we have been introduced by Jesus. Through Jesus Christ we have been introduced. You know what it means when you need an introduction? It's not let you know it. It's who you know. So you got to know some people, right? You got to have somebody introduce you. The picture here is of going into royalty or dignity, dignity, and you can't get in. You're a nobody. You've got to have somebody bring you in there and be the mediator and make this introduction for you. Let's suppose you lived in Cincinnati. And you were to go to a Cincinnati Reds game at the end of the game. Somebody who worked in the Cincinnati Reds hierarchy came and said, hey, would you like to meet Ken Griffey Jr.? And you don't want a lot of people in this room could care less. But there's someone saying, well, that'd be cool. So they bring you into the locker room and there you're side by side with Ken Griffey Jr. And you know what? He probably signed a ball or a program for you and you get a picture made with him. And that whole scene would last for how long? To tell you if you get one or even more than 30 seconds count yourself. So blessed about 30 seconds later, the usher your rear end out of that locker room. Because that's all that all the relationships that's really taking place there. There's no friendship. You couldn't call Ken the next week and say, hey, what's up? Right? And remember you, you're not his style. It's temporary. You need an introduction for that. But that's all you got out of it. The Bible says that we are ushered in to this relationship by Jesus Christ with God integrates the grace that renders us permanently there as the friends of God. That is awesome. Friends, we're not ushered back out. We're his children. We're his family. All through the work of Christ accomplishing something that you could never accomplish. You could have never made this relationship on your own. There's just not a cessation of hostility between us and God. There's actually a restoration of intimacy. Last week, I worshiped in a church in Miami, pastored by my lifelong friend. When I was in seventh grade, my canton and I started in school together. And we went all the way through high school together, graduated together, went to college together. We were roommates in college. And we went to seminary together. And for the last at least 15 years plus in ministry, we talked to each other every week. And he has been my friend through thick and thin for all those years. So last Sunday, we show up at his church. And we got there at 11 15 worship started 11. I figure you guys do it. I can do it. So. And when we got there, we found out he'd already introduced us to the congregation. It was like the Von Traff family. And the Von Traff. And the good Von Traff. And they're gone. They're gone. So, we actually embarrassed them. Good friends. And they're here. And we weren't. And so when we walked in, we sat in the back, right in the middle of the singing and everything off the podium comes like all the way down the aisle, all the way to the back of the church, trapping all the way through the road and grabs me in a big bear hug. Because I was more important than anything else then, nice. And he introduced us to everybody who was proud of us and proud of my family and telling everybody about our church. And after the service in the middle of an extremely busy day, he took us out to a restaurant on the other side of Miami, a special restaurant where he wanted us to experience this day with us. I mean, when this day was over, how do you think I felt? I got a friend. How should you feel this day? You have a friend. And that friend is intimate and caring and concerned and proud of you and would introduce you to all his associates to be friends with the living God. In the Old Testament, the people would not even utter the name of God, would they? For fear of ascending him and along comes Jesus and he says, when you pray, say to God, call God what? Papa, Abba, daddy. It's that close. It's face to face. It's intimate. So sweet. This is the fruit of our redemption. We are, have peace with God. We have friendship with God. Third, we have a glorious future. That's what it says, the end of verse two. It says, we have obtained this introduction to this grace in which we stand. And we exalted in the hope of the glory of God. We have an awesome future ahead of us. Life in this world is not often glorious. But the Bible says there's another world. There's another, there's a future which Christ is guaranteed for his children in which we'll be restored in our relationship to him. We'll be restored in our relationships with each other. And there'll be no pain and there'll be no hardship. Isaiah said, the lion and the lamb will lay down together and the young child could put a tan in the adder's nest and the fields will be verdant and the forest will be fertile. I mean, it's a glorious world. When we want to forget how hard it is living in this world, we do something called taking a vacation. That's what we did a week ago. You escape all the rigors of life and you go off to somewhere really pretty and you pretend that's the real world. So we went down to Palm Beach. And we went to Palm Beach Polo. I mean, we're talking about Palm Beach Polo. It's just dripping with money. And in the cars, we've been in these horse people and everything else. And I mean, it just seemed like a really nice fit. And I mean, the mansion and Polo ponies, it's 40, 50, 60,000 dollars they start at. And you've got to have to be a polo player. You've got to have 10 or more of them. And I think someone told me it takes 10 staff to support one horse. And so this is an ideal world, right? Well, there's no pain, no hardship, no. We walked out of our car and we weren't even to our seat when one of the polo ponies and the rider went down and when they got up, the horse's leg was all mangled.
As we walked it, sit down, right beside us, they brought the horse, struggling, off the field, right behind where we were sitting, no more than 20 yards, overcame a veterinarian with a big needle. And this majestic beast was put down. See, that's the real world. No matter how glorious we try to paint it, death and corruption intrudes, doesn't it? We went to Key West together as a family. On our way back, we're sitting on the highway for an hour. Nobody's moving in our direction. Nobody's moving the other direction. Head on collision on a bridge. By the time the highway patrol finally let us pass, we drove past. I mean, you could almost unidentifiable wreckage. We go in public. We're checking out. My wife says, I said, what is it? There's a guy on the floor. She said, yeah, he's dead. A bagged man, dead. Now, a lot of you are thinking right now, let's go on vacation with the courtesans. They really know how to have a good time. I don't tell you, we had a glorious time. I'm just telling you that even in all, I could tell you all the awesome things we did all along the way. You can't get away from this world, can you? The Bible says that Jesus has redeemed our future. If you live in this world and you feel a constant sense of struggle, listen, that's natural. You're not home, you're a pilgrim. And you ought to feel that there's something about your life in this world that never quite mesh up because it shouldn't. There should be an ache inside of us to say, I wasn't made for this world, I was made for home.
And if that wasn't enough, if that wasn't enough, everything I said, there's more. Not only is there God redeemed our past and present and future, but it says in the midst of trial and hardship, the fruit of being justified is that we have irrepressible joy. We could verses three and four and not only this, Paul says. It could add anything to what he's already said, and not only this, but we also exalt in our tribulations because tribulation brings perseverance and perseverance, proven character and proven character, hope. Even in the midst of hardship, the maples of this world can say, Jesus is all the world for me. Joy, irrepressible, no matter what the world brings to bear, you can't be conquered because you have something in you, you're connected with the father, your future is secure. Joy is the distinguishing mark of the justified and not even hardship, pain, trial or tribulation can take it away. I have stood at the grave of young children, and I have seen their parents weep with pain, and I have hugged them and they have expressed in me, uncomfortable joy. Now understand, we're not saying death and hardship is good. Jesus Christ weeps for the wickedness and the pain and the suffering of this world. I practice my wife and I was a young girl, this week 27 years old, she had cancer when she was two, and the radiation when she was just a baby is so ravaged her body that she's had 12 surgeries. And you know what I'm saying, something, this girl radiates. She knows joy. When you are secure with the father, it doesn't matter what the world brings on, there is a tenacity and a security in the midst of it that allows God's people to sing. Like Paul and Silas and a rat infested prison cell singing hymns in the middle of the night, this is the character of the secure children of God. A friend of mine is a young pastor, and he's really been put through the ringer the last couple weeks. He had one of his young parishioners die in a tragic death, and then he had one of his key people who commit some gross immoral sin. And this is what he wrote me this week, God has strengthened me and given me boldness I never had. God has given me the tenacity to go after the people and say very hard things to them to challenge their deceit and lives of infidelity to Christ. Being a minister will either make you a much more vibrant Christian because it will expose your inadequacies and drive you to Christ, or it will make you a much more hypocritical Christian because you'll suck it up, depend on yourself and do your job. With the death of the college student and with this immorality, March 2000 has been the hardest month of my life. Yet I have found Christ so near to me, literally his goodness, taste in my mouth. I praise God for his enabling grace that I'm experiencing. I am tired, but so full of hope in Christ. And he finishes by saying, thanks for getting me into this gig. You know what my prayer is? Some day you'll walk out of those doors up there, and you'll look me in the eyes and you'll say, thanks for getting me into this gig. It's hard walking through this world. But there is something sweet and good about being secure in the arms of Jesus. I love the picture of James Marton crying his eyes out up here, holding his little one whose utterly calm and asleep. So is the picture of a people in the arms of their strong Heavenly Father. We're secure. Whatever burdens have to be born, he'll bear them. Just rest child, just rest. Don't you want in on that gig? Don't you want that? I want to tell you whatever you're seeking, you're not going to have it. I'll tell you rest in the righteousness of Christ and the obedience of Christ that's been earned and is offered to you so you rest in the security of your Father. Don't you want in on that? Don't ever come to Seven Rivers Church again. It isn't about Seven Rivers Church. It's about being justified, being declared by God righteous in his eye, adopted into his family, and forever secure because of the work that Jesus has done for you. And you rest in it. Do you want that? Some of you have been Christians for 40 years and you've never had that. You've never had that security. You've never believed that God is wild about you, that he's not about you. It's the one thing you need. And that's the last thing we're going to say. How can we believe this? How can we have utter security in this? We keep forgetting it. Just two quick things. The Bible says there's an internal way, a subjective way, and there's an external objective way. The first internally is what does it say in verse 5? The Holy Spirit has been given to us for this particular ministry. The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has given us God has come by his spirit into our hearts to send us constant messages, constant bulletins of his life, of his love for us. Why do you think we need that ministry because we forget it every day, don't we? We need the constant ministry of the Holy Spirit saying it isn't about your obedience. It isn't about what a good father you are. It isn't about how you obey. It's about how Jesus obeyed for you. Rest in it, believe in it, trust in it. I love you. I'm for you. And those bulletins, where do they come from? They come from the beauty of creation. They come in our quiet time. They come in moments of worship. They come when we see a baby being baptized. They come from the consolation of a friend in a hard day. They come when we get an awesome note from somebody who says, I love you, and I'm pulling for you, and I'm praying for you. God sends these bulletins from every direction, doesn't he? The spirit prompting them all to say, I will never leave you, forsake you, or desert you, nothing will separate you from my love. Nothing. Not principalities, not powers, not life, not death, nothing will get you away from my grasp. And whatever it takes to convince you that you're the apple of my eye, I'll do it. Last night we had more time in our service. We didn't have baptism there, so we did a special prayer where we invited people with special needs to stand up and have hands laid on them and be prayed for. And there's a woman in our church that has Alzheimer's. She's really in her own world now. She stood up for prayer. The young lady in the church went over and laid hands on her, and she said, this elderly lady grabbed her with all her might. And as I prayed for everyone who was standing when I finished, the young lady told me that the elderly woman with Alzheimer's looked her right in the eye and said, don't you worry, honey, God is so good.
The work of the Holy Spirit, even in the dark and clouded mind, God is able to continue to convey the assurance and security to his children. Do you think he'll let anything stop him from giving his children security? Nothing. When my kids were little, they used to love to get in bed late at night in their eyes. They couldn't keep them open and just as they were falling asleep, just whisper in their ear, your mom and your dad think you're so precious. Just wanting them to go off into sleep, hearing those words that they might just baste in them all night. That's what God's doing by the Spirit and you. And the last thing is, I mean, that's just internal. That's supernatural. But the Bible says, you really doubt that God loves you. Eat the eye for you. And what else you want to do? You want someone to improve their love for you? What else could he do? It says it right there in verse 8. God demonstrates his own love for us and that while we were yet sinners Christ what? He died for you. Historically, look at it. Here's the facts. The guy died for you. Jesus died for you. Get it. Get it. Get it. It was for you. And if you think it's, I mean, it's phenomenal that anybody would die for you. But what makes it even more phenomenal is that you were his adversary, his enemy. I read this week of a minor, a mine cave in and plays in gas, sleeping into the mine, a miner's dying and succumbing to the gas. And how one miner had gotten to the emergency oxygen supply and he was going to survive. And he looked over and saw his friend. His friend was to perish. He realized his friend had three children. And this man was single, took the oxygen, pressed it over against the objections of his friend on to his face and moved away and gave up his life. Is that astounding or what? Look, that's nothing. He died for his friend. The Bible says that's noteworthy. But every now and then you'll find somebody who will die for a friend, but nobody dies for there. They're adversary. What if he took your oxygen mask off and gave it to the miner who'd stolen your wife? What if he gave it to the miner who had stolen from you and slandered you and caused the break in and hated you. Now we're talking about the love of Jesus for a friend. He's done what he needed to do so that you walked through this world to cure in his life. So what's the end result? I mean, what's up? Is it we ought to be a people of joy? Absolute unmitigated joy. What a tremendous apologetic in this world. Is there a God? I don't know. I'm not really sure. I haven't listened. People ought to look at you and say, there's got to be a God because there's no other explanation for that person yesterday. Yesterday we sent people out in this congregation to rake leaves in neighborhood. They weren't earning money. This wasn't a slave, you know, work day, hire a person, raise money for missions trip. They just did it for nothing. They just did it because they love Jesus. What would it be like if you opened your blinds and somebody was out raking up your leaves? What would you say? What's up? A couple guys went on a mission trip to Uganda and they wanted to reach the city of Compala and they said, how do we make any impact? And the city of Compala were massive piles of garbage. Near all the city marketplaces in particular, I mean rotten carcasses and fruits and vegetables. I'm just horrendous stench, rats running all through the garbage, kids playing all on top of the garbage. All the garbage trucks, the military had taken all the wheels off. There were only two functional garbage trucks out of 150. So they went to the minister of justice and they said, can we have them? And these Christian Ugandans and these Christians from America got on top of the garbage and started hauling it away and the whole time singing hymns to Jesus. At the top of their lungs, singing and praising God, you know what happened? Hundreds of Ugandans circled these garbage piles, stood there and looked at these lunatics saying, what? What is that? What is that? We never met anybody like this. It's God's people who can walk through the garbage of this world with genuine joy in their hearts because they are the secure children. Of the living God.