The following message is brought to you from the Chapel of Reform Theological Seminary, Orlando. A graduate theological school committed to the authority of God's Word where students develop a mind for truth and a heart for God. It comes during a week of intensive courses as part of the RTS Orlando Distance M-DIV program, and is the first of a five-part series entitled The Ligaments of Faith based on Romans chapter 5 is 1-5. To learn more about RTS Orlando, visit the campus webpage at www.rts.edu forward slash Orlando. You might also find recordings of other chapel messages, lectures, and campus interviews on the resources page at the same address. And now, Professor Gloto. Oh, it's good to see you first time students. You have some big shoes to fill. It's so good to see all you returning students, some of whom sadly will never pass this way again. I mean, come to campus for a class, but it's good to see all of you in everyone in between as well. This week, we're going to take five moments to reflect upon the words of Romans chapter 5, the first five verses each day. A faculty member or staff member will be reflecting upon one word in this succession of linkages in Christian experience. You want the shade? Yeah. Anybody else troubled by that? Okay. Oh, dispense with my concern. Well, let me read these five verses in total for you. And then as you see, I wish a excessive care of this deems fit. They can share subsequent verses. Here, the word of God in Romans chapter 5 is one through five. 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. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produce hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. They got at His blessing to this reading of His Word. Will you pray with? Well, Lord, we pray that you would open our eyes that we might behold wonderful thing in your law that you would quicken our hearts so that these dry bones of ours might live and that you would help us to be doers. Not simply hearers of the Word, man. How many of you've heard of Rube Goldberg? A few of you. He was a cartoonist of the early to mid 20th century, and his cartoon character, Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butz, Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butz, designed outrageously complex machines to perform simple tasks. The U.S. Postal Service honored Rube Goldberg posthumously with a stamp featuring one of his cartoons. It's where Professor Butz invents a machine to wipe suit from his mouth that involves a cracker, a parrot, a bucket, a sigh, the skyrocket, and a mantle clock. And the legacy of Rube Goldberg devices, which take something simple and turn it into something complicated, has been preserved in popular culture through Tom and Jerry cartoons, Edward Scissorhands, Back to the Future, Home Alone Your Favorite, and of course most recently the hybrid course canvas page. Now the fact is, we have a tendency to make Christian experience unnecessarily complex. We are like the proverbial man who, as we ask what time it is, he gives instructions on how to make a watch. Hence struggle, the lifelong struggle with sermon length, a man preaching lab instructors. So throughout our lives, we can return again and again to the verse that read here, Romans chapter five, one through five, as a reminder of the basics Christian and it's a wonderful text to recalibrate our own experience and forgiving counts other simple instruction in the Christian faith. And Paul, if I may borrow the Rube Goldberg metaphor, he uses the fishing pole to reel us back into this simplicity here. These five verses are actually a snow globe, Christianry that would bring us back to the basics and should be committed to memory and preached and taught from time to time by every one of them. In this text we find the cause of present joy and anticipation of the hope of glory based on the present possession of God. We find the cause of present joy and anticipation of the hope of glory based on the present session of peace God. And what this means, as we'll see tomorrow with Dr. Allen's exhortation and with Dr. Reed's the following day and Reverend Osborne on Thursday and is that even the very worst thing happened to us in life, become source to lessen that whether it's necessary for today. Certainly, if it ought, it does necessary for yesterday and yet and necessary for many, many tomorrow as our own exchanging. Each day we're going to look at a separate link and what this chain of Christian experience is. But like the links in the chain, links in the chain don't do anything by themselves, do they? Links in a chain have to be linked to what precedes and what follows in order to form a chain or if I can change the metaphor, bones and muscles are of no use unless they're connected by ligaments. So this week, this little is the ligaments faith. And without connection of these muscles and bones, we cannot move about in world, we cannot move through life experiences. But these ligaments of faith will cause a muscle and bone of belief and make us mobile spiritually in life. Just for a few moments, let's just look at the first two verses to begin our consideration of this priceless section of scripture. I turn your attention to verses, the first two verses, Paul says, therefore now, therefore assumes what has preceded it, which is the just shall live by faith in sum and up. Therefore, since the just will live by faith, we have been justified by faith, declared right before God through the instrumentality of confidence and belief in God's Word. And while this is not a good example of how God's faithfulness is the foundation of it, I think there are passage of Romans which invite that kind of interpretation. It's God's faithfulness upon which our faith depends, it's of both ends. And as a consequence, we have peace with God. Now, this is not the peace of God, which passeth all understanding or that passeth all understanding. One of those phrases that deserves to remain in the King James, but this is not that. This is not the peace of God. This is not a contentment of heart arresting, but it is dependent upon this peace, which is the peace with God, that is, warfare has ended as Paul subsequently says in this chapter. Why are we yet enemies? Why? Christ died for us. The foundation of gospel is that warfare has ceased between God and his believing children. How did it cease? Through our Lord Jesus Christ, see once again the instrumentality or the fundamental necessity of Christ's mediation. Professor John Murray says this, the mediation of Christ is not dispensed with in the bestowment of the privileges which proceed from justification. And this reminds us that our dependence upon the mediation of Christ is never suspended. All spiritual blessings are in Christ, but they are also joyed through Christ's new idiot activity. I remember a seminary professor telling a story about when he came across the parable where the son of man would gird himself and wait tables in the kingdom. And he ran to his president and said, to him, look, Christ even serves us in eternity. And the president of the seminary said to him, Bob, you'll know who that Bob is, Dr. Allen. Bob, when did you ever he sneed, even who haven't all of it, just because it is something that makes peace with God, but a person, the son of the Son of God. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. The word access here is something like an avenue. It's not just a bank account on which we can draw when we need it, but it's an avenue of approach toward God. Remember Dorothy's struggle to see the wizard and the barrier upon barrier which he encounters. But you see, justification by faith means free access into God's presence. As Jude 24 and 25 says, we can stand, we do stand, blameless with great joy to the glory of God. It's a grace in which we stand. Murray, once again, here is helpful. It's the grace of justification in which stand. It's not other graces. And therefore, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. You see the proper fruit just joy. Now, the word here is not typical word for joy. And I think Dr. Allen will probably speak to this tomorrow because the verb is repeated in verse three, but it's boasting. This word everywhere else in the New Testament translated boasting. And there's bad boasting. Previously, in Romans, Paul has talked about those who boast in the law, where where then is boasting and boasting in law, that's no boasting. But to boast in the glory of God is to have an external basis, which is worthy of boasting. Is he Christian boasting is not boasting about something that's within? But in fact, because it's external to us, this is something John Bunyan wrestled with in grace abounding, you know, the story. He was trying to figure out if he was truly of faith. And finally, he was so beside himself, he saw a puddle on the road. And he thought, if I tell the puddle to dry up and it dries up, I'll know I have faith. But if I tell the puddle to dry up and it doesn't have faith, then I'll know I don't have faith. And so he sits down under a bush and he's beside himself. And then this word comes to him that it's not a scriptural expression, but it's a scriptural concept of the court. I write it to the one who has ceded to the right hand. He is our right. We look to Christian experience and we don't find a consistency there, right? I remember in my early 20s trying to learn how to be a Christian adult. And I remember asking God, God, I'll take lower highs if you'll give me higher lows because I was living from one retreat to the next and there were too far in between. And from one moment, the ecstasy of Christian fellowship and hearing his word and then the depths of bonnancy. And I've learned through reading Pilgrims progress that a lot of the Christian life is bringing down the high place and raising up the low place somewhere that's appearing the way. And yet here is the end of that. Our righteousness is not within us thing. It is without a hidden cry. And I ran across this at the most unusual place and this is kind of the application point of the day of Richard Hayes's essays that conversion and the imagination. He describes reading a feminist scholar who was deconstructing the biblical story because of its obvious misogynistic patriarchal paternalism, particularly the story of Abraham. And this particular scholar was deconstructing the story in order that the story of faith could be preserved and used. And and Hayes says this. He says regrettably many practitioners of the hermeneutic suspicion are remarkably credulous about the claims of experience. In other words, the feminist scholar, the Marxist scholar or whatever the special interest hermeneutic is reads the text of scripture in deconstruction according to their experience. And I'm cheering Hayes on at this point. And he goes on to say if I may summarize it. Well, he says it explicitly. Abraham's faith is interpret interpretate explicitly as his trust in God's promise despite its incongruence with Abraham's own experience of sterility frustration. I as I celebrated Hayes slam dunko feminist critic, I realized Abraham beyond child bearing his wife beyond flesh, bear and child not because the Lord showed himself because the Lord had honed him a jacked promise. We're filled. He that's that's the ligaments faith not walking by side, but believing God's word is by it. And as Dr. Allen will show us tomorrow in light of philipsis tribulation trial stuff so that the end result and we'll see this on Friday's result of joy and hope. That's the goal of our meditation. That's the challenge of this text is scripture. Some of you will have heard at one time or another that old spiritual dem bones. And you know, dem bones is just bone until they hear the word of the Lord's beard of the Lord, gives ligaments, beard of the Lord, breathes life inectives. That's my prayer this week that this brief dwelling upon that on Romans 5 verses 1 through 5 will be an opiate of God strength and not just the muscles and bones of faith, but will strengthen for you the ligaments faith so that just of a case joy will be close partner in you. Lord, thank you for assembling us together to giving us the fellowship of the labors of the week. We pray for the professors. They would be good stewards of this opportunity. They pray for the students as well. Stewards of all the resources that are being entrusted to them as they take away life. Lord, mind us together in Christian love throughout that we fill us with the joy of just case as strength and ligament faith.