What Unexpected Blessings!

2nd Sunday in Lent, 3/4/12
Romans 5:1-11


What Unexpected Blessings!
I. Peace with God
II. Joy in our sufferings


Who doesn’t like a surprise? Most, if not all, of us would respond, “I do!” We enjoy a surprise visit from one of our children, a parent or a dear friend. We love it when a loved one surprises us with a small gift. We dream of taking a surprise trip to our favorite destination on earth. It makes our day when that day’s delivery of the US mail includes a check that we weren’t expecting at all. We’re thrilled to receive the unexpected news that we’re the grand prize winners. We’ll take any or all of those surprises any time.

But surprises can also be negative. You’re re-fueling your vehicle at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and you’re unpleasantly surprised to see coolant dripping down on the pavement under the vehicle’s engine. You scheduled a routine checkup with your doctor and the two of you are surprised that the test results indicate a serious health problem. You receive an unexpected phone call from your child informing you that something terrible has happened. All of these are surprises we can do without. In fact, we pray that they don’t happen to us.

Paul wrote these words of our text to the Christians in Rome, Christians who were facing spiritual and earthly problems in their lives. In that regard their lives were nothing unusual. They shouldn’t have been surprised. The common Christian experience is that we face many troubles in this life. That’s true in our lives today as well.

But Paul wants Christians of every era to know that in the midst of these troubles our God showers us with his blessings. What unexpected blessings! May this portion of God’s word remind us just how blessed we are as we ponder it this morning.

Part I.

I mentioned the problems that we Christians face in life. One of the bigger ones, at least in my view, is knowing that there’s a problem between you and someone you love, someone close to you, someone you work with. It ruins your concentration, causes sleepless nights, drives you to your favorite comfort food, and makes you moody and irritable. And it’s all because you know that the two of you have a problem with one another. It’s so much better when you know that everything is right between the two of you!

Are you sure everything is right between you and the Lord? Could there be something that the holy God holds against you? If you’re like every other sinner, I’m sure you can come up with more than one ugly sin that still haunts you. And then, when life gets really ugly for us, we wonder if God is still holding something against us.

Listen to the comfort Paul gives us, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” God has justified us. That means he has declared us not guilty, innocent, forgiven, holy in his eyes. He has nothing against us. That’s the greatest truth any sinner can hear.

And Paul wants us to know how unexpected that greatest of spiritual blessings is. He says it like this, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” We were powerless. By nature we’re sinful and spiritually dead. We’re powerless, therefore, to do anything to save ourselves or to please God so that he would be favorably disposed toward us.

In fact, Paul calls us ungodly. Really? Ungodly? That’s the fact! When God was carrying out his plan of salvation through Jesus Christ, he didn’t look out at a world full of sinners, find a few of them to be deserving and declare, “I think Jesus will die for this one, and that one over there and this one over here.” No, what he saw was a mass of ungodly people. All of us were in the same spiritual state. He saw you and me standing there with the likes of people with names like Hitler and Hussein and bin Laden and that adoptive father from Troy who made the news this past week. Despicable! Ungodly!

And then God did what was unheard of. He sacrificed his Son for the whole world of ungodly, despicable sinners! Paul points out by comparison how unheard of that is. He cites how a person might die for a good person or a righteous person. We’ve heard of such rare stories. For instance, we know of soldiers who have thrown their bodies on a live grenade to save their comrades. But those were “worthy” comrades. Jesus died for a world full of unworthy, ungodly, despicable sinners. What would cause him to do that?

In a word—love. The love that only God can show. It’s a love that knows exactly how we are and yet wants the highest good for us. And then that love gets to work and accomplishes that good thing for us. The good thing—the blessing—I’m talking about is our salvation. Here in the season of Lent we focus our attention on how Jesus accomplished our salvation. What an unexpected blessing in light of the damnation we deserve!

He did that so that we could live with him forever. Do you ever wonder if you’ll finally make it to heaven? Paul says, “Wonder no more.” He says it like this, “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” That’s Paul’s way of saying, “God already did the difficult thing. He sacrificed his Son for you. Surely, then, he’ll do the easier thing and take you home to heaven with him.” You can’t argue with spiritual logic like that! And it’s all because Jesus made you right with God.

What unexpected blessings! We have peace with God.

We try to recall the pleasant moments of our lives, but too often our thoughts veer towards our regrets, our failures, our shortcomings. We wish we could go back in time and be a better friend, parent, student, spouse, employee. And when we look the other direction—to our future instead of our past—we face our fears and our worries. If those fears and worries aren’t for ourselves, then they’re for our loved ones. What’s more, we consider the injustices we face. We try so hard, and it just doesn’t seem to matter. And then it dawns on us that, if we were a better Christian, we wouldn’t face such things. But then we’d be denying the very truth that Paul is sharing with us this morning. We have peace with God! Our God has declared us innocent. We’re forgiven! He has nothing against us. In fact, he’s on our side and, with him on our side, there’s no problem in life that we can’t face. What unexpected blessings!

Part II.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that our God asks us in his word to do some difficult things. For instance, he tells us to take up our cross and follow him. He tells us to love him above everyone else, including our family members. He commands us to trust him and not to worry.

Paul lists another one of those difficult things to do with these words, “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings.” Rejoice in our sufferings? That sounds like a person who needs psychological help. Just what does Paul mean?

Paul talks about those sufferings in a list of desirable characteristics. It starts with hope. Paul says, “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” We can live our lives confident of one day living in the glory of God. That’s what heaven will be—enjoying the eternal glory of God.

We have that hope even when we’re facing suffering in this life. The word Paul uses here for suffering means anything that is pressing on us. But how do those sufferings do anything good for us? As we face them day after day, knowing that eternal glory awaits us in heaven, we enjoy the desired characteristic of endurance. No one likes a quitter. Our God gives us the ability to bear up under sufferings and endure whatever comes our way.

That endurance, Paul says, produces character. It’s been said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’m sure you’ve been through a lot in your life. You’ve learned a lot about yourself and life in general through all those sufferings. That’s character.

And character produces hope. Paul has come full circle in his progression of characteristics. We’re people full of hope, God’s type of hope. It’s the hope that is founded on the certain promises of our God. We don’t have to wish that things will get better. We’re certain that they will. In fact, they’ll be perfect because that’s what our Savior Jesus has won for us and that’s what our God has promised to us. And that, my friends, leads us to do the difficult thing that Paul states here, to rejoice in our sufferings. How unexpected!

What unexpected blessings! Joy in our sufferings!

In another place in the Bible the Lord speaks about how he refines us and strengthens our faith through the sufferings of our lives. Is there evidence in your life that your God is doing that for you? I’m sure there is. You could easily tell me and others all about it. And it would be easy for us to be overcome with self-pity over all the sufferings we face. But instead of whining about it, Paul tells you to rejoice over it. The Lord refines and disciplines those he loves. Your God loves you and he showed it by sacrificing his Son for you so that he could bring you home to him in heaven. He uses your sufferings to accomplish that tremendous goal for you. And as you go through your sufferings in life, he uses you to encourage others who are suffering. You talk about unexpected blessings! And they all come out of the troubles we face in life. What an unlikely place! But that’s how amazing our God is. What unexpected blessings! Amen.