The sermon titled 'Tribulation Makes You Stronger' by Scott Brown explores the concept of tribulation and its role in strengthening a person's faith. The sermon focuses on the blessings of justification mentioned in Romans 5:1-11, including peace with God, access to God, hope in God, and rejoicing in God. It emphasizes that tribulations have a specific design in God's plan and are meant to grow perseverance, character, and hope in believers.

Just please open your Bibles to Romans 5 and find verse 1. Romans 5, verse 1. I've been so excited to get to this passage for many, many months. Here we are, Romans 5, 1. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God.

Romans 5-1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Let's pray.

Oh Lord, let these words fall down like dew on the grass to water it. We're so grateful that your word is true and it's wonderful. It's exactly what we need. I pray that you would come and give this congregation help from heaven. Amen.

Please be seated. Well, a key part of growing up and becoming mature is understanding why we experience troubles and particularly how to think about the troubles that you have experienced in the past and are in the midst of experiencing and will experience in the future. You might be in a time of trial. You know, here we are before the Word of God as a little local church and God is shepherding His church. He's leading his people to living water.

He's trying to shepherd a church in how to engage their trials and their tribulations. And you might be in a trial. You might know somebody who's in a severe trial. If you're single and you wanna be married, you're in a trial. You know that.

But we've come now to the time in Romans where the Apostle Paul is beginning to sum up the blessings of justification which we've spent many, many weeks on. In the first 16 verses, we saw why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel because of what it did in his life, it transformed him. And then he tells us that he's not ashamed of the gospel because man is under condemnation. And he elaborates on that. And then he moves on and says that he's not ashamed of the gospel because man can't be justified by his morality, by his religion, by his religious duties, or by keeping the law.

He can't be justified. But now he comes and begins to talk about the blessings of that justification. We'll spend some time in these first five verses. Not just today, this is part one. And I'm just gonna focus on one primary thing.

But as we come to chapter five, in the first 11 verses, there are eight blessings of justification. Verse one, peace with God. Verse two, access to God. Verse two, hope in God. Verse three, tribulations in the hand of God.

Verses five through eight, loved by God. Verse nine, saved from wrath through God, verse 10, reconciled to God, verse 11, rejoicing in God. These are blessings of justification. This is why Paul is not ashamed of the gospel. And So my plan here is to spend the next two or three weeks in these first 11 verses.

But today I want to focus our attention on verses 3 through 5 only. I want to take us up there in a brief form, but we'll elaborate on the first two verses later on. I will return to the whole next week. But there's something that everybody needs to know about tribulation. Hey, you're raising children, many of you right now, your children need to understand what God says about tribulation so that they're not thrown around by every trouble that comes into their life.

And of course we need to shepherd our own hearts in this matter, but there's something that every one needs to know about tribulation and it's revealed here in these verses. And this just brings us back to the treasure that is the Word of God. It teaches you how to deal with everything. Scripture is sufficient for your tribulations, and God teaches us how to understand them. It just helps us to understand the value of having Jesus Christ as your shepherd, to have him, to have his spirit shed abroad in your heart, that the love of God has come upon you.

This is the value of salvation. And what we learn here is that sufferings have a very specific design in God's plan. Sufferings are designed to grow you up, to grow your hope. Spurgeon said this, you cannot make an experienced Christian without trouble. I'll say that again.

You cannot make an experienced Christian without trouble. You cannot make an old sailor on the shore. You cannot make a good soldier without fighting. Here is that window of hope again, standing at the back of our experience. We look out of the window and what God has done for us is a token for what God will do for us.

That's Spurgeon. So all of this has to do with how you go through heartbreaking times and I mean you personally. You know you all look so fantastic this morning. But I know that there's drama in the room in one way or another going on in your life. But with all these things that are going on, you need to know why.

You need to know what's happening to you. And God teaches that to you. God forbid for the child that grows up in a home that doesn't understand these things. And the trials and tribulations of life are actually signs. You know that old motto of sailors, red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

That means good weather is past. Red sky at night, sailors delight. That means the weather is getting ready to turn. That other phrase, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. And the idea here is if you see one thing, you can count on another.

And the message of these verses is the same. Where there are tribulations, the believer is being strengthened. That's what's happening. And so that's why we read these verses and not only that but we glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance. So just to bring us up to the context here, in chapter 5 it begins with the word therefore and he's connecting these words with everything that was said before and plot Paul is explaining why he's not ashamed of the gospel and He's he's not ashamed of the gospel because God justifies by faith Not by works not by religious duties And then of course, you know in the previous chapter four he gives four illustrations of justification by faith first of all Abraham then David then ceremonies like circumcision and then law-keeping he's giving various illustrations And then he is going to talk about the impact of justification in verse one.

Therefore, because all of these things are true from chapter one right up to the end of chapter four. Therefore, So Paul is summing up his argument, and he's gonna continue to summarize it all the way to chapter eight. Can't wait to get there as well. But he's using this language, therefore having been justified by faith. Having been.

It's a Greek construction which is something that happened in the past that has ongoing impact. You have been justified once and it has ongoing impact and that's the whole idea. In other words, there are implications of your justification. And you know this, we've been speaking about it. Justification is a summary word that describes redemption that is in Jesus Christ.

That Jesus Christ, the one who kept all the law, he suffered for our sake because we could not keep the law. And justification is the act of redemption in Jesus Christ. And in justification, through the obedience of Christ, through the sufferings of Christ, through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, through the ascension of Jesus Christ, through his reigning at his father's right hand sinners can be saved and that is the doctrine of justification and we were talking last week that Justification doesn't mean that we were made righteous, but that we were declared righteous. There's a big difference. In justification, we are pardoned.

In justification, we are absolved. We are released from condemnation. We are relieved of our guilt, and the sentence against us has been suspended by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ because he took our punishment upon himself. And These verses explain the results of this justification by faith. And this morning I just wanna mention the first three of them briefly and then sink into the fourth blessing that's in this passage.

And then we will return to the first three later on. But the first blessing of justification is that we have peace with God. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have, meaning it's ongoing, It's something that we had and have and will have throughout all eternity. And it's the proclamation of the end of hostility toward us and our hostility toward God.

And there's, now you know that there are two kinds of peace. There's the peace of God and there's peace with God. The peace of God is when you have a sense of peace, of inner serenity or rest or calm or satisfaction. And I think that might be implied here, but the primary kind of peace is not peace of God, but the peace with God. In other words, that we are no longer enemies of God.

God was at war with us. We'll elaborate on that next week. And we were at war with God. People who do not believe in Jesus Christ are not wonderful people. They are at war with God.

That's what the Bible teaches. If you don't love Jesus Christ, you're at war with God, and frankly, God is at war with you. And we'll speak of that in some detail next time. But this peace, the peace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, is the peace with God in the complete cessation of hostility against you. Isn't that wonderful?

We have peace with God, and God is no longer at war. The second blessing of justification is that we have access to God, verse two, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And he's talking about ongoing, ongoing access to God. And it's by faith. Faith is the conduit, It's the corridor through which we move into grace.

We live in grace. We live in the state of grace, not just the state of North Carolina. We stand perpetually in grace. When I read this first a long, long time ago, probably 50 years ago, I just could picture being showered in the grace of God, just standing in cascading showers, standing in showers, you know, and I love the water and it just made me think of being washed in the Pacific Ocean and the showers of the Pacific Ocean. You are standing in grace all the time.

That's a blessing of justification. And then the third blessing of justification is that we have hope. We rejoice in hope, verse two. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Hope is really such a focus in these verses.

It's mentioned three times in these verses. Hope in verse two, hope in verse four, hope in verse five, begins with hope and ends with hope. And it's such a remarkable structure that the apostle Paul is describing how we ought to think about our tribulations and that means that we can rejoice before it had before the relief happens because we rejoice in hope in the glory of God we we what is this glory of God it's because it's it's God glorifying himself through his children. God is restoring us. God is making us into his image.

He's redeeming us, he's renewing us. He's making us like his Son, Jesus Christ. He's making us into the complete man, into the image of Jesus Christ. And so that's why you're called into hope. You can walk into joyful hope because you know where it's going, even though where you are now is hard.

And this whole matter of hope and joy in believing is one of the chief marks of a healthy church, where the people are happy. They're rejoicing in hope for the glory of God. They know they're not everything that they want to be, but they are going to be everything that they will be for God's glory in his own time. And Paul won't let this subject go, and he'll speak of it various times in Romans, But when you get near the end of Romans in Romans 15, he says, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. So the third blessing of justification is that we rejoice in hope.

And now we get to the central matter that I wanna focus on here. The fourth blessing of justification is in verse three through five, and that is that we glory in our tribulations. We glory in our tribulations. It sounds so strange, doesn't it? Or we rejoice or we boast, these are equivalent words for this matter of glorying in tribulations.

What are tribulations? Well, the language here really, it's a word picture of being squeezed, of being pressed, and it's a word that's often used in the pressing of olives for the extracting of olive oil in an olive press or the crushing of grapes for wine or the pressing of fruit to squeeze out its result. You can think of an apple press, you know, you put apples in this tub and you wind them down with a screw and the apple juice comes out. We enter into times of pressing where we are pressed. And by the way, notice that it's not tribulation, it's tribulations, it's plural.

There will be many of them, many experiences of tribulation. It's very interesting that in every country in the world, those who want to torture their criminals or their political dissidents, they engage in what's called pressing and there are different forms of it that you can read about. But it's this matter of pressing in torture, but that's not what God is doing. God is not torturing his children. He's growing his children.

And frankly, you know, the people who are reading this in Romans, it wouldn't be very long that they would be brought into the Coliseums and they would be eaten by dogs and lions and nailed to crosses and burned to the stake. They understood what pressing was. We don't understand it at the level that they did But here here's the story of every person's life and for the Christian it's actually something is very meaningful You are either in a trial or after a trial or before a trial in your life. That's the life that everyone lives on earth And God gives such a wonderful instruction to us. If you're a Christian, you should expect persecution in 2 Timothy 312.

All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. In Matthew 5-11, Jesus told his disciples what to do when they were persecuted. He said, rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great. God does not want his children to be slaves to their disappointments. Well, that would be a question you might ask, have I become a slave to my disappointments?

There's so many things to get straight in this passage. And the first thing is that scripture does teach us how to go through troubled times. And it's justification that opens the door to help us to go through troubled times in a healthy way because we often respond harmfully we often respond unprofitably to our tribulations. And we fall into complaining. We fall into lashing out.

We fall into defensiveness. Sometimes we fall into retreating. Sometimes we fall into fearing. Or you might have a hissy fit, or you might have a fainting fit, or you might have an anxiety attack because of your tribulations. It indicates a lack of understanding of tribulations and some manifestation of immaturity.

You can take the escapism route. I must have a vacation. I need a pill. I need a drink. I need a mental health day.

Well, the very best mental health day you could ever take is the Lord's Day. That's the mental health day of all days. Because on the Lord's Day, you do everything that causes health to your soul. Self-pity is the worst. When you nurse self-pity, you're on a death spiral.

And it's the chief reason people leave their jobs, it's the chief reason they leave their friends, it's actually the chief reason that people leave churches is they fall into self-pity and it's all about it's all about them but even worse it's the reason that people leave their marriages they feel that they're in such a bad situation. And that's why you see so many people, they walk out of their marriages during a time of testing. They quit their jobs because they're being tested by God. They dismiss their friends because the friendship is being tested. And they leave their churches because the covenant is being tested.

So we find ourselves in lots of testing situations and God gives us thinking that keeps us from becoming professional victims. And he says that we glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation produces perseverance. But God would keep his children from falling into these traps and becoming professional victims. Professional victims focus their disappointments outward toward other people. Professional victims blame others for their problems.

Professional victims blame their circumstances. Professional victims find reasons to dislike their friends. Professional victims blame their parents because it's so much easier to look outward than inward to see what God might be doing in your life through the testing. Because afflictions are God's program for God's people. And if you've become a professional victim, The first step is to repent of placing the blame.

You know, so many people are on these very interesting diets. There are all these waves of diets that are so popular that people go on. But it's possible some of you might need to go on a mind diet. You're dieting food, but you need to go on a mind diet and you need to govern what you think. You need to think rightly about what you're going through.

But scripture teaches us how to go through troubled times. God gives doctrine, this is the doctrine of suffering and trouble. God gives doctrine as a guide to help us engage tribulation. Now here's a question. Are you ready for this?

Are your feelings guided by the truth or by your disappointments? Are your feelings governed by your theology? Because trials and tribulations are tools in the hands of God. You know, when someone is going through suffering, we always pray that their suffering will end. We can't help it, because We do want their suffering to end, and it's a good thing for suffering to end.

But the truth is, God may not want their suffering to end yet. It's wise to pray, oh Lord, grow my brother or my sister's faith through this suffering. Oh Lord, take as long as it takes to get rid of whatever impurities and insecurities that are there. Lord, Lord, let this be an effective trial in my brother and sister's life. And I don't think it's wrong to pray that suffering would end in someone's life.

But we should recognize when we pray that God often prolongs suffering for his own glory and for the good of that person. Of course some of our sufferings are from our own foolishness. We suffer natural consequences of our sinful behavior, but even suffering from that is for our good. We do something foolish or sinful, and we suffer as a result of it. God is teaching us through that as well.

Even through our sin, God uses it for His glory. This is this is not a this is not a command to say, I'm suffering, hooray. That's not what he's saying. Gloring in tribulation is not the same thing as being happy about your tribulation. We're actually told to weep with those who weep.

In Psalm 125, we read, Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. The Lord Jesus Christ himself wept. It's often right to weep. This is not the same thing as saying, oh, my arm was just cut off. I'm so grateful that my arm was cut off.

Now, 15, 20 years later, you might say that. But I don't think this is an admonition to think in a foolish way about trials and tribulations and to say, oh yippee, you know, I just lost everything that I have. But to glory or boast in tribulation, and this is what I don't want us to forget, is to make a judgment about it. To glory in your tribulation is to make a judgment about that tribulation, to judge it for what it is. Not for what you think it is, but for what God says it is.

To glory is to boast in God's glory in tribulation. We judge it to have value and so we're given a way to think about our tribulations and our sufferings because here God is telling us what he's doing, that he's growing us, he's maturing us in these things that are listed in this chapter. You know, many of you have read about the ways that the Japanese make swords and they subject them to a thousand degrees and they pound them and they fold them over and over and over again hundreds and hundreds of times and they keep pounding and heating and pounding and heating and then comes this strong sword and actually has a very beautiful grain to it because the impurities have been beaten out of it. The impurities make the sword weak and you want to make the sword strong by beating it and heating it and beating it and heating it. I don't think God beats us and heats us quite like a sword maker does a sword, but he does a similar thing with us.

He puts up the heat and there are blows that happen in life, but they all have a purpose. They strengthen us. This passage says that they strengthen us. You know one of the one of the remarkable things about my mother, you know she's 96 years old, but six days a week she rides three miles on her exercise bike. Six days a week.

And just recently, she went to go see my sister on the west coast, So she didn't have her exercise bike for two weeks. And so she came back and I was studying there in the morning and she walked over to me the first day she was back and she said, Scott, I couldn't even make it a mile. I said, oh my, atrophy. And then a couple of days later she came in and she said, Scott, I made it just over a mile. And then a couple days later she came and she said, Scott, I made it two miles.

And then I think it was Friday or something, she came to me and she said, Scott, I just did three miles, She was back on it, you know. But this is, you know, exercise and that is that hurts actually improves and that's what trials do for us. And then we can go one mile and then two miles and three miles and who knows, because of our trials. And Tribulation does so many good things for us. It humbles us.

It shows us our sin. It shows us our weaknesses. It exposes who we really are. It forces you to face bitterness. I can testify that every single one of these things has been pressed forth in my life in trials that I've experienced, and I haven't experienced great trials.

Trials challenge you to forgive, to do one of the most important things you will ever do is to let people off the hook. Do you remember Last week we were talking about Abraham in chapter four, in 419, that his body was considered dead and his wife's womb was considered dead. And it says, and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his body already dead since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. The deadness of his body at a hundred and his wife's womb at probably 91 strengthened his faith, did not weaken his faith.

Did your infertility strengthen your faith? Did your waiting for a spouse strengthen your faith or weaken it? Did your loss strengthen your faith or did it weaken it? That's the whole idea here. God wants to strengthen your faith and he strengthens it through through waiting and and God teaches us how trials strengthen our faith.

Lloyd-Jones says that this is the acid test of a man's profession of faith, whether he's strengthened in trials or weakened by it. Because tribulation tests your faith to actually see if you are in the faith. Do you remember the parable of the sower? It's a picture of this person who receives the word of God quickly, but then he falls away. Verse 21 in Matthew 13.

He who received seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. But then he explains why. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the Word, immediately he stumbles. So how you handle your trials is like Lloyd Jones says, it's the acid test of your faith to see if you really are in the faith.

You said you trusted Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, do you really trust him in everything? And so what we know about God's purposes in trials causes us to grow. This passage is about what we know. It says, we know. And the apostle keeps talking about this in Romans 8.28.

He says, we know that all things work together for good. To those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. In 1 John Chapter three verses one and two, John says, we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We know, we know what's happening. God is purifying us.

He's making us like Jesus Christ. In Romans 822, we know why there's so much trouble in the world. 822, for we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Paul tells the Corinthian church in 2nd Corinthians 5 he says, for we know that if our earthly house this tent is destroyed we have a building from God a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.