The sermon focuses on Romans 5:1-5 and the blessings of justification by faith. It emphasizes the believer's access to grace and the enduring standing in grace. Access to grace is highlighted as a means of approaching God through prayer. The sermon encourages believers to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter five, find verse one. Romans 5 verse 1. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey, word of God. Let's read. 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.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we thank you for this wonderful text. We are so grateful for your shepherding this flock through your word and so come now oh Lord tend this vine, shepherd this flock. Come and pour your grace out upon your people that they might know you in the power of your resurrection. Lord we thank you for these words that have steadied us and helped us all our lives these words that you've given to us in the Bible.

Lord it's such a treasure. So now Lord pour out your treasure to your people. Amen. And please be seated. So as the year turns, we're really here and what I think is a pivotal text for a new year.

If you're a believer, it tells you that you have standing with God. And you know, just this morning I was reading The last chapter of the last book of the Bible in Revelation, just in my normal reading through the scriptures, and of course I was in Revelation 22, and The last verse of the last book of the Bible reads, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And as has already been pointed out, the Apostle Paul begins his letters the same way. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

And so in Romans five The apostle is really explaining this matter as a blessing, as an assurance of justification by faith. And as we've already covered, he's already said that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We covered that the last time we were in Romans. But the blessings extend far beyond peace with God. They include access by faith into grace.

It's this grace in which we stand. And it's an enduring reality, it's something that follows you all the days of your life. And here in this passage, which we'll actually cover next week, That we rejoice, we boast in the hope of the glory of God in order to turn this church into a church of boasters in the right thing. Come back next Sunday for that. But as we have been going through Romans just as a side note, I don't want us to miss the joy that Paul inserts into his preaching.

In these words and in many of the words ahead in Romans you just see the joyful character of the preaching of the Apostle Paul. He's exalting in the in the joy He's exalting the glory of God. He's giving thanks for every good thing He's telling you about the treasures that he's given to you as a child of God, and he just can't get enough of it. And he wants to wean us from all the unprofitable treasures of this world to find all of our hope in the hope of the glory of God. And so I don't want us to miss this.

And of course, some people are naturally happy, they look on the bright side, they were born with smiles on their faces, you know, people like that. Not everybody's like that. But if you're a Christian, you have access into this grace that's a gift of God, and it is for many purposes, but one of them is for your happiness. And so Paul here is, he's rejoicing, and he wants the Roman Christians to be rejoicing and boasting about Jesus Christ's power. And frankly, that's what he's been doing all the way up until now.

He starts out the letter really giving thanks, rejoicing, boasting in what God has done in his life, how God has changed his life in the first 16 verses. And then he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God and the salvation. And then he launches into, from the end of chapter one, you know, all the way into chapter three of the hopeless state of mankind, that man is under condemnation. Everyone is under condemnation. The most rank pagan is under condemnation.

The moral person, the religious person is under condemnation without Jesus Christ. He's trying to take every hope of salvation by works away from you. But all of this is really to help us to see the value of the grace of God. So there are four words that I want to focus in on this morning, four thrilling words. They're in your loud lines if you have one in front of you.

Knowing this, hanging on what's contained in these words can absolutely change your life. And it can alter everything that happens to you in 2024. These really are words of life and I'm so thankful that we're handling these words. The last time we were in Romans, we covered the first blessing of justification. As you know, the apostle has finished a long section on condemnation, and he has turned to justification.

And this first blessing, which is also an assurance of Salvation is that we have peace with God. He's as we pointed out. He isn't primarily talking about the peace of God which is often based on emotions of life's ups and downs, but rather peace with God. That the believer has been given a peace treaty. God is no longer at war with the believer.

And the believer is no longer at war with God. You have peace with God. Now this does have implications of having the peace of God, but this primary focus is the peace with God. And this is a wonderful blessing of justification. And so we've covered this matter of peace with God.

This is a judicial and fixed, unwavering peace that God has accomplished as a result of the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. And it is a justification that is accomplished. It's not like, justification's not like washing your car where you have to keep getting it washed. It's not like paying your taxes. It's not like cutting your hair.

It's not like filling up your car with gas or charging it up so it'll continue to run at the charging station. Justification is something that happens once. It's not like so many of the things that we have to do all the time. You know, like many of you this morning, we're trying to find the shoes of your children so that you could get to church. Justification is something that's won and done.

Praise the Lord. And So we have been declared righteous by a legal Transaction because of God's free grace. So that's what what the peace of God is all about So first we have peace with God and you know, I'm lingering in Romans 5 1 through 5 because I want us to really grasp the pivotal nature of what is here. So we've talked about peace with God. Today we speak about access by faith into this grace.

Next Sunday we'll try to dive more deeply into this third blessing of justification, and that is that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. I can't wait to get there. Well, I'll give you a foretaste of it this morning, but notice you have these words, we have. This is something that we had, that we have, and we will have every day of our life. What a blessing that is, you can't lose it.

And we know how it happens. Through, remember, our Lord Jesus Christ, the sweetest three words you can ever hear. Our Lord, meaning he's the sovereign master, Jesus, meaning he is our Savior, and Christ, he is the Messiah. We have all this through Jesus Christ. And so now we turn to verse two in Romans five.

We have peace with God, verse two, through whom, through our Lord Jesus Christ, we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Four words, four thrilling words, four words you can hang your whole life on, four words you can work through every day of 2024 and all the hours between now and then. And so these four words, the first word is access. Through whom we have, which is something that began and is ongoing in duration, we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. These are perfect tense verbs which speak of something that began and keeps on going.

And so we stand in this grace. And he's speaking of actually standing in a realm. Right now we are sitting in a room, but he's talking about the reality of where you're at in life. It's a realm. You've been ushered into a realm.

It's the realm of grace. It's the place of grace. When you turn to the Lord, you were ushered into this realm, this place of grace, and you stand perpetually in that state of grace. Now, in my years on the earth, I've lived in five different states. I was born in Alaska.

We moved to Artesia, New Mexico for two or three years and then we moved to Southern California. I lived we lived there for about 30 years. I did and then we went one year in Texas and now 35 years here in North Carolina. But in every every state I've lived. I always lived in the state of grace.

Praise the Lord. It didn't matter where I went, The state of grace follows me. David said, you know, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It's good to be in the state of grace.

You know, you can move to your safe city if you want, but you'll never be able to depart from the state of grace. And that will sustain you. And this is a certain and fixed and established and secure state. And so to have access to this grace is to live before God. You're familiar with that term that people often use to conclude their emails, corum deo, before the face of God.

That's standing in grace. And you go to God, and how do you, you go by faith. Faith is the conduit through which, it's the corridor, It's the corridor that takes you into this state of grace. And this whole matter of standing in grace has always been such a beautiful picture to me. I've pictured it all my life as like standing in a cascade of water, you know, in a waterfall, just standing in a waterfall.

You know, picture yourself in Hawaii. And you know, you're standing in this waterfall of grace. And it just keeps on flowing. Kind of like what John repeated from the Lord, I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. We stand in these showers of blessing and to stand in grace, it has to do with standing in the mercy of God, it has to do with standing in the cascading fountain of the living words of God.

And it's also, I think, it's the way that God counsels us as we go through life. It's by His grace that we receive all the counsel that we need. He said, I will guide you with my eye. It's such a blessing to have the Lord. You know, the world is buzzing about how much help you can get with AI, you know, it's gonna change the world.

You know, AI is going to change the world. But, you know, AI can generate information, but it can't give you discernment. AI can generate lots of ideas, but not necessarily truth. AI will tell you what you can do but not necessarily what you should do. You know it can assemble the collective brain of whatever data set you know it's operating by, but the collective brain is fallen.

But God is a fountain of pure, undefiled grace and wisdom and truth. He's the one. It's the grace in which we stand and we have access to God and His grace. Now this word access only occurs three times in the New Testament. Each time it refers to this relationship that you have with God, particularly in prayer, like in Ephesians 2, 18, we read, "'For through him we both have access "'by one Spirit to the Father.'" He's talking about access to the Father through prayer.

And then in Ephesians 312, we have the same kind of use in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him. The word access has a formal tone to it. It's the kind of formality of someone being introduced to a king or a queen. And I've heard it described like this, a beggar's on a street begging for food. And the rich, they have access to the king's court, but you can't go introduce yourself to the king.

You need someone to give you access to the king. You're hopeless without someone to rise up and give you access because you cannot get it on your own. You must have an introduction. And so now you have this beggar who has someone who steps up and says, I will introduce you to the King. And he's been given access and then is presented.

And this is what has happened to the believer. He has formally been introduced to the Father through the Son and by the work of the Holy Spirit. And we have obtained access into this grace. So this has vast implications to two things, two really important things. Every day of your life, first of all, you always have access.

You know, when the Lord said, I will never leave you or forsake you, This is what he's talking about. And also in the prayers of the church, when the church prays together, when the church meets, You know, we set aside a meeting to pray every week so that the whole church can come together and see the value and the beauty of this access. And we dedicate a whole evening a week to prayer Because we have access It's such a blessing and then grace the second word grace the believer has unbroken access to grace And you know, we don't need to go anywhere to get access to grace. We don't have to go to the priest, we don't have to go to the mass. You have access to grace.

This is the priesthood of the believers. And Paul uses this word grace, charis is such a beautiful word. I've met so many children with this name and I always am delighted to hear this name. But charis means, in most cases, favor or goodwill. And grace is also God's disposition toward his people.

That's why the Bible ends with, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. And There are 124 occurrences of this word in the New Testament. 86 of them are by the apostle Paul. And so the Bible speaks of the riches of his grace. One of my favorites is in Ephesians one, verse 16, where because we are adopted, he says, for what?

To the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. And so this is God's disposition toward us. Again, grace means favor. I get the feeling from some believers that they feel like God is always scowling at them, that his patience is wearing thin, that he's just telling you to work harder, just do more, that he's not pleased with you. And I am not here to say that we shouldn't pay attention to the disciplines of sanctification.

You know, you've been here enough to know that that's not what I think. But there there is a reality that the Apostle Paul told or the Apostle or whoever wrote the book of Hebrews in Hebrews 13, 9, he said, it's good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. It's good. You know, when the Apostle Paul was languishing over the fact that he could not be healed of a certain affliction, he said that it was sent to teach him that his grace was sufficient for him, and that his strength is made perfect in weakness because of grace. Grace is such a valuable thing, it's the most valuable thing that you can have in the world.

And so we have access into this grace, which is defining this ongoing flow, you know, into the Christian life from beginning to end. Let me say it like this. We are drawn by God's grace, we are saved by grace, we walk in grace, We're sanctified by grace, and we stand in grace. And that means that all year long, next year, there's always a way through by the grace of God. I don't know what you think about last year or next year, but here's the truth of both years.

There's always a way through by the grace of God. There's nothing that you're grappling with that cannot be addressed through the grace of God somehow. Maybe this is why the Apostle Paul seemed to be such a joyful preacher because he knew and he wanted every church to know of the power of grace. Because we don't have adequate strength in ourselves. We see that we're not what we want to be.

We are discouraged often because of our slow progress. I know I am. That we don't make headway in holiness like we want to. We don't have the urgencies for the word of God that we think is appropriate and that we would actually like. We don't feel as passionate as we want to be.

We're not as disciplined as we want to be. Every single day we can look back and say, I wasn't perfect. You know, many of you knew my dad, and if you would ask him how he was doing, he'd always say, perfect. He didn't mean it that he was perfect, but he just knew that God was. And God was perfectly taking care of everything.

That's why he said that. He wasn't speaking of personal accomplishment. He was talking about God's sufficiency. But grace connects us with God. Grace keeps us with God.

That grace is God smiling on his people. You know the Christian is standing in a cascading fountain of the grace of God. The Christian is not standing in acid rain. He's standing in grace. And so God's grace is really your only indispensable need.

The most famous Christian song goes like this, twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, "'and grace will lead me home.'" I hope you really believe that. I hope you're hanging on that. Are these just words, you know, are these just pious words, you know, from preaching?

This is the word of God. The book of Romans started with these words, grace to you. The book of Romans concludes in chapter 16 verse 20, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, amen. As we're studying Romans, it's really helpful to understand the flow, to see how it starts, how it progresses, and how it ends, and it begins and ends in grace. So this word access, you know, occurs mainly in the context of prayer in Ephesians 3 18 or 2 18 and 3 12.

I said that this has vast implications for us when the church prays together. Now we always pray when we meet. We always have access and we always take it up. And we have an evening prayer meeting on Wednesday night. I've always been very thankful that usually more than half of the people in the church or at least half Come to our prayer meeting, but half isn't enough for us as elders So we dedicate an evening exclusively to prayer, but there are, you know, over the years, you know, I've encountered different reasons why people don't come.

You know, there are some who say they're not a priority for me in my life right now. Or those who say I just don't have time to gather to pray. Or I don't get anything out of the prayer meeting. Or I'm too tired, I don't have time enough to go to the prayer meeting. But I wanna, since we have access to this grace in which we stand, I just want to have us consider, for those of you who don't go to prayer, here are three things to consider.

For those of you that do though, I think this will be helpful. If you're saying that nothing comes from the prayer meetings, you know, are you saying that God doesn't answer prayer? The prayers of God's people. If you don't think it's valuable, if you don't think God answers prayer, I mean, the Bible tells you that he hears, he hears us and he answers prayer. And so if you say it's not valuable, you're almost like saying God doesn't answer prayer, but He does answer prayer.

And secondly, if you say you don't get anything out of the prayer meetings, It's reflective of a, I'm gonna call it a gross misunderstanding of one of the great purposes of the prayer meeting. Because in one way, while prayer is a blessing to the individual believer, our prayer meetings really aren't primarily for you individually because we are interceding for others. Prayer is for the benefit of others. And in fact, if you think you're gonna come to prayer just to get something for yourself, you've just become a very selfish person. But what about the other people who need prayer?

Prayer isn't about you primarily, it's about so many other people in need. Every time we gather, we pray for lots of people who have need. And a lot of times, I didn't even know they had the need, because somebody prayed about it, and it was the first time I'd ever heard about it. Because somebody cared. And now, now the whole church cares.

Now I care actually, because somebody prayed for it. But if you go to prayer just to get something out of it, you need to think that prayer is also designed for somebody else to get something out of it, and they might live 5,000 miles away. Because we almost always pray for somebody 5,000 miles away. So we're praying for the glory of God to be manifested in other people. That's the essence of intercessory prayer.

So we pray because God commands the church to pray. We pray because God has given many promises to pray. We pray because we need help. We pray because we're not sufficient to handle the things that are going down in our lives. We pray because only God can accomplish the things that concern us.

And we pray in this church, actually the reason we pray corporately in this church on Wednesday night is because the pastors who are shepherding this church are calling the church to pray. That's why it's happening here. But there's another objection that people have that I've heard from time to time for not gathering with the church to pray. They say, hey, the most important meeting is Sunday morning and I'm there, but I don't need to go to any of the other meetings because they're not required. And in other words, I'm not obligated to do that.

And I would just say, you know, first, It is important because the church is commanded to gather together and pray. And secondly, it's important because, and I don't want you to take this wrong, but God appoints elders to shepherd the flock. God appoints elders to lead the flock into green pastures and still waters to restore their souls. That's what we're supposed to do. So when elders call for a meeting, it's serious.

Like, don't say Sunday morning is the only required meeting I'm not gonna do to anything else. Don't say, you know, that does not reflect what God has actually done in organizing the leadership of a church. And because God has appointed shepherds to shepherd that flock. And don't take that lightly, you should not take it lightly. I had an interesting conversation with a CrossFit trainer one time.

And we were talking, I said, you know, your job is a little bit like mine. You're always telling people to do something that they wouldn't normally do and sometimes it's even painful but it's for their physical health and then I said you know I help people do what they wouldn't normally do on their own, and sometimes it's not what they would normally want to do on their own, but they should do for the sake of their spiritual health. He said, yeah I guess my job is a little bit like your job. Hebrews 13, 17 says, obey those who rule over you and be submissive for they watch out for your souls as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief for that would be unprofitable for you.

I mean to act to act like the hey and by the way I am so thankful for the for the participation and the attendance at prayer in this church. I actually have never seen so many people come out to pray as in this church. I've been in churches where almost nobody ever shows up for prayer. So I'm super thankful. So Don't misunderstand me here, but in 1 Peter 5, likewise you younger people submit yourselves to your elders, you shouldn't take the calling of the church together lightly.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, 12, we urge you brethren to recognize those who labor over you, among you, and who are over you in the Lord and admonish you and esteem them very highly in love for their work sake. But all I'm trying to say is that it actually does matter if the pastors of the church are calling the church together to pray. And We're just calling you to do something really good. Maybe it's not in your schedule now, for most of you it is in your schedule. But you might think about putting it in your schedule.

This is spiritual crossfit. So the third word, the third word to define your year is that we have standing. If you have, we have standing. You're familiar with this word, standing. In the Supreme Court, if the Supreme Court refuses a case, they say that the case did not have standing, right?

And standing is the ability of a party to launch, the legitimacy of a party to launch a lawsuit in court. And standing limits participation in lawsuits. Just any old person off the street can't launch a lawsuit. They have to have standing. They have to have a legal right.

And in other words, you have to prove that you have personally suffered an injury, not your friend. To have standing is to have skin in the game. And this standing in grace is a little bit like that. We have standing we have we have we have personal reasons we We have a legitimate reason to stand in grace because of Jesus Christ. And we're standing in grace, we're not cowering, we're not groveling, we're not begging.

Hebrews 10, 19 talks About this matter in prayer. He says therefore brethren having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way Which he consecrated for us through the veil That is his flesh and Having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. We enter in boldly with assurance because of the blood of Jesus Christ. And it's so important, it's so important that we understand every day, every minute of the day, and don't you wish you could remember every minute of the day that you're standing in grace? Don't you wish you could remember every minute of the day?

You know, it grieves me how often I forget in the middle of the day. I try to start the day, you know, filling my mind and then I lose track of it, but what value there is in being connected with God. You feel disconnected with God, you have access. You're discouraged, you have access. You're hopeless before God, you have access before God.

You are angry before God, you have access. You have standing, you're standing in the grace of God. And then the fourth word, the final word, and this is really just an introduction to next week, so we won't play this out completely, but I want us to see the flow of thought. This takes us into the third blessing or the third assurance of justification by faith, the third reason everybody should become a Christian, because you rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

We're gonna introduce this word rejoice. It's also translated boast in other places. We rejoice, we boast in the hope of the glory of God. He's talking about a bold, audacious confidence about the future of your life. Bold, audacious, outrageous confidence because of God.

And we're seeing here a person who's exuberant about the future of his life. He has a deep joy, it's deeper than his insecurities, it's deeper than his fears, it's deeper than his heartaches, it's boasting in the hope of the glory of God. This is the kind of church God is making. It's a church full of boasters in the hope of the glory of God. People who are exuberantly, audaciously, so happy about the future.

Come on now. You ought to get happy about the future. So we're gonna elaborate on that next week. And it's for the glory of God. So as the year turns, This is a pivotal text for a new year.

And I want us to enter into this new year, concluding the last, understanding at some level What this grace is all about. That you stand in this cascading fountain of grace for the rest of your life and for all of eternity. And when you get to the end, the Lord Jesus Christ says, I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts." These four thrilling words, access, grace, standing, and boasting. Knowing this and centering your life on these things can change your life in 2024. You wanna do it?

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for you fill our hearts with songs of deliverance whenever we're afraid. We thank you that you never leave us or forsake us. We thank you that you have said come.

If anyone thirsts, let him come. Oh God, we are so grateful that you have in this world as we're walking in it such assurances. Lord, I praise you for access into this grace in which we stand. And I pray, oh Lord, that you would shepherd this church into such grace, assuring them into it, as the year turns, amen. Thank you.