In this sermon titled 'Boasting In a Certain Hope', Scott Brown explores the concept of rejoicing and boasting in the hope of the glory of God. He emphasizes that this audacious, bold confidence in God is essential for believers and the local church. The sermon highlights the treasures of justification by faith, including peace with God, access to God, and the assurance of glorification. Brown encourages believers to have enduring hope, even in the midst of tribulations, knowing that God will ultimately transform them and bring them to glory.

Open your Bibles to Romans chapter one and find, verse five, I'm sorry, chapter five and find verse one. Romans five, verse one. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. Romans 5. 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 hope in the glory of God and not only that but we glory in our 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.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for giving us such a good direction. Thank you for leading our hearts in the ways of joy. Thank you Lord for these words that are meant to shape this church, shape all of our hearts and everything that happens in our lives until we see you face to face.

So Lord come and bless your people today with your word. Amen. Please be seated. So our focus today, this morning, is the second half of verse two. You encountered the first half of verse two last week.

There are three words we're gonna hover over in the next few minutes. Rejoice, which literally means boast, and hope and glory. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And these words I hope will be an encouragement to your soul today. And I hope it's also something that will help you see God's vision for your life, the glorious vision he has for his people, how kind he is.

And if you don't know the Lord, that you would just see the kindness of God. You'd see the power of God and how good God is in all of his gifts. But I can't read this without thinking, What kind of life do I want to live? What kind of life do you want to live? Do you want to walk your days disheartened, destabilized, dejected?

Do you want to be a forlorn person, a fearful person about your life? You can walk your whole life, even as a Christian like that. Do you want to be living a life where you're always unsatisfied, you're always uncertain about the things to come, and it just dogs you every day. But not only personally, because This actually is directed to a church, to a local church, to the church in Rome. And that's why he says in the previous phrase, we have access and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

This is plural. This has to do with the gathered people of God, it has to do with a local church. And really the whole disposition of a local church, the way that people operate with one another. So it's actually a very practical question that's being posed here. Now, in this section, we're walking through the treasures of justification by faith.

We've already encountered two of them. We have peace with God, number one, we have access to God. And then now we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. This is the third blessing of justification that appears in this chapter. And of course you've walked with us in this book the apostle begins actually with rejoicing and boasting what God did in his life in the first 15 verses and then he says I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God And then he goes on in the next three chapters to describe the hopeless condition of mankind that all stand condemned.

The immoral of this world stand condemned, the moral of this world stand condemned, the religious Stand condemned without Jesus Christ. That's his whole argument in the first three chapters And then in in chapter 3 he picks up and begins to explain justification by faith alone So he's explained justification and now he's speaking about the treasures the beauties of justification how how helpful justification is to the soul of The believer and these are actually assurances of salvation just for context Chapter 5 to chapter 8 is a whole new section in Romans, and over and over again, it's a disclosure of the assurance that the believer has. We've just gone through a long season of the condemnation of the unbeliever without Jesus. Now we're in the section of the treasures of justification, the blessings of this overflowing stream of grace that we live in. And so now in the second half of verse two, Paul invites this church into a life of rejoicing, literally boasting, and so that's the focus.

And so this section just continue, well from here on up to chapter 8 will continue to give us assurances of glorification and you have this rejoicing in hope the object is glorification God's plan so that's the logic of it and and what God is saying is is that he is going to glorify his children. You can count on it. Not just have a vague hope for, but you can count on it. You know, as you're going through life, it really matters how you think about everything that's going on around you. You know, let me illustrate.

Sports gambling has been all the rage throughout history. The Romans gambled on the Coliseum, gladiators, the Greeks gambled with the Olympic Games, you know, they gambled on chariot races and horse races. But let's just say, oh, the Super Bowl is coming up, don't watch it, just kidding. But Let's just say that you bet everything you have on the Super Bowl. And all of your cash, whatever you have, your house, your children, you bet everything, your car.

But the difference is you already know who's going to win. You absolutely know who's going to win. Your bet is secure. The outcome is fixed. And so you bet the farm on that game, but you already know.

And, but as you start watching the game, there's one disaster after another. And The other team is ahead and you're getting crushed. And what are you thinking? You know who's going to win. You thought you knew who was going to win.

You hoped you knew was going to win. It was a very secure hope at the beginning. But you keep seeing your team getting behind. And then, of course, in the last two seconds, your team wins, and you become a gazillionaire. But when your team was losing, what were you thinking?

Were you defeated? Were you discouraged? Were you just Were you just getting jacked around by every up and down of the game? Like was your whole disposition dependent on the ups and downs of everything going around you? You knew you were going to win, but you doubted it on the way.

And this is what happens with us as well. And so I pray that what's here in this text will address this problem that we all have at different levels, that this fruit, this treasure of justification would be fully yours. And that it would be something that would shape the culture of our souls together as a church, that it would even shape the culture of your family, that it would shape the culture of your work, the way you engage your work as you whistle your way through the day knowing that God is glorifying himself and will finally glorify himself. Even shaping the culture of your country, wherever you walk in your country, to take this sense everywhere that you go. Also, I just want to point this out again.

It's hard to miss Paul's joy in his preaching. These words just remind us about the nature, the character of Paul's preaching and it's the character, it's a joyful character. Even Paul told the Corinthian Church, he said we are fellow workers for your joy. He says rejoice always, he says rejoice in trials, and he says rejoice in hope right here in this passage. This is the character of Paul's teaching and it's really a treasure of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I think that we all understand that God's intention for preaching the word of God, God's intention for preaching is to move a person from one place to another. The word of God is meant to move you, to move you from one disposition to another, to one way of experiencing reality to another, one way of thinking about yourself to another, One way of thinking about the whole world to another. Preaching is designed to move you. And I want these words here, these three golden words, to move your soul in a direction. I don't want you to walk out here the same person.

So let's begin with these words, three words, rejoice, hope, and glory. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Let's start with that word rejoice. It's actually a very strong word. Rejoicing, this same word is translated boasting in several places in the Bible.

Rejoice and boast mean the same thing. And my guess is that the translators use the word rejoice here because we don't feel good about people who are boasting. The boastful person, the arrogant person, the self-satisfied person is not a very palatable kind of person to be around. You don't trust boastful people. So I think it's possible the translators because of that would use this word rejoicing rather than boasting.

But this word rejoice or boast it refers to a bold, audacious confidence. Bold, audacious confidence. And actually, God desires this to be the disposition of your soul and mine. God desires this to be your outlook on life and my outlook and this church's outlook on life and God desires this audacious bold confidence to be your perspective. And all the ups and downs in this life, synonyms of audacious, undaunted, fearless, gutsy, intrepid.

Would you describe yourself that way? I don't know if anybody would necessarily describe themselves that way. But again, the Word of God is designed to move you, to change you, to make you a different kind of person than you are. He wants to remake you, even the way that you think about the ups and downs of your life. So the person we're seeing described here, the church we're seeing described here, is exuberant about the future.

And again, like I said, this is not just about a person, this is about a church. We, we have access. We rejoice, we boast. We are audaciously glorifying God for his plan, a victory for our souls. The boasting, the rejoicing, should color our insecurities.

The boasting should soften the blows of life. The boasting should infuse into our fears. The boasting should modify our heartaches. It should define our attitudes. It should reshape our personality.

Now we've encountered this word boasting already three times in the book of Romans, and it's used negatively. Look at chapter 2 verse 17, because boasting is not always used positively. In chapter 2 verse 17, he's talking about be boasting because you're a Jew. Indeed you are called a Jew and rest on the law and make your boast in God. Now this is a wrong kind of boasting.

Boasting because you're a Jew. And that you can just translate, you know, boasting because you have a religious persuasion. And then in chapter 2 verse 23, it has to do with boasting and law keeping. This is a negative kind of boasting. And you make your boast in the law.

And Then in chapter 3 verse 27, he says where is boasting then it is excluded In other words man has no reason to boast For his religious persuasion for his law-keeping for his heritage for his morality boasting in any of that is excluded. But our only boast is in Jesus Christ, that's the whole point. So he's been using boasting negatively and now positively. In the negative sense, it's about boasting in your accomplishments, boasting in your righteousness, and it is excluded. But now when we get to chapter 5 verse 2, it's a different way of boasting.

It's the same word, it means the same thing, but it's for a different purpose. So now we boast in a different way. We don't boast in what we are doing, we're boasting in what God is doing for us, what God is doing with us, what God is doing to us, and what God is doing in us. This is the kind of boasting that he's talking about. And that's why we can rejoice with confidence because the object of our boasting is the glory of God, is God, and what he's doing.

So this is an exuberant Christianity. And what is there to boast about? In 1 Corinthians 1.31, the apostle tells this church, but of him you are in Christ Jesus who became for us the wisdom of God and the righteousness and sanctification and redemption as it is written, he who glories let him glory in the Lord. Same word, glory in the Lord. In St.

Corinthians 1130, we boast in our infirmities. In St. Corinthians 129, the Apostle is boasting in his sicknesses because it makes him strong. Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ might rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak then I am strong.

In other words, in other words, you can rejoice in your infirmities because They make you strong. We had a whole sermon about that a few weeks ago. Your infirmities make you strong, and that's what the whole second part of, well, actually, chapter five verses three through five say that very same thing, that It's your tribulations that make you strong. We should welcome our tribulations because they make us strong and we need to be strengthened. And so God sends us strengthening trials into our lives.

In Jeremiah 9, 24, this is one of my dad's favorite verses. It's his birthday tomorrow. Of course, he's passed away. But let him who glories glory in this that he understands me and knows me. That I'm the Lord exercising loving kindness judgment and righteousness in the earth for in these I delight.

In other words let him who boasts, boast in this, that he knows me. So the first word is boasting or rejoicing. The second word is hope. Rejoicing or boasting in hope. Now, this word hope is a major theme of these first five verse verses is mentioned in verse 2 verse 4 and verse 5 Again hermeneutical principle when you see a word repeated in a text it has a lot to do with the meaning of that text And so the word hope is a really significant word.

You know, in the same way that the rejoice is a strong word, so is hope. It's a very strong word in the original language. And of course, we all know that there are two kinds of hope. There's a tentative hope and there is an assured hope. This is, he's talking about an assured hope.

A tentative hope is I sure hope I get that job. A tentative hope is, I sure hope it won't rain tomorrow, even though it says it's 50% chance. Tentative hope is, I hope my boss wants to keep me. That's tentative hope. But this word is not the same thing as just sort of hoping for the best.

Just, you know, just white-knuckling it, hoping for the best. He's not talking about that. That's not how God works in your life or in his church. And what this means is that we can rejoice before the fulfillment happens because we know how it will turn out. We've been taken up above the conflict.

We know who is gonna win the game. Even though there are ups and downs in the process, we already know this is an assured hope. We hope, We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. It's almost like the believer has, God gives the believer a perspective of life. It's like he raises the believer above the war, above and is looking down and can see the difficulties that are happening, but the believer knows where it's all going.

The believer knows who's going to win the game And the believer also knows that God will use everything in the game to glorify himself. But at the same time, a normal believer will struggle with hope in the midst of his experience in the world. And of course, you know, hopelessness is an epidemic in our times. There's so many drivers of it we could talk about. Talk about it, you know, people are using pacifiers to build hope.

Their toys, their shopping, their drugs, their beauty, their whatever, you know, all these false hopes. But so many people are afflicted by sadness and sins are a great burden to carry. You know, if a person has not escaped condemnation, there's always a voice of condemnation in their life. That's a heavy burden to carry for the unbeliever. Sometimes it's because we've cultivated sinful emotions.

You know, we, and as a result of our experiences, we often allow and cultivate and nurture sinful emotions and those things give us wrong interpretations of the way it really is and so our our view of the world has been shaped by not renouncing, by not repenting of sinful emotions like fear and anger and hatred, things like that. And we, in our culture, we want to sort of baptize all of our emotions as holy and they're not all holy. And so we end up in a very weird view of life compared to God. Can you imagine how God thinks of this? He looks up down on his people and he's thinking, don't you get it, I made you all these promises.

Why are you so worried about the ups and downs? You know, this is a practical thing, you know, for people who are pastors. You know, pastors end up, you know, seeing all kinds of heartbreaking things in a church. And a lot of pastors, They quit over it. In fact, today, pastors are quitting in platoons all over the place.

And it's because of discouragement, usually. The heartbreak, they just can't take the heartbreak. It's really important that your pastors understand that God is sovereign and that God is going to complete the work in every person in that church. You have to believe that you should quit. I believe that, you know.

Your pastors are not overburdened, by the way. We hope in the glory of God. And we believe that for this congregation, even in the midst of the ups and downs of different people's lives. So what does all this mean? One thing it means is that hope increases endurance, and endurance is such a critical thing to have as a believer.

In Romans 8.24, we read, for we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. What that means is that hope increases perseverance. Hope helps you to keep on going, even though your team looks behind. You look like you're behind.

But hope increases perseverance and endurance. It actually, and this is so practical, because it increases endurance in your relationships. Have you ever heard anybody say, I'm done? But hope actually increases endurance in relationships. Hope increases endurance in difficulties within jobs, bad bosses, crummy situations.

It increases endurance in churches. Churches have their ups and downs as well. You have lots of people out there that are just going to run out the door the first sign of trouble or the first offense, somebody didn't look at them right and so. But hope, if you have hope, you will have more endurance with your church. If you have hope, you will have more endurance with your church.

If you have hope, you will have more endurance with the goals and objectives that it seems like to you that God has laid upon you. Many of you have been making New Year's resolutions. That's actually a good thing. But hope is helpful to maintaining those desires, those good desires that you have. And the truth is there's hope because God has promised that he will finish the work in your life the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1 6 being confident of this Very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." You know, you can have hope in the wrong thing, and those hopes are often dashed, but this is hope in the right thing.

This is hope in God. Specifically, hope for the glory of God. There are ways to have hope and things that will disappoint. Oftentimes people's disappointment come because they put too much hope in the wrong thing. I'm sure some of you are grappling with it even right now, you're thinking about what that is.

That's a normal thing. Because it's hard for anyone to abound in hope when bad things are happening all around us. Because we tend to focus on our flaws. By the way, in just a few minutes we're going to take the Lord's Supper where the Lord wants you to focus on His perfections, not your flaws. His sacrifice for your sin.

You look at the headlines, you look at the internal headlines of your own heart. But God says, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Maybe you've already thought about this, but this is a local church and it has a name. It's Hope. Hope Baptist church. There you have it.

You know so many years ago we named this church because we wanted to have a congregation where people had their hope placed in the things that will be fulfilled. Hope in God, hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. A people who place their hope in the scriptures because Romans 15 4 says that through the patience and comfort of the scriptures we might have hope. That's why there's a big emphasis on everything we do on the scriptures. We want this church to be shepherded by the word of God.

We wanted to have a people who know where hope comes from, that it comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Romans 15 13. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing. We at the very beginning we wrote down that we wanted to have the people focused such that their countenance was lifted by hope. Psalm 43, 5, why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God. A people who would be doing what David did here, he's preaching to his soul. Soul, why are you cast down? Hope in God, soul. He's preaching to his own soul.

Like a people who would preach the word to their own souls. That's such a blessing. A people, especially young people who have hope in God. Psalm 71, 5. For you are my hope, O Lord God.

You are my trust from my youth. You are my trust from my youth." When we originally planted this church, we pray that God would give hope in our young people, hoping God, that They wouldn't be torn up by the hopeless things in this world. These were all passages of scripture that we wrote down that wanted to form the culture of this church. In Psalm 130, that was another one that we wrote down. People who wait in hope.

I wait for the Lord. My soul waits in his word do I hope. We also cited Hebrews 6, 18 and 19 that God would give us in this church a people with strong consolation. Hebrews 6 18 that we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil.

We identified 1 Peter 3.15 because we prayed that God would give a people in this church whose inward hope would cause them to be involved in the outward proclamation of the gospel. 1 Peter 3, 15. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is within you with all meekness and fear. People who are ready to give an answer for their hope. And of course the beginning of hope is the new birth.

That's where hope begins. Paul went to great lengths to say that you're hopeless without the new birth, without Jesus Christ, without being justified by faith. And now he's speaking of these great treasures, but in 1 Peter 1,3, we read that He has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. We have a living hope by being born again. This is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That God created man, he put him in a garden, but man ate the forbidden fruit. And sin was passed on to all mankind through procreation and all all have all are under the weight and the condemnation of sin without Jesus Christ And yet God in his kindness sent his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. And God would have it that his son would bear the punishment for the sins of his people. This is the beginning of the living hope, when you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and you repent of your sins and you set out on a course to bet the whole farm on him, to bet the farm on this hope, to take everything that you have, everything that you are, and it's now his, and you're now his slave, like the Apostle Paul said in chapter one in Romans, I'm a slave of Jesus Christ. I'm the happiest slave there is.

This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And The writer of Hebrews calls this hope the anchor of the soul. And then the third word, glory. Now of course, this is the object of the boasting and the hoping. Boasting in the hope of the glory of God, the glory of God.

Now in Romans 3 we we learned that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But now, in Romans 5, we hope in the glory of God. So, Paul is drawing a line here from justification through the intermediate state of your life in this world of boasting in hope and then glorification, final glorification. He's drawing a line in the whole doctrine of salvation here. I was reading Matthew Henry on this text he says grace is glory begun.

He says those who hope in the glory of God in the future have enough to rejoice about now. Because glorification doesn't just come at the end, it comes all throughout your life. This is progressive sanctification. This is growth in grace. This is the access that we have to grace causes us to grow.

And so we are being transformed. We hope in the glory of God. It's it's a twofold hope It's and and and it's not a transitory. Hope. It's a real hope.

It's a guarantee that that that God is going to transform you here and then finally and perfectly when you meet him face to face. But St. Corinthians 318 is one of the great passages of scripture that describes this. He says, but we all with unveiled face, beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. So the believer is born again and now spends his life beholding the face of Jesus Christ.

That means beholding him. That means seeking his word. His word is spirit and it is truth. And you behold the face of Jesus Christ when you encounter the Word of God and that's what makes you to be transformed in this world and you are being transformed. You know in my experience it's a very slow process.

It's so slow, painfully slow, but it is a process that's moving on for sure. God has promised. Promised. You know, I have had the the joy of knowing, you know, many believers for a long time, for years, decades, and I can see the glory of the Lord increasing in their life. It's what God promised.

He promised He would bring many sons to glory. Romans 8-29, we learn that this glorification has to do with being Conformed to the image of Jesus Christ a church is a people who are becoming like Jesus Christ Romans 829 for whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son Moreover whom he predestined, these he also called. Whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified. That's the whole picture of salvation.

Predestination, calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification. That's the life cycle of the believer. And then if you look at verse 3, and not only that, Romans 5-3, And not only that, 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 has given to us. And not only that, not only all these blessings of justification, but we also glory in our tribulations.

Come back this afternoon, you'll hear Trent speak about the love of God being poured out in our hearts in the afternoon service. But you, in verse three, we get the whole thing. We get the peace of God, we get access to God, to the grace of God, we get boasting and rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, and we get the fruit of tribulations. All of this is designed to make a strong church, a strong local church like Rome, where the people are brimming with hope. They're boasting, they're audaciously, boldly hopeful.

So let me just turn to some applications here, and we'll wind this thing up. There are reasons that people don't rejoice. Heavy trials, learned responses that turned out to be temperament that can be changed. This is, by the way, this is meant to pull you out of your temperament. Out of your despondent morose temperament, if you have it.

Not everybody has it. But if you do, this is for you. Pull you out. I talked about tolerating and cultivating sinful emotions. Some people don't boast because they think it's wrong to just be so free and so confident.

The Bible says it's right. The culture that we're accustomed to. We are a Reformed Baptist Church. You know, we are sober-minded. We are constrained.

We are, well, some aren't even happy, but you know, the problem, you can just be so unboseful and so unrejoicing, you know, as a reformed person. Have you ever seen that? You know, it always strikes me because if you believe that God is sovereign, you should just feel super free. But you know, the culture of our nation can affect us. A while back I did a preaching tour in Australia and New Zealand And we ran into this way of the Australians and the New Zealanders.

They have a tendency to have a distaste for people who are confident and who are successful. And that's one reason they don't like Americans because Americans can tend to be kind of brash and and you know you don't want to be people you don't want to see successful people walking around in Australia New Zealand and and they you be And they call it the tall poppy syndrome. You know, they don't wanna see anybody rising above. You wanna cut them down, you know, you wanna take them down a notch. And so when you're preaching in Australia and New Zealand, you gotta be careful, you know, not to be too confident.

You know, maybe this sermon should be preached, you know, there about being boastful here. I'm gonna go there, I plan to go there this year, Maybe this will be one of my texts. But the tall poppy syndrome is, nobody should be too confident. But the believer is meant to be super confident, boastfully, audaciously, boldly confident. This church, your heart, your family, your life, every day.

And I think that this type of thing is meant, it's to transform the way that we worship together, not distant, but engagedly boastful in the right way, rejoicing in the right way, transforming our prayer times into confidence. Now this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, and if we know that he hears us, he'll grant the things that we ask, says the Apostle John in 1 John. Even transforming our fellowship times, we're going to break up and have a fellowship time. You know, where there's a sense of rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. Transforming your family worship times, times of rejoicing, transforming everything, transforming us in our tribulations, transforming our evangelism, giving us a holy confidence to stand up for what's right and what's true and not to you know, not to wilt in the face of some kind of opposition or perceived opposition.

But we go back to this whole idea, what would it be like if you knew you would win? You know, that you'd bet everything, you bet the farm on this hope. But then as you're watching the game, you don't know how it's going to end. And so you get discouraged and you're going up and down all the time. I was struck by what the writer of Hebrews said.

Do not throw away your confidence. Don't throw away your confidence. Hope in the glory of God. Rejoice in hope in the glory of God. Rejoice, boast, audaciously, boldly, give thanks to God, let that shape your disposition, let that move your temperament, let that make you a new kind of person in Jesus Christ, and let's be a rejoicing, boasting church in hope of the glory of God.

Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for the way that it takes us out of ourselves into a world so much better than the one we've created for ourselves. We thank you for the power of the gospel, what treasures there are in justification. These are so wonderful, Lord.

So I pray that you would give all of them to us. Amen.