In his sermon titled 'Rejoicing in hope, Patient in tribulation, Continuing steadfast in prayer,' Steve Hopkins explores the teachings of Paul in Romans 12:9-13. He emphasizes the importance of genuine love, which is sincere and without hypocrisy, resembling the love of Christ. The speaker discusses how Christians are called to abhor evil, cling to good, and show brotherly affection, thereby living out Christ's example. The sermon also delves into the nature of serving the Lord, highlighting fervency in spirit and diligence. Hopkins references John Calvin's and John MacArthur's interpretations, noting that service encompasses worship, daily living, and being bond slaves to Christ. The sermon underscores the importance of rejoicing in hope, being patient in tribulation, and steadfast in prayer. Hopkins explains that Christian hope is assured and rests on God's promises, enabling believers to endure trials. Through examples and hymns, he illustrates how a focus on Christ revitalizes worship and service, ultimately directing all glory to Jesus.

If you would stand with me once again for the reading of the Word of the Lord. We will be continuing in chapter 12 of the book of Romans, our second week here back in Romans. We will be looking at verses 9 through 13 again and focusing on verses 11 through 13 this afternoon. Read with me together the precious words of life beginning with verse 9. Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.

Let's pray together. Father, God of all creation, everlasting God, unending and unchanging, Creator of the ends of the earth, you made the heavens and the earth by your great power. Your glory is above the heavens. How majestic is your name in all the earth. Oh Father, your word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.

Sharper than any of any two-edged sword is your word, a discerner of the thoughts and of the intents of the heart. Truly as your word says, heaven and earth shall pass away, but your word will endure forever. Oh Father, as we open your holy word once again, we ask for fresh supplies of the Spirit to open our hearts and our understanding that we may grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to whom be glory both now and forever amen let's be seated The title of the message this afternoon is Rejoicing in Hope, Patient in Tribulation, Continuing Steadfast in prayer. In our session last week as we picked up with chapter 12 and verse 9, the apostle, we found him breaking from his typical style of systematically working through the doctrines of grace and he began to rapid fire this list of commands for Christian living. And I said last week, you know, when we read these, we meditate on these.

We have to be thinking, or at least I'm thinking, wow, in so many ways these don't describe me. And I said, you know, when I think on these, when I really meditate on them, my mind just goes to Christ. I see the perfections of Christ. In my thinking, Paul just cast his gaze on Jesus for the bulk of these and just started describing him in so many ways. I mean you look at it and what he's saying here, perfectly sincere love, genuine love, absolute hatred of evil.

This is Jesus, His infinite goodness, everlasting kindness, perfect to genuine love, brotherly affection and brotherly affection, always preferring others, intense spiritual fervency, ever serving the Father, patient in every circumstance, always constant in prayer, always attending to the needs of others, and the list goes on to the end of the chapter. I said most of these, you know, just look like snapshots of Jesus, of Christ's life. Paul wants us to be more like Jesus, and we want that also. We want to grow in Christ likeness. We want to be more like our Jesus.

We want to live out the life of Christ in our daily lives in gratefulness for the mercies of God shown us in His Son. And the first thing that we looked at, the first thing the Apostle talked about was love, which is really the heading for everything that follows all the way to the end of the chapter. And he said, let love be without hypocrisy. If you were here last week, you know, I noted that the root of the Greek word that Paul used here, translated hypocrisy, is also the root Greek word from which we get the English word hypocrite, and it means actor. And at that time in Greek drama, these actors, these huppokrites is the word he used from which we get the word hypocrite, they were actors, but they were not just actors, they were actors who wore masks.

They were pretenders. They were just playing a part. And I said, Paul is saying the love that the Christian has, or the love of the Christian, is not to be like that. Christ's love is genuine love. It's not in any way pretended.

It's absolutely sincere, perfectly genuine for the Father and for us. And that's the kind of love Paul wants to see in us. In the Roman saints, Christians, the whom he was writing, and in all the people of God. Paul is saying our love is to be genuine, sincere, not pretended, without play-acting. And then Paul expounded it.

It's to be the kind of love that abhors what is evil and the kind of love that clings to what is good, that hates evil, even as our Lord hates evil, and that holds fast to what is good and doesn't let go of it. And again, this verse, verse 9, sets the stage for everything Paul is saying from verses 10 through 21. And the first subsection is verses 10 through 13, where we're at, where the apostle speaks of how we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, are to behave in the family of God. And again genuine love is the heading and brotherly love the context. And Paul says love one another love one another with brotherly affection.

So we talked about that a little bit last week right? With brotherly love. That is with the same kind of love that the members of a family have for each other. The same kind of love that parents have for their children and that children have or at least should have for one another in the family. It's the kind of love that is familial.

Paul says that the kind of love we should have for one another in the family of God is a brotherly love, brotherly affection. And then at the end of verse 10, Paul talked about preferring others for honor. He said that with regards to honor, we are to give preference to one another. And commentators have lots of different takes on this. But I think, and I said last week, I think what Paul is saying, just look at the text and see if you can get here with me, okay?

I think that what Paul is saying is that we are to prefer others for honor over ourselves. I think it's a call to humility. I think it's a call to, as I said last week, to deflect honor from ourselves to others. I gave the example like a shield deflecting something and causing whatever is coming at you to hit something else. So taking that honor that is put upon you, it's put upon me, deflecting it from ourselves to others in the body, that kind of preferring one another in honor.

It's where we make it bounce off of ourselves and land on someone else. And I said last week, I know members of this congregation and I know others outside of this congregation that do that all the time. You try to hit them with honor, and it just comes back like it just bounces back. Next thing you know, they're putting the honor on you when the honor should be on them. When we deflect the honor that is aimed at us and humbly direct it towards someone else in the body, putting them in the place of honor instead of ourselves or before ourselves, we are in honor preferring one another we are outdoing one another in showing honor as it's worded in the ESV.

Now as we pick up with verse 11 this afternoon the Apostle Paul continues, and genuine love is still the overall theme, and love for our brothers and sisters in Christ is still the context here through verse 13. So Paul says in verse 11, as we see it in the NKJV, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. John Calvin's take on this was that Paul was quote referring the duties of love to the brethren as service done to God. So he's he's taking this as okay this is a part of the previous sentence. Calvin was basically saying that the diligent, fervent, cherishing of our love for one another in the church is to be understood as service to the Lord.

When you do these things that Paul has been talking about in this rapid fire list of commands and paratives, when you show kindness, brotherly affection, When you deflect honor from yourselves and prefer others in honor and outdo them in honor, this is serving the Lord. That's Calvin's take. Others think that what Paul is saying is that we need to be busy about the things of God. The KJV, King James Version, translates this or renders this not slothful in business and that word's there in the text, in the Greek text, but it's not business like we go out and engage in business, it's busyness. It's busyness, so it's not being slothful in our busyness with regards to the things of God.

The idea being that we are to be active and diligent in our service of God and His people and not get lazy about it. And that with zeal and spiritual fervency. The ESV renders this, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, which also carries the idea that we should not be lagging in our zeal for the service of God and his people, but zealous and fervent in Spirit as we serve the Lord. Now, what I want to do before we go forward from this to the next verse, what I want to do is to take you through three different ways that the word that is translated serve or serving is used in in Scripture. Just to open up I think our understanding here.

It really helped open up my understanding. John MacArthur notes the first of those ways that the word serve or serving as it's translated in Scripture to English is used has to do with our worship of the Lord. Psalm 100 verse 2 says serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing. Have you ever been cold in your worship of God? Like just going through the motions.

Has anyone ever been cold in their worship of God? Like you come to church and you're just going through the motions. It's easy to get there. Our zeal in worshipping God and our fervency in the worship of God can just grow cold. We're saying earlier in Isaac Watts' hymn, he must have experienced some of this, right?

He said, dissolve my heart and thankfulness and melt my eyes in tears. Keith Green experienced this coldness in worship. The same thing that Isaac Watts was talking about in the hymn we sang earlier, dissolve my heart and thankfulness and melt my eyes and tears. In his song, My Eyes Are Dry, Keith Green, my eyes are dry, my faith is old, my heart is hard, my prayers are cold, and yet I know how I ought to be alive to you and dead to me. For what can be done for an old heart like mine, soften it up with oil and wine.

The oil is you, the spirit of love. Please wash me anew with the wine of your blood." In other words, Keith Green is saying, Lord, help me get my eyes off of myself and onto Christ. I want to be to be alive to Christ in my worship and for that to happen I got to get my eyes off of me. Another one of his songs you know and it's so hard to see when my eyes are on me. He's saying for that to happen I need to be dead to me, alive to Christ, dead to me, filled with the Spirit of love, and focused on Christ and what He has done for me.

Brothers and sisters, when our eyes are taken off of ourselves and our expectations in worship, expectations in worship, our eyes on me, When we take our eyes off of ourselves and our expectations for ourselves in worship and fasten them on Christ and what he has done for us, the fire of our worship is kindled into a burning flame. When we cast our dry eyes, Isaac Watts, Keith Green, dry eyes in worship, When we cast our dry eyes on Jesus and His cross in worship, our hearts can be softened, our cold prayers warmed into fervent praise and our zeal rekindled. And then fervent in spirit in reverential awe and with hearts inflamed with gratitude for What our Jesus has done for us, we can, as the psalmist said, serve the Lord with gladness and come before His presence with hearts that are singing His praises. Another way service is used in scripture is more practical with regards to our daily lives. Back in Romans 12.1 we saw that our spiritual service has to do with daily, right, daily, lifelong, sacrificial living.

So it's kind of a daily momentary worship, the giving up of our whole selves for our whole lives, every day, moment by moment, as offerings to God, as living sacrifices. So this is a more daily, practical, living perspective of the passage. 1 Corinthians 1031 says, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. That's it. Okay, that's a practical, daily, daily living, moment by moment.

This is daily, moment by moment, zealous and spiritually fervent service of God, no matter what we may be doing. Whatever you do, eat, drink, whatever, do all to the glory of God. Still another way that service is used in Scripture, and I think all of these are applicable to the passage. But another way that services or serving is used in Scripture is the way Paul spoke of service in the first words of his of this letter to the Romans. So if you want to flip back and look at just the Romans chapter 1 and verse 1, just look at that for a moment.

Look at what he says here. This is where at the onset the apostle identified himself as Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ. The word means a bond slave, a bond slave. Paul saw himself as a bond slave of Jesus Christ. John MacArthur notes that this form of the word that is used here in verse 11, verse 1, quote, refers to the service of a bond slave whose very purpose for existence is to do his master's will." Close quote.

The purpose, brothers and sisters, the very purpose for our existence as bond slaves of Christ is to do our Master's will. That's what Christian living is all about. Remember Francis Havergal's hymn from 1874. We sing it from time to time. Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee take my moments and my days let them flow in ceaseless praise Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of your love.

Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee. Take my voice and let me sing always only for my King. Take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee. Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold. Take my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour, at thy feed its treasure store. Take myself and I will be ever only all for thee ever only all for thee another hymn not in any of our hymn books, was written by a woman named Mary James back in 1873, All for Jesus. Anyone familiar with the hymn? All for Jesus. All for Jesus.

All for Jesus. All my beings' ransom powers. All my thoughts and words and doings. All my days and all my hours, all for Jesus, all for Jesus. In our study of Colossians a couple weeks ago, we heard the Apostle saying that his service to the Lord, his labor of love, his struggling was not of himself.

And so it is with us. Let's begin to think wrong about what the apostle's saying. He said it was not of himself but according, this is Colossians 1.29, but according to the power of Christ working mightily in him, according to Christ's power working in him, Paul takes no honor to himself. Yes he labored, and yes we are to labor and serve. Yes he served and yes we are to serve.

But he labored according to the power of Christ working in him. So it is with us. And in 1 Corinthians 15 10 he said of his labor in serving the Lord, I labored more than all of you." He wasn't bragging. I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Spurgeon, Oh, I love this.

Spurgeon writes, commenting here, Paul remembered where to put the crown, on Jesus' head, not his own. He took care not to steal an atom of glory for himself, but ascribed all to the power of him who loved him and gave himself for him. This version goes on, let us imitate the apostle in these two things. Let us live while we live a life of energy, but let us at the same time confess when we have done all that we are unprofitable servants. And if there be any glory and any praise resulting from the work we achieve, let us be careful to lay it all at the Redeemer's feet, all at Jesus' feet.

Brothers and sisters, the power of Christ working in us and through us is the power by which we serve the Lord with zeal and spiritual fervency. And when we understand this and acknowledge this and live this and lay our honor in the dust, Christ receives all the glory. Christ receives all the glory. And what a joy it is to serve Him. All our days, all our hours in worship and praise and every motion of our daily lives is willing bond slaves in gratefulness for all that He has done for us.

Paul goes on in verse 12, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. God's dear children, God's beloved, rejoicing in the hope that is Christ, we can patiently endure the pain, The troubles, the trials, the heartbreaks, and the discouragements of this life. We sing Christ our hope in life and death, Christ is our hope in life and death and in everything in between. In everything in between. But I want you, I want to read to you, and I'm going to take us down to kind of a low point for just a second here, but I want to read to you what I find to be both the saddest words in Scripture and the happiest words at the same time the happiest words in Scripture.

And they're found in Ephesians chapter 2 in verse 12. Paul is talking to recently converted Gentile believers in this passage about the condition, the state in which they lived before love and mercy found them. He begins, at that time, you were without Christ. Think of the sadness of these words. You were without Christ, aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, and then these bone-chilling words, Having no hope and without God in the world.

Can you think of any sadder words? Before the bright and morning star shed its beams around them, these Gentiles Paul was talking about were without Christ, having no hope, and without God in the world. And I can only think of one thing sadder, brothers and sisters, than being without Christ, having no hope, and without God in the world. And that is for one's condition and state to be so, when at the same time they are blind to what lies ahead if they remain in that state. And yet this is the state and the condition of literally hundreds of millions of people in the world at this very hour.

Roger prayed earlier about spreading the gospel and spreading the good news and telling others about Jesus, his prayer. This is the state and the condition of hundreds of millions of people in the world at this very hour They are without Christ Having no hope and without God in the world and blind to the eternal consequences of their unbelief I've been spending about an hour on the phone every Sunday evening with a young man from another state, 17 years old. He was raised in the church, has godly Christian parents, heard the gospel hundreds of times growing up, but now has altogether rejected Christ. He only talks to me on the phone because his mother wants him to. He said when he turns 18, the conversation will end.

And when I go over the message of the gospel with him again and again, as I have done for six or seven weeks now, he says, why do you keep doing that? Why do you just keep saying the same things about Jesus and dying for our sins and the mercy of God? And why do you just keep doing that? I've heard it all before. Why do you just keep repeating the same thing over and over again?

And I respond, three reasons. Because Jesus said to. The Bible says that the gospel of Christ is the power of God and the salvation, and because I love you, and your mother loves you. And I believe that one day you're going to wake up and find that Jesus loves you too. I said those words are both the saddest and happiest words I think to be found anywhere in Scripture because the people that Paul was talking to were no longer without Christ, no longer aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, no longer strangers from the covenants of promise.

Now they had hope and now they had God in the world. The bright and morning star found them and shed his beams around them and saved them. Now they had Christ, they had hope, They had God both in this world and in eternity. Christian hope, brothers and sisters, is not wishful thinking, but a certain hope that rests on the promises of God concerning the future. Promises for our future that cannot fail.

Christ is ours, and We are His who believe on Jesus and nothing in this world can take Him from us or us from Him. And because our hope is a certain hope, we can have joy in the midst of tribulation, Pain, heartbreak, sorrows, knowing that where He is, we soon shall be. In the furnace of the most fiery trials that come our way, we can have joy, knowing that we are united to Christ in an indissoluble bond that can never be broken. No matter what pain we may be enduring at the present, we can rejoice because our hope is anchored in heaven where Christ is and we know that where He is we soon shall be. Our hope is so certain and sure that we rejoice for that happiness as if we were already there.

Our minds are quiet and settled and we have great joy because of the heavenly inheritance that awaits us. Robert Haldane. Brothers and sisters, nothing can take that away from us, and nothing this world can throw at us will ever change that. Does hope seem to be lost? Hope in the Lord.

Are you anxious about tomorrow? Jesus said, don't be. God holds every tomorrow as firmly as He holds the ground underneath your feet. Are you fearful? Jesus said, don't be.

A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without your father. You're more valuable than birds. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Be patient in the trying times. God hasn't gone anywhere.

Wait on the Lord. The prophet said, wait, I say on the Lord. And while you're waiting, pray. Continuing steadfastly in prayer, the apostle says. Whoever said prayers are powerful didn't know what he was talking about.

There are no powerful prayers. Only a powerful God who hears the powerless prayers of a weak people and assures them that he hears them for the sake of his son who died for them and a God who is able to exceeding far above all we can think or ask. Continue constant in prayer. Brothers and sisters, it's okay to take a brief snapshot of today. We don't reflect on it too long.

Next year, this same time, the picture may be altogether different. Wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. Today is just one more page in the book of our lives. And when the books of our lives are written With all our prayers etched with tears in between the lines, the last page will undoubtedly read, Jesus did all things well.

Let's pray. Father, we know all things work together for good to them that love you and are the called according to your purpose. And we praise you for the certain hope of eternal glory that awaits every one of your blood-bought children. Christ is truly our hope in life and death and everything in between. And so we praise you, Father, for so great a salvation and so great a Savior as Jesus.

We'll receive our praise with favor. In Jesus' name, amen. You you you