The sermon 'Peace with God' by Steve Hopkins explores the journeys of three historical figures—Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and Charles Spurgeon—on their paths to finding peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Each faced deep spiritual turmoil: Luther struggled with guilt and the righteousness of God, Bunyan wrestled with his profane lifestyle, and Spurgeon, despite being raised in a Christian environment, lived in spiritual despair. The sermon highlights how Luther's understanding of righteousness transformed from one of fear to a grace-given gift, leading to his spiritual rebirth. Bunyan, after a moral reformation, realized his lack of inner peace and found fulfillment through faith. Spurgeon's encounter with a preacher in a snowstorm led him to the realization that salvation is through looking to Christ. Hopkins emphasizes that peace with God is a state achieved through justification by faith, not a fluctuating feeling, and challenges listeners to embrace this peace, reflecting on its permanence and the futility of seeking it through human efforts.

The history of the church is the history of a people who once staggering under the burden of sin and guilt found peace with God through the person and work of God's Son. And I'm going to be telling you the stories this afternoon of a monk and a tinker and a soon-to-be prince of preachers. The story of a monk living in a monastery in Germany in the 1500s who spent about 90% of his life there, confessing his sins to God and man. Yet after years of confessing and fasting and praying, was unable to find rest for his soul. And the story of a tinker, a potmender, in England in the 1600s who lived in a state of inner turmoil, plagued day after day for five years with doubts and fears concerning his eternal state.

And the story of a teenager, a soon-to-be prince of preachers in the 1800s who grew up in the church, heard the gospel, preached week after week, and yet whose soul at the age of 15 was, in his words, dry and dead and living under a cloud of what he called darkness and despair. These are the stories of desperate men who travailed for years in the state of inner conflict and spiritual misery, and how each of them found peace with God. If you would stand with me for the reading of the Word of the Lord, Romans chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. Let's read together the Word of the Lord. 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 of the glory of God.

Let's pray. Father, oh God, we praise and worship you this day. Oh Lord, you're so great, so wonderful, so merciful, so kind. Oh Lord, if you, oh Lord, as the word says, should mark iniquities who could stand, but Lord, there is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared, held in reverence. Oh, Father, we thank you that we who once were afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, and that His resurrection from the dead has validated and sealed the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life with Him.

O God, once again we pray that you might be pleased to give the Spirit to open our understanding as we open your Word and work a work, oh God, in the heart and the lives of this people that no man can work for the glory of your name and the glory of the name of your son, our Lord Jesus. Amen. Let's be seated. Martin Luther was born in 1483. His father was a successful copper miner and paid for Luther to go to law school to become a lawyer.

But in 1505, while Luther was still in school and at the age of 21, many of you know the story, Luther's traveling back right to school when he's caught in this severe thunderstorm and knocked to the ground. A bolt of lightning strikes right near him and he's knocked to the ground. In terror for Luther's life, for his life, he calls out to Saint Anne, the patron saint of miners, and he vows to become a monk if he survives the storm. True to his word, after surviving the storm, Luther quits college and in the same year he becomes a monk in the order of the hermits of Saint Augustine. Two years later in 1507, Luther is ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church.

But Luther would soon become a burden to the order. While the consciences of the other monks were able to be pacified by all the rituals and the masses and in good works, Luther's conscience was increasingly troubled, especially after he represented the order on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1511. There in Rome, Luther was disillusioned by the corruption that he witnessed among the priesthood, among the clergy. And in his pursuit of peace with God, Luther climbed the Scala Sancta, the sacred staircase across from St. John Lutheran church that is said to have been the stairs that Jesus climbed as he approached his trial before Pontius Pilate.

Pilgrims who visit Rome were told that they would receive a special indulgence. You may remember to reduce their time in purgatory or maybe one of their relatives time in purgatory if they ascended the stairs these stairs on their knees step by step Luther made the ascent reciting the Lord's Prayer and kissing each each step as he went but as he reached the top of the staircase, looking back, Luther wondered, who knows if any of this is true? Luther said that though he lived as a monk without reproach, he felt he was a sinner before God. Those are his words. And his conscience continued to be extremely disturbed.

He said he couldn't believe that God would be appeased by his satisfactions, things that he could do, And that he even came to hate the term of the righteousness of God because he viewed it as that righteousness by which men are threatened with God's righteous wrath, divine condemnation. And as a result his conscience was further troubled. Back at the monastery, Luther would wear out his confessors, confessing his sins sometimes for hours on end. And then just as he was about to get up off of his knees, he would remember another sin, another transgression, and his conscience again would be tormented, unable to find peace with God. Luther's confessors, those men that he confessed his sins to, finally complained, and Luther was asked to only confess significant sins.

He was wearing them out. Luther prayed for hours. He put on sackcloth. He fasted many times until he fainted. He exposed himself to the cold of winter.

He would go out and lay down in the cold of winter all night. He engaged in self-flagellation. He would whip himself in an attempt to ease his conscience. But no matter what Luther did, he was unable to find rest for his soul. Paul said in Romans 1, 17 that it is in the gospel of Christ that The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

The just shall live by faith. But what did he mean? Luther read this passage thousands of times, but he never understood. And he was miserable. He would meditate on this, the just shall live by faith, day and night on the passage, all the while living in turmoil, wearing out the priest who heard his confession day after day, confessing his sins from morning to night without relief, never finding rest for his soul.

Then finally, these are the words of Luther. Then finally, Luther wrote, finally, God had mercy on me. By God's grace, Luther came to understand that the righteousness revealed in the gospel was not the righteousness of God whereby God Himself is righteous and punishes unjust sinners, but the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is the gift of God whereby the merciful God justifies the unrighteous by faith." And Luther said that when he understood that, he felt that he had been, quote, altogether reborn and entered paradise. The peace of God flooded Luther's soul when by grace he understood that the just live by faith alone. A faith resting in Christ and his righteousness alone.

In Christ and what he has done by his life and by his death alone. Brothers and sisters, Martin Luther had no peace with God or rest for his conscience until he came to understand that the only righteousness approved by God is the perfect righteousness of his Son received with the empty hand of faith, not by works of righteousness which we have done or could ever do as Paul said, but by what he termed, what Luther termed an alien righteousness, a righteousness outside of himself, That righteousness that Christ worked out in his perfect obedience and death, they received by simple faith, simple trust in Jesus and what he's done. Luther had entered the state of peace with God. How many are familiar with Luther's hymn, Mighty Fortress is our God? Everyone knows it, right?

Here's one maybe you're not familiar with, Martin Luther. Fast bound in Satan's chains I lay, death brooded darkly o'er me. Sin was my torment night and day, therein my mother bore me. Deeper and deeper still I fell, my life became a living hell, so firmly sin possessed me. My good works could avail me not, for they with sin were stained.

Three will against God's judgment fought and dead to good remained. Grief drove me to despair and nothing left me but to die. To hell I fast was sinking. God saw in His eternal grace my sorrow out of measure. He thought upon His tenderness to save me by His good pleasure.

From sin and sorrow He set me free. Slay bitter death for Him that He may live with thee forever. Last line, Christ's life from death, the day did win. His righteousness bore all my sin. Now I am blessed forever.

We need to put that to tune if someone already has it. Luther had sought a righteousness that he couldn't obtain by his own works, for by the works of the law, as Paul said, there's no flesh going to be justified in God's sight. Grief drove him to despair, but as he was sinking to hell, grace caught Luther by the arm and lifted him up. And the righteousness of Christ that comes by faith, resting on Christ and his perfect obedience, was imputed to a former monk whose confessions and prayers and sighs and tears could not bear the awful load of this sin. By faith Luther entered the state of peace with God and the sense of that peace flooded his soul.

Being justified by faith, Luther at last had peace with God, as our text says this morning, through the Lord Jesus Christ, and could now rejoice in hope of the glory to come. Fast forward to 1628, the year John Bunyan was born in Elstow, a village outside of the city of Bedford, England. Bunyan's father was a tinker, a mender of broken pots and pans. John followed in his father's trade, But the trade for which Bunyan was best known was his profane life. Even as a boy of nine or 10 years of age, he was known for his, quote, cursing, lying, swearing, and blasting in the holy name of God.

Those are Bunyan's words. And he recounts from his own writings how it was quote, his delight to be taken captive by the devil at his will. The age of 21, after serving in the parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. Bunyan returned to his hometown of Bedford, but his coarse life of vice and ungodliness continued. And in his memoirs, Bunyan speaks of how he could, quote, sin with the greatest delight and ease, and also take pleasure in the vileness of his companions.

Then one day Bunyan is in the city. He's standing in front of a shop window, and he's overheard by a woman in the city who was known by everyone to be living a rampantly immoral lifestyle. And this woman that Bunyan referred to as, in his words, quote, a loose and ungodly wretch, Rebuked Bunyan for his foul language and wicked life and scolded him for corrupting the youth of the whole town. It hit Bunyan hard. How do you respond when a woman who is considered to be the vilest sinner in your city calls you out for your sins.

Bunyan said that as a reproof he was silenced. From that time forward he began to pursue a life of moral reformation and over time he began to take pride in the fact that he had achieved such an outward change of morals and manners that many in the city believed that he was saved, that he had been converted. But Bunyan's conscience told him otherwise. He was nothing more than, in his own words, a poor painted hypocrite." His outward show of a moral life provided him no inner peace of conscience because Bunyan had no peace with God. Then one day in the city of Bedford, Bunyan comes upon a group of poor women.

They're sitting in the doorway of this shop in the sun, and they're talking about the things of God. And he's now willing to hear, and he says that he, quote, being a brisk talker of religion myself, he said I drew near to them to hear what they're saying and he gets up close and he starts to listen to these women and he says what I heard I didn't understand. Because the things that they were speaking of were far above me out of my reach, their talk was a talk of the new birth, of a new birth, and the work that God had done in their hearts, and how they had become convinced of their miserable state in which they had been born, and how God had visited their souls with His love in the Lord Jesus, and how they had now come to despise and abhor their own righteousness, as filthy and insufficient to do them any good. And they spoke as though joy made them speak. Bunyan was drawn back again to listen to these ladies again and again noting the softness and tenderness of their hearths before God and then it was that he began to question his own condition.

He thought what a blind ignorant and ungodly wretch I am. Those are Bunyan's words. Bunyan was tossed up and down for years after this until it last by God's grace, being justified by simple faith, Bunyan found peace with God by simply putting his trust in Christ and what Christ alone had done for him. In his allegory, the Pilgrim's Progress, written while he was serving in chains for the gospel in Bedford Prison, Bunyan describes the moment a sin-burdened pilgrim found rest for his soul. It was an allegory of his own experience.

He says, quote, he ran Thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, a little below in the bottom a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as he came up to the cross, this is his allegory of which he's speaking of himself, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to tumble until it came to the mouth of the sepulcher where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then Pilgrim began to sing, Thus far did I come, burdened with my sin, nor could anything ease the grief that I was in till I came there. What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss, must hear the burden fall from off of my back, must hear the strings that bound it to me crack, blessed cross, blessed to sepulchre, blessed rather be the man there put to shame for me." Bunyan.

For the sake of Christ, writes Bunyan, God had made peace with the pilgrim, an allegory of himself. Christian is justified for giving all his sins stripped of his filthy rags given a robe of righteousness which represents the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ." Fast forward a final time with me to the winter of 1850. It's January 6th and a 15 year old boy is on his way to church, Charles Spurgeon, walking in a snowstorm. He's been in church as long as he can remember his whole life. I've always been in church.

He's heard the gospel preached a thousand times. He's seen the peace of God flood the souls of others, but his own soul has never known rest. This teenager is miserable. He isn't a Luther. He's not a Luther caught up in a system of works righteousness confessing his sins day and night kissing the steps of the Scala Sancta in Rome seeking peace with God.

He is an Abunion known for his cursing and lying and blasphemies from his youth, attempting to reform his life after being called out by the vilest sinner in his hometown. No, Charles is a church kid. He's born and raised in a Christian home, yet in his own words he is living under a cloud of, quote, darkness and despair, with a soul that was, quote, in his words, dry and dead. Until that day, By God's grace, Charles was caught in a blizzard on the way to church one morning. Quote, sometimes I think I might have been in darkness and despair until now, Spurgeon writes, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending that snowstorm.

Unable to go any further, Spurgeon was forced to seek refuge from the blizzard. And he turned down a side street and found himself at the doorway of a little primitive Methodist chapel. Inside he said there were about maybe 12 or 15 people. And he said, I had heard about these people how they they sang so loud that it would make your head hurt, these primitive Methodists. He said, but it didn't matter to me.

I wanted to know how I might be saved. And if they could tell me, I didn't care how much they made my head hurt. As it turned out, the pastor of the church hadn't been able to make it. The snow storm had kept the pastor of this little Methodist church from arriving that morning. But alas, a very thin man, Spurgeon says, maybe a shoemaker or a tailor, went up to the pulpit and began to preach.

And being unprepared to bring a sermon that day and not well instructed in the Word of God, the man chose a text from the book of Isaiah and then just began to talk. It was from Isaiah chapter 45 verse 22, look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth. Spurgeon said that the man didn't even know how to pronounce the words correctly, but it didn't matter. In those words he said, I saw, quote, a glimpse of hope. My dear friends, now says Spurgeon recounting him, The minister went on.

This is a very simple text indeed. It says, look, this is the sermon that God used to bring Charles Spurgeon to saving faith. It says, look, now look and don't take a deal of pains. It ain't lifting your foot or your finger it is just look a man needn't go to college to learn to look You may be the biggest fool and yet you can look. Anyone can look, even a child can look.

But then the text says, look unto me. A, he said in broad Essex, many of you are looking to yourselves, but it's no use. No use looking there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father, they'll look to Him by and the by and by, or look to Him by and by.

Jesus Christ says look unto me. Some say we must wait for the spirits working. You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, look unto me.

Then the good man followed up his text with this. Look unto me. I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me. I am hanging on the cross.

Look unto me. I am dead and buried. Look unto me. I rise again. Look unto me.

I ascend to heaven. Look unto me. I am sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh poor sinner look unto me Look unto me and then Spurgeon says the frail preacher looked right at him Personally under the gallery and just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart he said, young man, you look very miserable. Indeed I was, said Spurgeon.

It was a good blow. It struck right home. And he went on, you will always be miserable, miserable in life, miserable in death if you don't obey my text. Then lifting up his hands, this primitive Methodist layman shouted, young man, look to Jesus Christ. And a 15-year-old Spurgeon said, I saw it once the way of salvation.

I know not what else he said. I didn't really take much notice of it I was so possessed with that one single thought Like when the brazen serpent was lifted up and the people only were to look and to be healed So it was with me. I had waited I had been waiting to do 50 things. But when I heard that word, look, what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh, I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes out.

Then and there the cloud was gone, the darkness rolled away. In that moment I saw the sun and I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them. Oh, the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to him." Being justified by faith, Charles Spurgeon at last had peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ and came from that day forward and from that day forward was able to rejoice in the hope and hope of the glory to come. By the way, the primitive Methodist layman that preached that snowy Sunday in London has never been identified to this day, and I guess that's the way God would usually have it right sometimes. Not gonna let that glory go.

I'm the guy that preached the sermon. They never located him. Spurgeon later writes, personally I could never have overcome my own sinfulness. I tried and failed. My evil propensities were too many for me, till in the belief that Christ died for me, I cast my guilty soul on Him.

My sole hope for heaven lies in the full atonement made upon Calvary's cross for the ungodly. On that I firmly rely. I have not the shadow of a hope anywhere else." Brothers and sisters, Luther was a monk. Bunyan was an infamous blasphemer. Spurgeon was neither.

Spurgeon wasn't entrenched in a religious system that couldn't tell man how to find peace with God. He wasn't an infamous sinner whose life and words made even the wicked around him blush. Spurgeon was a church kid. He knew the Bible. He read Christian books, lots of them.

When the church doors were open, he was there, but he had no peace until he looked to Christ alone. All of these men, Luther, Bunyan, Spurgeon, they all had one thing in common. They had no peace until they came to rest on the righteousness of Christ by faith. The righteousness of God which is by faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all of them that believe Paul writes Therefore being justified by faith. We we have peace with God and That therefore is there for a reason it points us to the ground of our justification We are we were justified if you if your trust is in Christ we were justified in God's sight the moment we first believed, the moment you first put your trust in Jesus alone.

The moment you first, with empty hands, placed your trust in Jesus and what he has done for you. Not on anything you've done, we have done, or could ever do. That's the testimony of Luther, that's the testimony of Bunyan, That's the testimony of Spurgeon, and that's the testimony of every true believer who has ever been saved since the world began. That's the testimony. The instant we by faith lay hold on Christ and His righteousness, on Christ and His work alone, His righteousness is accounted as our righteousness, imputed to our accounts, and our sin transferred to His account.

The moment we put our trust in Jesus and what He has done alone, The rags of our sin and self-righteousness are taken off of us and put on Him, and His righteous robe is put on us. Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul. Not what my toiling flesh is born can make my spirit whole. Not when I feel or do can give me peace with God. Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load.

Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin. Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within. How can men write hymns like that? They can write them because they've been there. They can write hymns like that because they've been there.

They've been through it like Luther, Bunyan, Spurgeon. They've personally experienced the misery, the hopelessness, the utter futility of trying to find peace with God apart from Christ and Him crucified, apart from Christ and what He has done to save miserable sinners like them and like me and like you. Luther, Christ's life from death the day did win, his righteousness bore all my sin, now I am blessed forever. Bunyan, blessed cross, blessed sepulcher, blessed rather be the man that there was put to shame for me for the sake of Christ. God has made peace with the pilgrim.

Spurgeon, Christ died for me, I cast my guilty soul on him. My soul hope for heaven lies in the full atonement made upon Calvary's cross for the ungodly. On that I firmly rely. I have not the shadow of hope anywhere else." That's their testimony. Brothers and sisters, we've heard the life stories of three men that God used mightily in their generations, and every one of them was troubled deeply by the guilt of sin.

And I know I've said this before, but I've never been greatly concerned about the professor of Christ. The Lord says, my trust is in Jesus. I've trusted in Christ to save me. I've never been all that concerned about the professor of Christ who is tender to the sin that's in their life. On the other hand, the false professor's conscience is rarely disturbed by sin.

The unsaved man or woman or child can hear a sermon, read the Bible, and never feel any uneasiness. The saved person can't do that. The saved man or woman knows that the Word of God is true and it is true concerning them personally. The under-generate hear a sermon on sin, righteousness, or the judgment to come. There's no concern.

Whatever. Their consciences have never been awakened because they are still dead to God and the things of God. They're living in the graveyard of the spiritually dead. The things of God are of little to no interest to them. They aren't at all concerned.

That isn't the case with those in whom the Spirit of God dwells. They're typically the ones who are moved the most. I've told this congregation here many times that the person who struggles the most with assurance is many times the person who should struggle the least with assurance. They're tender to God and the things of God. So as I draw to a close, I want to speak some words of comfort and encouragement to believers, to all those who have put their trust in Christ and what he alone has done to bring them to the state of peace with God.

The first thing I want to tell you is that peace with God is a state, not a feeling. Peace with God is a state, not a feeling. We tend to think if I don't sense the peace of God right now, or at a particular time in my life, then I must not have peace with God. Being in the state of peace with God and feelings of peace are two different things. It can be two different things.

The state of our peace is permanent. The sense of that peace may rise and wane at various points in our lives. Romans 5.1 says, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. That's the state. That's where we are with God.

No more enmity, no more war, no sense of condemnation hanging over us. That was our state before we believed. Now we have possessed, we have peace with God. We exist in a state of peace with God. Our sense of that peace may reach various peaks and depths at times throughout our lives, but we don't have any more peace or any less peace in the sense of the state of our peace with God at any one time or another in our lives.

It's an unchanging state. The believer state of peace is an unchanging state. The blood of Christ's cross took care of that. Colossians 1.20, Paul says that peace with God was made for us through the blood of his cross. Amen.

If we're believers in Christ, We have entered the state of peace with God, and that peace was purchased by Christ, Christ by his death on the cross. Thy pains, not mine, O Christ, upon the shameful tree, have paid the laws full price and purchased peace for me. And what Christ has purchased for us can never be taken from us. The believer's state of peace is permanent. I think the devil wants the Christian to go throughout his or her life living under a cloud of guilt.

Of course he does. He wants you to go through your life living under a cloud of guilt. Of course he does. He wants you to go through your life living under a cloud of guilt, even though the sky above you is completely clear. Though every believer's guilt has been removed, I think he wants the sense of guilt to plague them.

The believers have been justified by God's grace and made heirs of eternal life, as Paul says in Titus 3. I think the devil wants us to spend our days feeling condemned and live our lives as though we were the heirs of eternal death rather than eternal life. In Revelation chapter 12, Satan is called the accuser of our brethren who accuses believers before God day and night. And one would wonder why he never stops, right? Why does he never stop?

Well, not a single accusation that's ever been charged against any believer in Christ before the court of heaven has ever been received. But he continues. And he continues to accuse us in our consciences, not only before God but also in our consciences. Jesus answers every one of the charges leveled against believers. First John 2, 1.

You want a verse? We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins, the sacrifice of atonement that made satisfaction for our sins before God. End of story. We have an advocate before the court who answers every charge, and every charge leveled against the believer is rejected because he is the propitiation for our sins. Revelation 5.9 says that Christ has redeemed us by His blood.

So it's like this. Satan accuses, Jesus advocates for us, speaks for us. I died for his sins. I died for her sins. My death atoned for her sins.

And the judge of the universe says, justice satisfied, wrath appeased, charges dismissed, court adjourned. But Satan never stops accusing us before God. And he never stops accusing us to our conscience. Our consciences. But think about it.

Brothers and sisters, believers in Christ, if Satan's accusations don't stand before the court of heaven, why should we permit them to stand before the court of our conscience? As though an answer had not already been made. Justice satisfied, divine anchor appeased, charges dismissed, and the court adjourned. Why should we permit that? Spurgeon comments here, neither in the court of heaven nor in the court of conscience can the enemy's accusations harm us for the blood of our substitute is a bar to all suits against us.

If by faith we are assured that Jesus has put away our sin, what cause have we for alarm? If the punishment do our sin and the sin itself have been carried away and they have been by our great surety so that our sin is plunged into the depths of the sea and cast behind God's back, then who is he who shall alarm us? That's Spurgeon. Brothers and sisters, the voice of the accuser is silenced by the voice of the blood in heaven. And so it should be on earth.

If Jesus answers, I died for his sins, my blood atoned for her sins, shouldn't we be saying the same thing? When the accuser accuses our consciences, should we not respond, Jesus died for my sins? He shed his blood for my sins. Isn't not enough that the Son of God suffered and bled and died for you for your sins? Brothers and sisters, again, what God accepts in the court of heaven, we should accept in the court of conscience we should not live under a cloud of guilt when the sky above us is clear so far as the East is from the West so far he removed our transgressions from us Psalm 103 12 The power of the enemy of our souls has been broken.

We who trust Christ, belong to Christ. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Through him, through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is, as we close, the grace wherein we stand. And like Luther and Bunyan and Spurgeon, we too can rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for so great a salvation and so great a Savior. In Jesus' name, Amen.