The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, chapter 15 and verse 13. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans chapter 15 and verse 13. It's a lovely text for a beautiful summer's day like this. One of the big texts of the Bible and how simple it is there. Words, one syllable, aren't they? God, hope, fill you with all joy and peace. I'm not going to make complicated what is very plain, what is the desire of Paul for the Christian church. And you see there's a presumption here. Let's look at that first of all. What is he presuming? Well, he's presuming that you're not filled with joy and peace unless God fills you with joy and peace. You've had the experience of being in a strange part of the country, say North Wales. on a cold, wet day and it's late in the afternoon and you forgot to fill up with petrol and the darkness, the shades of night are falling fast and you notice you're on empty and you start to talk and be animated so that your wife and children don't notice and they're strange, you know. The radio on, you put a CD in, and then somebody says, oh, we're on empty. And everyone notices, and there's a chill in the car. And the music and your jokes aren't a help. You go round the bend, and they're looking. And it's getting darker, and it's starting to rain. What will we do if we're here up in the mountains? What will we do? You go around another bend. There's a petrol station. It's closed. You go into a village. No petrol for sale. They're all cold. Whoa, daddy, what are we going to do? The little girls start crying. Running on empty. And then you go around one bend, and you see a shell sign, and there's a light on. And oh, the relief. You pull in. Barely done. And then you can go. You can go on your way. our nation is running on empty. And there are all the signs of it, aren't there? Non-stop entertainment, one relationship after another, alcohol, drugs, nicotine. All the signs of a nation without joy and peace, looking for it, longing for it, but not able to find it in all those things. Some temporary satisfaction and then gone again. Emptiness. The living God then offers to fill us with all joy and peace. This is his benediction, the apostle. This is his invocation to God. What does Paul want for the congregation there in Rome, in the heart of the empire, important city in the world. He longs that the God of hope would fill them with all joy and peace as they trust in Jesus Christ, that they may abound, that they may overflow with hope. He's speaking to a mixed congregation. There are slaves there in abundance. There are widows. There are sick people. There are beggars. There are business people. There are thinkers and philosophers. There are people from Nero's guard and Nero's household who've crept in. And they're sitting there and they're listening. And his hope for every one of them is that God would fill them with all joy and peace Now, we have to point out that our God is a consuming fire and we have to point out that God is light and in him is no darkness at all and God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and sin. We have to say that God is angry with the wicked every day. We have to say those things because the Bible says those things. But let's never forget that the unique distinctive of the Christian faith is that it has a message of hope. Jesus didn't say to the church, you are the traffic wardens of the world. He said, you're the light of the world. And he focuses then to them of a God who is love. who is long-suffering and gentle and good and faithful and meek and self-controlled, a God of joy, a God of grace, a God of pity. And that it is possible then for us sinners, when we come into his orbit under his influence, it is possible for us to be filled with all joy and peace. That's what our text is saying. It's almost unbelievable. And you know that the devil will say to you, it's too good to be true. He wants the entire congregation in Rome, the feeble-minded, the most needy person. He wants that needy person to be filled with joy and peace as they believe. You see? We live in this me generation. People say, well, okay, if I come to your church, if I become a Christian, what's in it for me? They say, well, what's in it for you is you're being filled with all joy and peace by the God of hope as you believe in his son, Jesus Christ. I think that's pretty important. I don't believe you'll get a better invitation in any other religion or any other philosophy or in atheism than what God promises here in his word. Now the Bible tells us how that joy and peace comes to us, that the God we worship is the God of hope. So he's not today looking at Brexit and hand twisting his hands and wondering what's going to happen next. He's not like that. He is wondering who will be the next leader of the Tory party. And he's not looking down at the travail and the trouble and the sorrow that there is in the Middle East or in North Korea or in Pakistan. places in the world, the Suffering Church in China. He's not aghast, he's the God of hope, always. He's not looking into a prison cell where a man is lying there in solitary confinement and God is a God of hope. Though that man has behaved wretchedly, God is a God of hope towards him. God will be our teacher. and he will tell us what's right and wrong, and he will instruct us, and he will lead us, and he'll give us power to keep going on the narrow way. He'll give us a new heart that loves him, and he'll never leave us. And when we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, he'll be with us. We won't do it alone. He'll take us to heaven, and there we will dwell with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all who love the Lord before us, we will dwell with them forever and ever. Karl Marx didn't make promises like that. Charles Darwin couldn't make promises like that. Sigmund Freud couldn't make promises like that. No politician can make promises like that but the living God. The living God does make such promises. And He's given us certainty that joy and peace will be ours. The God of hope does that. Well, what is the certainty He gives us? Well, I will tell you. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You remember they nailed Him to the cross after whipping Him and they took Him down when He was dead and they wrapped Him a shroud, and buried him, and put a great stone over the entrance that tomb robbers and wild beasts couldn't touch him. There he was, as dead as a dodo. Rigor mortis was set in. And then the third day, he opened an eyelid and another eyelid, and he looked around, and he moved, and he undid his grave clothes and folded them. and the stone was removed and out He came. Our Lord Jesus. The death couldn't hold Him. The grave couldn't contain Him. Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, the one who said, I am the resurrection and the life. And the disciples were told, the women were told, first they were there. They were the last at the cross and they were the first at the tomb. They ran to the disciples and Peter and John ran down and they looked and they saw it was even as the women had told. The body was gone. Nobody wanted that body. The Roman soldiers were determined to keep it there and the disciples simply wanted to anoint it and pay their last respects, but it was gone. And for 40 days he appeared then to one and then two on the road to Emmaus and then 11 in the upper room. And then all those disciples fishing, he met them and cooked breakfast for them and ate and drank with them. And then with 500 on a mountain in Galilee, like the Queen with one of her teas in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Three o'clock, the national anthem is played and the door opens and she comes down, often with Philip. and she mixes and she talks and doesn't hurry away for the hour or two she spends with him. Our Lord Jesus in Galilee he met then the Roman soldiers who loved him and served him and Martha and Mary in Galilee and the leper that was thankful and the mother and son he'd cast demons out of the boy the Gadarene demoniac, they were all there. He gathered a flock, his evangelism had gathered 500 people in three years. This God, the God who gives life, the God who changes and strengthens and helps us and he's never without us. And that's one reason why we believe. Joy and peace is ours. And then there's another reason why we believe also that these are not mere words, joy and peace, but there is our experience of God's goodness to us through our lives. You know, we can doubt many things. We don't know what to believe about Brexit. We don't know what to believe about global warming and black holes. We can doubt many things but I can't doubt the goodness of God because I've been an inheritor of the goodness of God all my life. I've known every day His great blessing on me and my family. I once was young and now I'm old and I haven't seen His seed begging for bread. All I have needed, Thy hand has provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. We sing it. And we sing it from our hearts. the goodness of God. And this verse then that I've read to you, how may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace as we believe in Him. Yes, it fits in. It's another piece in the great jigsaw puzzle of Jesus Christ and His salvation that is being built up through our lives. This is our experience. And how does joy and peace become yours? Well, as you believe in him, he says. That's what our text says. As you trust in him, isn't it? Trust is an easier word, it's an Anglo-Saxon word. Faith is a harder word, isn't it? A Latin word, fide, faith. There's something challenging about it. But trust, you looked at the clock, when you woke up in the middle of the night and it said 3.30 and you could trust it. You trust it. You can trust Jesus. All he says, you can trust him. Can't trust all I say. Can't trust all your most favorite preacher, your favorite Christian says, you know, sometimes we get it wrong, but you can trust everything about Jesus Christ. when he said he came to give his life a ransom for many. He wasn't lying when he said that. When he said, you come to me, I will give you rest. He wasn't exaggerating when he described what we get when we come as sinners and trust in him. You can trust in him, absolutely. There was a little girl Father's turn it was on the school run to pick her up and it was bucketing down with rain and the windscreen wipers were double speed and she got in the car with him and shook herself down and the windscreen wipers were going and he was careful with the other people who were driving their children away from the school. And after a few minutes she said, Daddy, I want to say something. He says, Yes. and her name was Aspern. Yes, Aspern, what do you want to say? She said, the rain is like sin and the windscreen wipers are like God wiping away our sin. Well, she was a funny little girl and she said funny things like that and that was one of the most lovely things she said and he was touched, she had a lump in his throat and So he thought, I'll see how far she can run with this. And he said to her, and have you noticed how the rain keeps coming? What does that tell us? She said, well, we keep sinning, and God keeps forgiving us. And he does. He keeps forgiving us. There are a limited number of sins that we commit in our lives we are not Forgers who are printing £20 notes. We're not planning to assassinate the government. Our sins are lust and pride and prayerlessness and coldness of heart and blabbermouths. Sins like that we are always going to God and say, I'm sorry Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me. The same sins. and the same forgiveness, the same mercy. God never grows tired of forgiving us for the same sins. And then the text tells us what happens to us when the God of hope, when we believe in the God of hope, he says, we become filled with all joy and peace. The joy of discovering the truth. The joy of knowing what our purpose in life is. The joy of knowing that all our sins have been cast into the depths of the sea and are no more. The joy of having a Bible. The joy of the Lord's Day. The joy of worshipping with the people of God. The joy of the means of grace. The joy of saying a word for Jesus. The joy of hearing the Word of God preached with power and the Holy Spirit and much assurance. A joy of knowing that we're going to meet our loved ones once again in heaven. I was preaching in Grand Rapids some years ago at the Providence Church there. My wife and I, my first wife, we had lunch then with a carpenter and the ten children. And it was a long table and he and his wife sat at one end and my wife and I sat the other and five children each side and we had chicken soup and rolls. It's a typical Dutch Sunday lunch, easy to prepare. And everyone was chatting. There was a lovely, happy atmosphere in the hall. And when the meal was over, he picked up a big Bible, and he put it down there, and he was going to read and pray at the end of the meal. And he said, I don't know, Pastor Thomas, if you know our story. And I didn't know it. I didn't know the details. But he'd not told me, and I wanted him to tell me. He said, my wife, my first wife and I had three children and she was expecting the fourth and she was at the stop sign, it was near Christmas and the light went green and she went out and a car shot through the red light at great speed and crashed into her and killed her and the unborn child. Children were all quiet, they were locked in positions of concentration. As their history was repeated and unfolded, there was silence. And then my second wife here, she said her husband was a butcher in Grand Rapids. He's a good man. Joe Beakey said to me he thought that he would have become a preacher. And he helped street people, employed them to butcher and cut up the meat And he employed one man and the man was dreadful, a thief, a liar, unreliable. He had to fire him. The man came back with a gun the next day and shot him dead. He had five children. So the widow's mother and father came to be with her at this horrible time. And they got into the car on the Sunday morning and this that particular Sunday morning after his death. And they would drive together, the five children in the back and the wife and her mother and father in the front. And then there was a little voice from the back of their vehicle. We're not singing. We always sing when we go to chapel. And one of them started up the great Sabbath hymn of John Newton, Safely Through Another Week. Imagine their father had been killed, murdered, but he was safe in the arms of Jesus. And they went to church there, and she was in church with her three children, and he was there with his five, and he'd gone through what she was going through, the loss of a spouse, and he comforted her, spoke to her, and they got friendly, and fell in love, and married, and then they had two children themselves. These 10 children from a year and a half to 18. Happy children. It was a home of joy and peace. because the God of hope filled them with all joy and peace. All kinds of joy. Joy in the midst of heartache. Joy when your spouse is taken from you. And not joy only, but joy and peace. Contentment, knowing that one day God will, God is his own interpreter and he will make it plain. that he will explain to our total satisfaction heaven won't be a world in which we're always asking why, why, why. God, God will show us. God will be with us. God will tell us. Joy and peace. God knows what he's doing, always. The blessings that come. God has to say to us, what I do, you don't know now, but you will know. You will know. You will know to your satisfaction why I do what I do. Our joy comes from receiving the providence of God as our inheritance. No one can ever take the providence of God from us. And our joy comes from accepting the will of God. John Newton talks about the angels of God appearing before God and getting their orders of the day. And the first angel, he says, go and be the emperor of the largest empire in the world. And off he goes. And then the next angel comes and he says, clean the sewers in the filthiest slum in Mexico City. And off he goes. It's immaterial to him. What he has to do, as long as he knows it's God's will, then he does it. Joy and peace come from knowing this is God's will for me. Joy and peace come when we say, thy will be done. I had a friend, and he was courting a girl in our congregation. And they were engaged. And he was going to become a minister. And he was a fine Christian, and she was a fine Christian, and I loved the both of them. But then, she, Jess had no assurance that she should marry him, and she dumped him. in their last terms as students. She said to me, he's boring. Well, I don't think he's boring at all. But it wasn't working out for her and so she dumped him. He was enormously upset and he shared with me his grief He said, I'll never marry now. I said, oh, come on now, you'll get married. No. No, I'll be single for the rest of my life. No. I said no. So the years went by, he became a pastor for many years. And then about 18 years later, there was a girl in the congregation that he much admired. And when she had her 18th birthday, he went to her parents and he asked permission to take her out for a meal. And they discussed it together and they said, no, we don't want you to do that. She's too young to start a serious relationship. And the age gap between you is too big. And then he accepted that. A few weeks went by and he saw a boy from the church sitting next to her in the congregation. And finding the Bible for her and the hymn book and speaking to her. And a week later he came to my friend and he said to him, Pastor, I've started going out with so-and-so. I don't know if you've noticed. I want some advice from you. How I should court her now. I want to do this right. He said to me, I'd have made her a far better husband than he ever would. And I was so sorry for him. I felt, oh, what heartache. No romance in the months. And I said, Romans 8, 28, I said, like we do, and so on. He said to me, it's all right, Jeff. It's all right. We believe when we ask God for something, either he gives us what we ask for, or he gives us something better. And that's the foundation of Christian contentment. That's the foundation of that jewel being ours. That we're not a stranger to it. But we say, thy will be done. And so two years later, then the phone went, and it was him. He said, I'm getting married. And I wonder, will you marry us? Well, who are you getting married to then? I said to him, and he told me, I know a family, a mother and father. And now he's a pastor and the manse is full of children. And a few years later, he got in touch with the girl who had dumped him. and her husband, who is a pastor, and their children, and the two families spent Saturday together and prayed together. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers. Let's be peacemakers. My friends, there's joy and peace that God gives to us because he's the God of hope. We must be people of hope because it's going to work out far better than we ever thought. That all things are going to work together for our good. That Jesus Christ is fulfilling his plan for himself and for us and for our lives together. And God's plan is that we be filled with all Joy and peace. That we may abound. That we may overflow with hope. That's what your text says. By the power of the Holy Spirit that you may overflow with hope. That's what God has brought you here today. To realize that God desires you to overflow with hope. Overflow. You know the Promised Land. There are the two seas. In the north there's the Sea of Galilee. The River Jordan flows in in the north and it flows out in the south and it flows down and down and down and then it goes down to the deepest spot in the world, the Dead Sea. It doesn't flow out from there, it just evaporates and gets more and more saline and sterile and chemical, no living thing can live in the Dead Sea because it just takes in and takes in and it doesn't give out. There are Christians like that who come to church and they take in, they read the Bible and they read the promises and they hear all the positive messages of the Word of God. And they just relax. They're not abounding in hope though. They're always restless people because they're not giving up. They're not praying, Lord, I want to be steadfast and immovable and abounding in the work of the Lord. Lord, guide me, open doors for me, teach my stammering tongue to speak. Help me when I'm strong to bear the burdens of the weak. Help me to minister to people around me. How is it possible you say, I'm such a weak Christian, I'm such a novice Christian. I'm only beginning. I haven't got the courage of other people. No, you haven't. You haven't. I haven't. But you see how our text ends. By the power of the Holy Spirit. By the dunamis, the energy, the strength which the Holy Spirit gives us. We can climb any mountain. We can ford any river. We can overcome any temptation. We can handle any privilege, any blessing. We can do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. We can do it. You can do it. You can be changed. You can be new people. Now may the God of peace, the God of hope I mean, the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in him, that you may abound, that you may overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. May each one of you know that and increasingly as the years go by, amen.