His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: Next on His Perfect Love, we'll see how the Lord can use the trials of life to produce endurance in us. There are so many things we can look at and look at these troubles: parents, brothers, sisters, loved ones, troubles, difficulties. We can begin to think we're alone. We can begin to think, much like Job's accusers, "What did we do to deserve this?"

If we don't understand what Paul's trying to teach us, that in this passage, troubles come to everyone. But for the Christian, for the believer in Christ, troubles produce endurance to be able to win and run that race, that you may be given that crown that you will then put at the feet of Christ.

Guest (Male): You might be thinking that trial you're facing right now is working against you, but actually, God can use it to work for you and your good, as well as for His glory. Today on His Perfect Love, see what trials can do for you and how best to respond to them.

In Romans chapter five, the Apostle Paul mentions a few of the things that trials produce in our lives. It includes perseverance and character. Pastor Matt VanderVen recalls a recent vacation where the Lord taught him a valuable lesson.

Matt VanderVen: I went to Florida. I had to officiate a wedding there, was asked and invited to officiate a wedding. I made my way down to Florida and while we're down there, there's a little theme park, or quite a big theme park, we decided we're going to go to a few days. But if you know anything about me, I take things pretty intently. I've got a plan. I've got a map. I'm literally looking everything out. I've got triangulations. I figured out where because we're paying to get in, we're going to see everything.

I guess I'm cheap. I've got a plan. I've written this down. We're going to go here, there. Mind you, four boys and my wife in tow. The youngest boy, seven years old. Poor boy by the end of the four days, the kid's dragging his leg. He's no longer even got stamina. The Lord reminded me during my devotional time there as He says, "It's not a sprint. Life is a marathon. The Christian walk is a marathon. It's not a sprint." Paul speaks about it. We just happen to be in one of his epistles, letters.

As I was thinking about that, I proceeded to do nine and ten miles a day at a pretty fast clip. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, nine miles a day. Mind you, I was elliptical two miles and I was catching my breath thinking I'm in good shape now. Bad. I'm doing the nine miles. I feel good. My poor wife and children, I'm like, "Come on, you can keep up." Bad pastor, bad Matt. I turn around and three or four days into it, I wake up one morning from the bed and excruciating pain. I get this numbness going down the front of my leg. I'm in pain. It's on fire and I'm going, "What's going on?" I tore something. Yes, I'm the only man you know that tore something walking.

God revealed to me something really important in that. Again, it's that idea of a marathon and not a sprint. He says, "Do you see what working out actually did, though?" It did produce something. My muscle, what is a tear? How do we strengthen our muscles? What do muscles need to do? Tear and then they grow back stronger. The fibers. It produces something, even my foolishness.

When we look at this and we think about troubles, that's what's in context here. He's telling us, much like a marathon, much like a runner, it's going to produce something. What he says is it produces this endurance, this ability to keep going, to not quit, to not grow weak or to not be able to continue, to run the race strong. We get into our sixties and seventies, we can begin to start to know there's a finish line coming. We're in our eighties, we know the finish line's there. We may not be right next to it, but we know it's there.

When we're in our thirties, do we realize that we're running a race? Do we realize there's an intention to this life and it's about bringing the glory of God to every man, woman, and child? It's a race and it's deliberate. It's through these troubles. Some people lose jobs. Some of you just this last year or two, you lost your job. Some, we just had a friend of ours, Finn, little baby went to be with Jesus. Two and three years old, died of cancer. This fellowship prayed for them. Good friends of ours. Love the family.

There are so many things we can look at and look at these troubles: parents, brothers, sisters, loved ones, troubles, difficulties. We can begin to think we're alone. We can begin to think, much like Job's accusers, "What did we do to deserve this?" If we don't understand what Paul's trying to teach us, that in this passage, troubles come to everyone. But for the Christian, for the believer in Christ, troubles produce endurance to be able to win and run that race, that you may be given that crown that you will then put at the feet of Christ.

Not only will that perseverance, it's going to produce something else called dokimē in the Greek. This idea of an approvedness or a tried character. Because that's what happens. You run, you do it enough and eventually it produces a character in you that you realize there's a resiliency in Christ. You realize that even as weak as you may get, Christ never becomes weak. His strength is simply able to be seen by everyone. When they look at your lives and they see the things that you're going through, the troubles, the difficulties, they may be not saying it to you, but they're thinking, "I don't know how he or she is doing it. How are they holding this together?"

Just in our community, we had a 22-year-old girl recently that just was in a car automobile accident, lost her life right not too far from here. The family member being in Arizona, they called the Calvary Chapel. They know we teach the word here. They want us to come around the family. They want us to get the word of God in there to encourage because that's the only thing that's going to help in the void of your heart is the word. That's the only thing that will ever help you with whatever trouble you're going through: Jesus and Jesus alone.

For that woman, you don't think the troubles are right there? Her daughter. Try to wrap that around your mind for a minute. It wrecked you. Some of you divorce, you didn't ask for that. You've done all the things the right way. You've tried to live your life a holy life, but you can't be responsible for other people's actions, can you? Other people's decisions?

But what do we see here? That God is saying that endurance is going to eventually take and build this tried character which in turn is going to produce something very important for us. We see it again, this idea of hope, but it's not used in the same way as we read above. Now we see because of the way it's being put together that he's trying to tell us that this confidence, this joyful expectation, it's going to produce a joy in you. As you go through more troubles in life, there's going to be an underlying joy.

Didn't James in the book of James write that you should have joy? That you count it all a joy? I thought the guy was maniacal until I finally read this. "What are you talking about? You want me to think my troubles or my trials are joyful? How about you walk a mile in my shoes, or nine?" Right? But see, James understood. You know they used to call him camel knees? Because he had such swollen knees and scabbed over knees because he spent so many hours on his knees praying and going to God. He understood a little bit about trouble.

Look at the first century church and the martyrdom. Look at today, the 100,000 martyrs every year that are Christians all around the world that are dying for the namesake of Jesus Christ, coming to a town near you, coming to a country near you. We have men that were and women that were just elected into office, some of them serving in the house obviously. I don't care what party you're in, that's not my business. I'm here to teach the word and the word alone. You vote based on the Holy Spirit. You're not to be ignorant, though. You vote based on the Holy Spirit. That's our job. That's our responsibility. We represent and we bear the witness of Jesus Christ.

But things economically, we're seeing things Ezekiel 38, we're seeing things come through and fulfilled. Damascus, Isaiah 17:1, we're waiting for that prophetically to be destroyed, to build that land bridge where the five nations are going to come in and destroy. I talked a little bit about it on Wednesday if you want to go and listen to the prophecy update at the beginning of the service. Aren't you glad you came here this morning? Doom and gloom? No. Because God is trying to teach us to be prepared. All the troubles in your life, if there's a new administration that should come in in four or five years, having the truth.

Notice that you can have anything else. You could turn around and you could have any other book and it's okay. Nobody has a problem with that. You can bring up the Quran, you can put your hand on that and swear to that. Nobody cares because there's nothing in it that actually means or is worth anything. The word of God is a holy book that is God-breathed. This is not a book that you just go pull from a library or from. This is God-breathed. This is not something we just look at and admire from a distance. It permeates our soul and our spirit. It divides like a hot knife going through butter, showing us truth. It renews our mind, sets us right, it encourages us, it gives us exhortation.

It tries us. It produces that patience, that endurance. It ultimately yields that hope, that confidence. That's what you have. That's what you've been given. Don't take this lightly. 27% of this book is prophecy. For people that wonder, is it trustworthy? It's trustworthy more than any other historical book, anything else you have in your possession anywhere. There's nothing else like it. Go to the Iliad, look at anything. There's nothing else like it. Over 5,000 different manuscripts, copies, artifacts like that. Sometime we should have a moment where I come up, we just go through canon, just go through and explain to you how magnificent this book is. It's supernatural.

You want to see a miracle? Open your Bible and read it and be the miracle as your heart gets transformed. Paul is helping us understand that this hope, this confidence, this joyful expectation that's going to be produced, he says now this hope, this what I just built in you, Paul saying through the Holy Spirit, this doesn't disappoint. Does God ever disappoint, friends? Never. Let's hear that again. Does God ever disappoint? Never. God forbid. Certainly not as Paul would say. Of course not.

Why did I mention 27% of the Bible? Because if I could tell you there's over 1,300 different prophecies that have happened over 4,000 years, some that are still remaining to be fulfilled and it's at 100% success rate. In other words, carbon-dated, go back, look, know that this wasn't written a year after, "Oh, this is going to happen and oh by the way, I can read sort of the seasons and it's going to happen." No, no, no. Most of these predictions or prophecies or promises are 700 years old before they happened.

Let me ask you a question. Did you know what was going to happen 5, 10 years from now? 50 years? How about 700? Every single one of them, over 600, I have a book just in my possession of just biblical prophecies that have come through. There's nothing else. An MIT grad did a statistical regression on it. He said there's nothing else like it. It is 100%. Normally you do a confidence interval if you're familiar with statistics, 99%, 95 to 99% confidence interval. He says that blew that out of the water.

For Jesus to have been born, did you get to choose where you were born or what city or where you came from or a bloodline? Of course not. You can't even change anything. It'd be like you trying to change a star. You don't have the ability. You can't change even a hair on your head. Some of you ladies are like, "Watch me at the beautician," but you know what I mean. You can't legit, you know. But the reality is this is true. I want to settle this in everyone's heart today. That's why we come and study under the word because we know what it says is true.

He wants us to know that hope, that confidence, it's built on nothing less than God's own name. If it didn't happen, God wouldn't be God. They're mutually exclusive. You can't have one without the other because He says that He lifts His word higher and elevates it higher than His own name. You can't have it any other way. You either believe it, there is no more lukewarm Christian. Today's the day. No more. You either believe or you don't. You either follow or you don't. Don't play Christian. Don't play church. We're living in the last days. He's separating the wheat from the chaff. It's happening.

And yet we see this church, a young church here, three years continuing to grow while other churches are falling. Why? Not because there's anything special about anybody, me or any of the leadership here. It's because the word of God. It's the everything. People are coming in because they're hungry for truth and nothing else will do. They're not willing to compromise any longer because they know even people that aren't believers know something's going to happen today. Things are changing. Things are not like they've been.

We're living in different times. Such an uncertainty. The in-fighting we have in our country right now, even between political parties, has never been like this. The swearing and the cussing from the political pundits, never have we seen things like this open as though it's accepted. The laws that we're changing in this land to redefine marriage, to redefine gender. We have never seen, there's never been a popularized, go back in your history and be a Berean, study your history. There's never been a culture that's ever legalized marriage the way we have for an entire population group. Not to say that homosexuality wasn't practiced, it was, but it wasn't a law of the land.

You can go even back and read the rabbinical teachings to see how they even said, "We don't see anything like this." Friends, if you don't realize the days, then you're not recognizing the seasons. We need to know what the days we're living in and we need to draw others to that truth and hope. Otherwise, we know where they're being given a life sentence to, and it's not with Jesus and not with heaven.

Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God, there's the equation, it's because of His love, has been poured out. That's ekcheō in the Greek. This idea of a bestowing or a distributing largely. Think of a large distribution. That's what he's communicating through this. He says it's like the love of God just gets largely distributed. Boom, just lays it out. Where? In our hearts. By what? By the Holy Spirit. Do you have the Holy Spirit? Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit, who was given to us?

Now he's going to go through and he's going to explain how does this work here. He says, "For when we were still without strength, when we were unable..." In other words, when did God save us? When did Jesus save you? When you arrived and were living a perfect life, free of drugs, alcohol, and pornography and sin and everything like that? Or did He save you when you were wretched and depraved? Most of us, it was when we were wretched and depraved. It was when I was in sin, when I was an alcoholic, when I was messing up womanizing. That's when Christ got my heart. It wasn't when I was living the right life. It was when I was doing everything contrary, when I was an enemy to Christ.

Isn't that a strong word, pastor, an enemy? Well, that's exactly what the Bible teaches. Did you know that? If you're a born-again believer in Christ, you're not just friends with God. You're an enemy to Jesus Christ. You're an enemy to God. You're either in one class or the other. You're either a beloved, a child of God, everyone's a creation, you're the beloved child of God or you're an enemy. Now, I know people on the radio, "Boy, pastor, that's harsh. That is heavy. How can you say that?" Because Paul said it. Look at verse 10. Verse 10: "For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through His death and Son." That's not my words, friends. Don't get mad at me. That's Jesus. He told you we were enemies. That was our position before we accepted Christ.

He says that our strength, He poured out our hearts, the Spirit had been given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. And that's exactly who He died for. Can you imagine? Would you give your own son, your only begotten son to a group of people that are going to mock you and spit on you? To who are going to basically zone out and not even be paying attention? They're going to ignore everything that's going on in a world you're living in just because you can? Would you do that? Would you give your own life for somebody like that? I asked that a couple weeks ago. You know what everybody said? "No way." There wasn't a single person here that said, "You know what? I'd take my only son and I'd put him up on a cross, a horrible torture instrument, so that a world could turn around and basically spit on it." Whose name do they take when they say the name in vain? It's not Buddha, right? It's Jesus Christ because there's power in the name. There's power in the blood.

Well, we read here he says, "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die." He's saying the same thing. "Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrated His own love towards us that in while we were still sinners, while we were sinners, Christ died for us." While we were complete enemies of God, He gave us what we wouldn't give ourselves or someone else.

Much more than, having now been justified as if we've never done anything wrong, it's a legal term. He's basically saying we were guilty but in our guilt, He's chosen to no longer see our sin. It's not that He forgets it. God doesn't forget anything. But He no longer looks upon it. He no longer sees the sin. As we'll read in Psalm 103, as far as the east is from the west, He's separated our sin from us. "Who shall be sōzō," that word is saved, "from what? What are we saved from? Wrath. The wrath."

Matthew chapter three, verse seven and Luke chapter three, verse seven speak of this. Do you remember when John the Baptist turned around, who was he speaking to when he was out and he was baptizing in the wilderness? The Pharisees and Sadducees had come out. They kind of came out from Jerusalem. "What are you doing out here, John? You're a crazy man, wearing this fur and the belt and the whole thing and you're eating honey and locusts. What's wrong with you?" They go out to investigate. You know what he says? He says, "You brood of vipers." You know what that means? You son of snakes, or you son of the devil. That's basically what he's saying to them.

It wasn't exactly a warm welcome. It wasn't like a "You're invited, be our guest." He says, "You son of the devil." That caught their attention. He says, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath ahead?" So we see it in the gospels, both Matthew and Luke. Turn in your Bibles to John, two books over there. Turn to John chapter three, look at verse 36. What I'm going to be building for you is a point that this is not new, that this idea of wrath to come and the saving from the wrath is exactly what God has designed for His church. Because there are some today, we in Calvary Chapel believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. We believe we will be harpazō'd out and the church will not be entered into wrath. But some people say, "Well, you just get that from First Thessalonians five, verse nine. That's the only place you're eisogeting, you're misreading, you're mishandling the word of God." In which turn I say, listen to this audio teaching. I'm passing this on to faithful men and women that will be faithful to pass it on to others.

Look at what he says in chapter three, verse 36 of John. He says, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. He who does not believe in the Son shall not see life." I think that's pretty clear. If you're a born-again believer in Christ, you will live. If you're not a born-again believer in Christ, you will not live. You will die. You will not have an eternity with Jesus, you will have an eternity in hell. That's what it's saying. "But the wrath of God abides on him." Who's him? The one that does not believe in Jesus Christ, the one that is disobedient, the one that has denied or rejected Christ. Are you with me? Okay.

Let's keep going here. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter five. Let's look at Ephesians chapter five, verse six. This is another one of Paul's epistles. It's to the church he spent the most amount of time with in Ephesus. "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God will come upon who?" The sons of obedience, right? What's it say? "The sons of disobedience." He's very clearly drawing a demarcation or a delineation for us. He wants us to understand orgē, that's the word for wrath in the Greek. He wants us to understand who's going to experience this wrath. He's never designed it for the righteous. He's never designed it for the church.

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt VanderVen on His Perfect Love. We're developing our study in Romans and if you enjoyed today's message, we'd like to know. Email us at our website, HisPerfectLove.org, and be sure to include your prayer requests. While you're there, you'll notice a place to listen to Pastor Matt's sermons, including all of Romans. That's at HisPerfectLove.org.

You can also listen to us at OnePlace.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And we have a free mobile app. This is a convenient way to listen to Pastor Matt on your mobile device. Just go to HisPerfectLove.org for more information. And if you'd like to support this ministry with a one-time gift or ongoing monthly support, you can do so through the website at HisPerfectLove.org. Thank you so much for that.

We want all of our listeners to have access to the word of God, so if you're in need of a Bible, we'd like to get one into your hands. Just email us through our website and ask for the free Bible offer. Here's our web address again: HisPerfectLove.org. This has been His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll share another study in Romans. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg-West Shore.