The text for Pastor John's sermon this morning is found in Romans chapter 5

verses 1 through 5. If you're using a Bible from the pew in front of you that's

page 980.

Romans 5 versus 1 through 5.

Therefore since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in our hope

of sharing the glory of God.

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,

and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God's love

has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

I'd like to begin this morning by trying to bring us up to date on where we've come in this series on Christian Hope.

We're 11 weeks into it,

and you may remember that the first question we asked,

11 weeks ago, was, what is hope? And we answered from Hebrew

chapter 6 verse 11 that hope, Christian hope, is not this, a finger-crossing wish that daddy might get home on time for

supper tonight so we could have playtime but he might not. But rather hope is a full assurance

and a confident expectation of good things to come.

And then we asked secondly,

why hope?

Is there any reason to hope, Any ground for sinners to hope?

And we answered with two words, grace and gospel,

from 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 16 it said the Lord

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