Thank you. Everyone experiences suffering.

The Apostle Paul reminded believers that while we're not removed from the trials of life,

we do have hope in the midst of our sorrows.

We'll look at this hope today on Truth for Life as Alastair Begg continues our study in Romans chapter 8.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis observes that when we consider the unblushing promises of all that God has in store

for his children, we are, he says, somewhat half-hearted creatures, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making

mud pies in a slum,

because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

C.S. Lewis is equally matched by J.B. Phillips when in 1961, he wrote what turned out to be a famous and well-read book,

Your God is too small. And in that book, he set out to expose inadequate views of God,

and to introduce his readers to the true and living God of the Bible.

And in a similar vein here in this section of Romans chapter 8,

we are confronted with the fact that our understanding of salvation needs to be set in the vastness and grandeur of all that Paul is conveying. It is right and necessary

and proper for us to think of salvation as the Bible does in individualistic terms, the importance

of our faith in the Lord Jesus being personal

and practical and so on. But it is possible for us to conceive of that in such a way that

the immediate nature, the personal dimension of conversion, prevents us from considering what we might refer to as the cosmic dimensions

of salvation. That the significance of the work of God is not to be limited to our tiny private

worlds, but has significance in the vastness of the world itself.

That the ultimate plan of God in providing redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ

is to put the universe back together again in a brand new creation.

That sin has fractured every relationship in the world, apart from the relationships within the

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