So That You Will Abound In Hope

So our passage starts off with an exhortation, therefore accept one another. And then everything that comes after that is the reasoning for why we ought to accept one another. Now why does Paul exhort them to accept one another? Well, because it's very easy for you and for me and for them to not accept one another. To look around and go, well, you're not like me. Well, you don't understand me. Well, you haven't had the same life experiences. You don't have the same culture. Reasons abound for us to not accept each other. It's easy for us to say there's a difference between them and me. And in this time, when Paul's writing, he's writing to the Romans, to this church that's made up of two different groups of people primarily. The first being those he describes as the circumcision or the Jews. And the other group being the Gentiles, those who were not Jews, those who had come into faith in Jesus Christ but not having been Jews previously.

And so to the circumcision, Paul tells us, to that group, to the Jews, he says that God has come to them, Christ has come and become a servant of them, so that he would have proven or fulfilled the promises that he had made to the fathers, to their fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And so the Jews had a leg up on other people at their time. We have to first understand the scripture in terms of what would they have been like at that, how would they have understood it. And at that time, the Jews would have said, we're God's people. We've always been God's people.

And nobody else is. Therefore, we're better than everybody else. Because God's chosen us. He's set us apart. He's made us holy. And so they tended to look down on anyone who wasn't like them. And so Christ comes to them and he's a servant to them so that the truth of God that was promised to them and to their fathers would be confirmed. That they would find salvation. And some of them did. But there's another group of people, to the Gentiles. And it says that Christ became a servant to them to glorify his mercy. Now, why did the Gentiles need mercy? Well, because they weren't the covenant people of God. They hadn't been God's people all along. They didn't have the promises. They didn't have this lineage of God's faithfulness to them. They were outsiders. But when Christ came, he came to demonstrate his mercy to them by including them who didn't belong into his church, into his family. And so that's why there's an exhortation toward unity. Because when you put two groups of people together,

there's not generally unity. If you think of when two people get married, what you have is a coming together of two families. And in premarital counseling, we spend a whole week, no matter who we're talking to, we spend a whole week saying, your families are different, and there's going to be a coming together, and you should expect that there will be a certain level of friction. And what you have to do is realize you're at the center of the friction because you're the couple getting married, and so you have to be unified. Husband, you're not a part of your family anymore in the same way that you were previously. The Scripture says you'll leave your father and mother and be joined to your wife, and the two shall become one. Wife, the same thing applies to you. You're no longer simply a daughter or a sister. You're now a wife, and you're a wife first.

And so if you were a Johnson before or a Smith or a Jones, you're no longer that anymore. Now you're this new family. And you guys have to be unified. The whole message of that counseling session is to say, you married couples, you different people, man, woman, Jones, Smith, you guys are going to become one now. You have to be unified. Because you have two groups of people with standards and cultures and expectations coming together. Well, the same thing's happening here in the church. You have the Jews coming together. who've been the covenant people of God forever and have a way of living and a way of behaving and a way of thinking. They have a culture about them that's exclusive, which means it excludes people who are not like them. But when Jesus came, he said, no, no, no, it's not like that anymore. Now, other people are going to be brought in. There's a marriage, if you will. And if you're married, you know that not all marriages go off without a hitch. How often do married couples need to be told, as an example,

You guys ought to work on being unified. You need to work together, not against each other. And that's the import of the point of what Paul's starting out saying here. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ has. He's accepted both of you. He's taken the two of you and put you together. Now accept one another. You've come from different places. You have different histories, and yet you're one now in Christ. So accept one another. And so I want us to see that the recipients of this letter were under constant threat, constant danger to divide from one another, to not accept each other, to not like each other. And so they had to be vigilant constantly or they would just settle into disunity. Unity, the sort of unity that Paul's exhorting them to, is not the sort of unity that just happens if you just kind of glance over it every once in a while to see, yeah, yeah, no, we're still fine. It's the kind of unity that takes proactive, self-controlled discipline, saying, you know, you're my brother.

And I love you. There's no other way. You know what I find, practically speaking, in my own life and in the lives of the people that I work with, you guys, when I counsel you, when someone says, you know, Bill is a jerk. He does this and he does that, and he's a jerk. One of the first things I'll ask you is, have you spent any time with Bill recently? And what is the answer? Almost always. No, I haven't. And this is a little window, this is a little picture into how disunity happens. When are they most likely to fight? Do you know? I can tell you it's really not as mysterious as you might want it to be. It's when they've spent an extended period of time away from each other. The likelihood of them getting into an argument when they come back together, it's been a busy week, it's been a busy month, I was gone, I was sick, whatever it is that causes them to be apart.

They're much more likely to fight when they get back together. Because disunity is the status quo. It's very easy for, if it was Vanessa and me, it's very easy for me to have a busy week and think she has no idea. And it's very easy for her to have a busy week and think Dave doesn't care. Whether those things are true or not has no bearing on whether we're unified. We have to work at it. And you have to work at it. And that's what Paul's saying in this passage, is you have to work at it. This is a sort of unity. You have to take by the hand and say, I'm going to have it.

Because you won't get it any other way. There's constant danger toward disunity. So what about us? Is this sort of exhortation to accept one another still necessary for us today? And if I were to talk about in our workplaces or in our homes or in our marriages, we'd all say, yep. And if I were to say, in the church, is it necessary? You might say, yes. Because you'd look around in the room and you'd say, you know, there are people here I don't get along with. I don't know. They don't know me. We're not the same. And so, yes, it takes a little bit of work. But I don't think that this unity that Paul's pushing for here is limited to those who are within the church. I think it's actually a unity that has to do with people coming in. Because if I asked you, do you have to work toward unity?

Well, let me ask you this. Are you a Jew or a Gentile? Is there any Jew here? Anyone who's Jewish? So does this apply? Here the text says Jews and Gentiles have this problem, and here we all sit going, well, we're Gentiles. Well, I guess we don't have this problem. And I say, oh, we're fools. We have this problem. When I ask you if you're a Jew, we all say, no, I'm not a Jew, because you're not Jewish. You didn't come up in a Jewish home. Your heritage is not Jewish. But if I were to ask you, are you a son of Abraham? Or if I were to say, are you one of God's covenant people? Well, then those of you who are Christians would say, yes, I am. And I'd say, then you're Jewish in that sense. And you're exclusive in that sense. And all of the things that he says to the Jews and all of the inclinations that they have to despise those who are different than them are the temptations that you and I face as Jews. Do you like being Jews?

Would you rather be a Gentile? I liked my status as Gentile better because they're the ones who are being accommodated. They're the ones who are being welcomed in. They're the ones that space is being made for. So I like being a Gentile. I like being a non-Jew because that means everyone's got to make room for me. And I say, no, no, no. You were a Gentile at some point. At some point in your life, you didn't believe. To some of you, that's more obvious in your life. You could look back and say, there was a time when I believed, and before that, I didn't. And after that, I do. But if you're a Christian, when you read this passage, you have to make room in your heart for the Gentiles. Because you're not one of them anymore. And so the division that existed in our text between the Jews and the Gentiles is perfectly intact today between Christians and non-Christians. There's an exclusivity. There's a difference in culture. There's a disagreement. There's all kinds of, I don't like you, going on. Now I want to ask you for a second.

Was it only the Jews who didn't like the Gentiles? Or was it true also that the Gentiles didn't like the Jews? Oh, it was a two-way street of disunity. The Gentiles didn't like the Jews any more than the Jews liked the Gentiles. They had their reasons. You don't like me, I don't like you. And so today that same division or that same temptation to division exists among us, but it's only between Christians and non-Christians as opposed to Jews and Gentiles. In Romans 4, Paul talks about this. He talks about Abraham and he says, he's trying to break down this idea in your heads that you're Jews and you're Gentiles. And he says, no, no, no. It's people of God and not people of God. And how do you become one of the people of God? Well, it's by trusting God like Abraham did. In Romans 4, 9 and 13, it says this. Is this blessing then on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised? This blessing of being a part of God's, being called one of God's people.

For we say faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness. Well, how then was it credited? How did Abraham become righteous? While he was circumcised or not circumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of faith while he... had been uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised. And so you see in this passage, there's an inclusion of those, even from Abraham, of those who come to faith and become a people of God without bearing the sign. There's an entrance. There's a door into the community, if you will, not a wall that keeps people out only. And so he was given a sign of his...

membership in the family of God, his righteousness, so that he might become a father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them, to us. And the father of circumcision, to those who only are of the circumcision, but also who follow in the steps of faith of our father Abraham, which he had while uncircumcised, the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be their heir, that he would be Heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. And so all of you who believe and would call yourself Christians are the Jews. We're the Jews. So you have to think at this point, do you have an inclination to say, don't belong here to unbelievers, to those who are not like you? I think what actually happens is that most of the time we don't want to say, no, unbelievers don't belong in church. They need to become believers. And I say, you're right.

Could you please explain to me how that's supposed to happen if they're not welcome, if they don't play by the rules, if they don't know all the ins and outs, when to stand and when to sit and what to say and how to smile and all the rest? How are they supposed to become Christians if they don't come in? You say, well, there's danger if they come in. And I say, yep. And there's bigger danger if they stay out, not only to them but to us, because we're in danger of being an unfruitful branch. So is it appropriate that there would be a division between Christians and non-Christians? You think, well, I don't know. And I think there absolutely is appropriate that there would be a division. And you're like, well, but didn't you just say that there shouldn't be a division? And I say, the division is inevitable. Just like the disunity in your marriage or your relationships is inevitable. You have to work against it. But is it appropriate that there would be a certain level of disunity?

Between Christians and non-Christians? Yeah, because there are real differences between them. In Sunday school a few weeks ago, I talked about what defines a nation. And I said, you know, we all think that it's borders that define a nation. And it's true that nations have borders and that those do provide boundaries. But what defines a nation? What defines a nation is their culture, but largely it's their God. Their God is what defines them. And so if you have two groups of people that get together and they have different gods, you have a division. They don't act like they're one and the same unless they're lying. There's a division between them because they serve different gods. They have different priorities. They love and care about different things. And this is what you have between a Christian and a non-Christian. One of them's God is Jesus Christ and the other one isn't. So do you think that they're going to get along and agree and be unified with each other? No.

But it's a lie that Christians have so often believed that there's not supposed to be a division, there's not supposed to be a difference, there's not supposed to be any differences between believers and unbelievers. And so our outreach or our evangelism toward unbelievers has been to go to them and to say, what would it take to get you to come to church? What do we need to be like to get you to come here to church? And the unbelievers said, well, be less like church. Basically what the answer is, Stop talking about sin. Stop talking about righteousness. Stop saying no to the things that I love and want to spend my time doing. If you'll stop doing those things and you'll make it more like an experience, like a concert or what have you, well, I like concerts. Let's all come. So they came. Was the disunity done away with? Well, it was, but it was done away with in the wrong direction. The Christians became like the world instead of the world becoming like the Christians.

I read a book one time, I've told you about this before, called Surprising Insights from the Unchurched. And the goal of this was not to go knock on unbelievers' doors and say, what would it take to get you to come to church? This survey was different. What they did was they went into churches and they talked to all the new believers within the last two years. And they say, why did you come to church? And they said, well, I had questions. I wanted answers. And they said, okay. So why'd you stay at the church? And they said, because they told me what God said, basically. And here's the interesting thing. They didn't stay at churches that agreed with them because they understood that they weren't Christians, that they didn't know Jesus and they didn't trust the Bible and they didn't have those priorities. And so they wanted to go to a place that was different than what they were.

Because if they were happy with where they were and what they believed, they wouldn't go to church. But they came to church and they became Christians. And what they wanted was someone to say, here are the differences between Christians and non-Christians. And the number one thing that was important to them was clear biblical teaching. That's what they wanted. Clear biblical teaching. Tell me what the Bible says. I know what the world says. I've been living it. I've been believing it. I've been doing it. I want to know what the Bible says. And I don't expect that the two will agree. So what's the difficulty? Well, the difficulty is, what do you do with this disunity among a believer and an unbeliever? Do you want to know what you're supposed to do with it, what your expectations should be as Christians? It's that you would see the unbelievers become believers. And that you would participate, that we would participate in that process. And that what we wouldn't say is,

You're bad. You do wicked stuff. You go figure out how not to do wicked stuff somewhere else because I don't want to get your wicked stuff in my life. And once you get that all figured out and you're a Christian and you understand how everything works in the Christian world, then you can come here and be a part. That's the disunity that Paul's opposed to. You unbelievers go figure it out. You Gentiles go figure it out. And when you get it all figured out, then you can come. So then there's this section in the middle of our passage where Paul quotes from Isaiah. Multiple times. And it talks about the Gentiles. And you have to remember now that this isn't saying, hey, you Gentiles, come on in. We're hearing it as the Jews. And we're being told the Gentiles need to come in. They should come in. You ought to want them to come in. And that's different. Because now instead of thinking, there needs to be room made for me, we have to say, oh, I need to make room for them. Not in a way that says, I'm like you and I'm not a Christian.

but in a way that accommodates their weakness and their ignorance and their lack of knowledge. They don't have faith. They're not going to say and do and behave all the ways you do. Right? So are they welcome or not? That's the question. So Paul, in these quotes, these passages from Isaiah, he says, Therefore, I will give praise to you among the Gentiles, and I will sing to your name. And again, he says, Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. Isn't that a strange thing? With his people. The Gentiles are supposed to praise God where? With his people. Well, what's that mean about the Gentiles? That means they've got to be welcomed there, and it means they've got to become one of his people. They've got to change. But the church folk have to have them. And I don't know that any one of us would say, I don't care if unbelievers come to faith. I don't care if they believe. I don't care if they come to know Jesus. That doesn't matter to me. But that's not the question. The question is,

How do you respond in your life when you see someone who sins because they don't know God? Do you think the same thing of them that you would think of a Christian, which is you should know better? That's what we think of Christians when they sin, right? You should know better. How easy is it to think of an unbeliever? They should know better. He knows better. Have you considered that they don't? I can tell you from my own experience, not coming up in the church, not being a Christian, that What Paul says about sin is true, which is, I didn't know what sin was until the law came in. Did not know it. I spent years of my life doing things that I can look back on and read into and say, that was wrong. That was sinful. I shouldn't have done that. But at the time, I didn't know. And all of us are sitting here going, but they should know. And I say, they should know. You're right. So how are they going to know? How are they supposed to know?

How are you going to help them to know? That's the question. In men's group last week, I asked the men, we were talking about motives. And I said, we actually, in disagreements, we need to be able to distinguish between someone is being malicious in their lies or whether they're ignorantly believing lies. Because you actually deal with those people differently. Someone who's believed a lie but doesn't know it's a lie is a different type of person than someone who has fabricated the lie. and who has made it up and who is misleading other people. Those are differences. Both of them are believing a lie. Both of them need to reject the lie and believe the truth. But they've come to it differently. And we have to have in our minds this space that there are people who don't know what we think they should know. And that our place and our responsibility as Christians is not to go, you should know better, but to say, how can I help them to know the truth? Because they don't know the truth.

Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. Bring them in. Teach them God's ways so that they can rejoice with you. Even then, in Isaiah's time, they were being told these things. Again, Isaiah says, There shall come the root of Jesse. This is speaking about Jesus. The root of Jesse is a son of Jesse. This is a promise or a prophecy that one of Jesse's children, if you were to go back and look at Jesus' lineage, I don't remember if it's in Joseph's line or Mary's line, you would find Jesse. And this is a promise that says, there's going to come a child from this man Jesse, and what's he going to be like? Well, he's going to rule over the Gentiles. Now I want to ask you, do the Gentiles want to be ruled over by this root of Jesse? The ones who are Christians do. We're so quick to say, oh no, no, Gentiles don't. And I say, okay, so is the division between Gentiles and Jews so deep in the concrete that it will never be transversed?

That there will never be someone who says, I was a Gentile, but now I've come to know Jesus and I love him. And he's my Lord and my Savior. Or are they just cast-offs that there's no hope for in the world? There shall come the root of Jesse, and he who arises, this root of Jesse, to rule over the Gentiles, in him shall they hope. And so the picture that this prophecy gives to us is that those Gentiles who come in who didn't know God and didn't have any claim, to his goodness and his promise and his mercy and ultimately his salvation, are going to receive it and are going to rejoice in it, are going to love it. They're going to believe. They're going to have hope. Hope is an exclusively Christian thing. When you read in the Old Testament about hope, if you just, whatever Bible, where you look up Bible stuff, if you just looked up the word hope, just in the Psalms, hope.

What you would find all through it is the psalmists talking about their hope in God. And you'd find them talking about their hope in God in the midst of such difficulty and such hardship and such seeming hopelessness. You can't conclude anything except that hope is something that only Christians have, that only God's people have. No one else has it. The Jews understood that. This would have cut across them. If they had understood what Isaiah was saying, At that time, they would have went, whoa, you're giving away our goodies. That's ours. We hope in you. Not them. But there'll come a root of Jesse and he who arises to rule over the Gentiles and him shall the Gentiles hope. Where are they going to get that hope? What are they going to hope in? They're going to hope in Jesus. So I'm saying all of this because I don't want you always to think in your mind that this division between believer and unbeliever is...

insurmountable. There's nothing that can be done about it. It will just always be that way. Everyone who's an unbeliever will always be an unbeliever. It's not true. Pray God that it would not be true. That we would never see a new believer. Someone coming to faith and coming to love Jesus and to say, he's my Lord and he's my Savior. And I love that he rules over me and he's given me a hope. I didn't have hope before, but now I do. I wasn't a Christian, but now I am. I was lost. I was dead. But now I'm saved and I'm alive. We would all like to have that day. And I say, if we'd like to have that day, then we have to want to have the days that come before that day. Our passage ends with a prayer, effectively, for Paul. A benediction, a good word, a blessing. Now may the God of hope, remember that our God is the only place where hope can be found. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you'll abound in hope.

by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the final thing I want to ask you, whether you're a Christian or you're not a Christian, whether you feel like you have hope or whether you feel like you have no hope, what I want to tell you is the only place you're going to find hope in this world is in Jesus Christ. And a Christian needs to hear that, who's been a Christian for decades, just as much as an unbeliever who has no hope in the world needs to hear it. Hope is the sort of thing that we're very inclined to lie about, to be dishonest about, to say we have hope when we don't have hope. That is the world's trope. That's their lie. They say they have hope, but they don't have any. And it's something that Christians have taken on to our harm. Paul says in Ephesians 2, reminding them of their hopelessness, he says this, he says, Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh,

the so-called uncircumcision, you realize there's always this sign with hope. There's always this circumcision or uncircumcision. There's always this part of the people of God and bearing the sign of that, now baptism or not. It's actually a division. It's actually a difference. It's sort of the marker. If you're baptized, you're one of God's people, at least in some respect. If you're not baptized, you're not one of God's people in every respect. remember in Ephesians 2, 11 and 12, therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands, remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel. Remember the division. And strangers to the covenants of promise, what? Having no hope and without God in this world. That is the status. That is the state of being.

For every unbeliever. And for many of us, we could point to a time in our life where that was the truth of our life. Having no hope in the world and being without God. And it's miserable. Hopelessness is about the worst thing you can have in this life. Trouble you're going to have. But in the midst of trouble, to not have hope of deliverance, to not have hope of reconciliation, to not have hope of a happy end to all of your trouble, that's the pit of despair. Christians have hope. Christians struggle with having hope, but they ought to have hope. And so this passage teaches us that hope, the hope that Christians have, will be extended to the Gentiles because God is the God of hope. He is in the business of giving hope to the hopeless.

So are you hopeless? That's the question. You say, am I a Christian? If I'm a Christian, then I'm hopeful. And I say, well, I'm not always. It's part of my weakness in my ongoing wrestling and struggling with sin is that I'm not what I should be. I'm not what I will be. But I know what it is that I should be. And I'm aiming at it, and I'm pushing toward it. Do you have hope? In Psalm 42.5, David says this. He's sort of counseling himself. He's speaking to his soul. God's truth. And this is what he says. He says, why are you in despair, O my soul? Why are you in despair? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him for his help, for the help of his presence. And so you realize that hope is this thing. We want it to just be this thing we collect and that we have and that we can, you know, it's this card we have in our back pocket. And whenever trouble comes, we just play that card and everything's all made better.

But we have these souls inside of us that aren't what they should be, that aren't where they should be, that struggle and are weak. And we don't hope like we ought to. And so David says, why are you in despair, O my soul? Do you say to yourself, why are you in despair, O my soul? Why are you having these troubles? Why are you upset? Why are you disturbed within me? This is the voice of a Christian. Hope is not the sort of thing that Christians have without any stumbling along the way. And so it follows that our questions would be at times of struggle and distress. Why are you despairing, soul? And this is why Paul prays at the end of this passage, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you will abound in hope. So often what we want is, instead of hope, is we just want our circumstances to change. Whatever is hard, whatever is difficult, whatever is burdensome to us, we say, well, I just want that to go away.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with wanting your hardships to go away. Being a Christian does not mean you just keep suffering and difficulty into your lap and go, I'm where I'm supposed to be now because my life is impossibly difficult. But hope is something that stands up in the midst of all of those trials and all of those difficulties and says, I'm not alone. Do you remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? We're going to make an idol and we're going to clang the bells and you're going to bow down and worship. And if you don't bow down and worship, what's going to happen to you? Off to the fire. You're going to be killed. The most awful, terrible death. Burned alive. And what do they say? They say, our God's able to deliver us from this. But even if he doesn't, we will not bow down and we will not worship. And Nebuchadnezzar gets so angry, he has them crank the furnace up to seven.

To the point that the people who are carrying these bound men to the furnace are dying from the heat. And yet these men are unscathed. Did they have hope? They had hope. Was their situation as bad as you could imagine? It was. They had hope. God did deliver them. So I wouldn't be doing all of my job if I only said to you, do you have hope? That is the first question. Do you have hope? You won't be able to communicate hope. or transmit it to anybody else in any sort of faithful way, if there's not some hope in you somewhere that's able to stand against the current of difficulty and say, no, I have hope. Not like I should, but I have hope. So the first question is, do you have hope? The second question, and maybe the more difficult question, is do you want others to have hope? Are you willing to participate in them finding hope?

What that means is are you willing to live with and among and help the hopeless? Do you like being around people who are hopeless? Do people like being around you when you're hopeless? When you're Eeyore all cranked up to the max? When you're biting and devouring and angry and frustrated and bitter and nasty? Do you want to be around you when you're like that? No. Does anybody else want to be around you? The people who love you do. So do you love the people who are hopeless? Do you want them to have hope, or do you want them to say, do you hope that they find hope somewhere, somehow, or will you speak words of hope to them in their hopelessness? What does it sound like to speak words of hopelessness to them? Well, it doesn't sound like, if you believe in Jesus, your life will get all better. That's often not the case. What it sounds like is something to the effect of, if you hope, I know your circumstances, and I can see what they are, and you weep with them and mourn with them and the difficulty of it, and you say, but this isn't all there is.

And this, in its time and in God's providence, is going to end at some point. And I don't know how it will end. It may be resolved well, or it may get worse yet. But however it ends, it will end. And when it ends, what will be left? Will you have hoped? Do you have any hope left? Is your only hope that the sick person will be healed? Is your only hope that your broken marriage will be mended? Is your only hope that your child will quit drugs? Is your only hope that you can find a job? Is that your only hope? We can work on and help with all of those things. We can't guarantee the outcomes of them. But at some point, that question is going to be answered. And new questions will arise. New opportunities to despair. New opportunities to be hopeless. I have hope that can withstand anything that comes our way.

Because my God is a God of hope. He sent his son into this world to give me hope. But not only me, you too. And then you have to be ready for them to tell you about the most difficult things in your life. You have to be ready for them to reject you and never want to speak to you again. You have to be ready for who knows what. I don't know what. God knows what. We have a God of hope. And Paul prays that we would be filled. With joy and peace in believing that we have a God of hope so that we'll abound in it. So that when the trial comes, there will be a hopeful resilience among his people that is spread to other people. They're invited into that unity and into that communion and into that fellowship. When their trials and their difficulties come, they're not without hope in this world as they were formerly. Well, you do the work of bringing people in from wherever they're at.

into that unity and into that hope? Well, not if you don't like them. And it really is that simple. Not if you don't like them. Not if you look down on them, like the Jews look down on the Gentiles or the Gentiles look down on the Jews. No, you won't have anything to give to them. You won't have anything to say to them because you don't love them. But God has loved you and he sacrificed his son for you so that you would love and make sacrifices for other people. And if you want to guarantee that it's going to work, you're never going to get it. But you can hope that God will use it. You can trust that God will use it. And he'll be glorified by your words. And do with them what he wants to do with them. And so if we as a church only have unity that is, if we only work at unity amongst us, then what we have is a dying unity. A unity that will not survive our lives.

Because we're not bringing anyone else into this unity. There's no new blood. It's dying. Paul exhorts us to a living, growing unity where unbelievers are coming in and joining us in loving and worshiping our God. Praising us. Praising God along with us. Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. Bring them in. Love on them. Tell them the truth. Tell them no when they need to be told no. Tell them what to pay attention to and give their hearts to. instead of what they're loving and giving their hearts to now, pray for them. I'm going to pray for you that God would give you hope. Not only that he'll resolve your trouble, but that he'll give you hope. And it's the sweetest work you'll ever get to be a part of. When I've been able to see these sorts of things happen, it's the most invigorating thing you'll do. When you see someone go from death to life, there's no greater joy.

Angels in heaven rejoice at that point. Why wouldn't we? Let's be about the work of spreading God's hope this Christmas season.