Romans 15:4: Hope and the Scriptures

Introduction:

The Puritans had a saying, ‘hope is the mother and daughter of patience.’  When we have hope, the knowledge of the certainty of the inheritance God has laid up for us, this gives birth to the daughter of patience, we can push through the difficulties because we know our sufferings are temporary and they must inevitably give way to glory.  But Patience is sometimes the mother as well.  Rom. 5:3-4, ‘More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.’  It is this second type of hope, hope as the daughter of patience that Paul is speaking about in our next portion, Rom. 15:4-6, ‘For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.5 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus,6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’  Paul ever the teacher, having quoted from the Scriptures in Psalm 69 gives a little aside telling us the purpose of the Scriptures. One of their purposes is to give us hope.  So as we move on in this portion we want to look at the relationship between the bible and hope.

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